As for test scores being used to evaluate the (in)effectiveness of teachers, I am also a huge supporter of Obama and Duncan on this policy. The existing system US public schools employ to evaluate teachers is an embarrassment to the teaching profession, an absolute embarrassment. Anything, I repeat, ANYTHING would be an improvement over the subjective evaluation system used to embellish the performance of 99.5% of every public school teacher in America. IT MUST BE TERMINATED.

Are there problems and/or potholes with using test scores in evaluating teachers? Of course there are. But this strategy needs time to develop.

First and foremost, hold the high stakes decisions that could potentially be attached to these scores in abeyance for some predetermined grace period (i.e two to three years). Use the test scores only to help improve instruction. No one loses their job or is denied tenure during this grace period until many/most of the potential problems can be remedied. Tweak this new system. Amend it from one year to the next but don’t end it. Refine it over time. Folks like William Sanders have worked to improve value-added-assessments and they’re close – very close to being what we need to determine the effectiveness of our teachers.

With all due respect to Diane Ravitch, and I have nothing but the utmost regard for her body of work, I believe she’s being a bit hasty on RTTT and her judgments on this program I consider to be premature.

Coercive? Dictating? If a state wants to avoid “Race to the Top” regs, all it needs to do is not take the money. And given the relatively small amount of money at stake (less than 1% of the yearly national spending on education), that shouldn’t be hard.

Also note that the CREDO study on charter schools found that students new to charter schools had a small dip in performance, but their performance rose in subsequent years. As an overall average, it’s true that 17% of charter schools did “better,” but that’s ignoring the fact that the longer kids were in charter schools, the better they did.

Finally, anyone else notice the implicit contradiction in Ravitch’s arguments? In the space of two paragraphs, she argues that 1) it’s not fair to evaluate teachers by test scores alone, even while 2) herself evaluating the worth of charter schools by test scores alone. In any event, as informed scholars know, research is finding that charter schools have strong benefits for attainment (high school graduation, etc.). See, e.g., http://www.rand.org/pubs/working_papers/2008/RAND_WR610.pdf

Mr. Carey writes, “So Ravitch is just engaging in garden variety chicken-and-egg obstructionism: you can’t prove X works because nobody’s ever tried it; you can’t try X because nobody’s ever proved it works.” But that is not the dynamic in question here.

It is not merely a case of banning a practice or allowing it. Rather, it is a case of mandating it. Require — of pressuring very strongly — states to adopt policies that are unproven is the issue. We knew that seat belts save lives, so requiring states to adopt seatbelt laws made sense. We knew that lowering speed limits saved gas, so requiring states to lower theirs to 55mph made sense. But that is not the case here.

The original idea being caps on charter schools was to try them out to see if they work, to see if they produce better outcomes that non-charter public schools. Well, we’ve done a lot of research and when we control for the most basic demographic factors we find that most charter schools do not. Charter schools are each supposed to be an experiment, but charters schools generally were supposed to be one big experiment — and that’s we had the caps.

Now, given all the evidence that charter schools are generally not superior to non-charter public schools — and quite a bit a evidence that that are inferior — the Arne Duncan and President Obama as demanding that states lift those caps.

States are already free to link teacher evaluation or compensation to student outcomes — even to achievment scores. Some have looked at that and realized that we lack the technology (i.e. appropriate tests with instructional sensitivity) and therefore should not do it, regardless of how attractive the idea seems. Others have not taken a stand, leaving school districts to try it out. Why should the feds demand we implement programs across the country without trying them first.

Isn’t that was federalism was supposed to be about. Individual states can try their own versions of things — another expample of little experiments. The national government insisting upon uniform policy at the state level is hardly federalism at all. And when it is untested policy, it’s not even smart.

The DOE’s and your argument for using test scores as part of teacher evaluation—even experimentally– is illogical and unfair, since many factors beside teaching affect how students perform on tests, most prominently their socio-economic status. The foreseeable results of using test scores this way are that all teachers would resort to year round test-prep in self defense and smart teachers would avoid placement in high poverty schools at all costs.

In advocating for more charter schools you set up a false premise in which parents are harmed by not having a greater choice of schools for their children. You forget that there is a finite number of tax dollars allocated for schools in all states, and that opening up more charter schools would spread those dollars thinner, adversely affecting both public schools and existing charter schools. As it is, most states and local communities are too lax about demanding accountability from charter schools and closing down the ones that are not working.

Finally, you ridicule Ravitch for not recognizing that school segregation was promoted by states and abolished by the federal government. Separating people by race was not an educational idea, nor was its practice limited to educational institutions. It was a remnant of cultural and pseudoscientific beliefs that had to be outlawed on a national basis. I find it unconscionable that you equate the 1964 Civil Rights Act with the ideological and self-serving proposals that the DOE is trying to foist on American public education.

Time for a history lesson, boys.

The federal government did not intervene to eliminate state-sponsored racial segregation in the mid-1960s just because the Johnson administration thought it was a good idea. It acted forcefully for two reasons: first, because the U.S. Supreme Court had ruled in 1954 that school segregation was unconstitutional and followed up with additional decisions; and second, because the U.S. Congress passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965. Thus, the Johnson administration had the legal authority to enforce decisions of the Supreme Court and the laws of the United States government.

To compare this series of events to the Obama administration’s decision to use nearly $5 billion to bribe states to do what the administration wants to do is simply ahistorical and wrong.

The Obama administration wants states to change their laws limiting the number of privately-managed charter schools and to change their laws that prevent the evaluation of teachers based on student test scores. These policy preferences are not based on any court decisions nor any enactments by Congress. As it happens, they are not supported by social science evidence or experience. They are simply hunches and preferences, nothing more.

Anyone who believes that the U.S. Department of Education has the wisdom to run the nation’s schools and dictate their every policy lacks understanding of and respect for the nature of our federal system of government, and is ignorant of history as well.

Diane Ravitch

But Duncan will fail just as the Business Roundtable, Gates, Broad, and the Waltons have failed because these forces have tried to hold back the tide of history. Economic globalization had been at the very foundation of the business model for schools, charters, vouchers, data driven instruction, merit pay, standardized testing, and most perversely of all, paying students to consume the corporate version of knowledge. It was the reason Bill Gates and the Walton family were among the driving forces behind these counterproductive educational policies. Big Business wanted a profit making private school system in their race with China and India to lowest possible wage for workers, Gates wanted contracts for his data-collection company Microsoft.

These Milton Friedman-inspired Reagan revolutionaries will mark the Bush years as the zenith of their power. This era spit up hucksters and charlatans like Rod Paige, Margaret Spellings, Armstrong Williams, Jack Welch, Ruby K. Payne, and more ominously for the future, Arne Duncan. It was certainly the time the attack on public education appeared ready to bear fruit. They had public school system wreckers like Michelle Rhee and Joel Klein in place, kids were dropping out in droves, and teachers were in full flight.

But something happened on the way to a global economy and a privatized education system to serve it. The whole thing fell apart. The plans made during the era when Wal-Mart and China were on their honeymoon and the credit default swaps and champagne were flowing on Wall Street and Bill Gates and Eli Broad thought they were destined to rule the world because they were richer than everyone else are canceled.

When a massive systemic effort like globalization dies its like a Hummer that has run out of gas. It will continue rolling down the road awhile longer. And that accounts for the absurdities that are coming out of charter-loving US Secretary of Education Arne Duncan’s mouth now. His tune will soon change though.

Because soon it will be every private school and charter school investor for himself. Private school students are being moved to the public schools by their debt ridden parents in significant numbers already. Obama’s education policy reflects the President’s own inability to yet grasp that the world he used to live in is about to evaporate. He himself will soon be fighting off the coup makers in the midst of the greatest economic dislocation the American people have ever experienced, the Greatest Depression.

Diane Ravitch and whoever this Kevin Carey is, and his last paragraph should be given an award named after Dr. Irwin Corey, battle on the plain of states’ rights. Ridiculous, federalism is irrelevant now that we live in the corporate state. This is an economic struggle.

Indeed, there have been states like North Carolina that have tried to base teacher incentive pay based on test scores, with a growth model no less, and the results have been overwhelmingly negative, leading to higher teacher attrition in high-neds schools. In many districts such as NYC the explosive growth of charter schools is now ripping communities apart — and depriving our regular public schools of both resources and space.

Your argument that the mediocre record of charter school achievement is the result of a cap on charters is ridiculous. If states cannot regulate bad charters out of business, and if the competition model doesn’t force them to close, what’s the point of opening more anyway? Where’s the accountability?

What would you argue if the record of charter schools was impressive? That the caps should stay? Instead, whatever the facts, you devise a specious argument to argue for more charters.

Duncan is making a big mistake in pushing this privatization agenda so hard and allying himself with Sharpton and Gingrich in the process. When has an unregulated free market produced more equality?