Quotation Of The Day: What Education Reformers Don't Get Edition

John T. Spencer gets what every ed reformer does not:

I'm struck by the fact that the biggest things I believe about education are not practical, theoretical or even pedagogical. They're more spiritual than anything else: the notion of kids as both amazing and broken, the idea of humility as the best method of leadership, the notion of learning as a holistic process; being progressive and hopeful and yet respecting the voices of the past.

Nearly every education reform, including Referred Law 16 begins with the premise that kids are means to make rich people richer. The people proposing them are arrogant enough to believe that they know more about students than people who have been in the classroom for decades. They believe that students need know only what's on the test that Pearson or some other textbook company publishes. The past matters only when it doesn't confront reformers with the truth: the virtue in most request is conformity.

Merit Pay Is Still A Bad Idea

Daniel Willingham gives 6 reasons in 3 minutes.

HT: The Answer Sheet Blog

Coming Soon To A Political Commerical Near You: Buzzword Bingo

Buzzword Number 1: Cory points to a Steve Hickey Facebook post and hints that Governor Daugaard and his allies will soon be screaming "Run for the hills the sky is falling! The Unions are coming! The Unions are coming! The Horror! The Humanity! The Unions are coming!"

Buzzword Numbers 2, 3, 4: Ed Kilgore points to a Sarah Palin interview:

Not to be outdone, Sarah Palin told Bill O’Reilly yesterday that she agreed with this warning to Romney, noting Ingraham’s threats and saying: “I couldn’t have said it better myself.” She also offered these suggestions to Mitt:

Fox News’s Bill O’Reilly asked the former Alaska governor on Tuesday if Romney’s campaign — which has come under fire from Republicans — needs to go after Obama in a “more personal way” and use buzzwords like “incompetent, dangerous, socialist.”

“Those aren’t just buzzwords,” said Palin. “Those are accurate descriptions of the commander in chief.”

“He should be very aggressive, and he should be adamant in his attacks on Obama’s record, which is so dismal, his plan, or lack of a plan of Obama’s, to get his out of these woeful times,” Palin continued. “He needs to be severely aggressive.”

One apparently loses the game if one is only "moderately" aggressive or if one utters anything that can be considered substantive. At this time, it's unclear if one has to utter the phrase "God Bless America!" at the conclusion of each buzzword combination.


In South Dakota, the Bingo Debate over Referred Law 16 will probably proceed with the following vapid buzzword combinations to answer any and all attacks:

Opponent: Supporting Referred Law 16 will do nothing to help teachers to teach better nor will it help students learn more.

Governor Daugaard: We should enact Referred Law 16 because the Union of Dangerous Incompetent Socialists supports the referral. God Bless America and South Dakota! Eat your vegetables! Bingo! Winner!

Although "Eat your vegetables" isn't one of the official buzzwords, the Governor's motto on cliches will probably be "Better safe than sorry."

Breaking News: Merit Pay Still Doesn't Work

New York City used this RAND corporation-Vanderbilt study to justify ending its program. Jersey Jazzman uses that occasion to cruelly points out that there's no Merit Pay Fairy:

we looked for the Merit Pay Fairy in Tennessee: she wasn't there. She wasn't in Texas, either. Corporate reformers stayed up all night in Chicago waiting for her; she never showed. She wasn't in Michigan. We even tried looking for the Merit Pay Fairy in 18th Century England; sorry, mate.

Governor Daugaard is nothing if not a skilled politician, so he must have some October surprise in store to insure that Referred Law 16, his version of merit pay, is enacted. If there's no Merit Pay Fairy, he probably won't insult voters' intelligence by trying to produce one. I'm just guessing here, but the Governor may try one of the following to show voters that he is indeed the person who can make merit pay work when no one else could.

• He and his friends can produce a live Sasquatch they bagged during the Governor's Hunt. Bigfoot is set in Deadwood, so there's a fictional precedent.

• He can produce the WMDs that were supposed to be in Iraq. I'm sure he's got people on his staff who could write a believable story about finding them in a couple of abandoned missile silos.

• He may start building a baseball diamond in a corn field. When asked why he's sacrificing crop land during a drought, he will whisper, "If you build it, merit pay will work."

• He can claim that he's found Noah's Ark in the Black Hills.

• Desperate times require desperate measures, so he may try to do something bi-partisan like produce conclusive proof that Al Gore did indeed create the Internet.

Of Schools And Warehouses And Poverty And Homes

Earlier this month conservative columnist George Will wrote:

Abundant data demonstrate that the vast majority of differences in schools’ performances can be explained by qualities of the families from which the children come to school: the amount of homework done at home, the quantity and quality of reading material in the home, the amount of television watched in the home and, the most important variable, the number of parents in the home.

Will carefully dodges the issue of poverty, but his sentences jar nonetheless.  No easy fixes exist to improve the"qualities of the families" that rear children nor should anyone want thought police searching homes to ensure that the "proper quality of reading material [is] in the home."  Further, any discussion of social policies designed to keep two parents who believe themselves incompatible together would make the same-sex marriage debates appear quaintly civil.  More importantly, if someone has the answer to eliminating poverty, one hopes that the solution would have been enacted long ago, but the poor, as they always have been, are still with us.

Today, writing at The American Conservative Rod Dreher builds on Will's point:

My conviction, based on talking over the years to public school teachers in Louisiana and elsewhere that I’ve lived, is that the No. 1 obstacle to effective public education is not lack of money (as many liberals would say), nor teacher’s unions (as many conservatives would say), but the personal, family culture of students. This is not something that any legislature can reform. The state cannot order parents to raise disciplined children who care about their studies. The state cannot command parents to stay together, to support their children, to turn off the TV, and so forth. . . .

The point is, the main problem with public schools is … the public.

Dreher supports Bobby Jindal's voucher program but "with serious reservations."  He contends:

Consider that you are a parent of a child in a failing public school, and that you are desperate to rescue your child. Consider that one of these voucher schools is the only option you have. You and other parents who have no money for private school, but who work to instill discipline and good study habits among your children, may be grateful to get your kids out of the “ghetto” of dysfunctional culture that impedes their education in their public school. Believe me, I wouldn’t want to send my kid to a school that viewed the Book of Genesis as a science text, but you’d better believe I’d choose that school if it had good order conducive to learning over a public school that did not, if those were the only options I had. You probably would too.

Dreher acknowledges that his position "leaves the public school as a warehouse for the children of the socially dysfunctional" and that results of leaving students in a warehouse would be terrible, that those results are superior to the status quo:

Bad news, to be sure — but what is the alternative? To compel working-class and poor children whose parents are trying hard to do the right thing to endure the children of parents who don’t care? Is this what egalitarianism requires? Because the well-off can buy their way out of these conditions. The state of Louisiana, with this voucher program, is offering the children of those who cannot a way out. It might not work, but it’s worth trying.

That still leaves us with a class divide that has become and is increasingly a culture divide. It ought to make us uncomfortable … but not as uncomfortable as the status quo.

Dreher's and Will's observations point to several things that frustrate me about the South Dakota school reform effort.

First, none of the discussion surrounding HB 1234 or SDDOE's regulations dealt with the pernicious effects of poverty or any other aspect of "the public." In fact, the South Dakota legislature seems to consider discussing poverty anathema.

Second, no one has articulated a clear vision for South Dakota schools. Preparing a student to be "college ready" differs from preparing as student "career ready."  Fixing the shortcomings that inadequate familial support causes is a totally different task than either of the others. Everyone seems willing to ignore the fact that one of the traditional functions of the public school has been to help prepare students to participate in a democracy. Is South Dakota's ultimate goal to create basic skills warehouses for most and elite schools for some?

Third, no one has identified a single school district that contains terrible schools or droves of incompetent teachers.  I've taught at one of the state's smallest public schools and one of its largest.  I've sent my step-children through a public school.  Every teacher was an imperfect human, but there was never a second when my wife or I would have considered sending them "to a school that viewed the Book of Genesis as a science text."  That's an admittedly low bar, but the young'uns have been able to successfully compete at out-of-state colleges. One graduated from a private institution in three years.

Fourth, the legislation and policies are cookie-cutter, one-size-fits-all policies that Scott Walker, and Bobby Jindal embrace. There's no evidence that a rural state like South Dakota has the same issues that a state decimated by Katrina faces. No one contends that political corruption endemic to Louisiana occurs in South Dakota; why would one assume that other states' other social institutions share similar weakness?

Schools are not perfect.  Neither is the larger public,  Reform done in isolation will fail; so will efforts that accept warehouses for the majority and elite schools for the rest. Politicians in South Dakota and the rest of the country, however, seem willing to look at only half of the problem and accept an either/or solution.

Some Questions About "Great Teachers" And HB 1234

David Montgomery is an indefatigable live event tweeter. (I really do mean that as a compliment even though calling someone a tweeter doesn't sound very complimentary.)

He tweets

Standing ovation for @BobbyJindal as he finishes his speech at the South Dakota Republican Party convention.
— David Montgomery (@ArgusMontgomery) June 23, 2012

Presumably, one reason for the adoration can be found in this Charlie Hoffman tweet that Montgomery retweets.

#SDGOP12 Governor Bobby Jindahl tells crowd at GOP Convention that putting a great teacher in every classroom the best way to improve Ed.
— Charlie Hoffman (@Charliebh) June 23, 2012

I doubt that anyone will argue that every classroom should have a great teacher.  If that's the case, why is HB 1234 premised on the fact that only 15% are great and 85% are sub par?

For the sake of argument, let's say that only 65% of South Dakota's teachers are excellent.  Under HB 1234 15% of South Dakota's teachers will be recognized as excellent when the bonuses are published as part of their salary.  Another 50% of the state's teachers will be doing an excellent job, but the public will deem them to be deficient because they weren't good enough to get a bonus.

I cannot in good conscience tell a student to consider a career in education in South Dakota when that job contains an 85% chance that that the people with whom she socializes or worships will believe she's incompetent.

A Minor Musing In Which I Play Political Consultant

In a Madville Times comment Donald Pay offers the following advice about the campaign to refer HB 1234:

Here’s the campaign. This isn’t about teachers, so don’t have teachers out front on this. It’s about students and incompetence in Pierre. Put parents, students out front against the bumbling idiots in Pierre.

Pay is correct; teachers will not successfully refer this bill if the pubic believes that they are merely complaining.

Pay is also incomplete;  Scott Kemp adds some necessary nuance:

Too many people don’t like teachers.

They don’t like them for their summers off, their short work hours, their “gold-lined” pension and their high salaries.

However, the reality is many people love the teacher.

They love the one in the room, helping their kid achieve great things. They love the teacher who coaches the sport, who supports their child when times get tough, who tries everything to connect with the child off the tracks.

Too often the conversation is about “teachers” and rarely about “the teacher”.

That’s how the narrative needs to change.

Governor Daugaard has shown that he wants to make the campaign about teachers and unions. Teachers need to make the campaign about students and the teacher who made learning possible.

Further, this campaign needs to be cast in the light of returning sanity to education and politics.  A piece of legislation that allows Rep. Steve Hickey to make his point only by speaking well of President Obama, a politician Hickey surely loathes, shows HB 1234 increases political insanity while harming education.

Finally, listen to Thoreau: "Simplify! Simplify! Simplify!" The legislation is unnecessarily complicated. Instead of getting into the bill's minutiae, remind voters that HB 1234 won't help parents stay involved in their students' education; it won't help students learn, and it won't help a classroom teacher teach.  It will hinder all of those goals.

HB 1234 Red Herring Update

I feel like Cassandra from Troy.  In early May, I wrote that Governor Daugaard would demonize unions as part of his defense of HB 1234, his signature legislation that imposes merit pay along with a testing regime and decimates continuing contract.

Today, as petitions were being filed, Daugaard responded:

“I’m not surprised that the Teacher Bonus Bill was referred because the teachers’ union put a lot of work into collecting signatures. I look forward to furthering the discussion with the people of South Dakota on this very important topic. The bill is aimed at improving student achievement by channeling extra money directly to our best teachers and phasing out teacher tenure.”

Let's parse this brief statement.

Daugaard claims that a nebulous "teachers union" not classroom teachers oppose the HB 1234.  He is contending that the "union" is not composed of real South Dakotans, and that the "union" wants students to fail while he, the defender of all that is right and good, is all that stands between students and the abyss.

Chicken Little told everyone the sky is falling; Governor Daugaard will tell everyone that the unions will destroy South Dakota schools.  Given that an asteroid may have wiped out the dinosaurs, Chicken Little has more truth on her side.

HT: Mike Larson

This Just In: Testing, Merit Pay, and HB 1234 Still Irreparably Flawed

During the past legislative session, teachers frequently cited Daniel Pink to show that merit pay doesn't work.  HB 1234 passed as Governor Daugaard twisted arms in the best Chicago politicalmachine style.

In today's Inc. Jessica Stillman reports on Justin Moore's analysis that shows merit pay is counter productive. Moore, a "co-founder and CEO of business-continuity and disaster-recovery company Axcient" takes issue with merit pay on several levels.

Governor Daugaard premises his flawed plan on the idea that money will motivate good teachers to do better work.  He rejected the idea that many teachers work for more intrinsic rewards.  Moore doesn't share Daugaard's belief that "cash is king" or "greed works."  Moore asserts:

If you have a sense of purpose in accomplishing something, you're doing it because you get some personal reward out of it, not because there's a stack of money being given to you at the end of it. It's been shown that financial incentives, while they work in certain situations, long term actually reduce creativity and eliminate some of that sense of accomplishment.

Moore also enunciates a principle that every governor, secretary of education, and testing proponent should consider:

"Measuring the wrong thing is actually worse than not measuring anything at all, because it will actually focus all your energies in the wrong place."

The testing regime certainly focuses teachers' energies on the test instead of students' education.

Moore does two other things that Daugaard refuses to do.  First, Moore eschews the top down approach:

"We rarely give top down goals," says Moore. Instead, managers sit down with employees to discuss what they need to accomplish and help them work out their own targets and metrics."

That approach sounds far different than the HB 1234 work groups that epitomize top-down thinking.

Finally, all of these reforms began with NCLB and its efforts to make 100% of students meet top down goals.  That unrealistic Lake Wobegon expectation could have been avoided if politicians had followed Moore's method for developing metrics:

The art of setting metrics, he continues, is in fact ensuring employees don't set unrealistic expectations for themselves by asking questions like: Do you really think that's achievable? Do you think you should give yourself some more cushion? Have you taken into account the unknown?

One would hope that if Moore's questions had been asked, someone in power would have come to the realization that 100% is not achievable.

Unfortunately, Axient's "disaster recovery" recovers data; it doesn't help citizens recover from bad political policies, so teachers will be left to their own devices to fix the disasters that ed reformers' policies will create.

Shh! Don't Tell Anyone; High School Students May Learn Some Things That Won't Be On The Test

The National Forensics League has released ten potential Lincoln Douglas debate topics that students will debate during the course of the 2012-2013 school year.  NFL member schools will vote on the topics; five will be chosen for September/October, November/December, January/February, March/April and the NFL National Tournament in June 2013.  Individual Students will have to develop a value based position to write separate cases to affirm and negate the resolution

Lincoln Douglas Topic List for 2012 – 2013

Resolved: The constitutions of democratic governments ought to include procedures for secession.

Resolved: When making admissions decisions, public colleges and universities in the United States ought to favor members of historically disadvantaged groups.

Resolved: United States Supreme Court justices should be subject to term limits.

Resolved: The United States is justified in intervening in the internal political processes of other countries to attempt to stop human rights abuses.

Resolved: In a democracy, voting ought to be compulsory.

Resolved: On balance, the privatization of civil services serves the public interest.

Resolved: On balance, labor unions in the United States are beneficial.

Resolved: The United States ought to guarantee universal health care for its citizens.

Resolved: Oppressive government is more desirable than no government.

Resolved: Rehabilitation ought to be valued above retribution in the United States criminal justice system.

Lest the policy debaters accuse me of neglecting the work that some will be starting next week, the the policy resolution for the entire 2012-2013 school year is:

Resolved: The United States federal government should substantially increase its transportation infrastructure investment in the United States.

Two person teams will develop affirmative containing a plan and negative positions on the topic.

The testing uber alles proponents may not like find these topics to their liking.  After all, it's probably impossible to develop a bubble test to answer these questions.  It's also hard to write a test that allows students both to affirm and negate the questions.

STEM fans like Governor Daugaard and Melody Schopp might take umbrage at the fact that many of the topics can't be answered with the pat answer: "use more technology."

Both the extreme testers and the STEM-will-save-everyone advocates will be hard pressed to explain that these topics won't help students survive in the "real world."  Right now, these bureaucrats probably think that if they ignore the facts high school debate will go away.  Of course, they governors and secretaries of education can do a bit more than hope;they can just pass laws like HB 1234 and the testing regime that comes with it.  If that effort fails, they can just cut education funding again.  In a single party state like South Dakota, the majority can do both without any debate whatsoever.

Plains Pops:Totally Random Updates Edition

Romney has released his education plan.  At first blush, it's indistinguishable from Obama's and Bush's. In related news,  Hollywood is apparently ready to give Rocky treatment to charter schools.

Jeff Barth reacts to comments about his video: “I don't care if you don't like [the video]. I don't care if you don't like me. I think it's kind of fun.”  The Dakota War College praises Barth's sincerity.  I still doubt that ironic hipster deconstructionists (IHDs) constitute a major South Dakota voting block.  Heck, I'm unconvinced there's enough of them to fill all of the tables at a Starbucks.


As further proof that Hell is experiencing a cold front, the aforementioned Dakota War College expresses unease at Governor Eddie Haskell's Dennis Daugaard's endorsements in South Dakota's Republican primaries. More importantly, the Madville Times points to Republican legislative candidates running against Daugaard's destructive education measure, HB 1234.

Finally, here's another reading trifecta.  Reporter and blogger Bob Mercer recommends Watergate: A Novel. NPR Books points to 15 summer reads recommended by Indie booksellers, and IO9 takes science fiction fans back to the  1960s.

Tony Martinet Resigns: South Dakota Debate Loses

Josh Verges gives an objective take on Tony Martinet's decision to leave Lincoln High School and return to Colorado. I'm not a reporter, so I don't have have to be objective.

Tony coached Sioux Falls Lincoln "debate team powerhouse" with skill and passion that few can match.  He replaced Kim Maass, a South Dakota forensics legend, and elegantly dealt with the baggage, both positive and negative, that comes with that sort of situation.  Because he developed great competitors, Tony made every other debater and extemper in South Dakota better. Coaching against Tony frequently made me feel as if the only things I had to offer were the nostalgia of a faded Mr. Rogers sweater and a good head of hair.

Verges mentions that Tony testified against HB 1234.  I don't know what role, if any, the legislation or South Dakota's political climate played in Tony's decision.  I do know that Tony is young, enthusiastic, talented, and intelligent; he has the qualities every teacher needs, and South Dakota is worse off because he's leaving.

Plains Pops: Evil And Happiness And Irony Edition

Google, who along with Apple and Microsoft may be the true "Axis of Evil," has a chief happiness officer.  Chade-Meng Tan, helped develop "a course called 'Search Inside Yourself,' designed to help Googlers improve their emotional intelligence and mindfulness, making them happier and more productive employees, and better bosses. Ultimately, his goal is to make the world in general a happier place for everyone."

Second, two of myfavorite supervillains were supposed to be "one-offs."  First, Captain America's nemesis Red Skull:

Though Red Skull is one of Captain America's earliest and most well-known enemies, he originally wasn't supposed to show up again after his first appearance. But as the fan base grew, the character was brought back into the story. Later issues revealed that the original Red Skull was a fake, and introduced the true villain, eventually shown to be Johann Schmidt. According to Marvel's page on the character, the modern version of Red Skull didn't show up until Tales of Suspense #66 in 1965. 

The most shocking character on IO9's list is the Joker:

The mad archvillain we all know and love was originally going to be killed off shortly after his debut=. At the end of the Joker's second appearance in Batman #2, he would have died after accidentally stabbing himself. Whitney Ellsworth, a DC editor, thought the Joker was too good a character to let die, so he had another panel drawn to show that the villain was still alive.

Thiid, I'll grant that Governor Daugaard may not be evil, but the testing über alles regime that he will usher in if HB 1234 stands will destroy student happiness and obliterate what's left of the state's teachers' morale.  The good Governor is also acting like a supervillain in his efforts to consolidate his power by endorsing legislative candidates in the primary election, an act that Joel Rosenthal, a former chairman of the South Dakota Republican Party, said . . .is unusual  . . . ."  One of the candidates that Daugaard endorsed sees himself as part of a “big team.”  Is it a coincidence that the Red Skull and the Joker also had teams of minions to help them enact their plans for conquest?

Let's review.  The conglomerate that violates users' privacy hired a person who seeks to make everyone happy.  Supervillains who were supposed to exist for only an issue or two have survived for decades, and a governor who has a reputation for being a good guy is recruiting people to help him enact a plan that will harm students worse than Google or the Joker would ever dream of.

South Dakota Department Of Education And Other Ed. Reformers Ready To Ignore Voters And Facts?

In this excellent post, Grant Wiggins observes,

Why it makes me mad. All this makes me deeply angry.  These policies will drive good people out of education and undercut the accountability movement. But this kind of policy-making is more than stupid and Kafkaesque; it is immoral. It is immoral to demand of others what we are unwilling to do to ourselves, whether we cite Kant’s Categorical Imperative or the Golden Rule. And no one, absolutely no one, promulgating this policy is willing to havethemselves be held similarly accountable. Who would? Who would willingly hold themselves accountable for measures that involve arcane math, no formative feedback en route, unreliable data, and admit no counter-evidence? Shame on the hypocrites proposing this; shame on the policy wonks who cheerfully overlook the flaws in order to grind their political axes; shame on all of us for not rising up in protest.  [Emphasis in original]

Bob Mercer reminds South Dakotans that they have another reason to be angry.  The South Dakota Department of Education (SDDOE) apparently plans to move ahead even if HB 1234, the legislation that will link teachers' evaluations to students' test results, is referred.

The petition drive to refer House Bill 1234 to a statewide vote is steaming along, with a June 18 deadeline for submitting the signatures. If Secretary of State Jason Gant determines there are sufficient valid signatures of registered South Dakota voters – at least 15,855 are necessary — the legislation would be on hold until after the results ae known from the Nov. 6 general election. The legislation wouldn’t become law until July 1 at the earliest if the petition drive falls short. All of which calls for the question to be asked: Why did the state Department of Education proceed already in naming the members of three of the panels created in the legislation? Those are the teacher evaluation work group, the principal evaluation work group and the local teacher reward plan advisory council. Do the voters not matter?

Ignoring voters may be a new twist, but education bureaucrats seem to frequently ignore inconvenient facts.  Wiggins writes,

. . .the ugly truth is that current and proposed uses for the approach are not ready for prime time on psychometric grounds. Worse, policy-makers (and, yes, some enemies of public education) are foisting these flawed approaches on us with seeming disregard for margin of error and the invalidity of shifting the purpose of the test – an old story in education.

Wiggins offers a solution that might also solve some of the burnout sources I mention here.

The solution requires us to learn from athletics: utterly transparent and valid measures, timely and frequent results, the ability to challenge judgments made, many diverse measurements over time, teacher-coach ‘ownership’ of the rules and systems, and tiered leagues (e.g. Division I, II, III) in which we have reasonable expectations and good incentives to make genuine improvement over time.

The Light At The End Of The Tunnel Is A Probably A Train

South Dakota Secretary of Education Melody Schopp has announced members of the HB 1234 work groups.

The first few lines of the Johnny Cash classic come to mind: the train is a comin' and the policies will come from people who sit in back rooms and smoke big cigars.

Damn, Cash was a genius,

And So It Starts....The Red Herring Slippery Slope Defense Of HB 1234

Bob Mercer issues a talking point that one will hear the Governor's supporters use to defend HB 1234: The Unions Will Come!!! The Unions Will Come!!! The Unions Will Come!!! Oh! The Horror!!! The Unions Will Come !!!!

The story will go something like this. HB 1234 is our sainted Governor's response to a uniquely South Dakota problem. (The fact that Republican governors Jindal, Walker, Christie et al. have proposed similar anti-teacher legislation will be conveniently ignored.)

This effort to save South Dakota schools from teachers is now going to be confounded by evil, vile out of state agitators who advocate terrible ideas like workers should be paid well. These heinous enemies of all that is right and good may even believe in evolution.

In this narrative, South Dakota teachers will be either the vanguard of a 5th column or witless dupes led astray by out of state agitators, the serpents in the South Dakota Eden. Focus group polling is likely taking place now to determine how to frame teachers in this debate.

Once the antagonists have been defined, the slippery slope will take shape. Unions will arrive in South Dakota; teachers will demand and receive more money; when teachers get paid more, other workers will demand hirer pay. When teachers get paid more, taxes will rise. When other workers get paid more, businesses will be less profitable. When taxes rise and businesses become less profitable, every business except McDonalds, which pays only minimum wage, will leave the state. When McDonalds is the only business left in a state, the citizens lives become nasty, brutish, and short.

The choice will be clear: either support "all of the . . . changes in the 65-section bill" or live in a state that allows outside agitators to provide "support for anti-1234 candidates for the Legislature and to campaign against the Republican incumbents who voted to pass 1234."

Governor Daugaard is likely negotiating right now to hire the person who created ads like this one for Direct TV to write ads for the save HB 1234 campaign.

Yet Another Reason HB 1234 Is Flawed

HB 1234 will eliminate continuing contract status.  Eliminating continuing contract will likely reduce the number of talented people willing to enter the teaching profession.  This analysis from the Chronicle of Higher Education sums up the issue:

Teacher tenure, in both higher-education and K-12 schooling, is an important mechanism for attracting talent. Stanford’s Terry Moe, a strong union critic, finds in his polling that “most teachers see the security of tenure as being worth tens of thousands of dollars a year.” His survey suggests a majority of teachers would need to be paid 50 percent more to give up tenure. Take away tenure without substantially increasing pay, and the pool of qualified candidates for the teaching profession is likely to shrink. (Although some might argue that talented teachers will feel confident and flock to teaching even without tenure, research has long found that self-confidence and actual ability are not as tightly correlated as one would hope.)

I'm not a math major, but a 1 in 5 chance at getting $5,000 is not going to get near that "50 percent more." Further, if a correct or incorrect answer to one question on a standardized test may change one's ranking by 20 percent, it seems unlikely that talented intelligent people will want to take the risk when they can earn far more elsewhere.

The South Dakota Education Debate Summarized

I don't know if P.L. Thomas has ever been to South Dakota, but he certainly understands how education issues were dealt with during the last session.

Inexpert political leaders believe in and act upon a faith in the effectiveness of their cult of personality. They say by their actions, "I can do this where others have not" -- triggering the American cultural faith in rugged individualism.

I didn't know every governor had a sycophant like Elizabeth Kraus, but that rugged individualism must make them irresistible.

Not only does South Carolinian Thomas understand the problem, he also has a great solution,

Universal public education needs a new wall, paralleling the wall of separation between church and state: a wall between education and government and corporate America. Power over funding and broad performance benchmarks can remain vested in political leaders. But granular operational details should be left to educators and local administrators, the people best suited to achieve these goals in their schools and classrooms. Education should be treated no differently than a civil engineering project: government provides funding and ensures the goals of the civil function, and then expert builders and engineers fill in the details, taking into account realities on the ground and utilizing a wealth of experience and training that is completely unavailable to most elected officials. Governors and presidents are no better suited to run schools than they are to run construction sites, and it's time our education system reflected that fact.[emphasis mine]

The bolded part of the quotation should be talking points in the campaign to defeat HB 1234, a bill premised on the idea that a governor knows more about schools than anyone else in the state and tears down any protecting wall that local control may have provided.

Why Would A Wise Forest Animal Eat A Talking Pineapple?

Or why I don't want any part of my pay based on a standardized test.

The New York Daily News covers a New York State test developed by Pearson PLC.  Students were asked to respond to questions from a story about a race between a talking pineapple and a hare.

In the story, an apparent take-off on Aesop’s fable about the tortoise and the hare, a talking pineapple challenges a hare to a race.  The other animals wager on the immobile pineapple winning — and ponder whether it’s tricking them.

When the pineapple fails to move at all and the rabbit wins, the animals dine on the pineapple.

Students were asked two perplexing questions: why did the animals eat the talking fruit, and which animal was wisest?

Let's be clear, none of the animals were named Socrates and none claimed to be the wisest animal because it knew nothing.  Apparently the unanswerable questions had been tested elsewhere.

The new exams have higher stakes for principals and teachers statewide, whose evaluations will be based in part on student scores beginning as soon as this year.

Scarsdale Middle School Principal Michael McDermott said the question has been used before and “confused students in six or seven different states.”

If Governor Daugaard or Education Secretary Schopp want read the story and take a stab at answering the questions, they can do so here.  I'm sure that they will claim that South Dakota checks its tests more carefully.  That claim may be true, but the difference between South Dakota's inane questions and New York's inane questions is difference of degree not of kind.  South Dakota's tests have their fair share of inane questions.

I have my own slightly less inane multiple guess question:

After hearing about the pineapple and the hare, Governor Daugaard and Secretary Schopp will

a. stubbornly insist that standardized testing is a great way to evaluate teachers.
b. claim that paying math and science teachers more than English, history, art or music teachers will help students answer the question about why the animals ate the pineapple.
c. offer Pearson a 10 year contract to write Dakota STEP tests.
d. all of the above.

More On School Administrators And HB 1234

I had a few minor musings here.  I suspect I will continue to revise and extend my comments.


 Josh Verges reports,

One concern for the school superintendents group is that educating voters will be difficult with a busy November ballot, DeGroot said. In addition to the presidential and congressional races, South Dakotans will be voting on the sales tax initiative and the referral of Daugaard’s large project development fund — House Bill 1230 from the 2011 Legislative session.

The last time I checked, voting was not a test.  One can use notes as one votes.  I suggest that education groups send out something like the following to every household.  I admit that this design is not flashy and it may need to be altered to reflect what each measure will be called on the ballot, but it strikes me as simple and effective.