John King's 'worries' about DeVos don't include "choice" or vouchers

Duncan & King

As N.Y.'s Education Commissioner, John King's top-down imposition of corporate-style reform policies, including Common Core testing mania, led to a revolt among parents and teachers.

As Arne Duncan's appointed successor to a short-lived stint as Pres. Obama's Ed Secretary, King continued Duncan's push for mass closings of public schools in black communities and replacing them with privately-run charters. In many ways, the Duncan/King failed Race to the Top program, set the table for Betsy DeVos' current school "choice" agenda which now threatens to decimate public schooling altogether.

As his reward for causing all this mayhem and division, King landed softly at the top of the Education Trust, which supposedly looks out for poor and minority children but instead has been a bulwark of destructive, top-down imposed testing madness going back to the now thoroughly-discredited No Child Left Behind law.

While King and Duncan have been critical of DeVos, they have steered clear of saying anything strongly critical about the bedrock of her "reform" strategy -- privatization, "choice" and vouchers.

In an interview with EdWeek's Alyson Klein, King reveals his and Ed Trust's affinity with Trump/DeVos on ed policy by omitting any criticism or even mention of their push for privatization and school vouchers. While King shares some of his legitimate "worries" about the DeVos administration's funding cuts to education and it's recent moves when it comes to civil rights enforcement, his concerns sound rather tepid.

"All of those things suggest that there's not a full commitment to civil rights protection," King said.

Not a full commitment? A duh statement if I ever heard one. Especially when you consider the lengths to which Trump/DeVos have already gone to turning the Office of Civil Rights into its opposite. 

And then there's the reality that King and Duncan's regimes also failed (by Duncan's own admission) on what Duncan called "forced integration", at times disparaging Obama's own Justice Department on civil rights enforcement.

But King's main concern isn't about the Trump regime's bent toward white supremacy. Rather it's that DeVos may not be tough enough on states and school districts when it comes to enforcing test-score accountability,

He tells Klein that he concerned that DeVos and even Democratic Gov. Jerry Brown aren't intervening severely enough in low-performing (high poverty) schools --"intervening" meaning labeling them as failures, closing them, and replacing them with charters.

"I am worried about the clarity for parents about school performance ... I'm very worried about the California dashboard," he said, referring to the state's proposed accountability model, which considers school performance on a host of factors, but doesn't come up with an overall rating. "I think it's very confusing."

While in previous interviews, King has called the voucher issue a "distraction", his list of current concerns expressed in the EdWeek interview include not even a mention of "choice" or school vouchers. This omission is most revealing. 

John King's Law: 'Test & Punish'

Test-and-punish enforcer John King (right) with predecessor Arne Duncan. 

As he did while he was in New York, Ed. Sec. John King continues to play the enforcer on high-stakes, standardized test scores as the primary measure for rating schools under ESSA.

Now he's trying to force CA Gov. Jerry Brown to use a discredited, simplistic A-F grading system to rank schools or districts as  “very low performing,” “low performing,” “high performing,” or “very high-performing,” based mainly on students' standardized test scores. It's what he calls a “single summative rating”.

He acts as though Gov. Brown is committing treason by advocating the use of multiple measures.

King claims it has to be a "simple" rating system so that parents can understand it. He thinks parents are too stupid to understand that there's more than one way to tell how their schools and their children are doing. His approach is what led to the mass parent opt-out revolt in N.Y. under his administration.

This is the same line we heard under Bush's No Child Left Behind. It turned out that NCLB testing madness was just another form of social reproduction. Or more simply put, a way of replicating and enforcing existing inequalities by punishing schools and districts with the neediest kids. Testing mania only reinforced school segregation and hurt poor kids and children of color the most.

Not to mention the discredited role of the use of standardized tests as a valid measure when it comes to evaluating teachers or schools.

Some pinned their hopes on ESSA as a way of giving states and local districts more flexibility and easing the pressures of federally-enforced, top-down school "reform." I was even worried that the new law would just shift more power to southern segregationist states like Mississippi and Alabama. I still am.

But when Brown, the nation's most progressive Democratic governor, tried even the slightest departure from King's Law, he was called on the carpet. I say King's Law because there is nothing in ESSA to prevent a state from using multiple measures, just as California is already doing. King made it up.

When I tweeted about this yesterday, the first one to leap to King's defense was Arne Duncan's former flack, Peter Cunningham.

@mikeklonsky Not true. King is pushing for a simple rating so parents can understand. Doesn't have to be based only on test scores.

— Peter Cunningham (@PCunningham57) July 1, 2016

Yes, of course "not only." But mainly.

Yes, should have said, test score as PRIMARY measure instead of single measure. Just as discredited. Shame on King. https://t.co/7WXraNaUuD

— Mike Klonsky (@mikeklonsky) July 1, 2016

@mikeklonsky That's in the law. That's not King's call.

— Peter Cunningham (@PCunningham57) July 1, 2016

First of all, it's not "in the law." as even the law's co-sponsor, Republican Sen. Lamar Alexander points out. He asks King,

“I’d like you to think about where in the law you get the authority to provide for a single summative rating.” 

King has no answer.

Then Alexander tells King:

“You’ve invented out of whole cloth a so-called summative rating system that’s nowhere in the law that would essentially require all states to come up with an A through F system for all of their schools based primarily on test scores on federally mandated tests in math and reading."

The great irony here is that when Arne Duncan ran the DOE, with help from Peter Cunningham, NCLB was "the law."  That didn't stop Duncan from imposing Duncan's Law, otherwise known as the now-discredited Race To The Top.

There are no big surprises here, especially when you consider King's history in N.Y.  As AFT Prez Randi Weingarten succinctly put it:

 ...his tenure as New York state’s education commissioner created so much polarization in the state with parents and educators alike that even Gov. Andrew Cuomo is finally doing a mea culpa over the obsession with testing. We can only hope that King has learned a thing or two since his tenure in New York.”

He hasn't.

Great victory in N.Y. teacher VAM case. But...

Dumb & Dumber

In a case that could have national repercussions, New York Supreme Court Judge Roger McDonough has ruled New York teacher Sheri Lederman received an evaluation that was “arbitrary” and “capricious” as part of an assessment system that was developed when John King, the new U.S. education secretary, was the N.Y. State education commissioner.

According to the Washington Post:

Lederman’s suit against state education officials — including King — challenges the rationality of the VAM model, and it alleges that the New York State Growth Measures “actually punishes excellence in education through a statistical black box which no rational educator or fact finder could see as fair, accurate or reliable.”

The judge's ruling confirms what educators and evaluation experts have been saying for years about the Value Added Model (VAM) which rates teachers on the basis of students' standardized test scores. In many cases, VAM ratings have determined teacher pay, job security, school funding, and often the very survival of schools under state accountability rules.

The ruling follows two years of mass anti-testing protests across N.Y. state, including a burgeoning opt-out movement of parents. The judge also heard evidence from national ed experts like Linda Darling-Hammond, Carol Burris, Jesse Rothstein, Audrey Amrein-Beardsly, Aaron Pallas and others.

Sanders only candidate to oppose high-stakes testing. 

But because Judge McDonough's ruling was limited to the Lederman case, VAM remains the standard in evaluation, leaving teachers to fend for themselves in expensive court cases against state and federal evaluation policies. And now the culprit in the case has been promoted to replace VAM supporter Arne Duncan as Pres. Obama's education chief.

Hopefully, the Lederman case will open the door to further broader rulings and VAM will end up in history's trash bin, replaced by more authentic and valid models of teacher evaluation.

What a pity that this struggle has to fought against, rather than with the power and might of the U.S. Dept. of Education.

So far, Bernie Sanders is the only presidential candidate to stand openly against this misuse of standardized testing.

How I get my news

At Fight For 15 rally in Chicago

Funny way to get the protest news. This morning's traffic report on NBC News warns me to watch out for Fight for 15 protests tying up downtown traffic. Thanks @KyeMartin. I'll rush right over.

More breaking news from CJR. Arne Duncan and his replacement at DOE, John King discover there's actual school segregation in Pinellas County, Florida.

 ...the US Department of Education opened a civil rights investigation into the district, the Times reported. Top department officials had first visited the district after reading the original Times series, which made clear that these aren’t just any struggling schools—they’re schools where student performance plummeted beginning in 2007, when the district abandoned an integration plan that had been in place for decades and the schools became resegregated.

Remember, it was then-Ed Sec. Duncan who, in 2013, came out firmly against what he called, "forced integration".  Shades of  "Bull Connor" and Orville Faubus.

CJR and local media have labeled re-segregated, impoverished Florida schools as "failure factories", a term more appropriate for the Duncan/King Dept. of Ed.

Duncan's reign was marked by his misuse of federal funding to favor (even mandate through Race To The Top) the spread of privately-run charter schools.

This from Phi Delta Kappa:

The fact is we don’t have to guess about the consequences of one of the Obama Administration’s most visible policies: the national expansion of charter schools. We need only turn to a large body of relevant research showing that charter schools, on average, don’t have an academic advantage over traditional public schools (Gill et al., 2007; Gleason, Clark, Tuttle, & Dwoyer, 2010), but they do have a significant risk of leading to increased segregation (Booker, Zimmer, & Buddin, 2005; Gulosino & d’Entremont, 2011).

Remember too, that it was Duncan, while CEO of Chicago schools back in '07, who lobbied to have the city's deseg consent decree thrown out, which it finally was in 2009.

So the next time you hear these guys say that "education is the civil rights issue of our time", nod and ask them, "which side are you on?"

NOW: dual marches of home care and fast food workers converge on Loyola campus! #Fightfor15 pic.twitter.com/zoU256BruM

— Fight For 15 Chicago (@chifightfor15) April 14, 2016

WEEKEND QUOTABLES

Albert Woodfox, released from Angola prison after 43 years in solitary confinement. 

Albert Woodfox

 “I can now direct all my efforts to ending the barbarous use of solitary confinement and will continue my work on that issue here in the free world.” -- Guardian

Jamil Smith

Scalia’s passing underscores that waiting for bigots to die is a fool’s errand. It doesn’t excuse us from the work that needs to be done, both organizationally and politically, to further equality. -- MTV News

Donald Trump on his support for Iraq War. 

“I really don’t even know what I mean because that was a long time ago and who knows what was in my head.” -- NBC, Meet the Press

NEA Pres. Lily Eskelsen García

“We definitely hear something new coming out of [Interim Ed Sec. John King],” she said, adding that while his words “mean a lot to us,” teachers are interested in seeing how he backs up those words with actions. “There’s some power in making a speech. I think that actually tells people where you are,” she said. “But if that’s where it ends, we’re in big trouble.” -- Washington Post

"Mr. Dalton was described by neighbors as someone who periodically shot a gun out the back door of his house." And "paranoid." More guns!

— Greg Mitchell (@GregMitch) February 21, 2016

WEEKEND QUOTABLES

Brother Fred

Mercedes Schneider

Duncan is gone, and the USDOE test worship continues. -- Deutsch 29

Valerie Strauss

[New Ed Sec. John] King was so enamored with test-based “accountability,” he pushed new Pearson-developed tests aligned to the Common Core before teachers had enough time to learn the standards and develop new curriculum and lessons. -- Washington Post

S-T sports columnist Rick Telander

Can you imagine the Chicago we know today inviting the world into our living room soon? I can’t. Nor will we. -- Thank goodness Chicago won't host the 2016 Olympics

Recall expert Joshua Spivak

 “There’s no jurisdiction I know of that have just one guy” open to recall. -- Sun-Times

Obama's choice of King, the worst possible [Updated]

3,000 N.Y. teacher union delegates give King "no confidence" vote. 

“Throughout his term in New York, John King was notorious for his complete disconnect from parents, teachers, and school officials. Our only hope is that this bizarre move by the White House will have the same effect across the country, spreading the Opt Out movement to every corner of the nation.” -- NYSAPE

Pres. Obama's choice of John King to succeed Ed Sec. Arne Duncan, couldn't have been worse. Why did he do it? It's hard to find a more reactionary and divisive thinker or a practitioner in all Obama's realm than King.

As N.Y.'s Education Commissioner, King's top-down imposition of corporate-style reform policies, including Common Core testing mania, has led to a revolt among parents and teachers. If anyone deserves major credit for sparking the growing parent opt-out movement which has spread now nationwide and represents the biggest single threat to Obama's own ed policies, it is King.

The size and militancy of the opt-out movement, with national elections on the horizon, has forced a self-critical re-assessment of administration testing policy. Obama now admits that his own testing push "has gone to far." But the King appointment further damages his credibility on that issue.

King's push for teacher evaluations based mainly on student test scores even has usually compliant union leaders up in arms. He received a vote of "no confidence" from the nearly 3,000 delegates to the state teachers convention, last year.

Could Obama have made a more divisive choice at a time when there's even the slightest opportunity for congress to adopt a new national education bill to finally replace NCLB? No.

King, who attended elite private schools, Phillips Andover and Harvard, has a bias towards privately-run charter schools over public, which exceeds that of Duncan himself. Like Duncan, he's sending his own children to a private school, where they were shielded from state tests.

In 1999, he co-founded one of Boston’s first charter schools, Roxbury Prep, a so-called “no-excuses” charter.

Pedro Noguera, who directed the Metropolitan Center at New York University (now at UCLA), recalls a visit to Roxbury Prep.

“I walked through that school and saw kids walking in silence, having lunch in silence. I told John I’d never seen middle-class white children treated that way. And he said, ‘This is the model that works for our kids.’ "

“I asked him, ‘Are you preparing these kids to be leaders, or followers? Because leaders get to walk and talk in the hallways.’ ”

Why, with educators and parents across the political spectrum demanding a major shift in ed policy, did Obama choose a Duncan clone to run the DOE for the duration of his term? Is it all about shoring up his legacy and "staying the course" in the face of attacks from the right and from Hillary Clinton?

If so, shame on him.

WEEKEND QUOTABLES 'No confidence' in Duncan/King

"No Confidence" in Duncan/King.

Jeanette Deutermann, Public school parent and founder of Long Island Opt Out

“Throughout his term in New York, John King was notorious for his complete disconnect from parents, teachers, and school officials. His blatant disregard for concerned parents and educators fueled opt outs to historic numbers. Our only hope is that this bizarre move by the White House will have the same effect across the country, spreading the Opt Out movement to every corner of the nation.” -- NYSAPE

John King

"It's [Duncan's]an incredible agenda and I'm proud to carry it forward.” -- Politico

Pres. Obama on Duncan resignation

"He's done more to bring our education system -- sometimes kicking and screaming -- into the 21st century more than anybody else." -- CNN

Diane Ravitch

So this is what the 21st century will look like: boot camps for minorities; teachers with scripts; schools run for profit; school scams by corporations; education industry traded on Néw York stick exchange; high-yield online schools with high attrition rates; the monetization of public education. -- Blog

Randi Weingarten

...his tenure as New York state’s education commissioner created so much polarization in the state with parents and educators alike that even Gov. Andrew Cuomo is finally doing a mea culpa over the obsession with testing. We can only hope that King has learned a thing or two since his tenure in New York.” -- AFT Press Release

'NO CONFIDENCE'...

NYSUT delegates applaud following the no confidence vote against Commissioner John King on April  5, 2014. ( Photo byAnnette Konoske-Graf )