What Was New
in Previous
Updates
These
items are presented in reverse chronological order with the
most recent shown first.
What’s New at Asora
In October 2019
October
2019 Theme: Sick Schools
Diagnosis,
Cure, and Prevention of School
Maladies
By
David V. Anderson
Our theme in this
edition, about Sick Schools, introduces our community of
K-12 education stakeholders to our new book:
Sick Schools: Diagnosis, Cure, and Prevention of School
Maladies
To be released in the Spring of 2020.
If this interests you enough that you’d like to know
more details, without having to wait to purchase the book,
you can download the book’s first twenty-odd pages
contained in the file SickSchoolsEntrance.pdf. You can
access it from our page: Books and Documents on Reform. An
even shorter summary of the book is in the Abstract, which
we display farther below on this screen
Many of our current themes and much of the content of the
book are extensions of subjects we have discussed in
previous Asora Updates. You will find a number of relevant
articles in them. They can be found in our What Was New
pages.
What’s
New at Asora
In August 2018
August 2018 Theme: Healing Sick Schools
The rise, the problems and the rehabilitation of K-12
education
By
David V. Anderson
david.anderson@asoraeducation.com
Our
theme in this Asora Update, about healing sick schools,
considers:
• Gutenberg
who not only invented printing but also self-pacing.
• Luther who not only sought to save souls but also
to make them prosper.
• Sturm who invented graded schools some 481 years
ago in 1537.
• The virtuous spiral of literacy and national
wealth.
• That progressive education practices are often
oxymoronic.
• How to include more self-pacing within graded
schools?
• That summer vacation markedly
“subtracts” math skills.
• Audio visual and related technologies used mostly
as supplementary.
• Importance of measuring mastery with tests: SAT,
ACT and NAEP.
• Technologies for distance learning and artificial
(machine) intelligence.
• Novel instructional methods enabled by technology.
• K-12 education as an economic sector is dead last.
• The voucher proposal of Milton Friedman in 1955.
• Expanding educational choice within government
schools and services.
• Research by Asora and others on choice enabled
improvements.
• The K-12 marketplace needs reliable consumer
information.
• Asora’s efforts to publish reliable consumer
information on school performance.
• Where K-12 co-exists and even thrives with
for-profit enterprises.
• Asora’s Stellar Schools franchising business
plan frightened investors away.
• Where a Communist, Gorbachev, liked capitalistic
schools with vouchers.
• Where the Republican Education Department, of G. W.
Bush, was communistic.
• Political efforts to rehabilitate the K-12 economic
marketplace.
• Strategies to get the reform camel’s nose
under the K-12 tent.
We are now in the process of authoring a book on these
topics, entitled
Sick
Schools - Diagnosis, Cure and Prevention of School Maladies
By David
V. Anderson
We plan to publish the book in 2019.
________________________________________________________________
Let’s
now elaborate on the previously listed points in our theme
essay:
Healing Sick Schools
The rise, the problems and the rehabilitation of K-12
education
By
David V. Anderson
August 2018
To
obtain this downloadable essay, HealingSchools.pdf, in
full, please access ASORA’s Reports on Reform page
here: http://asoraeducation.com/page35/page35.html
Preview
The long
view of education of children within western civilization
starts well before the printing presses of the 15th
century. In those early times most children remained
illiterate while a few learned in small groups or were
tutored. These methods worked because the teacher or tutor
was in direct contact with the students and could directly
monitor or verify their mastery of the subject. Once
printed books became available and affordable, well after
the 1450’s, many more students had access to these
resources but the numbers of teachers did not increase as
fast- for obvious economic reasons. The only economic
format that could accommodate the mismatch in the numbers
of students and teachers was what is now called group
instruction. Early on in the 16th century graded schools
with group instruction were established- not really so much
different than those of our current era, well over 450
years later.
In the
context of American K-12 education a student’s age
was traditionally used for the initial classroom placement
that could subsequently be adjusted through retention or
double-promotion to align that pupil’s placement with
the his or her actual performance level. That has changed
as a result of other social/political factors that have led
to the practice of social promotion in which students rise
through the “grade” levels of a school without
actually achieving the mastery levels associated with their
placements. This means that report cards, transcripts and
diplomas generally misrepresent the skill levels of the
students. Result: Sick schools in which significant
percentages of students fail to meet expected grade level
performance. We have quantitative measures for this within
the United States from the Nation’s Report Card that
has been testing and reporting student achievement levels
since 1970. For skills in reading and mathematics the
results for the early 21st century are dire: In public
schools well less than half are at grade level and by 12th
grade only about one-fourth are proficient in both
subjects. Ditto regarding knowledge about history and
civics. And the average private school is not much better.
What are the problems? And who are the ones responsible for
this mess?
It’s
tempting to blame the teachers, books and instructional
methods and most education reform efforts address those
causal factors in their efforts to improve schools.
Sometimes forgotten by school reformers is the role that
healthy economic incentives can play in fostering the
specific improvements. Nobel Laureate economist Milton
Friedman took up this challenge in the 1950’s and
proposed government funded vouchers that would give parents
more control over their children’s schooling. But are
vouchers sufficient to reform the education marketplace?
Not so far. Missing from that market is honest consumer
information to replace the reality that schools lie to
parents and others about their performance levels and other
characteristics. Parents are also somewhat complicit in
this because they like hearing false good news better than
the truthful bad news pertaining to their children.
Looking
deeper there are a number of practices within schools that
seem traditional but are also corrupt and dishonest. This
book discusses some promising instructional improvements
but makes the larger argument that a healthy economic
marketplace for K-12 education is a fundamental
prerequisite that will provide the incentives to develop
the new methods, technologies, curricula and institutions
that will, in turn, give its customers what they need and
want. Given that vouchers alone seem insufficient when
parents have little accurate information about school
quality, we must generate that information and get it into
the right hands. We identify the culpable parties to this
epidemic of sick schools and no one escapes some
responsibility: Parents, teacher unions (but not all
teachers individually), school administrators, politicians
and even the private sector of our economy. Finally,
technological developments allow schools to be structured
in more efficient styles. Education of our children can be
less expensive and much better. To find out how, keep
reading this essay.
____________________________
We reach
back to a time more than 500 years ago to take notice of an
event that revolutionized education in its own time. That
event was the invention of the printing press circa 1455 by
Johann Gutenberg in the German town of Mainz.
Gutenberg invented printing and in so doing also ushered in
self-pacing.
Before the printing press and printed books, students
learned from teachers and only rarely had books to read. We
estimate that in 21st century dollars the most common book
of the years preceding Gutenberg, the Christian Bible,
would have cost about $140,000. Within a few decades after
Gutenberg’s invention that cost rapidly decreased by
about a factor of 100 to about $1,400 for one book.
At that cost some schools could afford books for their
students’ use. Students could read ahead of their
lessons given by the teachers. That means that these pupils
could control the pace of their learning- if not in
practice- at least in principle. It was the birth of
self-pacing. It gave meaning to the institution of the
university. Without too much exaggeration the historian
Will Durant said that printing had become
…the greatest and cheapest of all universities, open
to all.
As more books became available who would read them when
almost every European was illiterate?
Luther not only sought to save souls but also wanted to
have them prosper.
Some 60 years later a German Roman Catholic priest, Martin
Luther, took advantage of the advent of printing to
circulate materials among colleagues, and others, to
address problems he saw in the Church. He appreciated the
fact that literate congregations could more rapidly
assimilate Church teachings if they could read. And he
appreciated the fact that literate citizens could be more
productive in making things and providing services to their
neighbors and town folk.
On this second point Luther said,
Were there neither soul, heaven, nor hell – it would
still be
necessary to have schools for the sake of affairs here
below…
He also understood that the decentralized structure of his
Reformed churches would be keeping tithes and other
collections in local hands instead of sending most of them
up through the church hierarchy towards Rome. With those
revenues, Protestant towns had money to establish and
operate schools.
Sturm invented graded schools almost 500 years ago.
Johannes Sturm was a German born scholar of the Latin and
Greek classics who was a follower of Luther. In 1537 he
established a Protestant school in the then German city of
Strasbourg (now part of France). He devised a curriculum
that was taught in nine phases or grades. The grades were
based on students’ skill levels, which even then
roughly corresponded to their ages.
In terms of contemporary grade levels his school was
effectively a combined upper primary, middle and high
school. Entering students were minimally literate having
already had some preparation- presumably learned from
tutors or parents.
Now, some 481 years later, schools around the world and
particularly American schools are graded and not so much
different than the one set up by Sturm.
The virtuous spiral of literacy and national
wealth.
If as suggested by Luther, schooling and literacy would
help with “affairs here below,” he must have
meant that these citizens would be more productive in
making things and doing things beneficial to themselves and
their neighbors. That would suggest that literacy would
encourage growing wealth.
And indeed that is just what economic historians found in
post-Reformation Europe. Literacy grew faster in Protestant
lands than in those Catholic. Corresponding to that these
scholars found that economic output in terms of Gross
Domestic Product (GDP) similarly grew faster in the
Protestant areas.
That progressive education practices are often
oxymoronic.
Early 19th century Swiss educator Johann Pestalozzi was an
adherent of European Romanticism. Or in modern phraseology
he was a dreamer. He thought and concluded that children
should direct their own schooling in as many ways as
possible. His brand of educational practice was popular but
also demonstrably inferior to more scientific approaches to
learning. No school could actually turn its management over
to its pupils but many schools yielded to children’s
preferences even when the pupil’s development of
skills and knowledge would work out better with the
educators making those decisions.
This suggests that progressive education practices might
not foster progress as much as a more traditional approach.
When the “progressive” approach hinders
“progress” that’s where the label
“oxymoronic” fits best.
It should not be surprising to learn that kindergarten was
and is based on a progressivist approach. With its emphasis
on playing more than learning it seems that kindergartens
are operated to please the children rather than to focus
primarily on their academic skill development.
How to include more self-pacing within graded
schools?
As graded schools became much more common in the 19th
century, educators and parents began to notice some rather
fundamental flaws in their graded schools. One obvious
problem concerned pupils who were unable to keep up with
their classmates. A related problem was about the boredom
of fast learners when they had to wait for their slower
classmates to master new material.
The relatively crude but familiar solutions were,
respectively, flunking and double promotion. Each had the
problem of often imposing a step down too far or a step up
too far. American educator William Shearer began developing
a more consistent system of assigning student grade levels
in the late 1890’s when he managed the public schools
of Elizabeth, New Jersey. His system, called “pliant
grading” used very short academic terms of just one
or two months rather than the more familiar academic year
or semester terms.
His pliant grading system worked well but was complicated
to manage and required teachers to have multiple sub-groups
in each classroom effectively transforming it into
essentially an ungraded one-room schoolhouse with perhaps
four or five subgroups.
That summer vacation markedly “subtracts” math
skills.
It seems odd that educators have until recently done very
little research on the effects of vacations on learning. A
study published in 2000 discovered a remarkable fact
concerning the effects of summer vacation on mathematics
skills. It reported that students lose a significant amount
of their mathematics knowledge and skills over the three
summer months: In fact, they typically regress three
months. In reading there is a relatively smaller
degradation of skills but the situation for math is
worrisome.
If this research is credible, and we think it probably is,
it would suggest that all students take some summer
instruction in mathematics. It might be just one hour per
day. Over the course of eight years of elementary / middle
school enrollment a student taking math in the summer would
learn double the amount compared to those not enrolling in
a summer math class. Or so the research says.
Audio visual and related technologies used mostly as
supplementary.
The various technologies of the first half of the 20th
century used to supplement K-12 education sometimes go
under the label “audio visual.” We have
identified over a dozen sub-species within this category
but motion pictures with sound have been perhaps the most
educational of them.
It has been extremely rare to use audiovisual media as core
instructional material. Rather they are most often used as
supplements.
But there was a pilot project undertaken in the
mid-1930’s in Providence, Rhode Island that used
movies to present academic content at the high school
level. Over one hundred students sat in an auditorium to
watch academic lectures in one or more subjects. This
occurred on two or three days per week with the remaining
days devoted to meeting with a teaching assistant for
purposes of review, remediation and testing. While this
format is similar to college level courses, the use of the
movies was not. As we will observe later, this pilot
project was a forerunner of what we now call distance
learning.
Importance of measuring mastery with tests: SAT, ACT and
NAEP.
Prior to 1950 there was very little standardized testing of
student skill levels that could give a national summary of
their educational progress. Early versions of the SAT have
existed since 1926 but it didn’t really have national
coverage until later. The ACT was established in 1959. The
NAEP, which only tests statistical sampling groups, started
its testing in 1970.
Of these tests only the ACT is designed for each subject to
measure and report percentages of students likely to
succeed later in college courses related to that subject.
The NAEP also measures and reports percentages of students
deemed proficient in certain K-12 subject areas but only
tests at the 4th, 8th and 12th grade levels. At those grade
levels the ACT percentages reported to be college ready or
on track to be college ready are comparable to the NAEP
proficiency numbers though generally somewhat higher with
one exception: 12th grade math. There the NAEP reported
proficiency percentages were only about one-half the
percentages reported by the ACT.
The big picture as portrayed by these assessment systems is
this: Less than half of American K-12 students are really
performing at grade level. This is true for both public and
private schools. Private schools are better when the entire
student enrollments are tested. But when the economically
disadvantaged demographic is tested, public schools are
tied with private schools in math. And over recent years
the reading proficiency gap between public and private
schools has been closing with private schools still ahead.
This suggests that vouchers will not work that well unless
a significantly better private school is found in which the
voucher-bearing pupil will enroll.
Technologies for distance learning and artificial (machine)
intelligence.
The earliest type of distance learning, using a synchronous
format, was usually delivered by some type of broadcast
television and was used occasionally in K-12 schools. A
later version, using an asynchronous format, is often
delivered over the Internet and is more frequently used in
schools but still comprises only a small fraction of actual
instruction.
Teachers unions generally oppose the wide spread use of
these types of instructional services but have not made a
big issue of the implied reductions in teaching personnel.
We believe that these kinds of services are seen as mostly
supplemental and not threatening any teacher’s job
security. For now.
Machine intelligence, our preferred terminology, is
generally called artificial intelligence. But there is
nothing artificial or fake about it. Rather you have
computers, based on neural networks of circuits that can
program themselves without much human input. There are at
least two problems we see with using machine intelligent
instructional robots:
1. The less ominous hazard is that this extreme form of
automation has the potential to put almost all teachers out
of work. There could be a Luddite uprising of teachers
using sabotage to disable the robots?
2. The more frightening hazard also involves sabotage but
in this case an out of control robot could engage in
harmful behaviors that would interfere with proper student
learning? Its violations might be subtle and not detectable
in some cases.
Industrial titan Elon Musk is worried about machine
intelligence. And the late and eminent physicist Stephen
Hawking saw the use of machine intelligence as
…potentially the worst mistake in history.
Asora intends to avoid machine intelligent solutions as
much as humanly possible.
Novel instructional methods enabled by
technology.
Before discussing new methods we observe that some of the
traditional instructional methods, such as direct
instruction, have been shown to be quite effective compared
to some of the more fashionable and progressive
methodologies.
In the context of a brick & mortar school, new
technologies enable new instructional strategies for
educating the students.
The blended format combines traditional instructional
methods with online learning. There are several
possibilities here ranging from mostly online to only
partly online. Teachers and/or teaching assistants would be
involved. Students would still have homework assignments in
this format.
Another possibility or form of blended instruction is
called the flipped-blended instructional format. Here much
of the instruction is received at home online while student
assignments are completed during school hours with the
assistance of the teaching staff.
Still another format envisages longer hours of attendance
at the school site wherein all of the student’s work
and instruction is done and received at the brick &
mortar school.
K-12 education as an economic sector is dead
last.
Before making note of K-12 economic growth statistics
let’s get some growth numbers from other industries.
In consumer electronics we compared a 1948 television with
a 2018 flat screen TV. Taking inflation into account we
calculated the cost per square inch of TV screen to find
that cost now down by a factor of almost 200. That’s
a growth factor of 200 over the 70-year period.
For desktop computers we calculated the installed cost of a
GFLOP or of one billion arithmetical operations per second
and then compared costs in 2018 with those in 1965. This
cost dropped by a factor of roughly 1300 during that
53-year period. That is a growth factor of about 1300.
We looked at supercomputers in terms of their installed
costs per GFLOP over the 54-year interval from 1964 to
2018. Here the growth factor has been an astounding
2,000,000,000. That’s two billion.
Most industries grew at slower rates than those above. For
the entire for-profit private sector the Bureau of Labor
Statistics (BLS) reported a growth factor of about 5 over
the 65-year interval from 1947 through 2012.
Finally, the BLS measured the labor productivity of K-12
workers in American schools, both private and public, over
the 22-year interval from 1989 to 2011. The growth factor
was 0.96 over that period. This indicates that the output
per worker fell during those years.
In all of these examples, except the last one, industry
leaders found new methods, new technologies and larger
scales to increase productivity. One wonders why K-12
education could not have done some of that and seen some
improvement?
The voucher proposal of Milton Friedman in
1955.
More than two decades before being awarded the Nobel Prize
in economics, Milton Friedman in 1955 proposed what was
really a compromise between schools being a government
monopoly and schools being totally private and dependent on
tuition revenues to maintain their solvency. His solution
was to combine government funded scholarships- aka
vouchers- with privately owned and operated schools. His
proposal allowed for government
…approved educational services
that the private schools would be required to provide.
Almost 40 years later, in 1993, Friedman would actively
campaign for vouchers in the Prop 174 ballot initiative
campaign in California. The proposal was defeated as were
all other attempts to pass vouchers through ballot
initiatives.
But voucher programs have been established at the state
level through legislation starting in Wisconsin in 1990.
Expanding educational choice within government schools and
services.
Some public schools are more attractive to parents than
others. Depending on the locale there may be more than one
public school available and that would provide parents with
some choices. We have a list of various kinds of public
school choice options:
• Illegal persuasion to enroll a student not eligible
for the desired school. ♣
• Choice of residential location dictates the public
schools available for enrollment.
• Public magnet schools can be chosen subject to
possible admission requirements.
• Public charter schools are sometimes available but
subject to enrollment caps and lotteries.
• Intradistrict choice allows choosing a public
school in a different attendance area in the district.
• Interdistrict choice allows choosing any public
school within the state.
• Alternative enrollments required by laws. The No
Child Left Behind law had such imposed
“transfers.”
• Public school options for homeschooling are
available in some states.
• Supplementary education services, such as tutoring,
test prep and remediation, are sometimes
“public.”
[♣ We are aware of situtations in which a parent
pressured authorities to allow attendance at a different
school. Sometimes they were trying to avoid unsafe crime
ridden schools or ones perceived to be problematic.]
All of these options are free as they are fully funded by
the government- usually at the state or local levels.
Sometimes parents are required to provide transportation if
the school is not near their residence.
Research by Asora and others on choice enabled
improvements.
The
Potomac Region schools and the need to measure the
disadvantaged demographic
A fundamental issue in school choice has nothing to do with
vouchers or charter schools. It is the question about using
student performance to rate a school and how that can be
done fairly. Just using student test results to rank
schools is not fair because in more affluent schools the
students also learn much at home in addition to what is
learned at schools. A more intrinsic measure of school
quality is needed that removes the affluence effects is
needed. That better measure comes from the test results of
a demographic subset of students who have not learned much
at home and most of what they know they learned at school.
One such demographic are economically disadvantaged
students judged by their eligibility for the Department of
Agriculture’s Free and Reduced Price Lunch program
(FRL).
When we at Asora used that measure on estimates made of
NAEP school performance in the three state Potomac region
of Maryland, Virginia and Washington DC (OK it’s not
really a state!) we found that the schools were performing,
on average, at about the same levels in the three
jurisdictions. That is significantly at odds with the
popular perspective that the Washington DC schools are
horrible. A more honest evaluation of the public schools in
these three jurisdictions finds them mostly comparable and
at the mediocre level.
So what are the numbers of proficient students? Among the
disadvantaged students school proficiencies are mostly in
the 1% to 30% range while for the entire student
populations they range more from 5% to 60%.
In those studies we also looked at charter schools. For
this Potomac three state region students in charter schools
performed somewhat better than their peers in regular
public schools. That’s different than the national
picture in which charter schools and regular public schools
perform similarly.
Since 1990 public schools have been catching up to private
schools & caught up in math
Based on national NAEP testing of the economically
disadvantaged (FRL) demographic since 1970 we know that
public and private school performance levels were stagnant
up to about 1990. In 1990 and 1992, respectively, two new
kinds of choice came on the scene: Vouchers and charter
schools. Alarm and fear were arguably triggered in the
public schools and less so in the private schools.
By 2013 the 8th grade NAEP mathematics performance of
public schools caught up to the private school levels: In
both kinds of schools the disadvantaged children had
proficiency percentages of 19% in math. In reading the gap
narrowed but private schools remained ahead with 30%
proficient compared to 20% for public schools. This
suggests that vouchers may not, on average, improve student
performance very much. Consistent with this most research
shows only minor improvements. More on this below.
Has Common Core instigated more recent performance
declines?
NAEP testing in more recent years since 2013 has shown the
end of rising proficiencies in mathematics and reading and
significant declines since. This is not surprising to those
who have observed the dumbed down curricula imposed by
Common Core in both mathematics and reading. Laxity in the
teaching leads to lax performance on tests. Shame on those
who devised and then imposed these regimes!
More on voucher effectiveness: The roles of teacher union
contracts & seniority clauses
Nearly all carefully managed studies into the effectiveness
of school vouchers have found that only black students seem
to benefit from them. This may not be an accident. Union
negotiated seniority policies in many urban school
districts allow the more senior and experienced teachers to
escape troubled schools. Though not intentionally racist,
this kind of policy has the effect that black children who
are most numerous in these troubled schools end up with the
worst teachers. When some of them transfer to a private
school with a voucher, that private school is probably
significantly better than the public school they are
leaving. As a result it should not be surprising that these
black children perform better after their enrollment in the
private schools.
The K-12 marketplace needs reliable consumer
information.
Would
reliable consumer information make vouchers more
effective?
Research on the effectiveness of vouchers has product
seemingly contradictory results. On the one hand, as we
alluded above, there seems to be little performance benefit
to the voucher students that is statistically significant
except for the black demographic where the gains have been
quite evident. But on the other hand it seems that in
whatever geographic areas have voucher redeeming private
schools there is an unexpected rise in nearby public school
performance?
One inference to be drawn from this holds that the voucher
redeeming private schools have been only marginally better
than nearby public schools, which would explain the
insignificant student performance gains. Another inference
from this says that the public schools were alarmed having
to compete with the voucher schools and in that process
improved more than the more remote public schools.
Asora would add a new component to the vouchers that would
be designed to elevate the competition between public and
private schools: We would provide reliable consumer
information to parents about the various characteristics of
the private and public schools in their areas. That kind of
information is almost totally absent in most parts of the
United States. More on this farther along.
We are aware of only one private voucher program where
school quality information may have informed the choices of
private schools that received the vouchers. That was the
Student-Sponsor Partnership Program that was established in
New York City in 1986 and as such was one of the very first
pilot programs using vouchers. Volunteers in the program
were legal and financial professionals from the city. They
determined which private schools, mostly Catholic, would
receive the voucher students. Instead of the parents
directly choosing the schools, these volunteers made the
choices- presumably based on reliable school statistics
they had obtained.
This program was quite successful at least based on average
SAT scores comparing partnership students with students who
remained behind in the public schools. Those SAT scores of
the voucher students averaged about 160 score points above
the public school comparison group.
Asora’s efforts to publish reliable consumer
information on school performance.
A continuing effort at Asora has been the production and
publication of guides to schools based on estimates we have
generated of the schools NAEP proficiencies and of the
schools disadvantaged students’ proficiency levels.
Our prototypical guides and their publication dates, that
are available gratis from this website, include:
• 2011 Guidebook & Resources for Parents in
Maryland, Virginia & Washington D.C.
• 2014 Are Bristol County, MA Private & Public
Schools Really Like This?
• 2014 Are Orange County, CA Private & Public
Schools Really Like This?
• 2014 Are Shelby County, TN Private & Public
Schools Really Like This?
• 2017 Are The Private & Public Schools In Rhode
Island And Massachusetts As Bad As These Numbers Say?
The first guide is limited to public schools only but the
other four include nearly all private and public schools
within their respective jurisdictions. Each of these books
represents a new development in school guides: They use the
same metric, estimates of NAEP proficiency percentages, for
all types of schools. Doing that then allows facile
comparisons.
Has there been any significant interest in this kind of
information among the stakeholders in any of these
jurisdictions? Only a handful of people have shown any
interest. A former mayor of Washington D.C., Adrian Fenty,
was one of them. Founder and CEO of the Center for
Education Reform, Jeanne Allen, was another. We contacted
many dozens of other community leaders in each of these
domains. The response has been mostly silence.
Where K-12 co-exists and even thrives with for-profit
enterprises.
It is mainly in the schoolroom that the K-12 establishment
virulently opposes for-profit organizations. In other
aspects of school operations, such as book purchasing,
using for-profit suppliers is fine. For-profit service
providers, such as Education Management Organizations
(EMO’s), have made some inroads in the operations of
public schools but there is often significant opposition to
their participation by teachers unions and other education
establishment types.
Asora’s Stellar Schools franchising business plan
frightened investors away.
Our business plan and associated documents are available
elsewhere on our website but let’s characterize our
proposal in two different perspectives:
From the instructor we have the acronym ASORA that takes
the education plan as
A) Asynchronously delivered “on-demand”
instruction.
S) Self-paced learning.
O) Online distance education.
R) Rigorous curriculum
A) Assessment is strictly tied to the curriculum
From the owners viewpoint the plan is that of a franchising
network composed of:
• A for-profit central management organization or
franchisor
• A network of schools that can have various kinds of
ownership: public, non-profit or for-profit.
We are still puzzled regarding the negligible interest
shown by investors.
• Are we dumb and don’t deserve investment
capital?
• Are many other school designers also dumb because
investors don’t like them either?
• Are the investors dumb because our plans would
generate handsome profits from growing enterprises?
• Or are investors smart because they know that there
are too many enemies of for-profit schools for them to have
much chance of survival and growth?
So what is the best answer? We don’t know. There are
possible answers:
• The cynical answer: Investors are dumb.
• The sad answer: Investors are smart and would go
broke if they put their money here.
• The optimistic answer: There are new kinds of
investment opportunities.
Milton Friedman was puzzled by this too. In 2003 he
commented,
… I have long been puzzled by the situation in cities
like New York and San Francisco: there are strictly private
elementary and secondary schools which charge very high
tuitions and have long waiting lists, and I keep asking why
it is that other private enterprises haven’t taken
advantage of that situation as a source of profit. Somehow
there is a customer base there; there is a market
opportunity.
We infer from his comment that there are, indeed, new kinds
of investment options here.
Where a Communist, Gorbachev, liked capitalistic schools
with vouchers
As CEO of Asora, I once met Mikhail Gorbachev in 2006 and
jokingly told him I was developing capitalistic schools. He
angrily responded and asked, “How will you educate
poor children?” I said, "With government supplied
vouchers." Then his interpreter explained vouchers to him
taking well over a minute to do so. Then Gorbachev smiled
approvingly and wished me good luck with my project.
Where the Republican Education Department, of G. W. Bush,
was Communistic?
In that same year I tried to be listed in the Bush
administration’s Education Department list of reform
proposals (EROD) and they denied me inclusion because my
ideas were “commercial.” Even after two
appeals, including one to Ed. Secretary Margaret Spellings,
they still denied me. It seems that they were more like the
Communists than the actual Communist who wished me well on
the capitalistic schools!
Political efforts to rehabilitate the K-12 economic
marketplace.
We previously mentioned the failures at the ballot box when
voucher advocates proposed establishing voucher programs
through ballot initiatives. There have been, on the
contrary, a number of legislative accomplishments at the
state level where vouchers and voucher-like systems have
been implemented. For example, education savings accounts,
which can be used to pay tuition, homeschooling expenses,
tutoring services have been established in Arizona and
other states.
Strategies to get the reform camel’s nose under the
K-12 tent.
We have tried to look at K-12 education reform from two
perspectives:
1. One is the development of new instructional methods
based on a variety of technologies, including some that
exploit efficiencies of scale.
2. The other is the establishment of new government
policies that will help repair the K-12 education
marketplace.
In our work at Asora we have formulated and proposed a
number of new instructional formats that could be tested in
pilots. But we have found no support for doing that work
nor can we self fund it.
We have also developed a number of methods for estimating
school performance statistics that could help provide
reliable consumer information to the K-12 marketplace.
Ditto: No one wants to support this either.
Nevertheless there are signs of future improvements.
Consider these:
• The recent Supreme Court victory in Janus v AFSCME
now allows government workers to avoid payment of agency
fees to unions if they are not union members. This will
weaken teachers unions and will provide more flexibility
for school administrators to innovate.
• For-profit K-12 schools are growing in numbers
albeit at a slow rate which is nevertheless higher than the
growth rate of the U. S. population. This means that these
for-profit schools will gain market share- but at a very
slow pace.
• Some of the technologies used in K-12 education are
less expensive and at the same time more effective in
supporting instructional systems than so-called legacy
systems. Such developments allow economies of scale in some
circumstances while also allowing better targeting of
students’ instructional needs.
• We think that a number of government imposed
restrictions on choice and other matters may violate laws
and treaties that school authorities should respect. They
should align their policies into compliance. The United
Nations Declaration of Human Rights is one such treaty that
arguably requires its signatories to implement school
choice systems. Such illegal impositions may be remedied
through lawsuits if legislation proves difficult to enact.
• Venture capitalists willing to take significantly
higher risks in their investments are often called
adventure capitalists. Many capitalists also engage in
philanthropy as an “after hours” effort to
support societal improvement. Many investors also choose
their investments based on their perceived social benefits
as well as on expected financial profits. In some cases
such investors may be willing to take reduced profits just
to maintain their pride in being charitable. Adventure
capitalists, of this stripe, might consider for-profit
schools as a worthy investment and in doing so factor in
Milton Friedman’s “market opportunity”
just noted above.
We
close with this thought:
Many of the new technologies and new instructional methods
are enabling higher and higher percentages of American
families to educate their children at home. Such
homeschooling is not necessarily comprised of just one
parent teaching one or more children of the family. Given
the inherent flexibility available to a homeschooling
family, the parent can be the manager of the
children’s schooling in which various other players,
products and services combine to provide the
children’s instruction. The parent may be a part-time
instructor in some of the subjects while other people cover
other areas. Some instruction, assessment and assignments
can be done online as well.
If the brick & mortar schools can’t compete with
homeschooling they will continue to lose market share. But
in that loss incentives will arise motivating school
leaders to improve their offerings. It could be that home
schooling will provide the dynamics to finally bring health
to the K-12 marketplace. Santé!
There Is Much More On Our Website
For further information, consider reviewing our home
page where there are links to more detailed descriptions of
the services and activities of Asora Education.
July
2017 Theme:
False Witness Schools
Why do most schools lie about their students'
performance?
Our theme discussion is a quick scroll down this screen.
If You Are A New Visitor
If this is your first time visiting here, welcome to Asora
Education Enterprises, which has been engaged in:
1.) Publishing national and regional guides (hardcopy and
online) to public and (now) private schools and the
supplementary resources locally available that are needed
to bring children attending these schools up to grade
level.
2.) An achievement test consulting service, in which we
analyze state administered test results to remove the
exaggerations found therein. Our guides and guidebooks are,
in part, based on the calculations we developed for those
studies.
3.) The Stellar Schools Franchising Project, which plans to
organize K-12 franchising networks of brick & mortar
schools that are based on a blended format of self-paced
online instruction, a flipped scheduling arrangement,
online adaptive tutoring and e-books blended with real
instructors, live tutors and hardcopy books.
4.) Helping to overcome the market failure in K-12
education. We can use our guides to inform parents. And
they enable aggressive contrast marketing, which can help
education enterprises thrive. Other stakeholders can use
this information to inform and energize other stakeholders
of education.
5.) A speakers' bureau focused on these topical areas.
If you're a new visitor to our website we suggest that you
might review the "headlines" and short articles below
before venturing into the other areas.
What
Was New In Preceding Updates:
If you have not seen our previous quarterly "What's New"
updates, then you might want to peruse our "What Was New"
pages here.
What’s
New in July 2017
July
2017 Theme:
False Witness Schools
Why
do most schools lie about
their students' performance?
By David V. Anderson
Our theme in this edition, about considering local reform
efforts, contends that:
*
Schools, public and private, engage in deliberate social
promotion.
* State assessment systems exaggerate student performance.
* Individual schools lie about student performance.
* Schools often “bear false witness.”
Respecting only Nine Commandments.
* Doing instruction and testing is a conflict of interest-
never called corruption.
* Relaxed parents have not been vigilant and informed
customers.
* Relaxed parents often lobby for social promotion- but
don’t use that term.
* Relaxed students want school to be easy.
* Religious congregations seem agnostic about K-12
schooling
* Many pro-education volunteer and civic organizations are
not helpful.
* Adventure capitalists could fix market failure in the
K-12 sector?
* Where is Milton Friedman now when we need him?
Of these factors, Asora believes the parents of school
children can be the most important agents of change. For
that reason, we have developed guidebooks to schools that
parents can use to help manage their children’s
education providers. Once parents understand the basic fact
that K-12 education is not what they think, they will react
by making better choices, both individually and
politically.
This Asora update has two related documents you can
download:
• Our theme essay,
False Witness Schools: Why do most schools lie about their
students' performance?
To obtain the downloadable file,
FalseWitness.pdf,
please click here
to
access ASORA’s
Reports on Reform page.
__________________________________________________________________________
• Our prototypical private and public school
guidebook that we have recently completed for the two
states of Rhode Island and Massachusetts,
Parents’ Guide To Schools & Services
In Rhode Island & Massachusetts:
A
Guide to Private and Public Schools & Other Educational
Resources
To obtain a copy of this 89-page book please
click
here to
access ASORA’s
Regional Guidebook page
where you can download
RIMA-Guide-01.pdf.
______________________________________________________________________
On False Witness Schools
The
general concept of “False Witness Schools”
carries with it two aspects:
* That some of the spread of misinformation has been
unintentional, though careless.
* That in other cases the spread of misinformation has been
intentional.
We listed twelve contentions above. Let’s now discuss
each one of them in turn.
Schools,
public and private, engage in deliberate social
promotion.
To understand social promotion it is probably best to be
convinced that it is a phenomenon closely tied to the
administration of age based grade levels. These concepts of
social promotion and age based grade levels may seem
different but they are really the same. We believe that
these “traditional” practices of social
promotion are mostly responsible for the large percentages
of students who are sub-proficient on the Nation’s
Report Card- or officially the National Assessment of
Educational Progress (NAEP).
Here’s how:
Historically, and surely in the early part of the 20th
century, children not performing at grade level were
flunked. Such children were then either remediated in
summer school or retained to repeat the grade. Retention
altered the correspondence of a child’s age with the
normal grade level associated with that age. It gave the
child an opportunity to learn more and eventually master
enough of that grade level’s material to finally pass
into the next grade- as most did. By retaining slow
learners and double-promoting rapid learners, the systems
put children into grade levels where tests indicated they
belonged. In a rough sense, this prevented many
sub-proficient students from being placed in classes beyond
their capabilities. It tended to ensure that most children
were so to speak at grade level or proficient therein.
In this author’s family there is an example:
Let’s look at my mother’s family for an example
of these common practices from the early 1920’s. My
mother, Virginia, was double-promoted after first grade.
About the same time her older brother, Alfred, was flunked.
And according to family legend, “more than
once.” This was the opposite of social promotion. It
was rather awkward, socially, for the two siblings to end
up in the same third grade classroom despite their age
difference of about three years!
But that’s old history. Enter the psychological worry
that flunking a child upsets his or her feelings and
self-regard. Over the latter years of the 20th century and
even more so recently, the criteria for retaining a student
in a grade level has become more and more restrictive with
the result that flunking is now rare. Double promotion, for
the same reasons, is also less frequent. The presumed
social importance of keeping a child with peers has now
come to outweigh the need to keep him or her from falling
behind or from getting ahead. So we now promote nearly
every student for these social reasons. Hence, it’s
called social promotion.
When there is no longer any retention within a grade level,
the child stays with his or her age cohorts- thus ensuring
age-based grade levels. That’s why social promotion
and age based grade levels are so much the same.
The cure for deliberate social
promotion.
A key
inference from the foregoing suggests how social promotion
can be cured. Simply abolish age based grade levels. End of
story.
Well not so fast.
The cure is self-pacing. Under it, children do not advance
to the next course of instruction based on their age.
Rather a child is advanced to the next level when he or she
has mastered the prerequisite course or courses. Implicit
in this system is the abandonment of the concept of
academic semesters, quarters and years. Instead each child
is advanced on or soon after the date on which they
demonstrate mastery of the preceding course.
State assessment systems exaggerate student
performance.
Asora Education Enterprises has for sometime been reviewing
published student proficiencies at the state level for the
subjects of mathematics and reading and then comparing such
numbers to the highly regarded measured proficiency
percentages of the Nation’s Report Card- officially
the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). The
proficiency percentages of the latter are regarded by most
educational professionals as the standard definition of
grade level performance. Asora makes that same judgment.
When we look around the United States we see gross
exaggeration of student proficiencies by the states. On
average states report proficiency percentages about twice
the level measured by the NAEP in the two subjects of
mathematics and reading. The worst offenders quadruple the
numbers while the most honest states are sometimes near
parity with the NAEP.
Even the most honest state, Massachusetts, loses that
integrity for high school testing. At 4th grade its state
reported proficiencies in 2015 averaged over the two
subjects were very close to the NAEP- less than 1% higher.
Not so good at 8th grade where the average inflation factor
was 1.22 or 22% higher “boost” of state
proficiency levels reported over their NAEP counterpart.
Sadly, for high school the inflation factor was 2.23 or
123% higher. So even the most honest state is a big liar in
its reporting of high school student performance levels.
The cure for state assessment
systems.
To
regain credibility states need to establish assessment
systems that are comparable to the NAEP. Being proficient
in any given subject should not be defined so much
differently than the national standards that it would
result in grossly inflated numbers being reported. The
deservedly maligned Common Core is not what is needed.
Rather existing tests and new ones are needed- that pass
the smell test. ACT provides testing that, for example,
produces proficiency percentages comparable to those of the
NAEP. Other established testing services, such as those of
Pearson, could be considered if the contract specifies
proficiency standards similar to the NAEP or ACT. There are
50 state jurisdictions as well as the District of Columbia
that are deficient in this. All need repair.
Individual
schools lie about student
performance
If state assessments exaggerate student performance levels
above those of the NAEP, how do individual schools rate
their own students? Answer: Even higher. Published
statistics tell us that student retention rates hover near
2% suggesting that 98% are passing. If we assume a school
defines its own proficiency by the percentage who pass then
the average individual school proficiency rate would be
around 98%.
For 4th grade students who nationally have about 34%
proficient on the NAEP and roughly 68% proficient on a
typical state’s test do we really believe that 98%
are proficient? At 8th grade and 12th grade the stories are
quite similar. Thus the state education departments grossly
exaggerate student skills while the individual schools go
far beyond those bogus claims to claim near perfection.
For private schools the story is similar though the
magnitude of the numbers is different. The average private
school, according to the NAEP, has about 48% of its 4th
grade students proficient. Very few private schools take
the state tests, but when they do the estimated state
proficiencies are much higher than the NAEP- perhaps around
90%. Ask the private school what is their passing rate and
we think they will give a number about 99%. So again the
state test would grossly exaggerate their NAEP performance
and the school would give you a number even higher.
The cure for lying schools.
As we
discussed in the foregoing, the incentive for
misrepresenting student skills comes from the perceived
need to keep the children socially promoted to maintain
their age based grade levels. One cure for this is to
significantly increase the amount of flunking and the
associated remediation. But we think the better cure was
given in the preceding article on curing social promotion:
That of using self-pacing with a mastery of prerequisite
courses requirement.
Schools
often “bear false witness.” Respecting only 9
Commandments.
On a more subjective level the previous article about lying
schools could be recast in a qualitative light. Nearly
everyone involved in public and private schools, including
students, parents, teachers, principals and others, know
that the schools promote or graduate students who have not
met the schools’ own standards. They also know or
suspect that the school’s own standards are weak
compared to those of the state’s education department
and might even know that their school’s performance
is, on average, no where near the NAEP standards.
The schools know this too and they know that they are
lying. But they seem free of guilt. This would suggest a
moral compass that allows the “bearing of false
witness.” It’s OK to misrepresent a
child’s progress- maybe because it makes everyone
feel good. It is almost as if one of the Ten Commandments,
“Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy
neighbor,” does not apply. Perhaps there are only
nine Commandments?
Maybe lying is OK as long as it does not harm your
neighbor? Or does neighbor mean anyone harmed by the lie?
So let’s make a list. Who is harmed by schools that
bear false witness? Surely the student is harmed when
little or no remedial effort is made. The parents
experience harm when their children later have difficulty
achieving economic independence due to their poor academic
skills. Society is harmed when some of these poor
performers turn to crime or become social burdens on the
government. Doesn’t society include the neighbors?
Thy neighbor probably voted for good schools and the
schools told the neighbor they were good. So, indeed, false
witness was given against the neighbor. Let’s not
forget that false witness can also mean saying something is
good when it is bad.
The cure for “bearing false
witness.”
Here the
cure is the recognition, firstly, that there are ten
commandments, not nine. And secondly, those involved must
tell the truth to and about their neighbors. The community
must learn the truth and as is said elsewhere in the
Bible, the
truth will make you free.
Doing
instruction & testing is a conflict of interest- never
called corruption
One habit of nearly all schools, public and private, is
that they provide two related services: They instruct. And
they test students on that instruction. Naturally schools
want to look good. And this becomes a conflict of interest
when they measure their own service or product. How can
such an unwise combination persist? The answer, is the same
one given by the character Tevye in the musical Fiddler on
the Roof: Tradition.
It’s always been done this way. Few educators have
ever thought about the conflict of interest. And few would
think it corruption. Similarly, parents and other
stakeholders rarely see this combination as corruption. But
it is corruption and the corruption is evident when schools
and others managing them produce “look good”
information about their performance and other
characteristics that effectively deceive those depending on
these institutions.
The cure for conflicted and corrupt schools.
The
solution to this problem is to remove the conflict of
interest. That can be done by having the testing done by an
external and independent organization, which does not
benefit from the school artificially looking good.
Examples of this cure abound for a number of professions
where such independent testing is done. For lawyers, the
testing is done by the bar association and not the law
school. Ditto for medical doctors. To be a CPA you must
pass an external exam. There is even an example of a K-12
charter school wherein its high school instruction is
tested externally. This school, The Advanced Math and
Science Academy (AMSA), in Massachusetts, gives its high
school instruction via Advanced Placement courses for which
the testing is done externally by the College Board. Guess
what? It is the only public school in the state for which
every student was deemed proficient on the state tests and
as such was the best performing public school in
Massachusetts. Arguably, it is the only public school in
the state not suffering from corruption.
Relaxed
parents have not been vigilant and informed
customers
Most parents and many stakeholders have positive views of
the schools around them. They know, or more accurately
think they know, that many public schools are good. They
generally think that private schools are better. We at
ASORA know they are wrong.
Some of the more supportive parents participate in PTO or
PTA organizations where friendly faces of teachers and
other parents lull them into a false sense of appreciation
for the school’s qualities. Oh, “look at our
long honor role,” they might say while not telling
the parent that the school’s testing is easy enough
that being on the honor roll is no great achievement.
Many studies of reported performance levels of various
kinds of schools have shown that public school systems
routinely exaggerate the skill and knowledge levels of
their students. Nationally, the average public school
system deems twice as many students performing at or above
grade level as what the well-respected Nation’s
Report Card measures. So the typical public system lies.
Then we have the private schools that hide behind their
unearned reputations of being much better than public
schools. Again, a close review of the Nation’s Report
Cart shows a rough parity between public and private
schools when the comparison is done fairly. That is, when
these schools are compared for a demographic that is
difficult to educate, there is a rough tie in performance.
The specific demographic used is the one of economically
disadvantaged students that is defined by eligibility for
the Free and Reduced Price meals of the National School
Lunch program of the US Department of Agriculture.
The rejoinder to this assertion will likely be that the
private school students performed better on the SAT or the
ACT. And that a higher percentage were accepted in
prestigious colleges. Superficially, these claims are
correct. Private schools benefit from the many children who
come from families of some means. Those children often
learn a great deal in their homes from their usually better
than average educated parents.
Very few parents are aware of this poor performance of
private schools. So we suspect that private schools keep
their performance numbers secret whenever those numbers are
modest. It’s a silent yet corrupt practice whereby
many parents of means are separated from their money with
little academic benefit going to their children. In the
prototypical school guidebook we have produced for Rhode
Island and Massachusetts, available here on this website,
we discovered an interesting correlation from studying the
estimated student proficiency levels of private schools.
For private high schools reporting SAT scores we noticed
that their estimated performance levels on the
Nation’s Report Card were significantly higher than
other private high schools not reporting them. It reminds
us of the old adage about dirty linen: Don’t show it
in public. But if your linen is clean or your SAT scores
are high then by all means display them for all to see.
The cure for inattentive parents
Our
guidebook project is intended as an example of what can be
done. The idea is to provide parents and others the
information they need to make intelligent choices among
schools. We often think of the information provided as the
second element of a school voucher program. There should be
two components to parental choice in education:
1. Provide the parent the financial means to make a choice
of schools for their children.
2. Provide the parent with consumer information allowing
them to make an intelligent choice. We call this
informational choice. It hardly exists except in our
prototype.
Our studies suggest that almost all school voucher
programs, whether funded publicly or privately, suffer from
parents making uninformed choices. Research on the
effectiveness of school vouchers has shown minor benefits
and only black children benefited in a statistically
significant way. Think of it this way: The parent takes the
voucher to enroll the child in a private school that they
think is better than the public school attended before.
But, as we know, the private school is, on average, no
better than the public school. So the child is moved to a
school where there is little additional benefit.
If this 2nd informational component of parental choice is
provided then the parent can seek out those private schools
that actually perform better than the previous school. That
should not only help the parent but it should introduce
more energetic competition among the schools. That
competition would likely lead to improvements in both the
private and public schools. Now that would be a real
“race to the top!”
Not every parent will have a voucher to use. But when
parents know about school quality they can put political
pressure on the public schools when they see poor
performance. And private school parents can vote with their
feet when they see low proficiencies in a private school.
Probably more important than choosing a different school is
the option for a student to receive some external
independent testing followed by supplemental instruction
when that student needs help to achieve grade level
performance.
Parents will probably make good choices once they are aware
of the degradation in their schools. They will be more
active in the educational management of their children. We
think every parent of a school child should regard
themselves as a homeschooling parent. But not necessarily
in the sense of doing homeschooling in their home. Rather
they can become the managers of each child’s
education by taking an active role in monitoring their
skill levels and then seeking remedial help when it is
needed.
Parents who lobby for social
promotion
Then there is another category of parents: The schools are
too hard lobby. Many parents actually think that the public
or private school is too demanding of their children. Yet
they want their children accorded the distinction of having
mastered the school’s curriculum. If the school
attempts to flunk such students, these kinds of parents
complain that their children are learning well enough to
pass. If it is a private school, the parent does not want
to pay for an additional year of instruction so there is a
large incentive to “move the child along.”
These parents rarely call their suggestion “social
promotion,” but the result is the same.
The cure for lobbyist parents.
Here the
remedy is the same one given for the conflict of interest
inherent to schools that do their own testing: Farm out the
testing to an independent agency. Any complaints to the
school about student performance and grades would be
referred to the external agency that in turn would reject
any improper complaints about a student’s
performance. Such parents would be encouraged to seek
remedial attention for their children if the school
wasn’t already taking such measures.
Relaxed students want school to be
easy.
Shouldn’t the students act responsibly as they work
to acquire the skills and knowledge they will need to
succeed after high school graduation? Gauging the
culpability of students for the lackluster schools they
attend is difficult because they are the most innocent of
the participants in K-12 education.
But there are things students can be encouraged to do.
Playing educational games, particularly ones that are
competitive, can help them acquire skills. Some students
like the idea of showing off their skills in various areas.
Why not consider academic contests that would help them
acquire mastery of skills? The more competitive students
might realize that their school is not challenging them
enough. They could complain.
The cure for lazy students
In the
end, students can’t really do much to improve the
schools. But they can become aware of some of the problems
and maybe “push” the system at the margins in
the right directions. They can be partners with their
parents keeping track of the events at school and giving
valuable feedback to their parents who are the ones really
in charge or should be in that role.
Such as the true story from the 1970’s in a
California 2nd grade classroom where a boy came home and
complained to the parents that the teacher told them 3 + 4
= 8 when he knew the answer was wrong. In that case the
teacher was eventually fired.
Religious
congregations seem agnostic about K-12
schooling.
Churches and other religious organizations in our
communities generally support American traditions and
culture. As such they frequently have positive attitudes
towards the schools in their communities. These schools
obviously play a role in the education of their
members’ children.
Historically, some denominations established their own
schools to ensure their children received academic,
religious and ethical instruction consistent with their
beliefs. Catholics have done this more than the others
though Episcopalians, Lutherans, Baptists and many
independent churches have also run their own schools. Some,
such as Methodists and Presbyterians, rarely if ever
operate schools at the K-12 levels. Overall, the number of
schools operated by religious organizations is small. In
Rhode Island and Massachusetts we count approximately 100
high schools with a religious affiliation out of
approximately 3000 religious congregations. That’s
about 3%. Why so small?
Part of the explanation comes from the fact that public
schools were essentially protestant Christian schools in
their early history. Over their existence in the United
States, now getting close to 200 years, public schools have
evolved to become more secular. No longer are prayers
recited in them. Some have even abandoned the Pledge of
Allegiance. Given that the public schools traditionally
taught ethical and moral principles consistent with many of
the various churches’ teachings, churches felt
comfortable with their members’ children attending
them. But that was then.
Now the public schools have been pushed into the
politically progressive and agnostic realm to such an
extent that their teachings often contradict what religious
groups espouse. As many churches and other religious
organizations are losing membership, part of the
explanation may be related to their loss of children and
young adults to other creeds and philosophies.
The cure for inattentive religious
congregations
What can
a congregation or denomination do to correct these trends?
One obvious answer: start your own school. But that might
not be feasible. There are measures that can help however.
Add a component to the religious education that counters
contradictory messages being taught in the secular schools.
Teach some history when the schools are calling Thomas
Jefferson’s reputation into question, exaggerating
the faults of Columbus or even calling Lincoln a liar. And
deal with political correctness- of whatever stripe- when
it tries to impose one line of political thinking to the
exclusion of the others.
Or if that’s is not possible, maybe just have a
sermon or two alerting parents to the troubles? In that
vein religious groups can also consult parents to help them
understand the problems in their schools. Give them advice
similar to what our planned guidebooks will suggest. If you
are in Rhode Island or Massachusetts, buy one or more of
our forthcoming guidebooks for your church library!
Depending on community details, the local schools may be
your adversaries. Or they may be drifting in a politically
unfriendly direction and may need a nudge or course
correction. And when it comes to public schools, churches
and other religious groups should consider becoming
politically active in educational issues. Encourage someone
to run for school board. Elect friendly faces to the town
council or the legislature. Elect folks who will push
public education in what you see as a healthy direction.
Many
“pro-education” volunteer and civic groups are
not helpful
Kiwanis and Chambers of Commerce come to mind. These are
among a number of civic organizations, with chapters at the
community level, that are friendly to private and public
schools in their areas. Yet many of them remain unaware of
the problems within the schools.
In an effort to be friendly to all sides, some of these
organizations involve public school officials in their
leadership, as is often the case among Chambers of
Commerce. These organizations help their local schools
usually according to the requests of those schools. They
typically refrain from any kinds of investigations or
research into problems within the schools.
When ASORA approached Chambers of Commerce about sponsoring
a county level guidebook to schools for their areas, not
one expressed interest or even curiosity. It is hoped that
some of these organizations will take interest in such
projects in the future. They may be inspired and encouraged
by the new administration in Washington?
The cure for civic groups
inattention
Study
the status quo in your communities. Get good data on school
performance and characteristics for your local schools. If
you are in Rhode Island or Massachusetts you can work with
ASORA to produce its guidebooks like the prototypical one
available now on this website. If you’re elsewhere,
hire us to help you produce a guidebook or perform related
work.
Adventure
capitalists could fix market failure in the K-12
sector?
Asora Education has witnessed market failure from a front
row seat. Over ten years ago we put forward a business plan
that would franchise novel schools. But no investors came
forward. Other entrepreneurs put forth their business plans
for novel schools. Again, no investors took interest. Asora
Education offered its estimates of public school
performance levels to companies in the supplementary
services niche of the education industry to be used in
marketing their services. Once again, no interest. Queried
why, a public relations consultant to the industry told us
that these firms would be punished by their public
education patrons if they dared to compete against those
patrons. We offered our numbers to the operators of
for-profit schools. Even they were seemingly afraid of the
blow back from the public systems if they were to dare use
our data in advertising. Lots of meek venture capital
people out there! But will they “inherit the
earth?”
The cure for K-12 market failure.
We have
not found any venture capitalists interested in supporting
firms that would compete and help energize the K-12 sector.
So we are seeking adventure capitalists. Are there any? We
foresee philanthropically inclined investors who are
willing to take mega-risks heretofore not contemplated by
garden variety venture investors. Come on guys! Somebody
must be out there with the guts to try this adventure. Step
up! Call me at 508 409 8597.
Where
is Milton Friedman now when we need
him?
Milton Friedman died over ten years ago so he can’t
help us directly. As readers of our Asora Updates are
probably aware we believe that the best path to education
reform lies in a competitive marketplace for the suppliers
and consumers of the products and services within the K-12
economic sector. This is the theory or philosophy that
guided Milton Friedman to be the author of school voucher
proposals- from his initial work in the 1950’s to his
authorship and participation in political campaigns in
California that sought to establish school voucher
programs. In the early years of Asora’s existence we
benefited from Professor Friedman’s feedback. He was
particularly interested in our proposals to build systems
of franchised schools based on self-paced instruction- what
we call Stellar Schools. There was a “choice”
aspect to such schools because they have been designed to
operate much less expensively than their conventional
peers. When a school costs less to run, it can stay solvent
at lower tuition charges. More parents can afford such
schools so for them they have the ability to choose among
them.
We have been looking for an economist with a Friedmanesque
vision to help us develop ideas for a healthy competitive
marketplace of K-12 education. Of particular interest to us
is the role that information economics can play in
producing healthy incentives within this sector. It is our
contention, verified by research, that vouchers alone do
not provide much competition when the consumers are unaware
of the characteristics of the products/services being
offered. We believe that parents need good information
about the schools around them if they are to have maximal
benefit from the vouchers. Without that information schools
are chosen that seem better but that on average are not
much better than the public school formerly attended. We
have approached a number of economists but have yet to find
a collaborator for this work.
Many free-market oriented think tanks around the United
States have explored various kinds of school choice. In
fact, there are too many of them to list them here. One
gets the impression, sometimes, that these organizations
are more focused on the politics of public policy than on
the actual outcomes various policy choices engender. None
of them, including the Friedman Foundation for Educational
Choice- now renamed EdChoice- seems to be looking at the
informational economics aspects.
The cure for missing economists
We had
various proposals on the “cures” in the
preceding articles but on this one we don’t know how
to proceed except to advertise our needs. We are not in a
position to hire anyone but we’d sure like to
collaborate. This author is too old to get trained as an
economist but not too old to help. If anyone reading this
has suggestions please get in touch. 508 409 8597.
What
Is ASORA Doing About This?
ASORA has always been engaged in much pro bono work. In
recent years the contract services we had been offering
found little interest. In fact, we suspended our business
activities in 2014 awaiting better circumstances.
Those better circumstances may be here. The many factors
mentioned above will allow considerably more freedom for
commercial activity in this sector.
We have decided to focus our attention in our own region
here in New England. Pro bono work will be restricted to
Massachusetts and Rhode Island. Our commercial efforts, if
any develop, will be focused over a wider geography. We
therefore are seeking business in the form of
collaborations, contracts and speaking engagements.
The players in the education industry do not really need a
national scale to be competitive. Working more locally can
still be profitable. The United States Constitution, by its
silence, also considers education activities something
regional rather than national. When we work at, let’s
say, the state level we can compete against other states as
well as against competitors in our own localities.
For example, ASORA’s guidebook projects are state
based or regional. If we succeed with our first
publications, then we’ll have the experience and
resources to develop others. If we succeed, others will
imitate and compete with us. If our guidebook projects
prosper, the benefits will be profitable to us and
profitable to K-12 education: A win-win situation.
There
Is Much More On Our Website
For
further information, consider reviewing our
home page
where
there are links to more detailed descriptions of the
services and activities of Asora Education.
Alternatively you might consider visiting
"What Was New"
to
learn more about our recent and not so recent history.
What’s
New in Winter 2017
Bottom-Up School Reform:
The
Stars Are Aligned For It
By David V. Anderson
Our theme in this edition, about considering local reform
efforts, contends that:
* The
federal government has been an obstacle to school reform.
* Unionized teachers have been a hindrance of major
proportion.
* Obedient school management has little freedom to
innovate.
*
Relaxed parents have not been vigilant and informed
customers.
* Students aren’t working hard enough to master their
subjects.
* Religious organizations often don’t see the harm
K-12 schools do to them.
* Many pro-education volunteer and civic organizations are
not helpful.
* Educational services firms fear the educational
establishment
Of these factors, Asora believes the parents of school
children can be the most important agents of change. For
that reason, we have developed guidebooks to schools that
parents can use to help manage their children’s
education providers. Once parents understand the basic fact
that K-12 education is not what they think, they will react
by making better choices, both individually and
politically.
This Asora update has two related documents you can
download:
• Our theme essay,
Bottom-Up School Reform: The Stars Are Aligned For
It
To obtain the downloadable file,
BottomUp.pdf,
please click here
to
access ASORA’s
Reports on Reform page.
• Our prototypical private and public school
guidebook that we have recently completed for the two
states of Rhode Island and Massachusetts,
Parents’ Guide To Schools & Services
In Rhode Island & Massachusetts:
A
Guide to Private and Public Schools & Other Educational
Resources
To obtain a copy of this 89-page book please
click
here to
access ASORA’s
Regional Guidebook page
where you can download
RIMA-Guide-01.pdf.
On Bottom-Up School
Reform
The general concept of “Bottom-Up” carries with
it two aspects:
* That an activity starting at the individual or small
group level can accomplish desired goals.
* That its opposite kind of activity, Top-Down, is often
unable, is too inefficient, or simply refuses to work
towards those goals.
We listed eight contentions above. Let’s now discuss
each one of them in turn.
The
federal government has been an obstacle to school
reform.
While most of the efforts in the United States to involve
the federal government in K-12 education have been arguably
well intended they have ignored two important
considerations in making these kinds of policies:
* They ignore the United States Constitution’s 10th
Amendment that allows no role for a federal department in
this area. Why do they ignore and disobey this fundamental
law?
* They ignore the economics involved by outlawing or
discouraging the very kinds of frameworks that would
incentivize desired improvements in education.
Previous administrations have imposed onerous regulations
required for the states receiving various federal grants
associated with the Elementary and Secondary Education Act.
As we saw, recently, the Ed department was even dictating
restroom policies to schools across the country. Through
its infamous Race to the Top program, it imposed coercive
incentives on the states to impose the politically
progressive Common Core State Standards on most public
schools in the nation.
Bottom-Up obstacle removal.
We at
ASORA believe that the best policy for education would
result from closing the Department of Education. It would
remove the federal harness from the 51 plus state and
territorial jurisdictions that would free them to compete
with the others. Economies of scale that advocates of the
federal department might cite are not really relevant when
that scale is accompanied by intrusive regulations.
Economics favors education operating more locally.
President Trump could do this on his own. Legislation is
not needed. He only needs to defend the Constitution that
according to its 10th Amendment has no provision for such a
department. He could simply give its employees notice and
terminate all its grant making programs. Were he to do
this, the courts would probably handle lawsuits seeking
reinstatement. Just as some previous Presidents have done,
President Trump could simply ignore the courts on the basis
that his oath of office and the terms of the Constitution
make him a co-equal interpreter of this founding document.
We doubt, however, that he will close the department. But
there are indications that under its new Secretary of
Education, Betsy DeVos, it will be transformed into a
minimally restrictive grant making organization. Where
conditions are placed on its grants, we have reason to
believe that they will be used to incentivize more parental
choice in education.
Based on President Trump’s campaign speeches we
believe that Common Core will die at the federal level. No
longer will there be any coercion on the states to adopt
it. There will likely be no active effort to kill it and
some left-leaning states will probably keep it or aspects
of it. Unwise as these states may be, they should have the
freedom to develop their own policies.
Also based on his campaign’s promise to greatly
facilitate the use of vouchers, charter schools and other
policies supportive of school choice we expect legislation
and regulations to accomplish those goals- including an
order-of-magnitude increase in voucher financing. That
means ten times the current level- as was promised during
the campaign.
Unionized teachers have been a hindrance of major
proportion.
At every level of government, teachers’ unions have
been active- some would say hyperactive- in supporting the
incomes and oftentimes the politics of their members. They
not only support the usual collective bargaining activities
typical of unions but they also interfere with the proper
management of public schools. These unions often control
local school boards, county school boards, state school
boards and legislatures. When it’s the local school
board they effectively control the management with whom
they negotiate wages, working conditions, and other aspects
of school operations. Even the Curricula have not been
immune from their meddling. We like to say that such unions
do not “negotiate” with management. Rather they
“megotiate” because they are the management- at
least indirectly- in control. These are arguably corrupt
practices.
Any proposed reform that would change a teacher’s
role would almost certainly fail. Innovations, such as
online self-paced instruction, are often dead on arrival.
Given this union resistance, few public systems have been
successful in developing promising improvements.
There are many teachers, albeit a minority of them, who
would embrace sensible reforms. There is no place where
they could go to find supportive school officials when the
latter are under the thumbs of the unions. A number of
teachers have either left working in the public system or
never chose to work there initially. Instead they have
chosen to work in private schools where they have somewhat
more freedom to act professionally.
Bottom-Up opportunities from union
decline.
The good
news is that as more and more states have become
“right-to-work” states, the power of unions has
been falling significantly. As more schools become charters
the number of unionized teachers will further decrease. As
vouchers become more commonly used, private schools will
grow at the expense of public schools and the unions will
lose even more members. Their decline in membership will
reduce their political power and many school boards will
regain their independence from union intimidation and
control.
Once school boards and teachers regain some independence
from union favored nostrums, they will be able to research,
develop and implement new ideas for school reform.
At the state level, where unions also have had much clout
there is the prospect of reducing the “one-size fits
all” policies imposed on local communities. That will
foster more freedom for further innovations.
Obedient
school management has had little freedom to
innovate.
A good question to ask public school officials is that of
who is in charge? The unfortunate answer, as we alluded to
in the previous section, is “the teachers’
union.” Where the union dominates school board
elections, their candidates win. In turn, their captive
school board members hire and fire school superintendents,
principals and others.
When parents and other stakeholders want certain reforms,
they can’t really ask the school managers to
implement them because they don’t answer to such
concerned parties. Yes, the parents can approach the school
board but if that governing body is under the sway of the
unions, there is little that can be accomplished.
You want to end social promotion? You want official testing
to be independent of the schools? You want incompetent
teachers removed? Good luck getting these leaders
interested. They’d rather collect their hefty
salaries, which in part pay them to “look the other
way,” rather than work to end these- again- arguably
corrupt practices.
For these administrators and the teachers, there is no
economic incentive for them to please the parents. They are
not directly paid by the parents and worse many parents
have been deceived into thinking the schools are good. So
there is little pressure on them from their customers.
Bottom-Up roles for school
management.
The good
news here is that school management will have greater
freedom enabled by the reductions in federal regulations,
the decline of union interference, and the introduction of
more parental choices among schools and service providers.
This doesn’t mean that management in the public or
private schools will have the freedom to impose their
ideas. Rather they will have the freedom to respond to
market forces as they develop the structure and policies
for school operations that will best keep their revenues
flowing.
In some sense these school administrators are at the nexus
within the public system where competition is engaged.
Their policies will depend significantly on what their
competitors are doing if they are to maintain or grow their
market share.
Relaxed
parents have not been vigilant and informed
customers.
Most parents and many stakeholders have positive views of
the schools around them. They know, or more accurately
think they know, that many public schools are good. They
generally think that private schools are better. We at
ASORA know they are wrong.
Some of the more supportive parents participate in PTO or
PTA organizations where friendly faces of teachers and
other parents lull them into a false sense of appreciation
for the school’s qualities. Oh, “look at our
long honor role,” they might say while not telling
the parent that the school’s testing is easy enough
that being on the honor roll is no great achievement.
Our studies of reported performance levels of various kinds
of schools have shown that public school systems routinely
exaggerate the skill and knowledge levels of their
students. Nationally, the average public school system
deems twice as many students performing at or above grade
level as what the well-respected Nation’s Report Card
measures. So the typical public system lies.
Then we have the private schools that hide behind their
unearned reputations of being much better than public
schools. Again, a close review of the Nation’s Report
Cart shows a rough parity between public and private
schools when the comparison is done fairly. That is, when
these schools are compared for a demographic that is
difficult to educate, there is a tie in performance. The
specific demographic used is the one of economically
disadvantaged students that is defined by eligibility for
the Free and Reduced Price meals of the National School
Lunch program of the US Department of Agriculture.
The rejoinder to this assertion will likely be that the
private school students performed better on the SAT or the
ACT. And that a higher percentage was accepted in
prestigious colleges. Superficially, these claims are
correct. Private schools benefit from the many children who
come from families of some means. Those children often
learn a great deal in their homes from their usually better
than average educated parents.
Very few parents are aware of this poor performance of
private schools. So we suspect that private schools keep
their performance numbers secret whenever the numbers are
modest. It’s a silent yet corrupt practice whereby
many parents of means are separated from their money with
little academic benefit going to their children. In the
prototypical school guidebook (mentioned above) being made
available for your review, we discovered an interesting
correlation in studying the estimated student proficiency
levels of private schools. For private high schools
reporting SAT scores we noticed that their estimated
performance levels on the Nation’s Report Care were
significantly higher than other private high schools not
reporting them. It reminds us of the old adage about dirty
linen: Don’t show it in public. But if your linen is
clean or your SAT scores are high then by all means display
them publicly.
Bottom-Up roles for concerned
parents.
Our
guidebook project is intended to provide parents and others
the information they need to make intelligent choices among
schools. We often think of the information provided as the
second element of a school voucher program. There should be
two components to parental choice in education:
1. Provide the parent the financial means to make a choice
of schools for their children.
2. Provide the parent with consumer information allowing
them to make an intelligent choice. We call this
informational choice. It does not yet exist except as our
prototype.
Our studies suggest that almost all school voucher
programs, whether funded publicly or privately, suffer from
parents making uninformed choices. Research on the
effectiveness of school vouchers has shown minor benefits
and only black children benefited in a statistically
significant way. Think of it this way: The parent takes the
voucher to enroll the child in a private school that they
think is better than the public school attended before.
But, as we know, the private school is, on average, no
better than the public school. So the child is moved to a
school where there is little additional benefit.
If this 2nd component of parental choice is provided then
the parent can seek out those private schools that actually
perform better than the previous school. That should not
only help the parent but it should introduce more energetic
competition among the schools. That competition would
likely lead to improvements in both the private and public
schools. Now that would be a real “race to the
top!”
Not every parent will have a voucher to use. But when
parents know about school quality they can put political
pressure on the public schools when they see poor
performance.
Probably more important than choosing a different school is
the option for a student to receive some external
independent testing followed by supplemental instruction
when that student needs help to achieve grade level
performance.
Parents will probably make good choices once they are aware
of the degradation in their schools. They will be more
active in the educational management of their children. We
think every parent of a school child should regard
themselves as a homeschooling parent. But not necessarily
in the sense of doing homeschooling in their home. Rather
they can become the managers of each child’s
education by taking an active role in monitoring their
skill levels and then seeking remedial help when it is
needed.
Students aren’t working hard enough to master
their subjects.
Shouldn’t the students act responsibly as they work
to acquire the skills and knowledge they will need to
succeed after high school graduation? Gauging the
culpability of students for the lackluster schools they
attend is difficult because they are the most innocent of
the participants in K-12 education.
But there are things students can be encouraged to do.
Playing educational games, particularly ones that are
competitive, can help them acquire skills. Some students
like the idea of showing off their skills in various areas.
Why not consider academic contests that would help them
acquire mastery of skills? The more competitive students
might realize that their school is not challenging them
enough. They could complain.
Bottom-Up roles for students
In the
end, students can’t really do much to improve the
schools. But they can become aware of some of the problems
and maybe “push” the system at the margins in
the right directions. They can be partners with their
parents keeping track of the events at school and giving
valuable feedback to their parents who are the ones really
in charge or should be in that role.
Such as the true story from the 1970’s in a
California 2nd grade classroom where a boy came home and
complained to the parents that the teacher told them 3 + 4
= 8 when he knew the answer was wrong. In that case the
teacher was eventually fired.
Religious
organizations often don’t see
the harm K-12 schools do to them.
Churches and other religious organizations in our
communities generally support American traditions and
culture. As such they frequently have positive attitudes
towards the schools in their communities. They obviously
play a role in the education of their members’
children.
Historically, some denominations developed their own
schools to ensure their children received academic,
religious and ethical instruction consistent with their
beliefs. Catholics have done this more than the others
though Episcopalians, Lutherans, Baptists and many
independent churches have also run their own schools. Some,
such as Methodists and Presbyterians, rarely if ever
operate schools at the K-12 levels. Overall, the number of
schools operated by religious organizations is small. In
Rhode Island and Massachusetts we count approximately 100
high schools with a religious affiliation out of
approximately 3000 religious congregations. That’s
about 3%. Why so small?
Part of the explanation comes from the fact that public
schools were essentially protestant Christian schools in
their early history. Over their existence in the United
States, now getting close to 200 years, public schools have
evolved to become more secular. No longer are prayers
recited in them. Some have even abandoned the Pledge of
Allegiance. Given that the public schools traditionally
taught ethical and moral principles consistent with many of
the various churches’ teachings, churches felt
comfortable with their members’ children attending
them. But that was then.
Now the public schools have been pushed into the
politically progressive and agnostic realm to such an
extent that their teachings often contradict what the
religious beliefs hold to be true. As many churches and
other religious organizations are losing membership, part
of the explanation may be related to their loss of children
and young adults to other creeds and philosophies.
Bottom-Up roles for religious
congregations.
What can
a congregation or denomination do to correct these trends?
One obvious answer: start your own school. But that might
not be feasible. There are measures that can help however.
Add a component to the religious education that counters
contradictory messages being taught in the secular schools.
Teach some history when the schools are calling Thomas
Jefferson’s reputation into question, calling
Columbus a murderer or even calling Lincoln a liar. And
deal with political correctness- of whatever stripe- when
it tries to impose one line of political thinking to the
exclusion of the others.
Or if that’s is not possible, maybe just have a
sermon or two alerting parents to the troubles? In that
vein religious groups can also consult parents to help them
understand the problems in their schools. Give them advice
similar to what our planned guidebooks will suggest. If you
are in Rhode Island or Massachusetts, buy one or more of
our guidebooks for your church library! Depending on
community details, the local schools may be your
adversaries. Or they may be drifting in a politically
unfriendly direction and may need a nudge or course
correction. And when it comes to public schools, churches
and other religious groups should consider becoming
politically active in educational issues. Encourage someone
to run for school board. Elect friendly faces to the town
council or the legislature. Elect folks who will push
public education in what you see as a healthy direction.
Many
“pro-education” volunteer and civic groups are
not helpful.
Kiwanis and Chambers of Commerce come to mind. These are
among a number of civic organizations, with chapters at the
community level, that are friendly to private and public
schools in their areas. Yet many of them remain unaware of
the problems within the schools.
In an effort to be friendly to all sides, some of these
organizations involve public school officials in their
leadership, as is often the case among Chambers of
Commerce. These organizations help their local schools
usually according to the requests of those schools. They
typically refrain from any kinds of investigations or
research into problems within the schools.
When ASORA approached Chambers of Commerce about sponsoring
a county level guidebook to schools for their areas, not
one expressed interest or even curiosity. It is hoped that
some of these organizations will take interest in such
projects in the future. They may be inspired and encouraged
by the new administration in Washington?
Bottom-Up roles for civic groups
Study
the status quo in your communities. Get good data on school
performance and characteristics for your local schools. If
you are in Rhode Island or Massachusetts you can work with
ASORA to produce its guidebooks like the prototypical one
available now on this website. If you’re elsewhere,
hire us to help you produce a guidebook or perform related
work.
Educational
service firms fear the educational
establishment.
ASORA has been offering its data and statistics to
educational service firms that could use this information
in contrast marketing. This data shows which schools are
weaker and which are stronger. Surely that could be used by
a tutoring service to advertise its offerings. Of the
hundreds of firms contacted, not one expressed interest.
Public relations experts told ASORA that most of these
firms have contracts with public school systems and do not
want to compete with those patrons. Nor do we know of any
such firms using similar kinds of data to market
themselves. This behavior has many descriptives among
others: “Go along to get along,”
“Don’t bite the hand that feeds you,”
“Play nice,” and “Don’t rock the
boat.”
For-profit schools are also education service firms. Like
the others meekly going about their work, ASORA was met
with silence when we proposed that an operator of
for-profit schools use our data for purposes of contrast
marketing.
Bottom-Up roles within the education
industry.
Individual
companies providing educational services to K-12 education
should try competition. Now that the educrats are losing
power there is less chance that they will retaliate if you
use aggressive but honest contrast marketing. If you are
the only such firm advertising in such an energetic
fashion, it is you who will be gaining market share. Soon
the others will catch on.
Investors of all stripes should reconsider their reluctance
to enter this economic sector. There are all kinds of
business plans seeking investors but few if any have been
funded. ASORA, for example, has one for franchising novel
schools. No one has expressed interest in its proposals nor
has hardly anyone invested in other novel plans.
What
Is ASORA Doing About This?
ASORA has always been engaged in much pro bono work. In
recent years the contract services we had been offering
found little interest. In fact, we suspended our business
activities in 2014 awaiting better circumstances.
Those better circumstances may be here. The many factors
mentioned above will allow considerably more freedom for
commercial activity in this sector.
We have decided to focus our attention in our own region
here in New England. Pro bono work will be restricted to
Massachusetts and Rhode Island. Our commercial efforts will
be focused here as well. That is not to say that we are
discouraging more remote collaborations, contracts and
speaking engagements; we still solicit those.
The players in the education industry do not really need a
national scale to be competitive. Working more locally can
still be profitable. The United States Constitution, by its
silence, also considers education activities something
regional rather than national. When we work at, let’s
say, the state level we can compete against other states as
well as against competitors in our own localities.
For example, ASORA’s guidebook projects are state
based or regional. If we succeed with our first
publications, then we’ll have the experience and
resources to develop others. If we succeed, others will
imitate and compete with us. If our guidebook projects
prosper, the benefits will be profitable to us and
profitable to K-12 education: A win-win
situation.
What’s
New at Asora
In November 2016?
For the
first time in 16 years- some would say first time ever-
political control in Washington will be in Republican hands
that are eager to use school choice to improve the
marketplace for K-12 education. The election of Donald
Trump and the election of Republican majorities in the
Congress makes this not only feasible but likely. Hence our
November 2016 Theme.
November
2016 Theme:
K-12 Reform
In The Trump Era
Trump
seeks to expand
school choice by 1000%
Scroll Down For The Theme Discussion
Or If You're A New Visitor
If this is
your first time visiting here, welcome to Asora Education
Enterprises, which has been engaged in:
1.) Publishing national and regional guides (hardcopy and
online) to public schools and the supplementary resources
locally available that are needed to bring children
attending these schools up to grade level. These needs are
pervasive- across both public and private education.
2.) An achievement test consulting service, in which we
analyze state administered tests to remove the
exaggerations found therein. Our guides and guidebooks are
based on the calculations we developed for those studies.
3.) The Stellar Schools Franchising Project, which plans to
organize K-12 franchising networks of brick & mortar
schools that are based on a blended format of self-paced
online instruction, online adaptive tutoring and e-books
blended with real instructors, tutors and books.
4.) Helping to overcome the market failure in K-12
education. We can use our guides to enable aggressive
contrast marketing, which can help education enterprises
thrive. Other stakeholders can use this information to
inform and energize the consumers of education.
5.) A speakers' bureau focused on these topical areas.
If you're a new visitor to our website we suggest that you
might review the "headlines" below before venturing into
the other areas.
What
Was New In Preceding Updates:
If you have not seen our previous quarterly "What's New"
updates, then you might want to peruse our
"What Was New"
pages.
What’s
New in 2016
By David V.
Anderson
Education Reform Ala Trump
He "will be the nation's biggest
cheerleader for school choice."
Click here to access our
Reports on Reform page where you can download this Theme
Discussion in the report TrumpReform.pdf
According
to campaign promises made by Donald Trump and according to
reports on what is popular in Congress, it is likely that
the new administration will be able to signficantly expand
the availability of school vouchers and other types of
school choice within the 50 states and the District of
Columbia.
Currently school vouchers are funded at about $2 billion
when all programs are combined. Trump plans to redirect
Education Department grants at the $20 billion level-
that's a 1000% increase over current levels.
Flended
= Flipped & Blended Schools
Is it
tradition, bureaucratic freeze, ignorance or union
resistance that keeps public education stuck in the 19th
century? Asora believes, "All of the above."
Age based group instruction given for only nine months of
the year worked in "farmville" in 1890 but is hardly a good
fit for 2017.
New methods and new technologies are here but few schools
are using them.
Most private schools imitate many aspects of this same
dated and obsolete tradition.
Here and there schools are using online instruction and
other forms of computer assisted learning. With these tools
the traditional teacher is becoming obsolete and needs to
be retrained as a tutor or in a few cases as the video
instructor. There are better ways to go:
⚫️End
union interference in school management.
⚫️Keep
the books but put curricular content online or on the
computers.
⚫️End
the age based system by instructing in a self-paced
learning format.
⚫️End
social promotion by requiring mastery of each subject prior
to advancement.
⚫️Accommodate
flipped scheduling
wherein lessons are received at home online while school
assignments are done at school with tutorial assistance.
⚫️Consider
blended scheduling
in which some group instruction is taught by a live teacher
to appropriate sets of cognitively "ready" students.
We dub schools that include flipped and blended scheduling
as
flended™️
schools.
Most K-12 schools should be flended friendly.
ASORA
Stellar Schools will be Flended
Friendly
Asora
Education has been well ahead of the curve with its Stellar
Schools proposal. Developed about ten years ago, our
business plan for franchised networks of modern schools has
gone unfunded by investors.
Maybe it's time for investors to wake up?
Maybe check out our business plans?
We are seeking partners and investors.
You can start at
http://asoraeducation.com/page41/page41.html
OK?
Common
Core is shown the door.
Federally
applied coercion to keep states pledged to implement the
so-called Common Core State Standards will soon end. The
Trump administration, in all likelihood, even without
Congressional legislation, will be able to rewrite
regulations that will "release" the states from any
obligations to continue Common Core.
Though probably not necessary, the new administration could
use new regulations to outlaw Common Core.
Overcoming
Common Core With Honest Academic Standards
A
detailed examination of Common Core issues is in a recent
Asora Education report, Overcoming
Common Core With Honest Academic
Standards, that
can be accessed on our website at our Reports on Reform
page
http://asoraeducation.com/page35/page35.html
Ending
Cronyism in the Education Industry
Asora
Education, for a number of years, was an active member of
the Education Industry Association (EIA).
Trusting hope over experience it took us years to accept
the disturbing stench of cronyism among for-profit
companies working in the industry. It brings to mind what
Pope Adrian had to say regarding corruption in the Roman
Catholic Church during the early years of the Protestant
Reformation. He said that its sins "were so widespread that
those afflicted by the vice did not even notice the stench
anymore...."
One of Asora's services has been the provision of school
performance information that could be very useful in the
marketing programs of for-profit education firms. Of the
hundreds of EIA member firms, not one expressed interest in
using our numbers to do contrast marketing. No one wanted
to criticise their local public schools with our damning
numbers.
A public relations expert told us that most for-profit
education companies earn the bulk of their revenue from
contracts with the public education system. Our marketing
proposals would have had them competing with their patrons
and thus essentially "biting the hand that feeds them."
They don't want to risk that.
We found that even for-profit private schools were loathe
to aggressively market their brands for fears of
retribution.
After suggesting to the EIA that it might consider
addressing this problem we were met with silence. Soon we
left the EIA in 2014.
One can imagine various kinds of industry organizations
that might work against the menace of cronyism. Small firms
could limit their operations to the so-called private pay
marketplace. Wouldn't that allow them to compete against
the public system? Maybe the climate under the Trump
administration will foster such developments?
Next
Gen School Vouchers
Some
parents, particularly ones who can afford private school
tuition, seek to enroll their children in private schools
that they regard as much better than the public school
alternatives.
To the extent that the private schools publish information
about their students' performance levels, the statistics do
show, on average, superior performance as compared to the
public schools.
Nationally, the NAEP actually tests samples of children in
reading and math. In 2013 for 8th
graders,
in private and public schools, they showed 47% and 34%,
respectively, were proficient. Information like this can
lead one to the conclusion that private schools are
significantly better (despite not being very good!).
Consistent with this, it is a widely held opinion among
parents, whether well educated or not, that the private
schools are superior.
But this comparison is not fair. It is not fair because
public schools have many more economically disadvantaged
children to educate than private schools. What does a fair
comparison say?
The NAEP also breaks out the testing results for children
who are economically disadvantaged. For them the private
and public schools are in a dead heat- statistical tie.
Those 8th
grader
proficiency percentages, measured in 2013, were 21% and
20%, respectively.
Thus
on average, private and public schools are equally
mediocre. The
number of parents who are aware of this is so small as to
constitute an almost vanishing percentage of the
population.
That fact goes a long way to explain the disappointing
results for school vouchers in which research shows no
statistically valid benefit except for black children. It
helps explain this research finding under the presumption
that a parent, on average, will choose a private school
hardly any better than the public school previously
attended.
Something else is needed. We believe the necessary
additional igredient is consumer information. Parents need
to know school performance information if they are to make
intelligent choices- if they are to actually find a better
school. The discipline of informational economics tells us
that a marketplace with bad consumer information will not
be healthy.
To accomplish this, those who grant school vouchers need to
provide parents with good information about school
performance. Moreover such grantors need to restrict the
issuance of such vouchers to those areas in which such
consumer information is put in the hands of the parents
seeking help.
Milton
Friedman Knew This
In
a more general sense, education reform is about economics.
Milton Friedman knew that when he first proposed school
vouchers in the 1950's. As in other industries, a properly
free marketplace will lead to competition through which the
better providers will be rewarded with business.
This is why Asora Education does not get too deep in the
weeds about the specifics of K-12 education reform. We do
know, however, that cost effective services will be chosen
by such a marketplace. That helps explain our Stellar
Schools proposals where various kinds of cost savings will
produce better educational outcomes for lower
costs.
Yes,
Virginia, Public Education Is
Communistic
The
Trump era is one of clarity in language. It is the opposite
of "political correctness."
Euphemisms are out. The hard and ugly facts are in.
Promoters of public education often label their efforts as
"progressive." We don't. Their efforts are more communistic
than anything else.
So said former Louisiana Superintendent of Education Paul
Pastorek. We recently wrote about this for the Daily Caller
in an article titled, "Moving School Choice Outside The
Government Box," which is available on our Reports on
Reform page.
Click here to access our Reports
on Reform page
Where
Are The Think Tanks, Education Consultants and Universities
on This?
We think
these institutions are mostly lost.
Obviously lost are those analysts who approach education
reform without cognizance of the primary role played by the
economic marketplace in which it operates. Thus those on
the political left tend to be lost.
Some give credence to market influences but still want to
have an education system that is operated top-down. Such
advocates seek for-profit firms acting as contractors to
help reach their goals.
Others see the marketplace as one that should be relatively
free. It should be a place where customers can reliably
compare the quality of the providers goods and services.
There are many think tanks that have this philosophy.
Still many of these ostensibly qualified institutions have
their idiosyncrasies that interfere with their
participation in these efforts. More on this as it affects
Asora follows in the next section.
CEO
David Anderson Has Left The Heartland
Institute
Over the
years since the founding of Asora Education Enterprises in
2008 we have had a formal affiliation with two free market
oriented think tanks.
One was the
Ocean State Policy Research Institute (OSPRI)
in Rhode
Island. I was their Fellow for Education, Energy and
Environmental issues. The institute became the victim of
unethical threats from the Governor's office when the
latter did not like the text of an Op-Ed this author had
written. I resigned over that and had the Op-Ed published
in the Providence Journal without OSPRI's participation.
Not long after that unfortunate event, OSPRI closed its
doors and became defunct.
Over the past year or so we have been involved with
the
Heartland Institute of
Arlington Heights, Illinois. I was a Senior Education
Fellow with them. I came to learn that Heartland is a large
organization apparently devoted to publishing as many
opinion pieces as possible and to such an extent that its
management sometimes loses track of its publishing plans.
As such it's more a publishing juggernaut than a research
institute. They gave me a project that involved hundreds of
hours of research and writing. When it was finished I
learned that they had inadvertently (some would say
deliberately) tasked a different author with much the same
project and that one turned out to be the one they
published. So my time was wasted. So I resigned again.
Is it that I can't hold a job? Or is it that some of these
organizations can't hold onto their valuable volunteers?
What’s
New at Asora In 2015 (and beyond)?
To
access information about replacing Common Core, you can
find articles on our Reform Reports page. It was the
subject of the previous Asora Update of July 2014- also
discussed in What Was New. Or you can read our booklet,
Replacing Common Core With Proven Standards of Excellence
that was published by the Heartland Institute. You can
access it at
http://heartland.org/policy-documents/replacing-common-core-proven-standards-excellence.
2015
Theme:
Let’s Help Parents Wise Up
Well
Informed Parents Are Essential To A Healthy K-12 Education
Marketplace
Scroll Down For The Theme Discussion
Or If You're A New Visitor
If this is
your first time visiting here, welcome to Asora Education
Enterprises, which has been engaged in:
1.) Publishing national and regional guides (hardcopy and
online) to public schools and the supplementary resources
locally available that are needed to bring children
attending these schools up to grade level. These needs are
pervasive- across both public and private education.
2.) An achievement test consulting service, in which we
analyze state administered tests to remove the
exaggerations found therein. Our guides and guidebooks are
based on the calculations we developed for those studies.
3.) The Stellar Schools Franchising Project, which plans to
organize K-12 franchising networks of brick & mortar
schools that are based on a blended format of self-paced
online instruction, online adaptive tutoring and e-books
blended with real instructors, tutors and books.
4.) Helping to overcome the market failure in K-12
education. We can use our guides to enable aggressive
contrast marketing, which can help education enterprises
thrive. Other stakeholders can use this information to
inform and energize the consumers of education.
5.) A speakers' bureau focused on these topical areas.
If you're a new visitor to our website we suggest that you
might review the "headlines" below before venturing into
the other areas.
What
Was New In Preceding Updates:
If you have not seen our previous quarterly "What's New"
updates, then you might want to peruse our
"What Was New"
pages.
What’s
New in 2015
By David V.
Anderson
Let’s Help Parents Wise Up
Well Informed Parents Are Essential To A Healthy K-12
Education Marketplace
Click here to access our Reports
on Reform page where you can download this Theme
Discussion in the report HelpParentsWiseUp.pdf
Our
theme in this edition, about well-informed parents being
essential to the schooling of their children, is based on a
fundamental principle of economics:
- Consumers need reliable information about the goods and services they seek to purchase.
Without that information these consumers will likely make unwise purchases. As one economist said about markets that don't have good information
When customers are unable to distinguish between high-quality and low-quality goods, business entrepreneurs have an incentive to cut costs by reducing quality. [cited in Theme Essay]
They will sell you "lemons."
So it is important to help parents wise up and avoid those many "lemons" of public and private K-12 education.
But They Are Unwittingly Lost In A Fog Of Misinformation
Most parents and other stakeholders of K-12 education have mixed opinions about the quality of American schools, but on average regard their local schools as acceptable or better. Having little information to the contrary, they don’t worry much about corruption, incompetence or lax standards that might affect these schools. In their minds there is no crisis.
They Rely On Public School Systems' Propaganda
In their reliance on published information and word of mouth most parents and other stakeholders of K-12 education have been misled into believing their schools are much better than they really are.
In nearly every state, the state department of education administers and reports on student achievement through assessment testing mandated by the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) legislation. Sounds good- right?
The actual legislation allows states to dumb down their proficiency criteria and most have yielded to this temptation. In a typical state this means that published proficiency percentages are about double what a more acceptable standard would require. At 8th grade, the highly regarded Nation's Report Card (more formally the National Assessment of Education Progress- NAEP) reports about 34% of American children being proficient in math and reading; that's not an encouraging number. But the states, on average, will report that 60% of these children are proficient or at grade level.
The course or class grades given out by the schools tend to be even more exaggerated than those of the NCLB testing. These considerations result in a situation not unlike this:
- The teacher gives passing grades to 95% of the students in any typical class.
- The state testing reports only 65% of these children are proficient.
- The NAEP assessments measure a far smaller 34% of them as proficient.
It would be a rare parent who would know about this last estimate and only a few would be aware of the state testing results. Most parents, even some of the ones whose children received a failing grade, would not regard the school as failing their child. They'd probably blame the child for not performing better. So they give the school an “A OK.”
They Rely On Supposed Private School Superiority
Some parents, particularly ones who can afford private school tuition, seek to enroll their children in private schools that they regard as much better than the public school alternatives.
To the extent that the private schools publish information about their students' performance levels, the statistics do show, on average, superior performance as compared to the public schools.
Nationally, the NAEP actually tests samples of children in reading and math. In 2013 for 8th graders, in private and public schools, they showed 47% and 34%, respectively, were proficient. Information like this can lead one to the conclusion that private schools are significantly better (despite not being very good!). Consistent with this, it is a widely held opinion among parents, whether well educated or not, that the private schools are superior.
But this comparison is not fair. It is not fair because public schools have many more economically disadvantaged children to educate than private schools. What does a fair comparison say?
The NAEP also breaks out the testing results for children who are economically disadvantaged. For them the private and public schools are in a dead heat- statistical tie. Those 8th grader proficiency percentages, measured in 2013, were 21% and 20%, respectively.
Thus on average, private and public schools are equally mediocre. The number of parents who are aware of this is so small as to constitute an almost vanishing percentage of the population.
Critical Achievement Percentage (CAP)
Based on the fact that fair comparisons between schools need to be based on the same demographic, we propose a new figure of merit: The Critical Achievement Percentage. It is simply the NAEP proficiency percentage of the economically disadvantaged children. Thus the Critical Achievement Percentage or CAP for private schools nationally was 21% in 2013 while the corresponding number for public schools was 20%.
The overall proficiency percentages for private and public schools that we cited above, of 47% and 34%, respectively, are not very useful for comparisons because they include other inputs and influences that are not related to school quality.
This academic parameter, CAP, probably more than any other number, shows the mediocrity of American K-12 education for both private and public schools. In our relatively recent mapping work, we have already estimated CAP for tens of thousands of public schools at grade levels 4, 8 and 12.
They Rely On Word Of Mouth
In most communities it is almost impossible to find reliable information about schools. Anecdotal information is often all a parent has to rely on. Their supposedly informed choices are more like rolling dice.
Putting The Financial Cart Ahead Of The Information Horse
You have the money to spend but you don't know much about the items in the bazar. Worse than being ignorant, you are misinformed and prejudiced about the goods for sale. Are you going to make good choices?
The Failures Of School Vouchers
Most advocates of giving parents school vouchers believe that the children of these parents will benefit. By enabling the child to attend a better school one presumes that his or her academic performance will improve.
But the research has shown little improvement except for the demographic of black children.
In the previous section we reported the parity of public and private schools in the way they educate those children who are economically disadvantaged. We believe that, on average, a parent using a voucher will simply transfer their child from a public school to a private school that is no better. One should not then be surprised to find little or no improvement.
School Vouchers Can Help If Parents Have Good Information
If parents had reliable information about the private and public schools in their communities, it is likely that they would only use a voucher if there were a school that could provide their child a superior education.
If such information were available, the lackluster schools would lose market share while the better performing schools would gain.
How To Explain The Lack Of Good Information?
Part of the explanation for understanding the absence of good consumer information rests on the understandable desire among all school officials to make their schools look good- even if they aren't so good. Public schools, which enjoy a near monopoly in K-12 education with nearly 90% of all students enrolled in them, similarly want to maintain or increase their market share by portraying themselves positively.
It does not look good when a school has a high retention rate (in which students repeat a grade) or has a high dropout rate. Local politics puts pressure on school authorities to lower these rates and they do it through social promotion policies. To justify social promotion, school administrators often hide the practice by inflating the scores children receive in their courses of study. Teachers are pressured to pass the vast majority of children and to be consistent with that are pressured to "grade on the curve" in such a way as to insure very few children ever flunk. Consistent with this actual retention rates rarely exceed 3% in the average public school class.
It has hardly ever occurred to school authorities that there is a conflict of interest when they have the dual responsibilities of instruction and testing. Because this combination is traditional it is rarely viewed as corrupt- though corrupt it is.
Non-profit private schools enjoy a reputation, probably not deserved, that they are significantly better than the public schools. Sometimes they publish information about their graduates' test results to show their superiority. But as we described above, their customers don't usually understand the demographic issue. This ignorance leads them to overestimate the quality of the private schools. And it means that private schools need not strive to be better when they can "get by" on appearances and a false narrative. To maintain this deception they’ll surely avoid publishing accurate performance statistics.
For-profit schools are so small in number that they don't affect the education marketplace very much. But why have they not gained a foothold? We believe that they are intimidated by the education establishment that would try to put them out of business if they compete too aggressively. So the for-profit schools meekly go about their business knowing that their small market share might be tolerated if they remain quiet and inconspicuous.
How To Produce Reliable Information
Given the fact that most of the published information about school performance is exaggerated it is necessary to find means of obtaining honest numbers.
In States Using ACT Tests The Information Already Exists
In some states, particularly those which use ACT’s various tests for their NCLB compliance one can find the ACT figure of merit “percent on track” to be “college ready.” A preliminary survey shows Illinois, Michigan, North Dakota and Wyoming using ACT for high school testing while Kentucky and West Virginia appear to use ACT’s 8th grade tests. Other states, including Colorado, have announced plans to participate as well.
For Other States There Are Methods To Estimate The Info
But in most states the testing systems report grossly exaggerated performance numbers, which are useless unless they can be converted to reliable statistics.
This latter defect can be remedied by using a mapping procedure by which the exaggerated numbers are “deflated” down to reliable estimates of how those students would have performed on the well-respect NAEP. Even in states using the ACT tests, such mappings to the Nation’s Report Card can be done to insure that comparisons across state lines are consistent. We can also generate estimates of the ACT’s “percent on track” number nearly everywhere in the United States.
We have performed many of these mappings in recent years for well over 10,000 public schools at grades 4, 8 and 12. Thus we have at least one method for making realistic estimates of student performance that can be applied in most (if not all) states and the District of Columbia. Our methods are in the public domain and can be used by anyone who is interested in generating such statistics.
Still Left Out Are Private Schools And The Home Schooled
Performance information for any given private school or home school arrangement is generally not available in a form for which useful comparisons can be made.
At the high school level, some private schools do report ACT and/or SAT scores for their graduates and sometimes for 11th grade students. In those situations, linear regression methods can be used to estimate the proficiency percentages to use in comparisons.
Despite the general lack of quantitative estimates, parents of these non-public school students should consider having their children tested by a tutoring center or other supplementary education service provider. We presume that their testing options include ones that produce statistics that can be compared to the proficiencies reported or estimated for the NAEP or ACT assessments?
How To Get This Information To Complacent Parents
Information about schools will not be sought by parents when they believe all is well. Nor will they seek information if they don’t know where to look. The Internet is not much help because most of the school information websites are simply regurgitaters of public school system propaganda. An example, containing some of this self-congratulatory nonsense, is the website GreatSchools.Org. I have offered them the use of my mapping methods so they could publish more reliable information, but they seem reluctant to go in that direction. If they did, they’d probably need to rename the website. Maybe it could be called LaggingSchools.Org?
Or we could consider starting such a website and accompanying service ourselves? Or someone reading this could undertake the project?
The Education Industry Does Not Want To Do It
Let’s consider the naiveté of this writer and his Asora Education Enterprises. One relevant effort we undertook was within the Education Industry Association (EIA)- where we were once members. We solicited the interest of supplementary education providers- such as tutoring services- to use our estimates of NAEP proficiencies in their communities as a marketing tool. Not one such enterprise expressed interest in learning more or in using our methods. Not one!
When we explored this disappointment with public relations advisors to the EIA their observation was essentially this:
These firms also do contract work for public schools and do not want to be seen competing with their own patrons.
So you can imagine these for-profit supplementary education providers would not want an advertisement saying in effect,
Gee, Look At The Low Performing Public Schools Here In Our Town. We Can Help Bring Your Kids To/Above Grade Level. Bring Them In For Testing And Tutoring.
As the saying goes, they’d be “biting the hand that feeds them.”
Our naiveté continued when we took the next logical step of concluding that those supplementary providers who only service private pay clients would not be afraid to engage in such aggressive marketing. Among such enterprises are for-profit private schools. One such company, when made aware of this marketing tool, ran in the other direction! Despite being significantly better than most private schools in their area they were annoyed that our NAEP estimates didn’t show them at an even higher performance level consistent with their own egos- and they said so.
It Puzzled Milton Friedman
These questions about the cowardice of for-profit education providers’ reminded me of a question that the late Milton Friedman once pondered. As he put it,
“…I have long been puzzled by the situation in cities like New York and San Francisco: there are strictly private elementary and secondary schools which charge very high tuitions and have long waiting lists, and I keep asking why is it that other private enterprises haven’t taken advantage of that situation as a source of profit. Somehow there is a customer base there; there is a market opportunity.” [cited in Theme Essay]
This reluctance of a private enterprise to get involved suggests that it fears retribution from the education establishment. Are they simply afraid that the supporters and players in public education would use propaganda to diminish their market share or does it go farther? Are they worried that government officials will impose onerous regulations upon them? We don’t know. However we do know, in the context of for-profit colleges, that the federal government has found ways to bankrupt some of them.
I think part of the answer to Friedman’s question is that the two states in question, New York and California, are probably among the worst legal and political environments in which to launch for-profit schools. Left unanswered is the question about other states. Some of them might be better venues in which such enterprises could be established.
Also of possible relevance to Friedman’s question is the history of FedEx and of UPS. These enterprises successfully established themselves in the parcel delivery industry and profitably took market share away from the government run Post Office.
Who Could Put This Information Out And Attract Consumers Attention?
It is clear from the foregoing that consumers are not seeking this kind of information and very few organizations are making this information available. How can that be addressed?
It seems that we have come full circle on the question of reliable performance information. No one wants to use it. No one wants to compete. According to their organizational types we have:
- The non-profits are comfortable in their niche where they rely on public misconceptions about their superiority; so they definitely don’t want to discuss actual performance numbers.
- The public schools surely don’t want their low performance numbers known as it might actually spur some competition.
- And the for-profit operators understand that by keeping a low silent profile they might survive without retribution. Are they gutless?
So who could provide reliable information to consumers after stimulating their interest in it?
The answer: Stakeholders in K-12 education that are organizationally capable of its production. Among stakeholders there are two possible motivations for doing this: Altruistic and financial. Some of these concerned organizations and their interests are:
- Religious congregations that almost always voice support for having their children well educated.
- Taxpayer organizations that seek cost-effective schooling for children in their midst.
- Business organizations such as Chambers of Commerce, which benefit from well-educated employees in their member businesses.
- Individual for-profit enterprises that provide products and services to K-12 education.
- Trade organizations of firms in the education sector.
- Research organizations that work in the education field- including think tanks, universities and related contractors.
- Home schooling parents and organizations representing them.
Who Should Do What?
We can go down the preceding list in an effort to understand why each of these kinds of organizations has not taken up the challenges involved and what each might do in response. Taking them in turn we have:
1. Among religious congregations their attitudes on this depends somewhat on their denomination. For example, Christian protestant congregations in the 19th and early 20th centuries saw public schools as mostly protestant schools because of the overwhelming protestant demographics in most communities. Their affiliation with the evolving public schools became a tradition even as the schools became more secular. Like so many other parents and stakeholders in K-12 education these religious groups have not scrutinized or challenged the statistics published by the public education establishment. They also don’t want to challenge the opinions of their members who mostly remain supportive of the public schools. Some denominations run their own non-profit schools, such as those operated by Catholic churches. They probably want to avoid the publication of reliable performance statistics for fear of being seen less competent than their public image represents. Similar issues, we believe, are also relevant in schools run by Jewish congregations.
To avoid conflicts within any given congregation, we would propose that the regional authorities within any denomination consider obtaining and publishing school performance information such as the CAP statistic. Within any state, this might be at the state level itself or could be within some other administrative region.
2. Taxpayer organizations would probably show interest in sponsoring some of this performance information if they could be made aware of the problem and how it affects their members and other taxpayers.
Such organizations could publish the relevant information for two purposes: It would be a public service. And it could be used to solicit an expanded membership within their taxpayer groups.
3. Business organizations such as Chambers of Commerce should be interested but generally avoid this topic- even when brought to their attention. Most local Chambers of Commerce give prominent roles, within their organizations, to the leadership of their local public education systems. As such they seem reluctant to engage in activities that might embarrass their “friends.” This is a conflict of interest.
We have yet to find a Chamber of Commerce willing to take this on, although we presume some would take interest. We’d suggest that businesses form alternative community and regional business alliances that would exclude government and non-profit organizations from their voting membership. They might solicit participation from such outside groups through non-voting affiliate memberships.
4. Individual for-profit enterprises resist any involvement in the publication of performance information that might prejudice their business relationships with public schools. And, in any case, some of these enterprises are often too small to afford the costs of data processing and its dissemination.
Even then, a small firm could use some of the information Asora has developed in the past (that’s in the public domain) to raise questions in its advertising in an effort to solicit clients to their business. Or for a few hundred dollars we at Asora might be able to produce CAP estimates for their locality- depending on the details.
5. Trade organizations of firms in the education sector might be interested if there were more of them. We are aware of only one such organization: The Education Industry Association.
We wonder if trade organizations were established at the state level what efforts they might undertake to help their members. We imagine that in some states they might decide to use realistic performance information to help their member firms market themselves. Even if this was done in only a few states at first, we can imagine others doing it later once it had been successful among the pioneering states. So our advice to the EIA is: Consider remaking your organization into a federation of state based trade associations.
6. Research organizations that work in the education field have an opportunity here. Their motivation to get involved would be both scientific and humanitarian. The former because they’d want to discover and understand policies that succeed and the latter because they want to help the schools improve.
Depending on their finances, such institutions might sell the performance data they have obtained or they might be funded sufficiently to publish it gratis?
7. Advocates of home schooling probably would like information that supports their claims about the presumed superiority of home schooling over other K-12 educational formats. If they tested the children within their home schooling organizations with tests that are statistically comparable to the ones used by the states, they could demonstrate how their performance compares to that of the others.
They could then publish their performance data. If it was as positive as some claim, it could be used to attract more parents into the homeschooling arena. And it would be a wakeup call to brick and mortar schools.
What Are People At Asora Doing About This?
Unless paid to do so, Asora Education will no longer be a significant player. We remain available to perform contract research and data processing as described elsewhere on this website.
Asora has suspended its activities and its CEO, David Anderson, is now working with the Heartland Institute of Chicago as an Education Research Fellow.
The onus is on you and others working in the various segments of the education industry. You can make up for your earlier “inefficiencies” by doing something constructive. We’ve laid out some ideas and proposals for you to consider.
If you do nothing else, look at what you can do to give parents reliable information about schools and other education services. Once they have a better idea of what is going on, their participation in the education marketplace will incentivize the necessary reforms. So, for example, if you are a tutoring service it is both in your financial interest as well as for your self respect that you market yourself with honest and accurate information. Don’t be afraid of the education establishment; don't be timid and yield to their pressure.
Participation In The Education Industry Association Has Lapsed
We appreciate the involvement we have had with the Education Industry Association. Many of the colleagues with whom we share our quarterly updates and many others we have met at EIA meetings have been very helpful to us. It has been a good learning experience. And we made friends.
But we also understand the “facts of life” of the Education Industry in the sense that it is considerably different from other economic sectors. Very little of the activity of firms within this sector is between the enterprises and the private pay customers. A very large fraction of it is contract work driven by the needs of the public education sector. That’s not what we want to do.
We believe that the EIA should consider an organizational “revolution.” In this major revision the EIA would rebuild itself as a federated organization comprised of state chapters. Each state chapter would organize itself around the laws and needs of its state. Each such chapter would be in a position to be an information source that would enable it to help its members market their services. Each of them could be a resource to parents and others seeking accurate and reliable information about schools and student performance. In doing this, the EIA would also temper its crony capitalism aspects. A healthy vibrant education marketplace would grow and children would benefit.
Our focus is summed up well by the quote from Joseph Bast and Herbert Walberg,
Temperance, orderliness, frugality, industry, honesty, moderation, and humility are all capitalistic values. We should not fear having our children attend schools operated by businesspeople who share those values.
Though we will be suspending most of our education activities, we will remain available to consider future contracts and collaborations. Call us if you’re interested!
CEO David Anderson Now At Heartland Institute
Almost all of the operations of Asora Education Enterprises have been suspended- mainly for the lack of business. Its CEO, David Anderson, is no longer actively seeking business (but would respond positively to inquiries from prospective customers, partners or parties interested in purchase of the firm.)
Anderson is now an Education Research Fellow with the Heartland Institute of Chicago but he works out of his home office in Massachusetts.
An important lesson has been learned from this seven year long experiment in capitalism. We learned that the marketplace for the business plan and other services offered by Asora is broken. For example, our efforts to franchise novel schools failed. More importantly, no one else has succeeded in this area either. In other economic sectors franchising networks would be very profitable and successful, but not in education.
And, why not? Have the enemies of for-profit education erected insurmountable obstacles? Or have the entrepreneurs of education been too timid to aggressively build their enterprises? Or are the potential customers uninterested based on their biases? Or is it a combination? We think it is the “combination” and this Update covers our thinking on this in much more detail and presents some possible solutions.
What’s New In October 2014?
October Theme: Fellow Travelers Of Totalitarian Education
Scroll Down For The Theme Discussion
Or If You're A New Visitor
If this is your first time visiting here, welcome to Asora Education Enterprises, which has been engaged in:
1.) Publishing national and regional guides (hardcopy and online) to public schools and the supplementary resources locally available that are needed to bring children attending these schools up to grade level. These needs are pervasive- across both public and private education.
2.) An achievement test consulting service, in which we analyze state administered tests to remove the exaggerations found therein. Our guides and guidebooks are based on the calculations we developed for those studies.
3.) The Stellar Schools Franchising Project, which plans to organize K-12 franchising networks of brick & mortar schools that are based on a blended format of self-paced online instruction, online adaptive tutoring and e-books blended with real instructors, tutors and books.
4.) Helping to overcome the market failure in K-12 education. We can use our guides to enable aggressive contrast marketing, which can help education enterprises thrive. Other stakeholders can use this information to inform and energize the consumers of education.
5.) A speakers' bureau focused on these topical areas.
If you're a new visitor to our website we suggest that you might review the "headlines" below before venturing into the other areas.
What Was New In Preceding Updates:
If you have not seen our previous quarterly "What's New" updates, then you might want to peruse our "What Was New" pages.
What’s New in October 2014
By David V. Anderson
Fellow Travelers Of Totalitarian Education
Our theme this quarter, about Fellow Travelers Of The Totalitarian Education, is based on disturbing recent trends towards totalitarian policies within K-12 education. Of most concern to us is the recent and ongoing coercion placing undue pressure on the states to adopt the so-called Common Core State Standards (CCSS). Farther along in this Update we remind readers about what’s right with K-12 education trends, but here we focus on what’s wrong. You can also find this discussion in pdf article form on our Reports on Reform pages here.
They Are Confused
By confused we refer to the fact that most players in the education field are not fully aware of the condition of primary and secondary education within the United States nor are they keeping abreast of technological and methodological trends affecting its future. Moreover, many participants have been taken in by various political and social agendas that are overly centralized and are arguably harmful to this important sector of American life.
Confusion is often the result of being misinformed or of being ignorant of the relevant issues. Those who teach in and administer public and private schools are often less competent than what parents and other stakeholders expect. Such shortcomings are often not obvious to the general public or to others relying on the systems. Consider the following areas of weakness among these educators:
◾️ The list begins by considering the cognitive ability levels of entering college freshman according to their intended majors. Of 27 academic disciplines Education ranked 26th in terms of students’ aggregate SAT scores. Only Agriculture was lower, at 27th.
◾️ Then consider the skill levels of newly trained educators- those who have completed degrees from education departments of colleges and universities. In California, for example, new teachers are required to pass the CBEST examination, which is a 10th grade competency test in reading, writing and mathematics. A significant fraction of entering teachers fail the CBEST. (This author took and passed this test in 2004.) But aren’t teachers supposed to be college graduates with at least 16th grade skills?
◾️ In many jurisdictions, holders of teaching credentials are eligible to teach but those with only academic degrees (including advanced degrees) in the subjects to be taught are excluded from consideration. (For that reason, this author was once blocked from public school employment, but was able to teach physics and mathematics in a private high school.)
◾️ Politically “progressive” influences in many school systems have led to a de-emphasis of the instruction of American history and civics. This not only leaves the students relatively ignorant of American laws and traditions, but it also preserves the biases and lack of knowledge of the teachers in these areas as well. It often puts teachers in the position of being susceptible to education policies that are not only ineffective but that are sometimes illegal and/or unconstitutional.
◾️ Almost totally lacking in the preparation of school staff and officials is any emphasis on the economic aspects of education. As a result there is little concern about the benefits of cost efficient operation of schools and other educational services.
These and other weaknesses of public educators (and some private ones as well) leave them more as a part of the problem rather than being reformers in search of solutions.
The Appeal Of Totalitarianism
We use the relatively old phraseology Fellow Travelers because it conveys a nuanced meaning much like its use during the 1950’s when it was applied to the Communist menace that worried many Americans. Here we use the term with respect to statist or totalitarian philosophies of education- particularly those that match the One-Size-Fits-All label.
To better understand these folks it is helpful to understand those philosophies first. We see three characteristics that motivate policy makers towards these statist systems:
◾️ Through a misunderstanding of economics, many educators seek economies of scale that require the imposition of uniformity across the community, region, state or nation. We are now witnessing a “power grab” to bring uniformity of curricula from the state levels to the federal. The vehicle is, of course, the Common Core State Standards. We would not generally refer to a common curriculum within a school district as totalitarian, but as a common curriculum is imposed on larger and larger demographics and geographies the totalitarian labeling becomes more and more appropriate. Thus Common Core is totalitarian because it is now being required nationally.
◾️ To impose an education system that teaches their politically correct totalitarian political, social, cultural and economic philosophies in preference to others not so favored.
◾️ To undermine the legal framework of K-12 education through subversion of the Constitutional and statutory provisions therein.
Who Are They?
Why would we use the label fellow traveler anyway? We believe that there are many observers of K-12 education who get swept along by the propaganda put forth from the education establishment who have not carefully considered the issues. They’re the fellow travelers who have been “taken in.”
Our first encounter with the concept of fellow travelers dates to the 1950’s when many Americans were worried about subversives within the U.S. government.
In terms of the advocacy of Communist revolution to overthrow the United States government, former FBI director J. Edgar Hoover defined “fellow traveler” as this:
“…someone not a potential Communist or influential advocate for Communist views but who agrees with some of those views.”
Some Of Their Species
In terms of K-12 education we can identify some types of these fellow travelers of totalitarian education policies:
◾️ Those who want academic standards to be mandated by the federal government to be uniform across the United States- such as advocates of the Common Core State Standards, which prohibit curricular variations more than 15% from the published requirements.
◾️ Those who want class sizes dictated at the state or federal levels.
◾️ Those who would impose credentialed teachers on students over those with academic degrees.
◾️ Those who oppose school vouchers.
◾️ Those who oppose charter schools.
◾️ Those who oppose for-profit schools.
◾️ Those who oppose patriotic exercises at school.
◾️ Those who want more dietary regulations enforced at schools.
◾️ Those who claim the U.S. Constitution is a mutable living document.
◾️ Those who oppose teaching civics.
◾️ Those who oppose teaching about the founders.
◾️ Those who promote identity politics.
◾️ Etc.
Most of these naïve folks are seemingly well-intentioned educators or are other stakeholders who have not had the opportunity to become very well informed about education policies. If they had a broader perspective, many would oppose the totalitarian approaches and possibly work against them. Or at least take a more cautious view of them.
The Education Establishment Resists Progress
K-12 education in the United States is largely a government function and sometimes that of non-profit private organizations. It is rarely provided by for-profit enterprises. In most other economic sectors, for-profit firms dominate with some services and products coming from the non-profit or governmental sectors. In fact, in most economic sectors the government does not participate.
To us “progress” would move the education sector into the free marketplace of capitalism while reserving a role to the government to do what it can do best: Provide funding. A system of vouchers would be the means by which all parents could have the responsibility of choosing their children’s schools and other educational services.
The education establishment consists of many interest groups that are politically active. Teachers’ Unions, Associations of School Boards and Parent Teacher Organizations are the most important. Their interests are both pecuniary and ideological. They have been forceful opponents of vouchers and other forms of school choice. They often display their hatred of capitalism and even resist teaching much about it in their schools.
Common Core Degrades American K-12 Education
A number of scholars have reviewed the published standards from Common Core and found them wanting. This author has also published a review that goes farther and recommends the consideration of the ACT organization’s tests and standards as a national “curriculum” that states and other educators could use on a voluntary basis without federal interference. (accessible at http://heartland.org/policy-documents/replacing-common-core-proven-standards-excellence)
The Common Core Advances Their Totalitarian Agenda
Until the recent imposition of the Common Core State Standards in nearly all states, public education was more or less centralized at the state level. Depending on the state, statewide control of school operations had some totalitarian aspects- such as uniform textbook selection, uniform curricula and certain administrative functions. Federal involvement had been limited mainly to supplementary funding and relatively loose testing requirements- such as is included in the No Child Left Behind legislation.
To the extent that Common Core remains in control of various state’s curricula and instruction, those jurisdictions have put themselves under federal control that is uniform across the states. In other words, they have put themselves under totalitarian control.
Who Are The People Pushing This?
To get a better understanding of these activities it is helpful to know something about the various individuals and organizations involved in this push towards totalitarian K-12 education.
First we consider some of the people who have played significant roles in the development, adoption, and enforcement of the Common Core State Standards.
◾️ Bill Ayers: This education professor from the University of Illinois (former domestic terrorist and self-described communist with a small “c”) has been involved with some of the proponents of Common Core. During the 1990’s and early 2000’s he worked with Barrack Obama, first in the Chicago Annenberg Challenge and later in the Chicago Public Education Fund.
◾️ David Coleman: Co-founded the Grow Network with Jason Zimba and then obtained a $2.2 million contract from the Chicago Public Schools (run by Arne Duncan) in 2001. Co-founded Student Achievement Partners with Jason Zimba and Susan Pimentel in 2007 that in 2008 solicited Bill Gates to “bankroll” their Common Core proposals. He has been the lead author of the English standards under Common Core and now is CEO of the College Board that is busy “modifying” the academic standards used in the SAT and other tests affecting K-12 education.
◾️ Arne Duncan: This former professional basketball player worked in the Chicago Public Schools administration in the 1990’s and became its CEO in 2001. During that time he befriended neighbor and basketball enthusiast Barrack Obama. As CEO of the CPS he gave contracts to Coleman and Zimba’s Grow Network. More recently, as Secretary of Education, in 2010 he led the Race to the Top effort to coerce states to adopt the Common Core State Standards.
◾️ Bill Gates: Through his foundation, dozens of grants were given to other non-profit players with the understanding that they would push Common Core and make it a national standard. This was partly the result of being solicited by David Coleman in 2008 to help the Common Core proposals become national standards.
◾️ Barrack Obama: Worked with Bill Ayers in the Chicago Annenberg Challenge project in the 1990’s and later in the Chicago Public Education Fund. Befriended Arne Duncan in the late 1990’s as Duncan was working his way up in the Chicago Public Schools administration. In his role as president he has supervised the adoption of Common Core through the Race to the Top competitions.
◾️ Jason Zimba: Co-founded the Grow Network with David Coleman and then obtained a $2.2 million contract from the Chicago Public Schools (run by Duncan) in 2001. Co-founded Student Achievement Partners with David Coleman and Susan Pimentel. He has been the lead author of the mathematics standards under Common Core.
We don’t have enough information to give details about the planning that these individuals cooperated in. But we find it very curious that most of these individuals that had Chicago connections over a decade ago are now heavily involved with the implementation of the Common Core State Standards.
We also find it troubling that all of the above individuals are left leaning political progressives. Why is there no representation from the political middle or right? How can these standards be in “Common” if their authors have no input from other parts of the political spectrum? Hell, there aren’t even any average Democrats weighing in!
Supporting Organizations Funded By The Gates Foundation
We found an interesting article in Mother Jones detailing the destinations of some $200 million in grants from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation- all in the support of Common Core. Bill Gates is surely well intentioned but he seems poorly informed about the efficacy and legality of imposing Common Core on the states. Wouldn’t you count him among the fellow travelers?
Among the organizations cited in the Mother Jones article there were a number of “Think tanks/advocacy groups.” Of those, here are the ones that received approximately $1 million or more:
◾️ American Enterprise Institute
◾️ Council for a Strong America
◾️ Foundation for Excellence in Education, Inc.
◾️ Fund for Public Schools, Inc.
◾️ James B. Hunt, Jr. Institute
◾️ National Association of State Boards of Education
◾️ Research for Action, Inc.
◾️ The Aspen Institute, Inc.
◾️ The Education Trust
◾️ Thomas B. Fordham Institute
◾️ U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation
In total the Mother Jones list of recipient Think Tanks and Advocacy Groups sums to over $41 million received from the Gates Foundation for their support of Common Core. Nearly all of this money was spent after the heavy-handed tactics were successfully applied to coerce adoption of the CCSS. It suggests that proponents in the Gates Foundation were worried that the standards would unravel without a heavily subsidized campaign of support.
Some of the notables caught up in the Common Core controversy who still support it include:
◾️ Chester Finn and Robert Pondisco of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute
◾️ Gov. Jeb Bush of the Foundation for Excellence in Education
◾️ William Bennett, who penned a recent op-ed favoring it
◾️ Chris Christie, Governor of New Jersey
We don’t understand how these serious people could support CCSS except to think that they have not carefully studied the details of it. Why would anyone support something like this that is academically wanting and that was established by legally suspect means? Surely they’re not fans of this kind of totalitarianism? They must be misinformed.
If That’s Failure, What Does Success Look Like?
Implied or written between the lines of the foregoing is the suggestion that there are better alternatives that sensible leaders of education could be developing and offering. First, let’s consider that success is not a single system. There are many ways to instruct, many ways to develop curricula and many ways to organize schooling. Let’s look at just two of the aspects: instructional methods and curricula.
Traditional Tutoring Is The Best Instructional Method But Expensive
Until the advent of group instruction, tutoring had always been the primary instructional format for primary and secondary education. Following the development of group instruction, which resulted from the Protestant Reformation, tutoring was still the preferred method for learning but was considerably more expensive than group instruction. As a result, age based group instruction became the cost effective format for educating the masses. And as a result, group instruction has been by far the most common mode of K-12 schooling.
Homeschooling, which is a version of tutoring, has been gaining adherents in recent years and generally produces better-educated students than public or private schools that rely on group instruction.
Computers And Online Instruction Enable Cost-Effective Tutoring
As in other fields, automation has ushered in alternatives to traditional methods of instruction. Distance learning and now online instruction allow expert instructors and other instructional materials to reach very large numbers of students. They can be used in conjunction with group instruction, but are flexible enough to be used individually- more or less on demand. In this latter case, students can self pace their learning and by doing so avoid the frustrations of falling behind or being bored by too slow a pace.
Local, State Based and National Standards To Consider
According to the laws and customs of the United States, K-12 public education is something organized within states and their subdivisions. The federal government is specifically prohibited by statute from controlling curricula of public schools. The closest the US Government had come to violating these laws was with respect to its administration of the Nation’s Report Card- more officially known as the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). Its content standards could be used to create a curriculum, but federal officials had never done so nor had they put any undue pressure on states to adopt NAEP standards as curricular components.
The advent of the Common Core State Standards have now put the federal Education Department in violation of these laws because the CCSS are now required (if the various states want to keep their federal funding flowing).
This movement toward national standards by itself is not troubling when they are voluntary. In fact, there already exist a number of national curricula that are well respected. They include the tests and standards of:
◾️ The ACT organization, which are specified and administered for grades 3 through 12.
◾️ The International Baccalaureate program for primary, middle and secondary school levels.
◾️ Hillsdale Academy through its Reference Guides that cover the years K – 12. There is no formal testing program of which we are aware. The Guides have been used in hundreds of schools in all 50 states as well as in schools abroad.
◾️ K12, Inc., which offers online instruction across the country.
◾️ A Beka Academy, which provides its Christian oriented services and materials nationally.
◾️ The Well Trained Mind, which is a nationally available book describing academic content for home educators providing a classical education in the Trivium format.
Thus we don’t need the illegally imposed Common Core State Standards. In a recent Heartland Institute Report (accessible at http://heartland.org/policy-documents/replacing-common-core-proven-standards-excellence) we wrote about their defects as to being incomplete, inferior and illegal. Why embrace such rubbish when a variety of voluntary national standards are available for consideration? And why risk that fellow traveler designation by supporting totalitarian education?
Asora Will Limit Unpaid Work
Regrettably, the services we have offered have not found many clients. Some of our plans for developing our business found very little interest- particularly from those who might invest in them. Our business plan that proposes the franchising of blended instruction schools went nowhere. And it’s not that a competitor succeeded in this area. No one else has succeeded with anything remotely similar. Statist interests have hobbled our business and many others.
Instead much of our work has been a combination of unpaid research and pro bono work in various communities around the country. While we will remain available to work under contract most of our other activities will be suspended.
For example, these quarterly Asora Updates will be issued less frequently and only as we see the need to do so. This might be the last one!
Participation In The Education Industry Association Has Lapsed
We appreciate the involvement we have had with the Education Industry Association. Many of the colleagues with whom we share our quarterly updates and many others we have met at EIA meetings have been very helpful to us. It has been a good learning experience. And we made friends.
We understand the “facts of life” of the Education Industry in the sense that it is considerably different from other economic sectors. Very little of the activity of firms within this sector is between the enterprises and the private pay customers. A very large fraction of it is contract work driven by the needs of the public education sector. That’s not what we want to do.
Our focus is summed up well by the quote from Joseph Bast and Herbert Walberg,
“Temperance, orderliness, frugality, industry, honesty, moderation, and humility are all capitalistic values. We should not fear having our children attend schools operated by businesspeople who share those values.”
Though we will be suspending most of our education activities, we will remain available to consider future contracts and collaborations. Call us if you’re interested!
What’s New In July 2014?
July Theme: Replace Common Core With ACT
Scroll Down For The Theme Discussion
Or If You're A New Visitor
If this is your first time visiting here, welcome to Asora Education Enterprises, which has been engaged in:
1.) Publishing national and regional guides (hardcopy and online) to public schools and the supplementary resources locally available that are needed to bring children attending these schools up to grade level. These needs are pervasive- across both public and private education.
2.) An achievement test consulting service, in which we analyze state administered tests to remove the exaggerations found therein. Our guides and guidebooks are based on the calculations we developed for those studies.
3.) The Stellar Schools Franchising Project, which plans to organize K-12 franchising networks of brick & mortar schools that are based on a blended format of self-paced online instruction, online adaptive tutoring and e-books blended with real instructors, tutors and books.
4.) Helping to overcome the market failure in K-12 education. We can use our guides to enable aggressive contrast marketing, which can help education enterprises thrive. Other stakeholders can use this information to inform and energize the consumers of education.
5.) A speakers' bureau focused on these topical areas.
If you're a new visitor to our website we suggest that you might review the "headlines" below before venturing into the other areas.
What’s New in July 2014
By David V. Anderson
Replace Common Core With ACT
Our theme this quarter, Replace Common Core With ACT, is based on a number of recent developments in and around the Common Core controversy wherein the federal government has applied undue pressure on states to adopt unsatisfactory academic standards for American K-12 education. By “unsatisfactory” we mean:
~ Common Core academic standards are incomplete.
~ Common Core academic standards are incompetent.
~ Common Core academic standards are illegal.
A number of states have abandoned or are now considering the abandonment of the Common Core. We at Asora Education had been passive observers to these “standards” until this past quarter. Then as we became more convinced about the federal government’s improper role in their establishment, we decided to say something, including this:
The US Department of Education used coercive tactics to herd states into joining the Common Core State Standards.
From the perspective of Asora we have long been advocates of strong academic standards as is implicit in our studies of the Nation’s Report Card- more formally known as the National Assessment of Educational Progress(NAEP). We agreed and still believe that the content tested by the NAEP is a “gold standard” of American K-12 education.
But we have not been advocates of a federal government imposed national curriculum because we think such a system would be unwise and illegal. Rather we would seek an informal or defacto national curriculum that would represent a minimum set of voluntary standards that students should consider learning.
At Asora, the major activity until now has been that of making local estimates of NAEP proficiencies, which we have done at the school and district levels. In doing this we have encountered a number of states that use the ACT organization’s various tests in their efforts to be NCLB compliant. During the past quarter we have been studying the relationship of NAEP proficiencies to performance measures of the ACT tests, which tells us that the ACT testing regime is comparable to the NAEP in terms of quality and has the added benefit of not being controlled by the federal government or by any state governments. We think it provides the “defacto” national standard we have been seeking. A more detailed report, Mapping NAEP Proficiencies to ACT’s POT, is available on our Reports on Reform page.
Before voicing our opinions, we wanted to learn more about the Common Core State Standards and the testing for them. So we consulted the literature and found much doubt and criticism of them. They are weak compared to the traditional curricula offered in most schools in most states: So we say they are incomplete. We elaborate in a subsequent section.
These standards have some very strange instructional concepts embodied within. The pedagogy followed is not supported by much research. In a word, they are incompetent. More on this below.
The incompetence aspect led us to inquire about the Common Core’s authors and their qualifications. Those responsible were not hired by the states to produce the mislabeled State Standards. Rather their work product was imposed on the states. Thus the words State Standards were misleading because the states did not formulate them and do not have any control over them. The incentives erected by the US Department of Education to encourage states to adopt the Common Core have been coercive to such a degree that many legal scholars believe them to be unconstitutional and illegal. We discuss this in greater detail farther along.
But there is more than a glimmer of hope. States can reject Common Core as some have now done. And they have an alternative with a very good reputation: They can adopt and use the ACT organization’s many tests, which are now available from grades 3 through 12.
The Common Core Is Incomplete
In the subjects of mathematics and reading, the Common Core has reduced the content students are required to master. This suggests on the one hand that students will have more time to study the remaining topics or perhaps on the other hand will be taught additional content that has not been determined or released.
In mathematics the mastery of several calculational skills are delayed by one or two grade levels. Common Core only specifies three years of high school mathematics compared to the traditional four years of instruction that is recommended by the National Mathematics Advisory Panel. There is no way that 11 easy years of math learning can equal 12 years of more intensive work. So the math standards are incomplete.
In reading, which also includes content from English Language Arts (ELA), the reading lists of classical literature are markedly reduced from traditional curricula. In the place of these fictional texts is the proposal that more non-fiction be read, but those reading lists are also amazingly short. Does this portend the English classroom becoming more like a “study hall” or does it suggest something else? Whatever it suggests, it is an incomplete specification.
The Common Core Is Incompetent
When any program is based on untested or failed proposals, it displays incompetence. Students should not be put at risk by forcing them to participate in unproven schemes. Here is a list of some of the more bewildering aspects of Common Core:
~ There is no standard for cursive writing. Printing and typing are still taught- at least for the next few years.
~ Historical documents, such as famous speeches, are to be read “cold” by purposely withholding relevant background information. You’re not allowed to mention the Civil War when teaching about the Gettysburg Address!
~ Common Core promotes marginal teaching methods such as experiential education, which at best should be an adjunct to instruction. They don’t mention direct instruction, which has been validated in many studies.
~ Common Core claims that it includes the teaching of “critical thinking,” “higher order thinking skills” and “21st Century skills” but never bothers to define what they are. That it doesn’t do this is probably the result of its authors not knowing what they are. (In reality they are empty concepts unless one is considering them as aspects of mathematics and logic.)
When a set of academic standards, such as these, propose incompetent methods of instruction and learning, it makes plausible the relative incompleteness of them. So the first two unsatisfactory aspects, incompleteness and incompetence, exacerbate each other.
The Common Core Is Illegal
We are not legal experts, so here we need to rely on the analysis of others. There are two areas of legal concern:
~ The Constitutional violation of its 10th Amendment that reserves certain powers to the “States… or to the people.”
~ Three federal statutes prohibit federal control over school curricula.
The Constitutional requirement devolves education to the state level or lower. Federal activities in education have persisted for many decades but have mainly been in the areas of grants to public school systems and in the area of research. The, NAEP, for example, represents an activity that might be justified by the Weights and Measures clause or maybe the Commerce clause, but many would argue otherwise. The establishment of the Department of Education is more difficult to justify by the language of the Constitution, but so far the Supreme Court has allowed it to persist.
The three federal statutes that prohibit direction of curricula restate what the Constitution already implies. These statutes have the characteristic, “this time we really mean it.”
It appears that the Department of Education wanted to have indirect control over the curricula of the several states, which gives it some ability to deny its role. The Department used its Race to the Top grants and the issuance of waivers from the requirements of NCLB to pressure states into adopting the Common Core State Standards. Some will argue that these pressures were perfectly legal incentives while others are expected to label them coercive.
We believe the latter.
Scott Walker's 10th Amendment Concern
About two years ago, we attended an education conference at Harvard where Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker shared some of his policies and concerns about K-12 education. What primarily caught our attention was his concern that the "wrong" kind of national testing and standards would violate the 10th Amendement of the US Constitution. In a brief conversation afterwards, I suggested to Governor Walker that using the ACT tests and their standards might be the "right" kind of national testing because the federal government would play no role.
Wisconsin's current policy seems to straddle the fence. Going forward, ACT testing will be used at all available grade levels but the state is still participating in Common Core and will use some of its testing in elementary grade levels.
More On Why We Would Abandon Common Core
The short answer to this question is: There is a better alternative that already exists and that is the ACT organization’s many tests for K-12 education.
Why waste time, money and resources on a controversial curriculum such as Common Core when there is a more credible and less expensive option?
The only answer we can think of is that “it’s not politically correct.”
A more thorough analysis can be found in our essay, Abandon Common Core?, which you can download from our Reports on Reform pages here.
Formulas For Generating ACT Estimates From NAEP
Here at Asora Education we have recently completed analyses comparing NAEP performance results with those of the ACT for those states in which both sets of data are available. At the 8th, 10th and 12th grade levels we find that one of the NAEP’s figures of merit, its proficiency percentage (or an interpolated estimate thereof), is numerically close to the ACT’s figure of merit, the percent on track to be college and career ready.
The details of that can be found in our report, Mapping NAEP Proficiencies to ACT’s POT, which is downloadable from our Reports on Reform pages here.
Replacing NAEP Estimates With Those Of ACT
Over the past seven years Asora has been evaluating tens of thousands of public schools by providing estimates of NAEP proficiencies their students would have achieved had they taken one of the NAEP tests that are given to 4th, 8th and (sometimes) 12th graders. We have also made estimates for a much smaller number of private schools for which useful performance data was available.
We have now developed mappings, mentioned in the preceding section, that allow us to convert NAEP estimated proficiency percentages (of any school or district level tested group) to the ACT percent on track (to be college ready). We see two advantages to this new practice:
~ ACT’s tests are already being used in dozens of states and beginning this year are covering grades 3 through 12. We would not need to produce estimates of that ACT data, which would already be reported at the school and district levels.
~ ACT’s content standards are independent of any federal government dictate and are based on scientific research studies that link a student’s knowledge with their statistically likely performance in college. We believe that the ACT’s success in this area warrants the label, “platinum standard” of K-12 education.
So if you live in an ACT state, you already have the advantage of this knowledge. And if you don’t, Asora can work with you to make estimates. More on this in the mapping report we mentioned above.
Asora Will Limit Unpaid Work
Regrettably, the services we have offered have not found many clients. Some of our plans for developing our business found very little interest- particularly from those who might invest in them. Our business plan that proposes the franchising of blended instruction schools went nowhere. And it’s not that a competitor succeeded in this area. No one else has succeeded with anything remotely similar.
Instead much of our work has been a combination of unpaid research and pro bono work in various communities around the country. While we will remain available to work under contract most of our other activities will be suspended.
For example, these quarterly Asora Updates will be issued less frequently and only as we see the need to do so. This might be the last one!
Participation In The Education Industry Association Will Lapse
We appreciate the involvement we have had with the Education Industry Association. Many of the colleagues with whom we share our quarterly updates and many others we have met at EIA meetings have been very helpful to us. It has been a good learning experience. And we made friends.
We understand the “facts of life” of the Education Industry in the sense that it is considerably different from other economic sectors. Very little of the activity of firms within this sector is between the enterprises and the private pay customers. A very large fraction of it is contract work driven by the needs of the public education sector. That’s not what we want to do.
Our focus is summed up well by the quote from Joseph Bast and Herbert Walberg,
“Temperance, orderliness, frugality, industry, honesty, moderation, and humility are all capitalistic values. We should not fear having our children attend schools operated by businesspeople who share those values.”
Though we will be suspending most of our education activities, we will remain available to consider future contracts and collaborations. Call us if you’re interested!
What’s New in April 2014
By David V. Anderson
Your Education Responsibilities Check List
Our theme this quarter, Your Education Responsibilities Check List, is based on the concept that every player in K-12 education has (or should have) a concept of what their (your) obligations are (or should be) if that player is to play a financial rewarding and maximally constructive role in providing needed education services to America’s children. Unfortunately, most players in the field are not very effective in carrying out these roles. Asora believes that nearly every player in our K-12 education field, whether an individual or an organization, operates under disincentives that discourage needed reforms. We hope to counter that.
This is not “rocket science.” Asora’s CEO should know- having once been involved in the theoretical underpinnings of rocket science (that applied concepts of controlled thermonuclear fusion phenomena to the designs of interplanetary rocket motors).
And this is not essentially a problem of pedagogy though changes in that area are sought. Rather incentives are needed to focus educators on solving the various problems. We think they need a “bottom line” that will help focus their attention on practical improvements.
Thus we think this is primarily an economics problem. Many of the players in this field (oddly?) seem disinterested- or at best modestly interested- in the creation of wealth. The organizations and individual participants in the education industry seem to disdain financial profit to themselves and the corresponding academic profit that would accrue to their students.
In the following we attempt to identify the various players in the field and how they might discharge their responsibilities better. We do this by formulating checklists for participants in the education field.
After presenting the checklists, towards the bottom of this Update, we discuss our philosophy that led us to their formulation.
Led Astray By Traditions? Are We Unwittingly Complicit?
Many observers, stakeholders, and leaders of the K-12 education sector of the American economy have many concerns about the quality of the products and services provided within this sector. Few of them, however, are aware of the severity of these problems.
In some cases, the issues are acknowledged but the remedies proposed either don’t work or don’t go far enough to solve the problems. In other cases the educators make the problems worse. We are led to wonder:
Who among K-12 education observers, reformers and providers are “unwittingly complicit” in exacerbating these problems?
Traditions often hide bad practices. Schools routinely play conflicting roles. Consider that:
(1) They both teach and test without acknowledging the implied conflict of interest.
(2) They nearly always employ social promotion as a substitute for remediation.
(3) They use “look good” testing regimes and “turn a blind eye” to the implied deception.
(4) They hire unionized teachers who generally don’t put the interests of children first.
(5) They often discriminate against for-profit education service providers.
All of these practices are seen as “normal,” but are arguably wrong and unethical. Some of them are corrupt. Adhering to the checklists below can help the various players and stakeholders of K-12 education overcome these problems.
The School Operator’s Checklist
We believe that in a more perfect world nearly all schools would be for-profit- if not at the administrative level, then perhaps at the operational level. Even if not for-profit at the operational level, we would seek for-profit sub-contractors wherever such services and products are better and more cost effective than the alternatives that are done “in house.”
If our existing for-profit schools had been healthy capitalistic institutions they would have grown in market share to dominate the industry. The fact that they have not indicates a broken marketplace with perverse incentives blocking the entry of new enterprises and hindering the growth of those currently in operation.
Most for-profit schools perform much better than their counterparts run by the government or by non-profit organizations. Unfortunately, few parents and other stakeholders know this. It is the responsibility of for-profit schools to provide this consumer information. We believe that non-profit private schools and public schools will perform best when they emulate the practices of the for-profit schools. For that reason, we don’t have separate checklists for the different kinds of schools. We have just one as follows:
1.) Do your schools require official testing (that is used for promotion, diplomas, and transcripts) to be performed by external independent agencies?
2.) Are your marketing and/or publicity efforts including consumer information about your schools’ performance levels as compared to those of your competitors?
3.) Can your reported assessment performance levels be related to NAEP achievement levels in reading and mathematics?
4.) Do you have a program of remediation for children who have fallen behind grade levels as defined by NAEP standards?
5.) Do you have full management control of your instructional staff, free of impediments such as collective bargaining or other external interference?
6.) Are you really entrepreneurial? Or are you simply comfortable as an operation that will not grow and/or become more cost effective?
The After School Operator’s Checklist
Beyond the “brick and mortar” schools involved in traditional K-12 education there are organizations providing various educational services such as:
⚫️ Assessment
⚫️ Instruction by Tutors
⚫️ Online Instruction
⚫️ Services to Homeschoolers
An essential service that such providers perform is that of remedial instruction. Most providers of these types of services are for-profit enterprises- though a few are either non-profit or government run.
Then for supplementary and alternative education providers we propose the following checklist:
1.) Do you offer assessment services that are provided through external independent agencies?
2.) Do these assessment services report results comparable to other relevant testing regimes such as the NAEP or those of the ACT organization?
3.) Do your marketing efforts include performance information about nearby brick & mortar schools?
4.) Do you publish statistical averages about the performance improvements of your student clients?
5.) In bringing client students to grade level academic achievement do you measure against NAEP standards or ones that are comparable to the NAEP?
6.) If you also operate as a subcontractor to a major public or private school system, do you have a means on the private-pay side to attract and service customers there without introducing conflicts between that and your work for the major patron?
7.) Are you really entrepreneurial? Or are you simply comfortable as an operation that will not grow and/or become more cost effective?
The Education Publisher’s Checklist
Publishers of instructional materials provide textbooks, digital content, and various kinds of Internet accessible platforms on which learning can be facilitated. They are almost always for-profit enterprises and yet what they publish is often dictated by the large school systems that procure their various products and services. Other publishers cater to smaller marketplaces where, for example, private schools and homeschoolers can find suitable texts and content.
The checklist for publishers of educational content is:
1.) Do your textbooks and other instructional materials disclose the grade levels associated with the content within?
2.) Are these disclosures within the texts themselves and/or available from your Website?
3.) Do you use the NAEP content standard and its definition of proficiency or an equally rigorous standard to determine what is meant by grade level performance?
4.) If you offer assessment services are you able to relate test results to those of the NAEP or to those of the ACT organization?
5.) Would you be interested in publishing a guide (hardcopy and/or online) about the performance levels of public and private schools?
The Media Checklist
These kinds of organizations are generally for-profit though some significant ones, including National Public Radio and the Public Broadcasting System, are non-profit quasi-governmental enterprises. Education media often act like publicity machines for school systems and less often as independent news reporting services.
The news media checklist:
1.) Do your reporters solicit and report on contrary information when reporting on any particular school or school system’s activities?
2.) In your opinion pages do you balance the viewpoints of the commentary concerning K-12 education?
3.) Do you provide disclosures when reporting on student proficiency levels to alert the public to the exaggerations (almost always found) within?
4.) Do you write and report about legal and ethical problems within the education field?
5.) Would your publication or program be interested in producing a guide (hardcopy and/or online) about the performance levels of your local public and private schools?
The Community Civic Organization Checklist
Most communities have (or are near) community organizations such as Chambers of Commerce, Rotary Clubs, Kiwanis, Lions and other similar associations of civic-minded citizens. Like the media organizations, many of these confine their education related activities in support of the existing local institutions rather than taking a broader view.
In the case of Chambers of Commerce the local public school officials are often officers within the Chamber organization. As such the Chambers take less interest in education reform proposals and activities that would challenge the public school officialdom.
In our local area, here in Massachusetts, Asora tried to interest a Chamber of Commerce in helping us develop a guide to local public and private schools that could be used by parents and other stakeholders. I was told by this Chamber’s Executive Director that her Chamber’s officials were already involved with local public school systems and would therefore not want to participate in our independent effort.
The checklist for community organizations follows:
1.) In the area of education reform do you operate more or less independently of the local public school systems and their officials?
2.) Are public or private school officials playing roles as officers in your civic association?
3.) Would your organization be interested in sponsoring guide books (hardcopy and online) to your local K-12 schools?
The Religious Congregation Checklist
Most Christian and Jewish religious organizations, as well as those of other faiths, are interested in the education being received by the children within their congregations.
Most denominations that don’t run their own schools usually accept or at least tolerate the public and private schools around them. In the case of many Protestant churches, the public school systems are seen by them as cultural partners that are suitable institutions for educating their members’ children. This may be an artifact of the fact that public schools were arguably “Protestant” schools when they were established- over 150 year ago.
Other denominations sometimes run their own schools. It goes without saying that they think highly of the services of their own schools.
Some religious leaders have been scrutinizing the quality of the schools around them. Whether public or private they are learning that many if not most of these schools are substandard. For those congregations operating their own schools there seems to be little interest in measuring and reporting on the proficiency levels therein.
These considerations inspire their checklist:
1.) Are you aware of the performance levels of the schools your congregation’s children attend?
2.) Do you recognize the Nation’s Report Card (NAEP) content standards as the ones that define grade level performance?
3.) What kind of values curriculum is taught in these schools and do they conform to your religious tenets?
The Education Industry Investor Checklist
A number of for-profit educational support firms exist and some of them have been helped by investment firms that not only provide them investment capital but also participate in their management. We are unaware of any investors helping the owners of for-profit schools expand their operations and we wonder why. Others, including the late Milton Friedman, have been puzzled by this as well. There is some kind of pathology preventing healthy developments in this area and we are largely at a loss to explain it. We think populist rhetoric that labels for-profit schools as “evil” is a factor, but there may be other issues too. It is bewildering.
Despite these discouraging factors, we have a checklist for investors:
1.) Have you ever invested in a for-profit school or system of schools?
2.) If you understood the “pathologies” would you consider investing?
3.) If you invested would you favor franchising over wholly owned networks of schools as a means of growing the target company?
4.) Have you considered soliciting philanthropically oriented investors to take the kinds of risks that would be involved?
The Parents' And Other Stakeholders' Checklist
The end customer of K-12 education is the parent even though it is the child who is its beneficiary. For parents to act responsibly in directing their children’s education, they need to be provided with honest information about the alternatives they have for that purpose.
There are other kinds of stakeholders in K-12 education, either because they fulfill other roles in this industry or because they want to be good citizens with respect to public policy on education.
The checklist we propose for parents and other stakeholders is this:
1.) Have you scrutinized your sources of information about education to determine if they provide accurate reporting on schools?
2.) Are you aware that most state departments of education provide misleading (and exaggerated) information about student performance levels?
3.) Does your child’s school or other school of interest have a remedial education program for children who have fallen behind?
4.) If guides to K-12 schools were available that had honest performance information would you consult them?
5.) Are you an active member of a school parent (PTA, PTO or other) community organization that has K-12 education as its focus?
We Want To See Your Checklists!
If you are so inclined, we’d love to see your checklists.
Just copy, edit, paste and/or attach them to a return email!
Or give us your commentary on them.
In our July Asora Update we’ll report on the feedback we receive. We expect that such advice will inform Asora’s future plans.
Stay tuned.
Checklist Philosophy
We believe that the economic issues related to dysfunction in the K-12 sector don’t really change much with the ownership format. Thus for-profit, non-profit and governmental organizations within the education sector have similar problems and concerns.
From a philosophical vantage we simultaneously want to achieve the goals of capitalism and altruism. One of them is about the creation of value while the other is concerned with the charitable sharing of resources.
We don’t see these as conflicting concepts, but believe that the sincere pursuit of one of these requires the advancement of the other.
The founder of modern economics, Adam Smith, discussed how the “hidden hand” of capitalism provided many of the desired social benefits of altruism. Thus if education capitalists are honest operators selling their good products and services for monetary rewards, those products and services will benefit their student customers. And that benefits altruistic goals.
On the other hand, the altruistically inclined should realize that doing “good” requires financial resources. And what better way to generate these dollars than for non-profit and governmental organizations to acquire a capitalistic mindset that seeks efficiencies, growth and scale to benefit their efforts. Part of doing that might involve subcontracts with for-profit vendors. Another part of that would involve recasting their non-profit activities to resemble those of successful commercial firms. Those achievements would look very much capitalistic. And, of course, some altruistically motivated providers would actually be capitalistic for-profit enterprises.
The other component of altruism, voluntary for capitalists, is that of charity. Most everyone, of all political stripes, agree that private charities and government financial assistance are important sources of financial support to enable all children to have the means for obtaining a K-12 education. Some think government run public schools, including charter schools, represent the best means for providing this charitable support. Others contend that government provided scholarships (vouchers) combined with privately funded scholarships (private vouchers) is a better plan. Others would do both. We are already doing both to some extent. Asora believes in a combined approach but with emphasis on vouchers.
We also believe that capitalism can be practiced honorably within the education sector. Consider what editors Joseph Bast and Herbert Walberg said in their book, Education and Capitalism: How Overcoming Our Fear of Markets and Economics Can Improve America's Schools,
Temperance, orderliness, frugality, industry, honesty, moderation, and humility are all capitalistic values. We should not fear having our children attend schools operated by businesspeople who share those values.
But within the education field, how would these concepts apply? What is the relevant checklist to help each player succeed? And that’s what led to the preceding checklists.
What’s New in January 2014
By David V. Anderson
Fixing Local Education Marketplaces Our theme this quarter, Fixing Local Education Marketplaces, elaborates on the concepts discussed in earlier updates- particularly the one from last October: Fixing Private Schools First. Rather than dictate to private schools what they must do to reform, we have been proposing the introduction of vigorous competition between and among schools and other providers of educational services.
We face an industry where many of the participants do not want competition or if they do they want a weak form of it in which their customers remain largely ignorant of the quality of the services and products being offered.
To learn more about this quarter's theme, you will find this Update's Theme Essay at the bottom of this segment. It is entitled: Fixing Local Education Marketplaces.
Also of interest is a PowerPoint presentation, What's Wrong With Our Schools: What ASORA Can Do To Help, in the downloadable file AsoraFixingPrivateSchools.pptx, which you can access from our Reform Reports page.
What You Need To Know To Help This Effort
The headlines that follow and their short articles are meant to do two things: Inform you and challenge you. We ask you to consider what you can do to help. Your role might be simply that of passing this information along to others who might want to help? Or you might want to get involved yourself. We at Asora are ready to discuss any of this with you. Let us know at Contact Asora.
What Asora Can Do For A Local Education Market
Education services, even if generated on a larger scale, are local when delivered to a student. The choices of schools, curricula to follow, and the accessing of supplementary educational services are also local in nature. This suggests that reformers, entrepreneurs, civic associations, and other players can also focus their efforts locally. While regular public schools are usually organized over large geographic regions and therefore not amenable to local reform efforts, we see both charter public schools and private schools as ones that can participate in local reforms.
Local efforts can be more cost effective. Multiple approaches can be tried without the kinds of costs that would be involved in a regional or national effort.
Although we have a number of micromanaging ideas for schools and education reform, our emphasis here is that of improving the economic marketplace in which all schools and other education providers operate. Here’s what Asora can do:
Our most relevant capability for this is our methodology for making estimates of student proficiencies that pupils would have achieved on the Nation’s Report Card (the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP)). More on this below.
Our other capability is that of consultant. We can visit communities that are seeking education reform ideas and help them devise strategies for implementing improvements. This is not “rocket science.” (I should know, I once was one!)
More on how a community can involve Asora in their educational improvements is discussed below under “Asora Will Send A Speaker….”
Asora Now Provides NAEP Estimates And Guesstimates For Private Schools
As is fairly well known, very little reliable proficiency testing information is available to parents and other members of the public about schools in their communities. Of the information that is available, the national and state level proficiency testing of the NAEP is most reputable and revealing. But they don’t provide this information more locally.
For the past seven years, we at Asora have developed a number of mapping techniques that calculate a local NAEP proficiency estimate for individual public schools and districts. We have analyzed several tens of thousands of public schools and made NAEP estimates for them- mostly in East Coast states.
A major flaw in that capability has been a lack of methods for estimating private school proficiencies. We have now begun to overcome this difficulty. Where private high schools do report testing results- generally average SAT or ACT scores- we now use linear regression techniques to make NAEP estimates. For all other private schools that do not report testing results, we have developed an interim estimate through a method we call the “gap imposition” (GIM) method. In each zip code containing one or more private schools, we assume that they relate to the nearby public schools in the same way the two kinds of schools relate on the national scene (where the proficiencies of each are known). Whatever performance gaps are measured nationally are simply imposed locally.
Each of these methods have errors in them and the GIM method is sufficiently imprecise that we use the word “guesstimate” in its description. Are any of these methods’ errors too large to be useful? We think not. Our estimates are not used for precise analysis or for policy making decisions. Rather the “ball park” estimates we provide parents and other stakeholders are meant to call their attention to likely problems and deficiencies in student skill levels. We use them to encourage further individual testing of children outside of the schools by independent testing organizations. That enables parents to address each child’s failings and needs.
The ACT Option For Private Schools
We imagine that private schools will sometimes not like seeing their performance levels estimated by the GIM method. Particularly, they might take exception when they see the estimates significantly lower than what their own internal testing shows.
For that reason and for the desirability of reliable consumer information, private schools might consider having their students tested by one or more of the ACT organization’s tests to their students and then publicly reporting the results. ACT, beginning this year, is offering grade level testing from 3rd grade and up. It is a straightforward process to estimate NAEP proficiencies once average ACT scores are reported.
Schools could even report an ACT inspired proficiency measurement: We call it the ACT24 proficiency and it is simply the percentage of students achieving a score of 24 or higher on the test. We know that NAEP proficiency tends to correspond to ACT scores of 23 to 24. Since all of the ACT tests have a maximum perfect score of 36, achieving a 24 is not all that remarkable- it’s the same as getting a 67 on a 100 point test, which was barely passing in most schools.
The Bristol County, Massachusetts Consumer Information Project
Asora Education is located in Bristol County, Massachusetts and as such can most easily work with collaborators here to provide parents and other stakeholders the consumer information they might want to use in finding the right combination of schools and other supplemental educational resources for their children.
We have a policy of operating pro bono in Bristol County- at least until we need to update our 2013 NAEP estimates to those of 2015. We already have those for 2013.
In each county where we will participate, Asora will provide proficiency estimates and consulting. We will not be the managers of any local consumer information project. Instead, we are seeking partners in Bristol County who will organize these kinds of efforts. We are already engaged in discussions with interested parties in the County.
To help this process get started, we recently produced a prototypical guide booklet entitled:
Gadzooks! Are Bristol County’s Private & Public
Schools Really Like This?
Doing Fine Or Left Behind
We use the emphatic term,
Gadzooks!, to
represent the surprise of most parents when they see the
sobering numbers in the guide. The booklet can be
downloaded from our Reform Reports page.
Click here
to
access it.
The
Memphis And Shelby County, Tennessee Consumer Information
Project
Our
second undertaking is in the Memphis, Tennessee area
including the other communities within Shelby County.
Unlike our work in Bristol County, we are seeking contracts
with interested parties. We are first seeking speaking
and/or consulting engagements with possible collaborators.
As in Bristol County we have created a prototypical guide
booklet based on some NAEP performance estimates we
generated for 2007. An actual guide booklet would require
new estimates to be made for 2013- the most recent NAEP
testing year. This one’s title begins like this:
Gadzooks! Are Shelby County’s Private & Public
Schools Really Like This?
As this guide and the other ones say in their conclusion,
“To the extent that parents take up these
responsibilities, we can have Fewer
Children Left Behind- even
if we can’t achieve the loftier goal of
No
Child Left Behind.
As with the previous guide booklet this one can be
downloaded from our Reform Reports page.
Click here
to
access it. We also plan a more extensive web version of
each guide.
The
Orange County, California Consumer Information Project
Our
third undertaking is in Orange County, California area,
which is one of the most populous counties in the United
States- with about 4 million residents.
Like our work in Shelby County, Tennessee, we are seeking
contracts with interested parties. And as there, we are
first seeking speaking and/or consulting engagements with
possible collaborators.
As in Shelby County we have created a prototypical guide
booklet based on some NAEP performance estimates we
generated for 2011. An actual guide booklet would require
new estimates to be made for 2013- the most recent NAEP
testing year. This one’s title begins like this:
Gadzooks! Are Orange County’s Private & Public
Schools Really Like This?
As with the other guide booklets this one can be downloaded
from our Reform Reports page. Click here
to
access it.
Evidence
That Course Testing Done Independently Is A Winner
In
preparing the Bristol County guide booklet we noticed that
a nearby charter school,
The Advanced Math & Science
Academy, of
Marlborough, Massachusetts had the highest estimated NAEP
proficiency of any Massachusetts’ high school. In
fact, we estimated that 95% of their 12th
grade
students were proficient in both mathematics and English.
This school does nearly all of its high school level
instruction through Advanced
Placement (AP) courses
and as such is required to use an outside agency to do the
testing for course grades. That outside agency is
the College
Board. We
believe the combination of high quality course content with
the independent testing has contributed to these
students’ high performance levels. (Can’t do
that “look good” testing anymore?)
Evidence
That For-Profit Schools Are Among The
Best
As we generated the private school estimates for Orange
County’s private high schools, we noticed that
the Fairmont
Preparatory Academy has one
of the highest estimated NAEP proficiencies for its
12th
grade
students. This school, unlike most other private schools,
is for-profit.
It’s just one data point and perhaps doesn’t
prove much, but it is consistent with other studies that
have shown for-profit K-12 schools perform better than
either non-profit private schools or public schools.
Who
Can Do This Locally?
There are many local organizations that are capable of
obtaining performance information and making it public.
Many of these community level groups would also likely
benefit from doing this. Others fear getting involved.
Among those who might want to consider playing these roles
are:
* Local news media
* Book and magazine vendors
* Business associations
* Religious congregations
* Local governments
* Research organizations
* Civic associations
* Consumer organizations
* School operators and owners
* Organized labor unions
* Other charitable and philanthropic
groups
For those of you interested in helping school reform
efforts, and particularly private school improvements, you
could probably work through one or more of the groups show
above. If you have any questions about how you might
participate, give us a call or use the Contact Asora
Education link
to reach us.
As we explore what can be done in the three counties of
interest, most of these kinds of organizations will be
contacted to solicit their participation.
Asora
Will Send A Speaker To Promote Local Reforms In Your
Area:
We are now soliciting speaking engagements and other kinds
of consultation to those in communities that would like to
learn more about our proposals for reform and how they can
be implemented locally.
Except in our local areas of Rhode Island and eastern
Massachusetts, we will charge fees and expenses for these
visits. Two hours of speeches, discussions and advice (you
determine the apportionment) for a fee of $250 would be a
good investment.
In areas close to us, we work pro bono as our contribution
to our local communities’ efforts to improve schools.
There
Is Much More On Our Website
For further information, consider
reviewing our home page
where there are links to more
detailed descriptions of the services and activities of
Asora Education. Alternatively you might consider visiting
"What Was
New" to learn more
about our recent and not so recent history.
_____________
January
2014 Essay
Fixing Local
Education Marketplaces
David V. Anderson
Our
theme this quarter,
Fixing Local Education Marketplaces,
plays
off two main factors:
1.) Helping
parents find schools and other educational services locally
2.)
Third
parties can do this work when the providers of educational
services do not
The most important stakeholders in K-12 education are the
students and parents. It is from their perspective that we
approach the questions as how to best improve each
student’s educational experience. If school reform is
too slow, we can help the students individually.
Introduction
Since
education is generally a local responsibility, providing
parents & others with information about their local
schools and other education resources can help them do
their part.
In an ideal world we would reform the schools to ensure the
success of their students. We don’t live in such a
world, and many efforts at school reform have not resulted
in the kinds of schools parents and students want. If we
can’t reform the school, then we can work to improve
the educational experience- one student at a time.
These customers can’t wait for schools to improve.
But there are a number of things parents can do now to help
their children gain proficiency in their subjects. Two of
these are:
1.)
The
parent can seek information about school performance that
can be used to choose a better school and/or better
understand what kinds of supplemental instruction would be
needed for their children.
2.)
The
parent can seek information about supplemental educational
service providers that would allow them to manage the
resources to be accessed by their children.
The
latter is easily accomplished by searching the Internet-
essentially by consulting the contemporary equivalent of
the old yellow
pages directories.
It is the first of these tasks that is most daunting. Very
little reliable information is publicly available
concerning K-12 schools.
Public schools, through each state’s department of
education, do report on students’ average
performance- often in terms of a proficiency percentage. In
nearly every state and for nearly every subject
tested,
grossly exaggerated proficiency results are
reported. On
average, states report twice as many children having
proficient status or better as compared to the
Nation’s
Report Card- also
called the National Assessment of Educational Progress
(NAEP). NAEP proficiency standards are well regarded by
educators and to be NAEP proficient is what many serious
educators equate with grade level performance.
For
private schools very little is reported about student
performance levels. With some fairly rare exceptions,
private schools do not participate in the state run
assessment systems used by the public schools. At the high
school level, a fairly small percentage of private schools
report either SAT scores or those of the ACT for their
11th
and
12th
grade
students.
The
National Picture: Private Schools Are No Better Than Public
Schools
While
stakeholders of K-12 education are frustrated when they
seek information about their local public and private
schools, there is a source of information on the national
level. It is the NAEP. Nationally, the NAEP tests and
reports on samples of both public and private school
students and does so for a variety of demographic groups.
The NAEP also tests public school students at the state
level, but does not test private school students within
states.
The national situation is disappointing. While the
performance of all private school children exceeds that of
those in public schools (about one-third of private
12th
grade
students proficient and one-fourth for those in public
schools), the story is different when comparisons are made
for demographic groups. The chart below shows proficiencies
of the economically disadvantaged versus those who are not.
Private and public schools are surprisingly equal!
Thus what seems to be a modest advantage of the private
schools over the public schools almost vanishes when
comparisons are made within similar economic groups. Those
children who are economically disadvantaged (defined by
eligibility for the free and reduced price lunch program of
the U.S. Department of Agriculture) see no statistical
advantage from attending private schools as you can see
this in the chart above.
For those students who are not economically disadvantaged,
there is a rough parity of public school and private school
performance- with the latter up about 6% above the former.
Even that 6% “edge” among those not
economically disadvantaged may be more due to the higher
affluence levels of these private school families than
those of public school families. What can explain this drab
“sameness” of public and private schools?
When parents of private school pupils see these numbers, it
is often a “Gadzooks”
moment for them. They had the popular prejudice (as most of
us did) that the private schools were significantly better
than the public schools. Not now! Not anymore! Not so- say
the numbers.
State & Local Pictures: We Have Estimates Of Public
& Private Schools’ Performance
NAEP
measures and reports public school student proficiencies
for nearly every state, but does not do so for private
schools. And at the local level (county, district, or
school) the NAEP provides nothing.
We at Asora Education have a number of methods by which
local estimates of public and private school performance
can be made. The three in use are:
1.)
We
developed, in-house, a mapping procedure by which we
convert state reported public school student proficiencies
to those of the NAEP. This is done at the school &
district levels. We call this method ELQ.
2.)
We have
applied a standard linear regression procedure to generate
NAEP estimates for private high schools that have reported
average SAT scores or average ACT scores for their
11th
and/or
12th
grade
students.
3.)
For the
large majority of private schools that do not publicly
report student performance or do not report it in a useful
format we make a rough estimate based on the assumption
that the proficiency relationship between local public and
private schools (usually within the same zip code)
preserves the same performance gaps seen in NAEP’s
national testing. We call this the “gap imposition"
(GIM) method.
Each of
these methods is imprecise, particularly the GIM method. So
one might question how useful such estimates will be? Since
the large majority of public schools have fewer than half
of their students NAEP proficient, we don’t need much
accuracy to convince parents that many of their children
will be performing below grade level. Likewise, the
national data on private schools also suggests many of them
are sub-par. Even when the estimates using the GIM method
have errors up to 30% or more on the NAEP scale, they still
have value.
Our estimates are used to call attention to likely
problems- not to prove the precise level of
dysfunction.
Thus our estimates are intended to raise questions about
student performance. It is then the responsibility of
parents and other stakeholders in K-12 education to have
each child tested independently of the schools to ascertain
his or her skill levels. Once each student’s status
is known, then parents can seek help.
Guidebooks
To Local Private & Public Schools And Supplementary
Services
In most
communities there is a lack of reliable information about
K-12 schools. As we discussed in the Introduction,
performance information for public schools is grossly
exaggerated while that for private schools is usually kept
secret.
Given Asora’s expertise in making estimates of NAEP
proficiency levels for individual private and public
schools, we have been proposing the development and
publication of consumer guides at the local level.
Our guides provide the two kinds of information mentioned
in the Introduction. We have developed prototypical guides
for three different localities within the United States and
hope to find local patrons to undertake their further
development. The three projects are:
1.)
A Guide
for Bristol County, Massachusetts where Asora is based.
This project is being undertaken, pro bono, and we will be
working with community organizations that might want to
provide further support to the effort.
2.)
A Guide
for Shelby County, Tennessee, which includes Memphis. In
that locale we will be soliciting collaborators with whom
we can contract to do some of the work involved in
generating guides. The prototypical guide for Shelby County
is for demonstration only as it uses out-of-date
performance data from 2007.
3.)
A Guide
for Orange County, California, which is a large and rather
affluent “mega-politan” area to the south of
Los Angeles.
All three of these prototypical guides are available for
download from this website. Click here
to
access the download page.
Reforming
The Student Will Lead To Reforming The Schools
As we
conclude this discussion, one might ask, “How will
the provision of consumer information to parents reform the
schools?”
The answer is:
Competition. (and
we mean friendly competition)
When the customers of education, the parents mainly, have
good information about schools, about their
children’s performance levels, and about the
resources available to supplement their children’s
learning in the school, then they can take the
responsibility to manage the delivery of these educational
services in such a way as to improve and maintain the
students’ performance levels within and beyond
minimally acceptable levels.
As parents and other choose the best suppliers of these
education services, the competition among the providers
should help the better ones thrive while reducing the
market share of the ones not doing so well. As schools and
other providers compete, we expect that they will improve
their “products” to maintain and expand their
market shares.
Here in Massachusetts we already see a “glimmer of
light” as to how one particular reform might gain
adherents. One of our charter high schools, the
Advanced
Math and Science Academy has an
estimated NAEP proficiency of at least 95%. It’s
reform? Some would say that it’s their requirement
that nearly all high school courses be Advanced
Placement courses
and as such the students learn more. Others point out that
AP Courses are not graded by the school, but by the
external organization running the AP curricula:
The
College Board. We see
this as a two-fold structural reform: First, provide good
content. Second, test that content independently of the
school.
Whatever the practices of the schools, they will be
influenced by the publication of honest consumer
information. Our goal here at Asora is that of helping
local leaders of education reform to enliven their local
marketplaces of education by providing its participants one
of the ingredients of a successful free market:
credible information.
If you are one of those local leaders,
consider hiring us to help!
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What Was New in October 2013
By David
V. Anderson
Fixing
Private Schools First
Our
theme this quarter,
Fixing Private Schools First, is based
on accumulating evidence that the reform of K-12 education
in all its different forms is easier and less expensive to
accomplish if the various reform experiments and pilot
programs are instituted in private schools first.
Implicit in this is the fact that private schools suffer
many of the same defects seen in public schools and taken
as a whole nationally aren’t that much better than
public schools. In fact, as discussed in these pages in
earlier quarters, the national NAEP testing shows a
statistical tie between private and public school student
performance if the comparison is made among economically
disadvantaged children those eligible for the free and
reduced lunch program.
This quarter marks the beginning of a new feature of Asora
Education’s quarterly update:
The Theme Essay. It
includes more details and the rationale for each
quarter’s theme. Click here to read the Theme
Essay:
Fixing Private Schools
First.
Also of interest is a PowerPoint presentation,
What's Wrong With Our Schools: What ASORA Can Do To
Help, in the
downloadable file
AsoraFixingPrivateSchools.pptx, which
you can access from our Reform Reports
page.
What
You Need To Know To Help This Effort
The
headlines that follow and their short articles are meant to
do two things: Inform you and challenge you. We ask you to
consider what you can do to help. Your role might be simply
that of passing this information along to others who might
want to help? Or you might want to get involved yourself.
We at Asora are ready to discuss any of this with you. Let
us know at
Contact
Asora.
Encourage Transparency In Private Schools
Most
private schools endure and survive based on popular
misconceptions about their students’ superior
performance. The typical private school seldom publishes
testing results for their students or when they do the
information is not easily digested or useful to parents and
other stakeholders. The information is generally not even
adequate for assessment experts to ‘translate’
into understandable or useful advice to those interested.
In our case, Asora’s mapping methodology is most
often useless if NAEP estimated proficiencies are sought
for the private school. Without such credible estimates,
how are parents to make an informed confident decision as
to the best schools for their children?
As the name “private” might suggest, private
schools tend to resist government-imposed regulations such
as those that might mandate certain kinds of testing. And
we agree that it’s a step too far to simply require
private schools to take the same tests used by their public
school counterparts. But we do encourage them to
participate in these tests. So how do we nudge private
schools in the direction of more transparency about their
performance? What less onerous incentives could be
considered?
Incentives
From Private Vouchers And Scholarships
Most
private schools that enroll students funded by private
scholarships do not have testing programs sufficient to
provide parents and others useful information that they
could use to make comparisons with other schools. To remedy
that, a simple and yet powerful incentive could be provided
by the granting organizations: They could
limit the private institutions participating in the
scholarship program to those who provide acceptable
performance data.
A minimal requirement for such a testing program would be
the reporting of performance levels of economically
disadvantaged children- probably using the eligibility
criterion for “free and reduced school lunch”
program that is typically used to define this demographic.
Doing that would have two beneficial effects for private
schools and their students:
* The better performing private schools would enroll larger
numbers of scholarship students compared to those not doing
so well.
* Schools would be motivated to improve their performance.
Those not reporting their statistics would be frozen out of
this market until they began participating. Among those
participating, they would feel competitive pressure to
improve so that they could increase their market share of
the scholarship students.
Were this kind of policy widely adopted among private
schools, we think their assessment scores would rise-
including what is measured by the national NAEP. In
particular the proficiency levels of economically
disadvantaged children would increase.
Incentives
From Public Education Voucher Systems
Just as
private scholarship awarding foundations could provide
incentives for private school reform, so can government run
voucher programs.
Here the simple requirement would be for the voucher
receiving private school to participate in the
state’s assessment program on the same basis as the
public schools participate. This would automatically
provide performance statistics for the economically
disadvantaged demographic.
Some states have made steps in the right direction, but
none to our knowledge requires the full participation of
those private schools receiving voucher students. Wisconsin
comes close in that it requires voucher-receiving schools
to test voucher students with the state’s testing
system. But they do not require all of the private
school’s students to be tested.
Which
States Allow Private Schools To Take State Tests
We count
at least 28 states where private schools have the option to
participate in the state’s K-12 student assessment
system. This is the result of a recent survey we conducted
among state education departments. Those states include:
AZ, FL,
IA, ID, IN, KS, KY, LA, ME, MI, MN, MO, MT, NC,
ND, NH, NY, OH, OR, PA, RI, SD, TN, TX, VT, WA, WI, WV
We are assuming that these states test those private school
students in the same manner as the public school students
and in particular use the same criteria for demographic
designations such as eligible for “free and reduced
price lunches.”
With these assumptions, private schools in these states can
begin to test children using the state tests and can report
performance information that is useful to the parents,
stakeholders and other customers of education.
Why wouldn’t a private school welcome the opportunity
to compare the education they provide to that of a public
school? The answer is: Many of
these private schools are afraid of being exposed for what
they are.
Where
State Testing Is Prohibited In Private Schools
By our
count there are at least 17 states that report the
prohibition of private school participation in their state
testing systems. These states are:
AK, AL,
AR, CA, CT, DE, HI, IL, MA, MD, MS, NE, NJ, NM, SC, UT, VA
By refusing to allow the participation of private schools,
these states are making it more difficult for private
schools to report their performance levels- at least in the
context of allowing comparisons between public and private
schools.
Though “difficult” they are not making it
impossible.
The
ACT Workaround
For
private schools wanting to report their performance levels
to prospective customers and others, there is a
straightforward path around the obstacles. They can use the
ACT high school level assessments and ACT’s EXPLORE
assessments for 8th
grade.
Beginning in 2014 ACT will also offer tests at the lower
grade levels, which will allow 4th
grade
comparisons.
If these tests are administered with consistent demographic
criteria and report sufficient details of student
performance, then such schools can potentially use
Asora’s mapping technology to derive estimated NAEP
proficiencies. Since we already have or can calculate NAEP
estimates for the public schools, this would enable
comparisons between the public and private schools.
Preserving Private School Flexibility
Little
of what we are proposing here would limit a private school
from using its own preferred operational format. The
private school could continue to use other assessment
systems that it favors. Many private schools would opt to
use their own favored tests in addition to those needed to
report the kind of performance information needed to allow
comparisons with their competitors.
Private schools would remain free to avoid participation in
this proposed “comparative testing” regime.
They could retain their special identities but they’d
also remove themselves from the competitive marketplace.
Attracting enrollment might be more difficult.
Asora
Still Seeks To Build A National Guide To
Schools
You can consult Zagat’s Guide if you want a
decent meal out.
You can read Consumers’ Report to help buy your next
car.
But if you want to find a good school for your child,
you’re out of luck.
We at Asora have the capability to develop a national guide
to public schools and could also do this for private
schools- if they would cooperate. As the first step in this
project we published a guidebook to schools in Maryland,
Virginia and Washington DC- which is available for purchase
on this website.
Uncertain
Status Of Bush Institute’s Global Report
Card
As you may be aware, the Global Report Card (GRC) that is
published by the George W. Bush Institute is potentially an
important information source for parents and stakeholders
in public education. The GRC numbers are percentile
rankings showing how various American school districts
perform relatively compared to others in their states,
within the United States, and within the OECD countries.
Being limited to public school districts and not reporting
at the school level, the GRC is of limited value to parents
choosing schools. Its principal beneficiaries appear to be
policy analysts interested in geographic comparisons of
schools systems.
We will continue to monitor developments in the GRC and
look forward to their service being extended to the school
level and/or being supplemented with other kinds of school
performance information.
Who
Can Do This Locally?
There
are many local organizations that are capable of obtaining
performance information and making it public. Many of these
community level groups would also likely benefit from doing
this. Others fear getting involved. Among those who might
want to consider playing these roles are:
* Local news media
* Book and magazine vendors
* Business associations
* Religious congregations
* Local governments
* Research organizations
* Civic associations
* Consumer organizations
* School operators and owners
* Organized labor unions
* Other charitable and philanthropic
groups
For those of you interested in helping school reform
efforts, and particularly private school improvements, you
could probably work through one or more of the groups show
above. If you have any questions about how you might
participate, give us a call or use the Contact Asora
Education link to reach us.
This quarter’s
Theme Essay provides
some additional ideas about the roles these various
groups might play.
Asora
Will Send A Speaker To Promote Local Reforms In Your
Area:
We
are now soliciting speaking engagements and other kinds of
consultation to those in communities that would like to
learn more about our proposals for reform and how they can
be implemented locally.
Except in our local areas of Rhode Island and eastern
Massachusetts, we will charge fees and expenses for these
visits. Two hours of speeches, discussions and advice (you
determine the apportionment) for a fee of $250 would be a
good investment.
In areas close to us, we work pro bono as our contribution
to our local communities’ efforts to improve schools.
We’re
Getting Started In Taunton,
Massachusetts
We
have been engaged in discussions with education experts in
Taunton where we hope to engage its Chamber of Commerce in
a feasibility study of what might be done. Instead of
giving a speech to communicate some of these ideas, we have
already participated in a local cable access television
station interview. We hope to develop a fruitful
collaboration with local stakeholders in education.
Our work in Taunton is pro-bono because it is in the region
(Rhode Island and the eastern half of Massachusetts) where
we offer our services gratis.
What
Was New in July 2013
By David
V. Anderson
Solving
Milton Friedman’s Puzzle
Our
theme this quarter,
Solving Milton Friedman’s
Puzzle,
marks the
10th
anniversary of Asora
Education as well as the input we received from Milton
Friedman concerning our efforts to develop franchising
networks of novel schools.
Ten years ago this month, Friedman observed,
“…I have long been puzzled by the situation in
cities like New York and San Francisco: there are strictly
private elementary and secondary schools which charge very
high tuitions and have long waiting lists, and I keep
asking why is it that other private enterprises
haven’t taken advantage of that situation as a source
of profit. Somehow there is a customer base there; there is
a market opportunity.”
Our goal in this update is put forward some answers to that
question.
Whatever that answer is, we believe that the poor
performance of K-12 schools is more a problem of inadequate
external incentives than of pedagogical imperfections. As
Friedman’s remark seems to imply, those negative
incentives are discouraging entrepreneurs from entering
this K-12 education market sector.
We believe that if we can fix the environment in which
schools operate, then that will encourage new players to
enter the business. They will compete and innovate. We
foresee that resulting in all kinds of internal
improvements in the ways schools educate our children.
Adam Smith’s Insight About Subsidized Teachers
The great
moral philosopher and economist Adam Smith, even in 1776,
understood part of the problem we face today in K-12
education. He gave a number of examples showing that
schools operating without subsidies were more effective in
educating their students than those with them. From his own
observation as a former student at Oxford University he
remarked that the subsidized professors there had,
“…given up altogether even the pretense of
teaching.” Like Smith, we also worry about the
effects of subsidies.
Can The Profit
Motive Be More Altruistic Than Pure
Altruism:?
One of the essential points made by Adam
Smith was that of the dynamic of the “invisible
hand” under which the free marketplace of
self-interested players produces societal goods and
benefits of significantly greater value than if the
producers were solely motivated by altruistic feelings.
When one examines the for-profit sector of the education
industry in the United States one sees both the altruistic
and financial incentives at play and yet the marketplace is
not very free. The robust competition seen in other
economic sectors seems absent here. Surely there is a
profit motive, but it seems weak.
Most players in this sector are limited to the extent they
can compete. They compete against other private vendors but
rarely compete against the government owned schools, which
might retaliate if they did.
These for-profit players derive most of their revenue from
contracting with the government entities and therefore
refrain from competition between themselves and those
patrons.
But what about those vendors who operate or would operate
purely in the private sector and aren’t affected by
being a government contractor? This is essentially the
question posed by Friedman.
There are either barriers to their entry into this
marketplace, or there are perceived risks discouraging
those who would invest their time and resources developing
for-profit schools and other educational services.
Or perhaps these enterprises don’t have the guts to
forge ahead when there isn’t a clear path to profits
for themselves and benefits to their customers. Do they shy
away because of the chorus of demeaning rhetoric showered
upon them or anyone else who would dare profit from the
schooling of children?
The misdirected altruism of the detractors of for-profit
education does not acknowledge that free market competition
is the greatest engine for reaching the societal and
educational goals they profess. That is to say socialists,
and others favoring government solutions, do not understand
that capitalism is the engine that can best achieve the
very goals they seek. Think of it this way:
Capitalism is a very good engine of altruism, while that of
socialism falters.
Moreover we think most prospective for-profit school
operators tend to misjudge the marketplace based on the
misinformation being put out by their existing public and
non-profit private competitors.
Where is the Federal Express of education? Where are the
enterprises that can take on this failed and broken sector
of our economy?
Design a Novel
School at StartUpWeekend?
In early June we ventured West to
participate in the Start Up Weekend organization’s
competition in which teams of school experts
would
design novel schools.
(Emphasis on “would.”)
Of the nearly one hundred participants, approximately 40
made one-minute proposals to the gathered participants,
coaches and judges. The organizers used text messaging from
the audience to estimate approval levels of the various
proposals.
Our proposal was simply that of suggesting that whatever
the successful model school was to be, that successful
replication of that school should be done through a
franchising network or an equivalent licensing arrangement.
Through haphazard control of the display screen behind the
presenters, the audience was able to see the approval
levels generated by the texting responses. As the
presentations proceeded we were gratified to see our
proposal near the top- within the top three or four.
We quickly learned that the winners of this initial round
of the competition were determined by four judges who could
and did overrule the audience preferences. Our rank, we
have inferred, was lowered from the top handful to at least
15th-
by the judges. Why would they have such a different opinion
of the presentations than the audience?
We looked at the credentials of the judges. Not one of them
had any relevant private sector experience. This suggests
that they might be alienated by any proposals with a
for-profit aspect.
Of the 40-odd proposals, most were variants of old
progressive education models. Few were about finding ways
to operate schools more effectively or more efficiently.
Most of the explanations given were incoherent. For
example: Consider a school in which teachers are given one
day off each week so they could better prepare their
lessons? Beyond being a boon to substitute teachers, what
benefit could accrue from such an arrangement?
It was a waste of time. Recognizing that fact we abandoned
our participation early.
How The Education Industry Association Fits
In:
We have been a member of the Education
Industry Association (EIA) now for about seven years.
Through contacts developed as a result of our participation
we have learned a great deal about the private sector of
education within the United States.
An irony for us is that the most influential experience we
had there derived from a suggestion to us from a government
staffer about NAEP testing. As we became experienced in
making local estimates of NAEP proficiencies, we gained a
unique perspective about the performance of local public
schools. Moreover, we indirectly learned about the paltry
performance of private schools- which on average is no
better than that of public schools when compared for
similar demographics.
The knowledge and estimates we have developed could be a
valuable marketing tool for vendors in this industry, but
very little interest has been shown in these capabilities.
The inference we draw is very troubling for K-12 education:
Our private education sector is discouraged from competing
too vigorously against their competitors. Surely those who
would use our estimates in their marketing would be engaged
in robust competition. The absence of such kinds of
marketing not only depicts a fearful attitude of these
vendors, it also helps perpetuate the education
establishment’s propaganda that the existing levels
of performance are about as good as can be achieved with
current levels of financial support.
Fix The Market
First. Other Reforms Will Follow:
Schools and other players in the
education industry are subject to the same principles that
guide other sectors of the economy. Among them: You must
get the incentives right or people will not be very
productive.
We believe that the education sector of our economy has
very little competition and thus lacks many incentives for
improvements that would result from a higher level of it.
When the various vendors and institutions within the
education sector are effectively motivated through
competition, we believe that pedagogical reforms will be
almost automatic as the marketplace rewards those offering
the better services and products.
Vouchers Alone Have
Not Helped Much:
A great deal of hope has been attached to
government funded school vouchers as well as privately
funded scholarships with the expectation that the resulting
school choice would generate more competition among
schools. That competition should provide incentives for all
different kinds of schools, public and private, to improve.
Various voucher programs, some in existence for over 20
years, have been studied and most demographic groups have
shown little improvement- except for black children.
Our theory for this unexpected weak result is that, with
the exception of blacks, parents are generally choosing
schools not much better than the public school
alternatives. To explain why black children did show
improvement, we hypothesize that their former public
schools, on average, were inferior to the private schools
they chose to attend.
This theory is corroborated by the Nation’s Report
Card, which shows a rough parity in the quality of public
versus private schools for the economically disadvantaged
demographic that typically receives the vouchers. If the
“choice” school is no better than the former
public school, it should not be surprising to see such weak
results.
Consumers Need
Honest Performance Information:
As most economists know, a healthy
marketplace needs more than consumer choice: It needs
reliable information about the products and services being
sold. In this regard, the education sector suffers from a
lack of such information.
In the public system, student performance is grossly
exaggerated in the information provided to the public. In
contrast, private schools tend to hide their performance
information (assuming they have measured it). How can a
parent or other consumer of education make an informed
decision when the information is either erroneous or not
provided? It’s no
wonder that parents take vouchers and then waste them on an
equally lousy school!
Asora Still Seeks To
Build A National Guide To Schools:
You can consult Zagat’s Guide if
you want a decent meal out. You can read Consumers’
Report to help buy your next car. But if you want to find a
good school for your child, you’re out of luck.
We at Asora have the capability to develop a national guide
to public schools and could also do this for private
schools- if they would cooperate. As the first step in this
project we published a guidebook to schools in Maryland,
Virginia and Washington DC- which is available for purchase
on this website.
As you may have seen in earlier updates, we have looked
upon the Global Report Card (GRC), of the George W. Bush
Institute, as a resource that can help parents and other
stakeholders better judge their local public schools. Yet,
the GRC estimates available from the Bush Institute are
rather meager. The GRC numbers are percentile rankings
showing how various American school districts perform
relatively compared to others in their states, within the
United States, and within the OECD countries.
We have proposed doing something similar but more extensive
than the GRC. We propose extending the percentile rankings
down to the school level, which will help parents and
others find relatively good schools (rather than just the
districts). We also propose using our estimates of NAEP
proficiencies as a means of developing a Local Report Card
(LRC) that at the school level would provide information
about absolute student performance. We think that this
expanded reporting of student skills would greatly improve
the consumer information available in the marketplace of
education. This information, in our judgment, would foster
real competition among school providers.
One might ask how consumer information for private schools
could be provided. Absent state legislation requiring their
participation in state administered testing, we think that
private school operators can be “pressured”
into testing their students appropriately so comparisons
can be made with their public counterparts.
Our advice to private schools would be to participate in
the ACT testing that will soon be available to most grade
levels of K-12. Assuming these schools would report their
scoring distributions, we already know how to map those
results into corresponding NAEP proficiency estimates. Were
all that to happen, we could produce a web based guide to
both public and private schools. That would further improve
the information available to parents and other consumers of
K-12 education.
These consumers would come to learn that both public and
private schools are severely deficient. Such information
might finally foster the development of better schools-
perhaps operated by for-profit operators.
We have recently had some brief communications with the
Bush Institute in which they declined any collaborations
that would work towards extending their GRC service into
the areas we have recommended. Whether they are planning to
work with others to accomplish similar ends is not clear.
Because of that we are in the process of finding other
prospective collaborators who could help us build a more
robust national guide to K-12 schools. Please contact us if
you are interested or know of others who might want to
participate.
We Can Do Much
Locally:
In previous Asora Updates we discussed
efforts that we’d like to shepherd in local
communities. Civic associations, religious congregations,
and other community groups (even Parent Teacher
Organizations?) might want to engage in consumer
information efforts. Chambers of Commerce, Kiwanis, Rotary
Clubs, newspapers, radio & TV stations come to mind as
organizations that might want to help.
What can these groups do to help that is affordable to
them?
They could fund a local testing program to help community
stakeholders and parents learn how many and which children
need help. They could use existing information, such as
high school SAT & ACT scores, AP pass rates, the Global
Report Card, and college acceptance numbers to help
diagnose local problems in K-12 education.
Community organizations can provide incentives to private
schools that would motivate them to report their
students’ performance levels. That will allow
comparisons between public and private schools.
We understand the reluctance of private schools to report
on their students’ skills. They don’t want
their customer base to know how poorly their students
perform (about the same as public schools) when compared
for the same demographics.
These groups could hire Asora to calculate estimated NAEP
proficiencies for their local public schools. In the past,
Asora has generated such estimates under the sponsorship of
statewide non-profit organizations, but local communities
didn’t pay serious attention to the sobering
information we generated. To get people involved, on the
ground, perhaps these estimates should be contracted
locally where stakeholders are more likely to pay attention
to the results.
Asora Will Send A
Speaker To Promote Your Local
Reforms:
In the near future, we will be soliciting
speaking engagements and other kinds of consultation to
those in local communities who would like to learn more
about our proposals for reform.
Except in our local areas of Rhode Island and eastern
Massachusetts, we will charge fees and expenses for these
visits. Two hours of speeches, discussions and advice (you
determine the apportionment) for a fee of $250 would be a
good investment.
In areas close to us, we work pro bono as our contribution
to our local communities’ efforts to improve schools.
Did We Answer Milton
Friedman’s Question?
Milton Friedman essentially asked why
there aren’t more entrepreneurs operating for-profit
private schools? We tried to suggest that the marketplace
lacks sufficient consumer information for robust
competition that would attract market entrants. Whether or
not the foregoing discussions fully answer his question, we
do have the methods to develop adequate consumer
information. We are ready to embark on this path. We await
well-endowed stakeholders coming forward with the means to
get started.
What Was New in
April 2013
By David V. Anderson
A Flawed Education
Industry
Our theme this quarter, A Flawed Education
Industry,
considers problems among the providers of K-12 educational
services- particularly those that have contributed, either
directly or indirectly, to the poor performance of students
in their communities. Our emphasis this quarter is on the
private side, where for-profit and non-profit enterprises
bear some of the responsibility for the poor performance of
K-12 students in America.
Thus we continue our themes concerning private sector
education reform that we wrote about in recent quarters. As
in those discussions, we have been seeking legal and
economic environments that would foster a healthy and
prosperous free-market in the education sector. This
quarterly update takes a closer look at the weaknesses of
private providers:
How and where are they to blame?
And what can they do to profit themselves and advance their
student clients?
Is There Corruption,
Collusion or Cronyism?
Earlier this month, Wall Street Journal Columnist Daniel
Henninger wrote about the harmful effects of corruption,
collusion, and cronyism have on national economies in the
developing world. That led us to consider the possibility
that these same factors might be playing less than
constructive roles in the education industry?
From our perspective the unethical and/or illegal behaviors
associated with corruption, collusion, and cronyism are not
just affecting the government run public schools but also
seem to be evident on the private side of this industry.
Sometimes a traditional practice in education is not seen
as corruption when it arguably has the characteristics of
it. For example, allowing schools to provide both
instruction and official testing is a clear conflict of
interest, which almost always leads to degrees of laxity
that would be reduced or absent if those two functions were
performed independently.
Corruption in
Non-Profit and For-Profit Private
Schools:
Ever wonder what the actual performance levels are among
students in private schools? It’s generally not easy
to get the data, and when it is provided it is often
neither comparable to the metrics used by their competitors
in the public system nor with those used by other private
schools.
Their little secret, in about half of the cases, is that
their students under-perform their public school peers,
when appropriate controls for students’ economic
situations are taken into account. They don’t want
parents and other stakeholders to know this. So they keep
quiet by not reporting student performance information. It
seems to be an effort at deception and serves as an example
of unethical– if not corrupt- activities among those
in private education.
Or could it be that they are innocently unaware and are
simply following their inherited traditions?
Passive Collusion in
the Supplementary Education
Community:
We consider a form of collusion in which rivals conspire to
cooperate when a healthier marketplace would have them
compete instead.
We distinguish active collusion from passive collusion. In
the former, the rivals explicitly agree to cooperate. But
in passive collusion, the players work from an unspoken
understanding that certain behaviors will be rewarded and
others punished.
This is how we interpret certain behaviors of vendors in
the supplementary education services sub-sector where many
of them have limited their activities in the private pay
marketplace by focusing on government contracts.
Specifically, they have refrained from aggressive marketing
to private pay customers out of fears that such marketing
would offend their public contractor patrons. The result:
Fewer children benefit from their instructional and
remedial services.
Asora Education has seen this first hand. In nearly every
instance where we have offered vendors the use of our
localized public school NAEP proficiency estimates we have
been met by silence. Why would they forego such an obvious
source of information to use in their marketing to attract
clients? Perhaps there is another explanation, but we
think most supplementary
education providers are afraid of the blowback they’d
receive if they used marketing that was critical of the
schools run by their government patrons.
They don’t want to
“bite the hand that feeds them.”
Friends Win
Contracts By Being Good Cronies:
When a
supplementary education services provider or other vendor
in the education sector seeks business from a public school
system it is important to develop a pleasant relationship
with those potential patrons.
Doing business with other clients and customers that might
offend the patron could lead to fewer contracts, less
business and difficulties renewing contracts.
For example, consider a vendor that would approach its
private pay customers by using contrast marketing in which
attention is called to the poor performance of the public
schools. That’s not nice! Good friends or cronies
don’t publicly criticize their patrons.
Fix The Market
First. Other Reforms Will Follow:
Schools and other players in the education industry are
subject to the same principles that guide other sectors of
the economy. Among them: You must get the incentives right
or people will not be very productive.
We believe that the education sector of our economy has
very little competition and thus lacks that type of
incentive for improvements that would result from more of
it. When the various vendors and institutions within the
education sector are effectively motivated by the means of
competition, we believe that pedagogical reforms will be
almost automatic as the marketplace rewards those offering
the better services and products.
Vouchers Alone Have
Not Helped Much:
A great deal of hope has been attached to government funded
school vouchers as well as privately funded scholarships
with the expectation that the resulting school choice would
generate more competition among schools. That competition
should provide incentives for all different kinds of
schools, public and private, to improve.
Various voucher programs, some in existence for over 20
years, have been studied and most demographic groups have
shown little improvement- except for black children.
Our theory for this unexpected weak result is that, with
the exception of blacks, parents are generally choosing
schools not much better than the public school
alternatives. To explain why black children did show
improvement, we hypothesize that their former public
schools, on average, were inferior to the private schools
they chose to attend.
This theory is corroborated by the Nation’s Report
Card, which shows a rough parity in the quality of public
versus private schools for the economically disadvantaged
demographic that typically receives the vouchers. If the
“choice” school is no better than the former
public school, it should not be surprising to see such weak
results.
Consumers Need
Honest Performance Information:
As most economists know, a healthy marketplace needs more
than consumer choice: It needs reliable information about
the products and services being sold. In this regard, the
education sector suffers from a lack of such information.
In the public system, student performance is grossly
exaggerated in the information provided to the public. In
contrast, private schools tend to hide their performance
information (assuming they have measured it). How can a
parent or other consumer of education make an informed
decision when the information is either erroneous or not
provided? It’s no wonder that parents take vouchers
and then waste them on an equally lousy school!
Asora Seeks To Build
A National Guide To Schools:
Because of the aforementioned bad behavior by private
schools and enterprises working in the education sector,
these institutions are not doing their part in the
development of accurate consumer information. Given their
fears of robust competition they refrain from aggressive
(but honest) contrast marketing.
If the industry will not fix its broken marketplace,
outsiders like Asora can work to fix it.
Our company has been interested in establishing a national
guide to public schools that would be based on our
calculations of estimated NAEP proficiencies at the school
and district levels. We have already published a guide for
the three jurisdictions of Maryland, Virginia and
Washington DC.
There is one national guide to school districts and that is
provided by the George W. Bush Institute in Dallas. Their
Global Report Card (GRC) enables stakeholders to obtain
percentile information showing how individual school
districts compare to others within their states, within the
US, and within the OECD countries of the world. Valuable as
that is, it does not provide a measure of student
proficiencies. They can’t tell you how many children
in each school are at or above grade level.
We have offered the Bush Institute our assistance to expand
their GRC to include a Local Report Card (LRC) based on our
NAEP proficiency estimates.
We are in the process of determining whether collaboration
with the Bush Institute would be pursued or whether we
should find a different organization (almost certainly a
non-profit) that would provide an Internet based guide to
American public schools and districts. Rather than mimic or
copy the GRC, we would estimate percentiles for schools and
districts as well as proficiency percentages using our
Asora based methodologies.
Asora Is Available
To Help Local Stakeholders:
In the previous Asora Update (January), we discussed
efforts that we’d like to shepherd in local
communities. Civic associations, religious congregations,
and other community groups (even Parent Teacher
Organizations?) might want to engage in consumer
information efforts. Chambers of Commerce, Kiwanis, Rotary
Clubs, newspapers, radio & TV stations come to mind as
organizations that might want to help.
What can these groups do to help that is affordable to
them?
They could fund a local testing program to help community
stakeholders and parents learn how many and which children
need help. They could use existing information, such as
high school SAT & ACT scores, AP pass rates, the Global
Report Card, and college acceptance numbers to help
diagnose local problems in K-12 education.
Or they could hire Asora to calculate estimated NAEP
proficiencies for their local schools. In the past, Asora
has generated such estimates under the sponsorship of
statewide think tanks, but local communities didn’t
pay serious attention to the sobering information we
generated. To get people involved, on the ground, perhaps
these estimates should be contracted locally where
stakeholders are more likely to pay attention to the
results.
Asora Is Seeking
Partners And Capital For These Efforts:
Our
proposals to establish national guides to public (and
private) schools are not new. But our goal remains the
same: We want to find collaborators and the funding to
carry out some of these proposals.
We need the human resources, which requires funding to
support them. Instead of approaching institutions with just
the proposals, our new plan has us working with the
institutional operators to find the capital they need to do
the work. Or we can simply find the funds and work with the
funding source to find the institution to do the work.
Yes, Asora could be the institutional operator for
providing school performance information, but we think a
non-profit, non-partisan, free market oriented and national
organization might be better. The performance numbers will
be more accepted if they are coming from a trusted
independent source.
Asora Will Send A
Speaker To Promote These Reforms:
In the near
future, we will be soliciting speaking engagements and
other kinds of consultation to those in local communities
who would like to learn more about our proposals for
reform.
Except in our local areas of Rhode Island and eastern
Massachusetts, we will charge fees and expenses for these
visits. Two hours of speeches, discussions and advice (you
determine the apportionment) for a fee of $250 would be a
good investment.
In areas close to us, we work pro bono as our contribution
to our local communities’ efforts to improve schools.
What Was New in January 2013
By David V. Anderson
Fixing
Your Local Private Schools
Our theme this quarter,
Fixing Your Local Private Schools,
focuses on an aspect of our theme from the previous
quarter- that of
Private Sector Education Reform. As in
that discussion we seek a legal and economic environment
conducive towards a healthy and prosperous free-market,
except here we ask what can be done locally to improve
mediocre private schools.
The typical public reaction to the previous sentence would
be some version of doubt or offense: “What do you
mean ‘mediocre private schools?’ Why not focus
on the troubled public schools?” Our answer is that
both kinds of schools are troubled and of the two only
private schools are relatively easy to reform.
Private schools are local- with few exceptions- while
public education systems are often managed over larger
geographic regions or at least have some of their services
controlled from afar. Being local increases the feasibility
of reform.
The
NAEP Says: Private Schools Bad, Public Schools
Bad:
One of Asora Education’s key competencies is the
analysis of NAEP testing and the calculation of NAEP
estimates at the local level. Overlooked by us until just
recently has been the NAEP testing of economically
disadvantaged private school students. Consider this:
nationwide, the NAEP proficiencies of economically
disadvantaged children are about the same whether they are
in public schools or private schools. And irrespective of
the tested grade level: 4th, 8th or 12th.
For 8th grade, the math proficiencies, nationally, are
equal with 19% of the tested disadvantaged children deemed
proficient. For 8th grade reading the private schools are
somewhat better with 24% designated as proficient compared
to 18% in the public schools.
In terms of what we call the “overall”
proficiencies (defined as the minimum of reading and math
percentages) of economically disadvantaged students in 8th
grade the public and private schools are at 18% and 19%,
respectively- a statistical tie. This is a new development.
Some fifteen years ago, public school 8th grade
proficiencies trailed those of private schools, 8% versus
15%, respectively. During the ensuing years, both school
types saw improving proficiencies, but the public school
student proficiencies increased faster- possibly the result
of the No Child Left Behind legislation. We wrote a
report,
In Critical Condition: American Private & Public
Schools. It is
contained in the document NAEPTrends.doc
which
you can download from our Reports on Reform
page.
Low proficiency percentages, like any of these just shown,
surely justify our use of the label “mediocre.”
Given these numbers, a more appropriate descriptor might be
“severely substandard.”
Range
of Strategies to Reform Private
Schools:
A key problem in our dysfunctional K-12 education systems,
discussed in our October 2012 Asora Update, is that of
market failure. As in that discussion we believe that
school level reforms will be more or less automatic once
the K-12 marketplace is made healthy. We have a concept for
doing that locally.
Our strategies for accomplishing marketplace reforms are
based on competition. New school operators, for example,
could use realistic but sobering information about their
competitors to inform their marketing strategies as well as
inform the technical aspects of their school operations.
Various kinds of community organizations, including trade,
business, religious, media and political, can work to give
consumers of K-12 education realistic information about the
education resources in their midst. Parents, once disabused
of their Pollyannaish complacency about local schools, can
also seek good information about their alternatives.
Marketing
with Honest Student Proficiency
Information:
Providers selling in to any given locality can solicit
customers by using accurate information about the
characteristics of their enterprises and those of their
competitors. This includes “contrast” marketing
that brings attention to their competitors’ deficient
characteristics.
When the enterprise is a school or other provider of
educational services, student proficiency information is of
great interest. So, for example, what percent of students
at any specific grade level have received a proficient
score in one or more subject areas? In nearly every state,
the public school proficiency information provided by the
state testing authorities is grossly exaggerated making it
essentially useless for use by private competitors as a
marketing tool.
Asora can help. We can use the inflated state reported
proficiencies to calculate estimated NAEP proficiencies for
these schools. When the private school or private
afterschool tutoring service uses our NAEP estimates, they
can point to the poor quality of their public school
competitors as a means to advertise their comparably better
services.
The
ACT can be the Engine of your
Marketing:
One of the limitations to using Asora’s NAEP
proficiency estimates is that we currently have no method
by which we can make such estimates for private schools.
But here is an alternative significantly better than using
just our NAEP estimates:
We know how to map NAEP proficiencies onto the ACT
proficiency scale. ACT does not actually publish
proficiencies per se but it does publish its scoring
distributions, which allow us to determine an effective ACT
proficiency. By using the appropriate cut score on each ACT
scale, we can make the NAEP and ACT proficiencies equal.
For example, in math we estimated that the ACT score of
23.5 corresponds to the NAEP proficiency cut-score. In
reading and science the respective ACT scores are estimated
to be 22.5 and 24.0.
This means that Asora can calculate a NAEP estimated
proficiency for any group tested on the ACT. If a private
school or other supplementary education provider is willing
to publicize its ACT results, they can also obtain
corresponding NAEP estimates using Asora’s mapping
services. Once done they can then do comparative marketing
in which they can show their organization’s NAEP
estimated proficiency against the ones Asora has estimated
for the public schools.
Given that the ACT organization provides testing from grade
level 8 through grade level 12, these kinds of estimates
will enable marketing in the upper middle school levels
through 12th grade.
Looking forward, the ACT organization has announced plans
to test grades 3 – 7 in addition to its current menu
of 8 – 12. Their testing of the lower grades begins
in 2014.
Religious
Congregations Can Guide Their
Adherents
It may seem a bit odd that most religious denominations are
“agnostic” when they consider what schools
would provide instruction most consistent with their own
values. Most seem accepting of public schools even as these
government run institutions become more and more secularly
oriented. Then they wonder why they lose so many of their
younger members as they mature into young adults.
We can envisage religious congregations getting more
pro-active in the education of their children. On the one
hand, they could consider running their own school or
helping parents homeschool their children. Or
alternatively, they could provide guidance to their members
about schools- most often private schools- that offer
instruction consistent with their religious group’s
values.
Chambers
of Commerce as a Nexus of Reform
Local communities often have civic, religious and business
organizations that have financial as well as altruistic
motives to promote quality education services in their
areas.
Of these kinds of associations, we think that Chambers of
Commerce may have the most interest in education given the
fact that their members are often seeking highly qualified
workers who have mastered a high school curriculum. These
Chambers know that high school diplomas and/or transcripts
generally exaggerate student accomplishment and are
therefore of little value in the hiring process.
Because of the unreliable information provided by the
public school systems, many employers use their own
internal testing as a means of qualifying job applicants.
Our suggestion is that Chambers of Commerce could undertake
this role for all relevant graduating high school students
in their communities.
Here is what a Chamber might consider doing:
1. Contract with the ACT to test 12th grade students in
their local area.
2. Fund the testing costs through parental contributions
and other charitable sources.
3. Provide a transcript of each student’s test
results to the student and prospective employers.
4. Moreover, in those cases where the student is deemed
proficient according to the ACT scoring scale award the
student a Chamber Diploma attesting to this accomplishment.
While individual student scores would be kept relatively
private, the Chamber could consider publishing the NAEP or
ACT based proficiencies on a school-by-school basis. If
this information were available for private schools as well
as the public schools in the local area, such published
data would help the consumers of education make intelligent
choices.
And locally, the free market pillar of honest consumer
information would be strengthened.
School
Security and Safety Information
The recent horrific tragedies in Newtown, Connecticut
remind us of the importance of student safety in public and
private schools.
Without commenting on what might be the best polices for
ensuring student safety, it would be of interest to most
parents, students and other stakeholders to have
information about the various schools’ resources in
this area.
For example, does the school employ security personnel? Are
some of its employees trained in this area? What kinds of
lethal and non-lethal counter measures are in place? Does
it have effective surveillance systems? Etc.
Leveling
the Local Playing Field
As we discussed in the previous quarter’s update, the
second pillar of a healthy free market is that of fair
competition. It requires corrective measures to balance the
effects of the large subsidies for public education.
Without such remedies, we’d end up with the situation
envisioned by Milton Friedman when he said, “Try
selling a product that someone else is giving away.”
To level this playing field requires subsidies to the
private providers or their customers. Giving the customers
some financing to purchase educational services encourages
more competition than subsidies to the enterprises.
Vouchers
and Kindred Devices can Spur
Competition
This subsidization of customers can be accomplished with
government funded vouchers or with other kinds of financial
assistance. Tax credits, including the refundable variety,
are more popular than vouchers- even when their monetary
value is the same. Private scholarships- sometimes called
private vouchers- can help. Micro-vouchers that are
targeted to just one course or one academic term can help
students avoid a bad teacher or course in situations where
the public school is otherwise adequate for the
student’s instruction.
Lastly, when private schools can be operated for
significantly less cost than before it enables reductions
in tuition charges. Such reductions make such schools more
affordable and thus more attractive to a larger number of
customers. Asora Education’s proposals for cost
efficient schools employing self-paced blended
instructional models provide an example of this sort. Lower
tuition charges can have the same effect as a partial
scholarship or voucher.
Invite
Us For A Pep Talk!
If you wonder if some of these local reform efforts might
apply to your community, you or the appropriate
organization in your area could invite us to provide more
information about the possibilities and alternatives. More
information about Asora’s consulting services and our
speakers bureau are available elsewhere on our website.
Still
Awaiting Feedback From The Global Report
Card
In all four of our 2012 quarterly updates, we mentioned the
Global Report Card (GRC), which provides percentile ranks
for school districts within the United States in three
different frameworks: statewide, national and
international. The GRC results are provided by an online
service of the George W. Bush Institute for Public Policy.
You can view them at
http://www.globalreportcard.org/map.html.
We have proposed to the Bush Institute that we discuss a
possible collaboration based on the additional kinds of
local proficiency estimates we have developed. We still
await their reply, though we are not holding our breath.
At Asora we have improved upon the methods used by the GRC.
More details are described in our report, Mapping District
Level K-12 Scale Scores Onto National & International
Assessment Distributions. The report is in the file
QuantileMeasurements.docx , which can be downloaded from
our Reform Reports page.
Guidebooks Or Web Guides To Public Schools And
Supplementary Services?
Our first guidebook, It
Takes More Than A Village to educate your child when the
schools aren't up to the task,
covered the public schools in Maryland, Virginia and
Washington D.C. The phrase "More Than" refers to
supplementary services, which include many tutoring
companies and other vendors in the "afterschool" space. You
can learn more about this guidebook by clicking
here. The
guidebooks play two roles: First, parents and others can
use them to find a better public school. More
importantly, the guidebooks contain directories to those
offering supplementary and alternative services.
Thus our guidebooks provide a means by which vendors can
publicize their services and thereby "drive" customers to
their businesses.
By early 2012, we had extended our local NAEP estimates to
all of the East Coast states. In contemplating a hardcopy
guidebook to this region, we are challenged by the many
hundreds of pages necessary to present even the most basic
estimates for each school and district. For this reason and
others, we are now contemplating a Web guide in which
advertising would fund the service.
For early 2013, we are embarking on a four state analysis
of the Lake Michigan states of Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana
and Michigan. We are curious whether we will be able to see
any effects of the 22-year old voucher system used in
Milwaukee. Our analysis will allow comparisons with other
urban areas, including Chicago, Gary, Indianapolis and
Detroit. We can’t wait to get started.
But
We Need Working/Human Capital To Complete Our
Guidebooks
Until now the guidebook project has been a one-person
effort. Performing the data analysis required to cover the
entire United States along with the other preparatory work
will required the full time efforts of at least one other
collaborator/worker. These guides would include information
much like that contemplated for the school level report
cards proposed by Mitt Romney.
Thus seek various kinds of assistance in the completion of
this project. Interested parties could consider, among
other possibilities:
1. Investing in the production of the Web guide.
2. Collaborating with Asora in its production.
3. Contracting with Asora to make these kinds of estimates
for states and regions of interest.
The numbers we generate paint a "picture of need." When
parents and stakeholders finally "see this light" they will
often seek out the services of the vendors listed
within.
What Was New in October 2012
By David V. Anderson
Private
Sector Education Reform
Our
theme this quarter, Private Sector
Education Reform,
is based on free-market economic principles as verified in
practice. In every other economic sector of our economy
for-profit and non-profit private providers provide a
superior product or service compared to entities that are
government owned and operated.
As is also true in every other industry, for-profit
providers almost always produce a better product at lower
cost than those who are non-profit. Casual observers tend
to find this counter-intuitive. They argue that the
revenues of the non-profit are not depleted to provide a
profit stream and thus there are more resources for the
non-profit to provide its product as compared to the
for-profit. On the contrary, what businesses understand is
the incentives provided by the profit motive result in
efficiencies so great that they not only provide a profit
stream to the owners but they also provide additional
capital inputs to the business not available to the
non-profit.
Many observers nevertheless prefer the non-profit approach
because they think it is based on altruistic motives
instead of “evil” profit motives. But it is not
an “either-or” issue. All providers usually
have altruistic motives. This means that the for-profit
enterprise has both monetary and altruistic incentives,
while the non-profit counterpart only has the “feel
good” altruistic motivations.
Case in point: The Coop supermarkets that formerly operated
in Northern California were non-profit enterprises. These
were high quality retail operations that eventually became
insolvent. Today, in these same locations are for-profit
supermarkets of even higher quality than their predecessors
and they are operating comfortably in the black.
In other economic sectors, the effects of competition in a
free marketplace have guided the evolution of the
providers. That competition tends to discourage government
run enterprises as well as those that are non-profit and
does so to such an extent that the vast majority of the
businesses are for-profit.
Pillars of a Healthy
Education Industry Marketplace
In June of 2011 we discussed what we
called the three pillars of a healthy marketplace for
education:
1. The pillar of
accurate information. With good information, parents and other
stakeholders can make appropriate choices for a student.
Without it, consumers will often choose inferior providers
of educational services.
2. The pillar of fair
competition. When
providers are treated equally, only those providing high
quality goods and services survive. That's unlike the
current environment where monopolistic operators (the
public schools) are receiving large subsidies that markedly
distort the playing field on which the providers compete.
3. The pillar of the
rule of law. When laws
and regulations are applied fairly, healthy competition can
ensue. Alternatively, when favoritism is shown the best
providers may lose market share and risk going under.
If we had these “pillars,” we believe that
education reform would be natural and automatic. The needs
of students and parents would translate into market share
for the providers who were recognized most cost effective.
But these pillars are lacking. Is there a path to education
reform that will create these building blocks? Can we get
there even when the education establishment opposes such
reforms?
The Fed-Ex Role
Model:
In
looking for examples we remembered how the establishment of
the Federal Express Company not only helped repair a broken
marketplace within the parcel delivery economic sector, but
it also resulted in an enterprise that provided a better
service at a lower cost than its government run competitor-
the US Post Office.
The key aspect of the success of Federal Express in this
market was their emphasis on efficiency and cost control
that allowed them to compete on price with the Postal
Service’s subsidized service.
Asora Stellar
Schools Can Be The Fed-Ex Of
Education:
The
original activity of Asora Education Enterprises was the
drafting of a business plan to create a franchising network
of for-profit private schools employing various new
technologies and methods- including online instruction.
While that plan still awaits investment capital, our
financial projections show how this provider of schooling
would be able to significantly undercut our competitors in
terms of cost while at the same time improving the
students’ academic outcomes.
As with other new firms, securing sufficient market share
to enable various economies of scale will require
aggressive marketing. Given the propaganda and other forms
of misinformation promulgated by the public schools and
sometimes the private schools, the marketing campaign will
require some comparative information about those other
schools. But how can we “rate” the competition
when honest measures of their services are lacking?
Using Asora’s
NAEP Estimates As A Marketing Tool?
When Asora’s business plan was
unable to secure investment capital, we offered other
services including the calculation of student proficiency
estimates for individual public schools and school
districts.
Working under various contracts with public interest
foundations, for example, we analyzed the public schools in
the seven states of Oklahoma, New Hampshire, New Mexico,
Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Tennessee and Vermont. For each
school and district we used each state’s published
school proficiency levels as input to a mapping process
that estimated what the NAEP (Nation’s Report Card)
proficiencies would have been in each case. Given the fact
that the states almost always report grossly exaggerated
levels of student performance, our method resulted in more
realistic levels of student proficiencies. And also more
sobering.
Our method was also applied to the public schools of
Maryland, Virginia and Washington DC and then used to
produce a guide to public schools in that region. It was in
this context that our book became a marketing tool for
education providers because the book not only gave
information about the schools, it also gave considerable
information about supplementary instructional services and
resources that could enable parents and other stakeholders
consumer information directing them to these alternatives.
Sadly, very little interest has been shown by players in
the education industry in using our public school
performance estimates.
Fear Of Aggressive
NAEP “Based” Marketing
We were surprised that providers of
tutoring services and other educational products showed
very little interest in using our NAEP estimates.
As we discussed this disappointment with providers,
consultants and academics, we came to the tentative
conclusion that most firms in this sector also provide
services directly to public school organizations. Given
that using our NAEP estimates of public school performance
for marketing might offend the public school establishment,
we were told that most companies would forego such
aggressive marketing. But since when is it considered
“aggressive” to tell the truth?
Still this information should be of interest to enterprises
that don’t contract with the public schools. If such
companies do not exist in sufficient numbers, we think it
is time to create them.
Capitalists Might
Reconsider Their Reluctance
Do
capitalists bear some of the responsibility for the broken
marketplace of education? Let’s look at the broad
marketplace of education providers defined to include
public education. What can for-profit private firms in this
industry do to cure this dysfunctional marketplace?
Moreover, what can other companies in other industries do
to help their counterparts in the education industry?
Instead of asking this of individual firms, let’s ask
what existing trade associations and other business support
organizations can do to help build a competitive education
industry?
Chambers Of Commerce
As The New Nexus
Let’s think about Chambers of
Commerce. What are their purposes? Isn’t one of their
goals the promotion of enterprises within their
communities. Maybe Chambers could focus on the education
sector where such “industrial” development is
sorely needed? What can they do?
There is another reason why Chambers of Commerce might want
to help the education sector: It is in their self-interest
to promote education reform that will result in better
prepared entry level employees to their businesses.
One avenue that Chambers of Commerce could consider is the
development of independent testing of school children-
particularly at the high school levels. Chambers of
Commerce could offer testing to students and then issue
certificates of mastery to those who pass their tests. For
example, a Chamber of Commerce might use the ACT tests
(available at grade levels 8 through 12). They could even
issue “Chamber” Diplomas to those who have
demonstrated grade-level competence. Within a community,
businesses could make the passing of such testing a
criterion for hiring.
By doing this or something similar, the Chambers of
Commerce would help provide good consumer information about
schools and other educational services. The provision of
such information would help alleviate the present market
failure within the education industry. With such
information, parents and other stakeholders would be able
to make more informed choices, which would enhance the
competition among the schools and other providers.
And get this: No legislation is needed for Chambers to
undertake such projects.
The Romney Proposal
For School Level Report Cards
In May of this year, Presidential
Candidate Mitt Romney proposed that school level report
cards be developed for individual schools around the
country. The schools would be evaluated against solid
standards.
In his speech outlining this proposal there were few
details, but we can imagine how such a proposal could be
implemented.
One obvious avenue to such an outcome would simply have the
NAEP, which is based on testing sparse samples of students,
extended to test all students in American schools. That
would permit reporting student proficiency percentages at
the school level. We would also include private schools in
this testing system. Federal legislation would be required.
Or, as we suggested above, the ACT tests could be used to
generate school level report cards for the middle and high
school levels. Other similar tests, already in use, could
be used for the lower grade levels. Michigan is one state
already using the ACT for this purpose. To cover all
schools would again require some kind of federal
legislation. Failing that, covering more schools might be
accomplished by private “campaigns” to increase
interest in this approach among school operators and
stakeholders.
At Asora we are already producing school level report cards
based on our estimates of NAEP proficiencies. We have
generated estimates for nearly every public school in the
East Coast states. To finish and extend this work we need
to find sponsors who can fund the efforts required to cover
the entire United States. In terms of feasibility, it is
this approach that will most likely succeed. But
we’ll not be able to include private schools.
Still Awaiting
Feedback From The Global Report
Card
In our
January, April and July 2012 updates, we mentioned the
Global Report Card (GRC), which provides percentile ranks
for school districts within the United States in three
different frameworks: statewide, national and
international. The GRC results are provided by an online
service of the George W. Bush
Institute for Public Policy. You can view them at
http://www.globalreportcard.org/map.html.
We
have proposed to the Bush Institute that we discuss a
possible collaboration based on the additional kinds of
local proficiency estimates we have developed. We still
await their reply, though we are not holding our
breath.
At Asora we have improved upon the methods used by
the GRC. More details are described in our report,
Mapping
District Level K-12 Scale Scores Onto National &
International Assessment
Distributions. The report is in the file
QuantileMeasurements.docx
, which can be downloaded
from our Reform
Reports page.
Guidebooks Or Web
Guides To Public Schools And Supplementary
Services?
Our first guidebook,
It
Takes More Than A Village to educate your child when the
schools aren't up to the task, covered the public schools in Maryland,
Virginia and Washington D.C. The phrase "More Than" refers
to supplementary services, which include many tutoring
companies and other vendors in the "afterschool" space. You
can learn more about this guidebook by clicking
here. The
guidebooks play two roles: First, parents and others can
use them to find a better public school. More importantly,
the guidebooks contain directories to those offering
supplementary and alternative services.
Thus our guidebooks provide a means by which vendors
can publicize their services and thereby "drive" customers
to their businesses.
By early 2012, we had extended our local NAEP
estimates to all of the East Coast states. In contemplating
a hardcopy guidebook to this region, we are challenged by
the many hundreds of pages necessary to present even the
most basic estimates for each school and district. For this
reason and others, we are now contemplating a Web guide in
which advertising would fund the service.
But We Need
Working/Human Capital To Complete Our Guidebooks
Until
now the guidebook project has been a one-person effort.
Performing the data analysis required to cover the entire
United States along with the other preparatory work will
required the full time efforts of at least one other
collaborator/worker. These guides would include information
much like that contemplated for the school level report
cards proposed by Mitt Romney.
Thus seek various kinds of assistance in the
completion of this project. Interested parties could
consider, among other possibilities:
1. Investing in the production of the Web guide.
2. Collaborating with Asora in its production.
3. Contracting with Asora to make these kinds of
estimates for states and regions of interest.
The numbers we generate paint a
"picture of need." When parents and stakeholders finally
"see this light" they will often seek out the services of
the vendors listed within.
There Is Much More On
Our Website
For
further information, consider reviewing our
home
page where there
are links to more detailed descriptions of the services and
activities of Asora Education. Alternatively you might
consider visiting "What Was
New" to learn more
about our recent and not so recent history.
What Was New in July 2012
By David
V. Anderson
The
End Of Tutoring As We Know It
Our
theme this quarter, The End Of Tutoring
As We Know It, is
based on recent developments in the methods and
technologies that support and provide tutorial instruction.
The business plan for Asora Education’s Stellar
School Franchising Network of K-12 schools has always
contemplated a version of automated tutoring, which we have
called Cyber Tutoring. New research in the field has now
shown how computer based tutoring algorithms are almost as
effective as human tutors in helping students “learn
from their mistakes.”
The research in tutoring effectiveness strongly suggests
that Cyber Tutoring, which can be delivered much less
expensively than its traditional alternative, will attract
many customers while human tutors will lose market share.
We believe, with near certainty, that human tutors will
still be needed as a back-up resource and as the star
performers who will be appearing in the pre-recorded Cyber
Tutoring video clips. We also continue to believe that,
going forward, peer tutoring by more advanced students will
remain a viable practice.
Whether in a homeschooling virtual classroom or in a real
brick & mortar school, the Cyber Tutoring services will
be much less expensive to provide. Depending on the
economies of scale involved, the cost of Cyber Tutoring may
run in the pennies per hour as compared to the human
alternative where costs sometimes reach the $100 per hour
level.
As may be apparent to those who have studied the history of
education, the evolution of K-12 schooling towards
automated instruction and tutoring bears some resemblance
to the Lancastrian schools developed in England in the
years around 1800. In that model, one teacher would manage
a school of perhaps 200 children by using
“monitors” drawn from the more advanced
students in the school. The monitors were essentially peer
tutors who had the job of working with small groups of
students. If the schools we are contemplating come into
fashion, we’ll have schools in which one professional
teacher will be able to manage similar numbers of children.
The peer tutoring, however, in this case will be augmented
by the automated instructional and tutorial services. Also
in this mix would be additional personnel who would perform
those teaching and management chores that are needed to
supplement the online instructional systems as well as to
provide for conventionally taught elective courses.
Our topics this quarter, which relate to the automation of
instruction and tutoring are:
Effects on
Afterschool Tutoring Companies
Automated
tutoring will not be a major source of losses at first, but
over time it will gain market share for those tutoring
companies offering it. In time it will reduce the demand
for and the revenues from human tutoring. Those providers
who offer both human and computer based tutoring will find
ways to combine the two formats in ways that will increase
their market share but at the same time significantly
reducing their charges and costs. Price competition will
likely be severe. As automated tutoring becomes a
mainstream educational service, only those providers who
combine large economies of scale with other efficiencies
will have a good chance of survival.
Human and Computer
Based Tutoring
In
any given course, the tutoring process can be largely
specified in such a way that a computer can be programmed
to act as the tutor. But not completely. If one regards
tutoring from a Question & Answer format, it should be
possible to list and program many of the common questions,
mistakes and omissions that arise in the student’s
mind. But just as a Website’s FAQ is never a complete
list of user questions, we doubt that a computerized
tutoring service will be able to respond to all student
problems.
Over time, we expect the computer based tutoring process to
improve its ability to respond to the student. Even so, we
believe that human tutors will be needed to respond to
difficult situations not foreseen by the computerized
tutoring systems.
The Methods of
Step-Based Tutoring
For this discussion, Tutoring is regarded as the
instructional feedback that follows a student’s
incorrect answer to a test question. Prior to the tutoring,
we are assuming that the student has received instruction
in the topic under consideration.
We distinguish two types of tutoring: Single step and
multi-step. In the former, the tutor explains the correct
answer in terms of the most immediate item of prerequisite
knowledge. In the latter multi-step method, the tutor
reviews a sequence of prerequisite knowledge items and
makes an attempt to identify where in the sequence the
student’s misunderstanding or omission first
occurred.
Many research studies have been conducted in recent years
to determine the effectiveness of computer based tutoring.
Much of this was reviewed by Kurt VanLehn in
The Relative
Effectiveness of Human Tutoring, Intelligent Tutoring
Systems, and Other Tutoring Systems
(in Educational Psychologist,
46, 197-221, 2011)
In the case of computer based Single Step tutoring, VanLehn
reviewed dozens of other studies and found a significant
improvement: The average tutored student performed at the
62nd percentile compared to the untutored who remained at
50th.
For computer based Multi Step tutoring there was remarkable
improvement: The average tutored student rose to the 76th
percentile. That review also presents results for human
based Multi Step tutoring that are quite similar with the
tutored students achieving 79th percentile. Not much better
than the computer based version, but signficantly more
expensive to provide.
We are indebted to Professor Herbert Walberg, who called
our attention to VanLehn’s review.
Organizing Online
Instructional Programs
Based
on the foregoing we perceive three components to the
instructional process:
1. Presentation of information by the on-screen teacher.
2. Testing students on this content.
3. Tutoring students, online and “live”, to
resolve errors.
Nearly all of the first two components can be automated and
most of the third.
The teacher, as we have noted, is no longer in the
classroom, but is a “star” teacher who makes
perfected video segments of the instructional material. We
say “perfected” because the combination of
rehearsing and using multiple “takes” removes
most errors in the presentation. This is a distinct
improvement over live presentations where a slip of the
tongue can lead to confusion. “Perfected” also
suggests making the presentations interesting and
compelling. The star teachers and their assistants can also
assist with the “live” end of the tutoring
service.
The instructional program could be managed by one or more
individuals. The star teacher could do it all- and be the
author of the presentations, all of the tutoring material
and the testing. Or a group of instructors, including the
teacher, tutors, and assessment experts, could manage the
development and management of a course.
Who Is Left In The
Classroom?
As
we have indicated elsewhere in our business plans, the
students within a classroom will be operating in a
self-paced mode. Different students will likely be working
on different courses among various subjects. What school
personnel should manage the classroom?
The Stellar Schools, of our plans, will also teach elective
courses. Some of them will be taught online in the manner
of the core subjects, but others will be taught in more
traditional group instruction. The personnel in the
classrooms, ideally would have skills in the elective areas
and would be able to cover the tutoring needs for some of
the core subjects. Minimally, the classroom-based workers
would carry out so-called classroom management chores,
including the maintenance of order.
Still Awaiting
Feedback From The Global Report Card
In our
January and April 2012 updates, we mentioned the Global
Report Card (GRC), which provides percentile ranks for
school districts within the United States in three
different frameworks: statewide, national and
international. The GRC results are provided by an online
service of the George W. Bush
Institute for Public Policy. You can view them at
http://www.globalreportcard.org/map.html.
We
have proposed to the Bush Institute that we discuss a
possible collaboration based on the additional kinds of
local proficiency estimates we have developed. We still
await their reply, though we are not holding our
breath.
At Asora we have improved upon the methods used by
the GRC. More details are described in our report,
Mapping
District Level K-12 Scale Scores Onto National &
International Assessment
Distributions. The report is in the file
QuantileMeasurements.docx
, which can be downloaded
from our Reform
Reports page.
Guidebooks Or Web
Guides To Public Schools And Supplementary Services?
Our
first guidebook, It Takes More Than
A Village to educate your child when the schools aren't up
to the task,
covered the public schools in Maryland, Virginia and
Washington D.C. The phrase "More Than" refers to
supplementary services, which include many tutoring
companies and other vendors in the "afterschool" space. You
can learn more about this guidebook by clicking
here. The
guidebooks play two roles: First, parents and others can
use them to find a better public school. More importantly,
the guidebooks contain directories to those offering
supplementary and alternative services.
Thus our guidebooks provide a means by which vendors
can publicize their services and thereby "drive" customers
to their businesses.
During the winter, we extended our local NAEP
estimates to all of the East Coast states. In contemplating
a guidebook to this region, we are challenged by the many
hundreds of pages necessary to present even the most basic
estimates for each school and district. For this reason and
others, we are now contemplating a Web guide in which
advertising would fund the service.
But We Need
Working/Human Capital To Complete Our Guidebooks
Until now
the guidebook project has been a one-person effort.
Performing the data analysis required to cover the entire
United States along with the other preparatory work will
required the full time efforts of at least one other
collaborator/worker.
Thus seek various kinds of assistance in the
completion of this project. Interested parties could
consider, among other possibilities:
1. Investing in the production of the Web guide.
2. Collaborating with Asora in its production.
3. Contracting with Asora to make these kinds of
estimates for states and regions of interest.
The numbers we generate paint a
"picture of need." When parents and stakeholders finally
"see this light" they will often seek out the services of
the vendors listed within.
What Was New In April
2012
We Know How To Fix Schools. Do
You?
For
First Time Visitors:
Welcome
to Asora Education Enterprises, which is presently engaged
in:
1.) Publishing Web based regional guides and guidebooks to
public schools and the supplementary resources locally
available that are needed to bring the children attending
these schools up to grade level. The need for the latter is
implicit in the low performance levels of nearly all public
schools (and most private schools) that we have studied.
2.) An achievement test consulting service, in which we
analyze state administered tests to remove the
exaggerations found therein. Our guidebooks are based on
those studies.
3.) The Stellar Schools Franchising Project, which plans to
organize K-12 franchising networks of brick & mortar
schools that are based on a blended format of self-paced
online instruction combined with real books (including
e-books) and real tutors.
4.) The online courseware brokerage.
5.) A speakers' bureau focused on these topical areas.
If you're a new visitor to our website we suggest that you
might review the "headlines" below before venturing into
the other areas.
What
Was New In Preceding Updates:
If you
have not seen our previous quarterly "What's New" updates,
then you might want to
peruse
our "What Was New" page to see them by using the link at
the bottom of this page.
What’s New in April 2012
by David
V. Anderson
The Keystone of School Reform: Enforcing Assessment
Results
Our
theme this quarter,
Enforcing Assessment Results,
alludes to the fact that our present K-12 schools, both
public and private, are egregiously deficient in the uses
of assessment. Particularly, the measurements of student
competencies are mostly ignored as input to decisions
regarding promotion, graduation and transcripts.
We contend that educators, both public and private, have a
tradition in which the responsibilities for instruction
reside with the same management that is also responsible
for assessment related functions. This represents a
conflict of interest in which the school, so to speak,
becomes its own auditor. This conflict, whether by accident
or intent, has led to “look good” assessment
systems. After giving its students proficient designations,
these systems then proceed to promote, certify, and
graduate large percentages of children who, in most cases,
are really sub-proficient.
How does Asora have this insight when so many others
don’t? Many educators and stakeholders understand the
problem but remain unsure about the remedial steps that
might be taken.
Our understanding at Asora is based on our studies of
student proficiency levels, which we have performed for
nearly all of the public schools in approximately 20
states. Through our mapping technology we have generated
NAEP assessment estimates of student proficiencies. This
has allowed us to compare schools across state lines and
has allowed us to see the effects of economic demographics
more clearly than before. And as we discussed last quarter,
under its theme of a
"ceiling of mediocrity," even
schools in affluent areas are doing a poor job bringing
their students to proficient levels of content knowledge.
Our prescription for curing this disease in based on
removing the conflict of interest inherent in having
instruction and testing under the same management. We
advocate removing the responsibility of official tests,
transcripts, promotion, retention, proctoring, and
graduation to a separate agency or organization.
If implemented, this proposal will have disruptive
consequences for the schools. They will no longer be able
to engage in the
unwarranted promotion of
sub-proficient students. Rather they will be challenged to
provide remedial services to those who test below grade
level. Happily, cost-effective solutions are available to
help children catch up. They include computer-based
instruction, online courses, peer tutoring as well as human
tutoring.
Our topics this quarter, which touch on our desire
to
enforce assessment results, are:
Setting
The Stage With Milton Friedman's Observations
The
late Nobel Laureate and Professor of Economics, Milton
Friedman, had much to say about the problems of K-12
education. Based on his writings, speeches, correspondence
and personal communications, we know a great deal about his
opinions in this area. Taking the liberty to paraphrase his
actual commentary, we might find him saying
1. “Consider two brothers who have been able to build
a far better quality Buick in their Wisconsin barn than
their industrial counterparts in a Detroit factory.
Doesn’t that say something more about the factory
than the barn? Of course, this is a metaphor regarding home
schooling and its surprising superiority to public and even
private education.”
2.
“Look at the marginal performance of private schools,
which according to NAEP testing, is only somewhat better
than that of their public counterparts. Adam Smith
understood this. He observed and commented on the harm done
to private vendors when their public (government)
counterparts receive government subsidies. In other words,
try selling a product that someone else is giving
away.”
3. “ ‘Dumb and Dumber’ are appropriate
labels for non-profit private schools and public schools,
respectively. To have really effective schools likely
requires them to be for-profit.”
4. “Franchising may be a good business model for K-12
education. Within a franchising network all kinds of
franchisee schools would participate regardless of their
ownership and governance format- public, private
non-profit, and private for-profit.”
Professor Friedman’s observations about the
superiority of home schooling have been consistent with the
preceding comments about unwarranted promotion. Parents
love their children and would rarely abuse the testing
processes involved in home schooling. This suggests that
their children would tend towards proficiency. Unlike
parents, schools do not have the same level of regard for
the children in their care. They find it expedient to pass
them along, year after year, until they can pass them on to
society.
Friedman’s last two points, though not directly
related to the issues of unwarranted promotion, are
supportive of some of the solutions. Why not run schools
for profit? And why not use franchising to further improve
their quality and cost-effectiveness? Asora’s own
proposals for franchised Stellar Schools are based on these
principles.
A
Taxonomy Of Cheating
In the
past year, several cheating scandals have been uncovered in
our K-12 school systems. Last year, in Atlanta, nearly 180
school teachers and administrators were accused of altering
test results for Georgia’s statewide assessments.
Casting a wider net, investigators found similar patterns
and irregularities in approximately 200 other school
districts nationally. Let’s consider cheating where
it impacts student progress in K-12 schools. By types we
have:
1.
Student cheating.
Copying others’ answers, using prohibited
communications devices, and theft of examination materials
are among the improper behaviors seen in student cheating.
2.
Teacher cheating.
Stealing examination materials, ignoring student
misbehavior, coaching students, allowing extra time, and
altering answer sheets are some of the kinds of
improprieties teachers have been found doing.
3.
School administrator cheating. Here
there is sometimes collusion with teacher cheating. In
other instances school system administrators have
instituted policies known to interfere with the security of
examination documents and data.
4.
System cheating.
Seemingly innocuous policies that are designed to deceive
parents and other stakeholders represent a type of cheating
that is not obvious and yet has many harmful effects.
Laxity in the standards tested by state assessments,
extremely low passing grades at the classroom level, and
the promotion of children who fail in the classroom are the
principal forms of system cheating. Much of this cheating
is so “traditional” that educators don’t
recognize its presence.
Tests,
Testing, and Genuine School Reform
Is
the title of Herbert J. Walberg’s excellent book
(Hoover Institution Press, 2011), which includes
recommendations for more independence of the assessment
systems used in K-12 education. Many of Professor
Walberg’s conclusions are quite similar to ours. One
result: We have been working together on some op-ed
articles in this topical area.
Cheating
Breeds Unwarranted Promotion
One
common attribute among the different forms of cheating is
that of an exaggerated proficiency designation. The scale
of this exaggeration is quite large. Nationally, at the
8th
grade
level, it results in approximately 99% of the students
being promoted to the next grade level when, in fact, only
about one-third of them are sufficiently proficient to
warrant that promotion.
This brings us again to the concept of
unwarranted promotion of which
we consider three types.
Social Promotion. The most
well-known type of unwarranted promotion is that of social
promotion wherein school authorities promote a child who is
academically unprepared for the next grade level but is
moved along anyway based on maintaining the child’s
social relations.
Fiscal
Promotion. Many
schools would ideally want to retain a child who is
sub-proficient and provide the student with remedial
instruction to bring them up to grade level performance,
but they find it too expensive to do so. This type of
unwarranted promotion is not really a separate category of
promotion, but rather more accurately describes the
education system’s motivation for moving the child to
the next instructional level. We're tempted to call it the
"dirty little secret" of social promotion.
Marginal
Promotion. In some
cases, educators argue, with some validity, that the child
is not that far behind the grade level performance
standards to justify being held back an entire academic
term.
To
Fix Schools We Must End Unwarranted Promotion
Think
about it: A school that did not engage in unwarranted
promotion would only promote students found to be
proficient in their studies. Subsequent achievement testing
would then likely find nearly all of these children
proficient in their grade levels. The system wouldn’t
be perfect, but proficiency percentages in the 90% range
would be likely.
How can we end the unwarranted promotion and the underlying
cheating that is its cause?
Removing The Conflict Of Interest That Is The Root Of
The Problem
As
we stated above, we believe that the root of the problem
resides in the fact that schools have the dual
responsibilities of instruction and testing, which
constitute a conflict of interest. The school will be
motivated to look good and can achieve that through easy
testing. Or as we labeled it above, by cheating.
The solution is the establishment of independent testing
and certifying organizations that would have a number of
responsibilities:
1.
Establish subject content standards.
2. Test students on this content.
3. Report results.
4. Control passing and retentions by passing only those
found proficient.
5. Control transcripts.
6. Control diplomas and graduations.
How
Schools Would Respond
Schools
would focus on instruction as their former testing and
certifying roles would no longer occupy their time. The
initial effects of the independent testing would include
large numbers of children retained. Schools would need to
focus much of their efforts on remediation. With
traditional instructional methods and technology, this
would be costly. Schools would be forced to seek
alternatives. Luckily, cost effective alternatives are
coming. Self-paced instruction can be enabled through
online instruction delivered on demand. The teachers would
morph into tutors. Within a few years, we foresee the
levels of retention going down. The role of online
self-paced instruction would attract more and more
participants- well beyond the remedial role. We think a
high percentage of the instruction would move to this
format.
The interplay between the enforcement function of the
independent testing and certification organizations and the
instructional services in the schools would end the
unwarranted promotions and would lead to the desired status
wherein schools would have nearly all students accorded the
status of proficient- we think 90% or more.
Now you know what we know! You can go out and fix the
schools in your midst.
Awaiting
Feedback From The Global Report Card
Last
quarter, in January 2012, we mentioned the Global Report
Card (GRC), which provides percentile ranks for school
districts within the United States in three different
frameworks: statewide, national and international. The GRC
results are provided by an online service of the George W.
Bush Institute for Public Policy. You can view them at
http://www.globalreportcard.org/map.html.
We have proposed to the Bush Institute that we discuss a
possible collaboration based on the additional kinds of
local proficiency estimates we have developed. We await
their reply.
At Asora we have improved upon the methods used by the GRC.
More details are described in our report,
Mapping
District Level K-12 Scale Scores Onto National &
International Assessment Distributions.
The
report is in the file
QuantileMeasurements.docx , which
can be downloaded from our
Reform Reports page.
Guidebooks
Or Web Guides To Public Schools And Supplementary
Services?
Our
first guidebook,
It Takes More Than A Village to educate your child when
the schools aren't up to the task,
covered the public schools in Maryland, Virginia and
Washington D.C. The phrase "More Than" refers to
supplementary services, which include many tutoring
companies and other vendors in the "afterschool" space. You
can learn more about this guidebook by
clicking here. The
guidebooks play two roles: First, parents and others can
use them to find a better public school. More importantly,
the guidebooks contain directories to those offering
supplementary and alternative services.
Thus our guidebooks provide a means by which vendors can
publicize their services and thereby "drive" customers to
their businesses.
During the winter, we extended our local NAEP estimates to
all of the East Coast states. In contemplating a guidebook
to this region, we are challenged by the many hundreds of
pages necessary to present even the most basic estimates
for each school and district. For this reason and others,
we are now contemplating a Web guide in which advertising
would fund the service.
But
We Need Working/Human Capital To Complete Our
Guidebooks
Until
now the guidebook project has been a one-person effort.
Performing the data analysis required to cover the entire
United States along with the other preparatory work will
required the full time efforts of at least one other
collaborator/worker.
Thus we seek various kinds of assistance in the completion
of this project. Interested parties could consider, among
other possibilities:
1. Investing in the production of the Web guide.
2.
Collaborating with Asora in its production.
3.
Contracting with Asora to make these kinds of estimates for
states and regions of interest.
The numbers we generate paint a "picture" of need. When
parents and stakeholders finally "see this light" they will
often seek out the services of the vendors listed
within.
What Was New in January
2012
By David
Anderson
We
were not late with the December 2011 update!
Rather we decided to shift our quarterly updates forward to
be dispatched in the months: January, April, July &
October. We did this in recognition that December is a
month of distraction with Christmas and other holidays
focusing your and our attention away from these more
secular matters.
A
Ceiling of Mediocrity
Our theme this quarter, A Ceiling of
Mediocrity, is
descriptive of the performance of children in public (and
sometimes private) K-12 education. Our interest here is
data driven. We find that even in the best public schools
that a majority of children are below grade level. Thus we
refer to these "best" schools as being at the
"ceiling of
mediocrity." So far,
beyond one or two exceptions, there are no excellent public
schools and to find a good one is exceedingly difficult or
impossible depending on where one resides.
As we have been gathering assessment proficiency data for a
guidebook to public schools of the East Coast United
States, we have been struck by the seeming inability of our
schools to produce proficiencies much over 60% - even when
nearly all of the students are not disadvantaged.
A more meaningful statistic, in our opinion, is not the
proficiency level of the entire tested population. Rather a
more relevant parameter is the performance of a group with
specified demographic characteristics that enables making
comparisons with other groups having those same
demographics. In making the NAEP estimates discussed here,
we have looked at the subset of tested groups limited to
those groups having 80% or more non-disadvantaged children.
We call this group the Top
Tranche.
Nearly All Schools
Are Sick
When we
segregate our proficiency estimates by these demographic
tranches, the usual disparity of student performance, from
state to state, narrows significantly:
At the 4th and 8th grades, the differences among states
diminish. The spread of their proficiencies narrows by half
or more. We see this effect at the 12th grade as well, but
are not as confident given the additional assumptions and
approximations used at that level to generate our
estimates.
When we see this narrower range of public school
performance it suggests that the operations of public
schools, from state to state, do not vary much. Given that
the proficiencies seen for the Top Tranch rarely exceed
60%, it suggests that nearly all schools are drab,
monolithic and dysfunctional. Moreover it implies that
there are few if no role model schools for others to
emulate. These problems extend beyond public schools into
most private schools as well.
We believe that a combination of two practices, that are
endemic to public and private education, provide the
essential basis and explanation for these problems:
1. Group instruction
2. And its accomplice, social promotion.
The good news is that technology now makes both of these
practices obsolete and relatively inefficient. Online
instruction, mediated by tutoring, combined with a rigorous
assessment regime can replace these traditions. They can
lead us into a new era in education in which proficiency
will be the norm (rather than the exception it is now).
Asora's Stellar Schools are designed around these concepts.
Is
It Possible That Washington D.C. Tops the 4th Grade
Heap?
One of the results of these NAEP
estimations- covering all public schools in 14 East Coast
states- is that Washington D.C., with an estimated NAEP
proficiency of 65%, for the Top Tranche, is significantly
ahead of number two, Massachusetts (at 61%). and number
three, Connecticut (at 58%).
When demographics are ignored, one gets the usual result:
Massachusetts leads with 47% proficient, and D.C. comes in
last at 17%.
Although our focus is on the Top Tranche, for comparison we
note that in the Bottom Tranche (where 80% or more of the
children are disadvantaged) the estimated numbers of
proficient children range from 9% to 27% over these same 10
states.
The nearby table shows the best performers in the Top
Tranche NAEP estimations for the three grade levels of
interest.
Grade
|
State
|
Estimated
NAEP Proficiency
|
4th
|
DC
|
65.4%
|
4th
|
MA
|
61.0%
|
4th
|
CT
|
57.7%
|
8th
|
NJ
|
56.2%
|
8th
|
CT
|
54.5%
|
8th
|
RI
|
54.3%
|
12th
|
MA
|
49.6%
|
12th
|
NJ
|
44.0%
|
12th
|
CT
|
43.5%
|
New Jersey Leads in
the 8th Grade Comparisons
As the chart shows, New Jersey, Connecticut and Rhode
Island take the top three positions- win, place and show-
with 56%, 55% and 54% estimated proficient within the Top
Tranche, respectively.
Massachusetts Wins
the High School Competition Among Those in the Top
Tranche
Whether or not demographics are taken into account,
Massachusetts high school students have NAEP estimated
proficiencies significantly above its nearest rivals.
Within the Top Tranche, we estimate Massachusetts average
proficiencies of 50%, 6 points above runners-up New Jersey
and Connecticut.
We believe that Massachusetts is unique among the
Northeastern States in that it uses its achievement testing
(the MCAS examinations) as a graduation requirement. Based
on this we hypothesize that it acts as an incentive for
students to learn more or, in some cases, to drop out of
the tested group. Either way, the average MCAS performance
of the tested group should increase, which indirectly
increases our NAEP estimates for them.
When Even The Best
Are Bad
The implications of the foregoing suggest that even the
very best public schools, which are found in the Top
Tranche, are highly dysfunctional when approximately half
of their children are below grade level.
Private schools are not immune to these problems, though
they are impacted less than their public counterparts.
We know how to fix these schools, but the political will is
not there to accomplish such an overhaul. It is left to
parents to arrange additional instructional resources to
fill the gaps. Asora's guidebooks are designed to help
parents detect their children's shortcomings and lead them
to resources that can provide the needed remediation. We
are currently producing a book covering schools in East
Coast states. Here's a peek at the book's cover page:
Enhancing the Global
Report Card
Last
summer we learned about the Global Report Card (GRC), which
provides percentile ranks for school districts within the
United States in three different frameworks: statewide,
national and international.The GRC results are provided by
an online service of the George W. Bush Institute for
Public Policy. You can view them at
http://www.globalreportcard.org/map.html.
Jay Greene, a professor at the Univeristy of Arkansas and a
Fellow at the Bush Institute, is the pioneer who developed
this school performance measure in which local school
districts are compared in mathematics skills at the three
different levels just mentioned.
Unlike our work, in which we estimate proficiencies at the
school and district level, the GRC uses percentile rankings
as its figure of merit. Currently it does not report at the
school level, but the data to do that is available.
At Asora we have generalized the methods Greene developed
to provide more accurate estimates of the percentile
rankings. More details are described in our report,
Mapping District Level
K-12 Scale Scores Onto National & International
Assessment Distributions. The report is in the file
QuantileMeasurements.docx
, which can be downloaded
from our Reform Reports
page.
Encouraged by GRC's international example, we have also
developed an analogous method for estimating NAEP
proficiencies of selected foreign countries to which we can
compare districts and states in the United States. For
example, New Hampshire, which has an 8th grade NAEP math
proficiency of 43.3% falls between Estonia (42.2%) and
Germany (43.9%). We don't interpret this as to say New
Hampshire is as good as these European countries. Rather
these European countries and New Hampshire are doing a poor
job of educating their students when over half of their
students are not meeting standards.
Our Guidebooks Can
Help Tutoring Firms Attract Private Pay
Customers
Our first guidebook, It Takes More Than
A Village to educate your child when the schools aren't up
to the task,
covered the public schools in Maryland, Virginia and
Washington D.C. The phrase "More Than" refers to
supplementary services, which include many tutoring
companies and other vendors in the "afterschool" space. You
can learn more about this guidebook by clicking
here. The
guidebooks play two roles: First, parents and others can
use them to find a better public school. More
importantly, the guidebooks contain directories to those
offering supplementary and alternative services.
Thus our guidebooks provide a means by which vendors can
publicise their services and thereby "drive" customers to
their businesses.
We Seek Help To
Complete Our Guidebooks
In the past
year our efforts on the guidebooks have expanded. We
recently completed the data analysis for an additional 10
states (Delaware through Maine) with the intention to
publish a guidebook for the East Coast states. We are
reviewing that decision and are considering instead a
"growing" guidebook that will eventually cover all 50
states plus the District of Columbia.
We seek various kinds of assistance in the completion of
this project. Interested parties could consider, among
other possibilities:
1. Investing in the production of the books.
2. Collaborating with Asora in their production.
3. Contracting with Asora to make these kinds of estimates
for states and regions of interest.
The numbers we generate paint a "picture of need." When
parents and stakeholders finally "see this light" they will
often seek out the services of the vendors listed within.
What Was New in
September 2011
By David
Anderson
We
have two themes this quarter because we don’t have
the patience to delay one of them until the next quarter!
Our first theme regards the profession of teaching. We
envisage radical changes coming to such an extent
that teachers, as we know
them, will become extinct. Supplanting teaching will be new forms of
instruction, including online courses and various forms of
tutoring. The total instructional work force will shrink
significantly- we think a 25% reduction is in the likely
range.
Our second theme, related to educational economics, is that
education reformers should fix
private schools first. Though not as dysfunctional as their
public cousins, most private schools are mediocre, with
more than half of their students (also) below grade level.
We think non-profit private schools lack the incentives to
thrive and therefore pin our hopes on for-profit schools.
And just think: reforming a private school can be done with
very little interference from the government and unions.
GDP
Boost From Good Teaching- It’s In The
Trillions
Recent research studies conducted by
Stanford’s Eric Hanushek and others not only confirm
the correlation between good teachers and student
proficiencies, but also predict the effects better teaching
would have on the national economy. They estimate that just
replacing the bottom 10% of teachers with average teachers
would move the United States student skill levels (in math)
to equal those of the top European students (in Finland)
and would increase the present value of future US GDP by
more than $100 trillion. This is not a typo. More
information on this can be found here.
I’ve Had A
Good Look At Teacher Competence
Approximately ten years ago, I
considered becoming a substitute teacher in California
and was required to take an eligibility examination, the
CBEST, that is used to screen California teachers to
ensure their basic academic competencies. The test was
quite easy and did not test beyond the
10th
grade level. Yet, 30% of
California teachers fail this examination on their first
attempt. The national situation is not much different.
In light of the preceding remarks on the value of good
teaching, does this not suggest that we might replace
the bottom 30% of teachers and by doing so elevate
American students to skill levels well above the best
seen in Europe?
Then Finland would want to catch up to us!
How Asora’s
Stellar Schools Will Achieve Highly Competent
Instruction:
If
dismissing the bottom 10% of teachers has the beneficial
improvements of bringing American children to Finnish
levels of academic performance, what would the removal of
the bottom 25% combined with the retraining of the
remaining 75% do? In the Stellar Schools environment,
(click here to learn more
about this) the
instruction is online, which requires significantly
fewer teachers- or shall we say
“instructors”-than before. In our model, the
classroom teacher’s job morphs into that of a
tutor-facilitator, whose role does not include much
instructing beyond what occurs in the one-on-one
tutoring relationships. A very small percentage of
instructors would appear on-demand in the online self-paced environment
where they would instruct many hundreds, or thousands,
or even millions of children each. For these “on
camera” roles, Stellar Schools can hire star
instructors, which in many cases might be university
professors who possess great content expertise as well
as pedagogic skills.
How can one be so sure of this? Well, I experienced
something like this in my 1957 high school physics class,
which was taught via television with Berkeley physics
professor Harvey White doing the instruction. If the
“proof is in the pudding” I later earned a
Ph.D. in physics. Even then the economy of scale was quite
significant with 100,000 students, all across the United
States, enrolled in this class.
Replace Teaching As
We Know It With What?
Various prognosticators and futurists
predict that K-12 education will evolve to implementations
based mostly on self-paced online instruction in which the
instructional model is that of tutoring. According to
Clayton Christensen’s recent book,
(Disrupting Class: How Disruptive Innovation
Will Change the Way the World
Learns),
more than half of K-12 instruction will be online within
the next eight years.
If this is our destiny, what will happen or perhaps more
importantly what should happen to the profession of teaching? We
take a view consistent with our business plan
for Stellar Schools which
should not be meant to exclude other approaches
involving online instruction.
In the subsector of online tutorial instruction we foresee
that for every 100 teachers currently working in K-12
education:
1. Approximately 68 tutors will be engaged working in
classrooms.
2. Another 6 tutors will work remotely at a “help
desk” facility.
3. No more than 1 instructor will deliver content online.
By these estimates alone, it is clear that the population
of instructional staff (those who teach, tutor or instruct)
would shrink by 25% in this scenario. But not all of the
remaining 75 instructional workers would continue his or
her employment in K-12 education; rather there would be
turnover based on finding the most competent individuals
for each position. We presume that many current teachers
will be retrained to work as tutors, which will not only
include learning new pedagogical techniques and methods,
but will also require many of them to “beef up”
their content knowledge.
Adam Smith And
Milton Friedman On Subsides:
In
reviewing the student proficiencies of American K-12
students, it is noteworthy that 8th grade private school students do not
perform anywhere near the popular conception. In fact, the
Nation’s Report Card consistently reports that less
than half of these students (about 45% of them) are
proficient in reading and math. Public school
children’s proficiency levels are lower- typically
around 30%.
In earlier Asora updates we commented on the broken
marketplace for K-12 education. What did Adam Smith contend
and what did Milton Friedman say about this issue?
Smith wrote in his famous book, “The Wealth of
Nations,” that subsidized teaching would tend to
reduce the number of privately paid teachers and would act
to bring the quality of private instruction down towards
the level of the subsidized one. And Friedman once quipped,
“Try selling a product that someone else is giving
away!”
What About the
Mediocrity of Non-Profit Private
Schools?
We
think non-profit private schools operate under weak
incentives for success: There’s no profit motive
except for the incentive of solvency. Without a profit
motive there is little encouragement for growth and once
the “seats are filled” there is little interest
in further improvements beyond the relatively weak effects
of altruism.
We think that for-profit schools, though currently limited
in number, have the potential to be the engines of reform.
Were it not for the broken marketplace of education, we
believe nearly all K-12 schools would be for-profit or
operated under contract with for-profit management
companies.
Milton Friedman agreed that non-profit schools have these
problems, when we asked him about these issues in 2003. The
relevant correspondence and related report are contained in
a pdf file downloadable
here.
When Do
Public-Private Joint Efforts Make
Sense?
There
are obviously many relationships between government schools
and various kinds of private enterprises. Among the latter
are the vendors of textbooks, specialized instructional
& testing services, and education management
organizations. In each of these areas, the government
entity prescribes the goods and services to be purchased
and has the authority to renegotiate different terms as the
contracts specify or allow. Political interests often
dictate these arrangements. If those interests are opposed
to effective reforms, as is almost always the case where
teachers’ unions hold sway, then the private goods
and services will not contribute much to educational
progress.
Asora’s Stellar Schools model also foresees
public-private collaborations, but proposes that they be
under franchising contracts. Under franchising, the
for-profit franchisor is the party that dictates the
resources and methods to be used and is relatively immune
to political meddling. This is so because altering the
franchise contract would damage the franchisor’s
brand (and reputation) and would be resisted by the
franchisor. We believe the franchising model allows the
Stellar Schools franchisor to operate one or more networks
of schools regardless of the legal format of the franchisee
schools (government, non-profit, or for-profit). Learn more
about franchised Stellar Schools here.
Asora Can Help
Tutoring Firms Attract Private Pay
Customers
In July 2011, Asora Education Enterprises
participated in the annual EdVentures Conference of the
Education Industry Association (EIA). Of the member
companies within the EIA, a plurality are enterprises
providing various kinds of after-school instructional
services. At Asora’s booth we encouraged these
“tutoring” companies to consider using our data
(primarily of school and district level estimated NAEP
proficiencies) to attract “private pay”
customers, either by directly contracting with us or by
using our guidebooks to
public schools and supplementary instructional
services. We
continue to seek forward-looking providers in this area
to solicit our help in developing prospective clients.
We Seek Help To
Complete Our Guidebooks
Most of our
efforts in the past year have focused on the production of
guidebooks to public schools and supplementary
instructional resources. Our first book, "It Takes More
Than A Village," was published in February 2011. For the
Potomac Region of MD, VA and DC it provides estimated NAEP
proficiencies for nearly every public school and school
district and it provides lists of vendors and other
resources that provide "after school" supplementary
services, which can help bring students up to grade level.
We have collected the data needed to produce a second
guidebook, this time for the ten states in the Northeastern
US. We seek collaborators to help us complete this effort.
There
Is Much More On Our Website
For further
information, consider reviewing our home page where there are links to more detailed
descriptions of the services and activities of Asora
Education. Alternatively you might consider visiting
"What Was New" to learn more about our recent and
not so recent history.
What
Was New In June 2011
June Theme: Sharing the Blame for K-12 Education Market
Failure
At
Asora Education, we believe in the superiority of free
market capitalism over its rivals to deliver the best
quality goods and services at the lowest possible costs.
We do not believe what most educators hold: That education
is a special industry that's immune from the laws of
economics and free markets. In particular we believe that
educational services and products would be far superior to
what we have if a free market were allowed to operate in
this economic sector.
Instead, the productivity of our education sector is low,
the costs are high, and the quality of its "output" is
mediocre at best. Not only is public education
dysfunctional, but private K-12 education is also troubled-
though to a lesser degree.
We believe the degradation of K-12 education has resulted
from well intended but wrong headed laws and regulations
that have been enacted over the past century (and longer),
which have broken down the pillars of a functioning free
market competitive economy in this sector.
Those pillars include:
1. The pillar of
accurate information. With good information, parents and other
statkeholders can make appropriate choices for a student.
Without it, consumers will often choose inferior providers
of educational services.
2. The pillar of fair
competition. When
providers are treated equally, only those providing high
quality goods and services survive. That's unlike the
current environment where monopolistic operators (the
public schools) are receiving large subsidies that markedly
distort the playing field on which the providers compete.
3. The pillar of the
rule of law. When laws
and regulations are applied fairly, healthy competition can
ensue. Alternatively, when favoritism is shown the best
providers may lose market share and risk going under.
Unfortunately, most efforts at reform concern themselves
more narrowly. They tend to ignore the "pillars" while
focusing on the details of the instructional systems. Thus
most efforts at education reform in the K-12 sector involve
attempts to make changes to the practices, to the tools, to
the personnel, and to the curricula of primary and
secondary education. But they haven't borne much fruit:
Children perform at about the same low levels as they did
during much of the last century.
A longer discussion of these concerns can be found on our
page: What Ails Our
Schools.
Teachers
Are The Most To Blame
Who then should
we blame for our dysfunctional K-12 schools? Ordering the
"candidates" by their duty to educate our children we have:
Parents.
They have been misled and
typically don't scrutinize the schools of their children.
Teachers.
Some can't teach well and
most of them irresponsibly vote for the union.
School
Administrators. They
manage the bad practices.
Teachers'
Unions. They work to
"elect" their friends to school boards who then usually do
the union's bidding.
School Boards.
They often neglect their
positions of trust and put the unions' interests ahead of
their duty to children.
Law Makers.
Many legislators are in the
pocket of the unions who then resist prudent reforms.
Business
Organizations. Chambers of Commerce and others complain
about low skills but do little to help.
All of these folks should know better- and none more so
than the teachers.
SES Providers Should Focus On Private
Pay
There is currently
much concern within the SES providers' community over the
uncertain future of government subsidies to them for their
tutoring services provided to public school children.
Whether or not the SES "sector" loses these funding
streams, they should also consider getting more active in
the "private pay" sector.
To attract parents to their services, SES providers need to
have ways to market themselves based on the real needs of
children. These needs are not always evident to parents and
other stakeholders because of the public school system rosy
propaganda to the contrary.
Asora's guidebook projects (and its ability to do contract
research in the area) are resources that can be used to
generate the "how bad it is" information about public
schools. Companies within the SES sector might find this
information beneficial in their marketing programs.
It Takes More Than A Village
As we mentioned in our previous update,
we have had some difficulties in producing an e-book
version. We recently contracted with a production service
that will generate the various versions appropriate for
reading on different mobile devices, including iPad, Nook,
Cruz, and even Kindle. We hope to have versions for sale at
the various online book sellers- with our first efforts
being focused on the iBookstore of Apple.
But, in the meantime, we have published a paperback edition
of our book. The front and back covers of our book tell you
more:
[We
thank, ChloroFill, LLC for their generosity in allowing us
to use their art work. ChloroFill is a producer of
environmentally responsible building materials.
(www.chlorofill.com)]
and the back
cover:
The
book's extended title,
We will soon
have our e-book available from the online bookstores
operated by Barnes & Noble, Borders, and Apple's
iBookstore. The book can be read on the color e-book
readers sold by these same stores. Also, our book will be
readable on Amazon.com's Kindle reader, but only in black
and white. We look forward to color Kindle readers but we
don't know when they will arrive?
In the meantime you can also purchase the book, either, in
e-book pdf format, or as a paperback by clicking
here to reach
the guidebook area of the Asora website.
Next Book: Guidebook For The Northeastern United
States
As we mentioned in the last two updates,
we have assembled nearly all of the state reported
assessment data required to prepare a guidebook for the ten
states in the northeastern United States- from Delaware and
Pennsylvania to Maine. This Northeastern Region encompasses
a population nearly four times that of the Potomac Region.
While we don't currently have the financial or human
resources to complete this project in a prompt fashion, we
are nevertheless going to push forward and hope to have
something in the fall.
Maybe someone out there reading this would like to
collaborate? As authors and collaborators, we intend to
generate some income from the book sales. Thus, we aim to
make some profit from this effort even as we "profit" the
parents and other stakeholders benefiting from our
information.
Asora Is For Sale
When we say that our business is for
sale, we mean that we are looking for others to help it
grow. At one extreme this quest would result in the sale of
our business with no further participation of Asora
personnel, while at the other we'd still be involved in
some aspects.
If we remain involved in some way, we envisage various
kinds of collaborations: partnerships, joint-ventures,
consulting arrangements. Asora's current management will
likely need to be replaced within the next five years.
Most of our assets are intangible, including our expertise,
our work product, and, perhaps, most important our
registered trademark Asora®.
What
Was New In March 2011
March Theme: Pervasive K-12 Corruption Thwarts Reform
We've been thinking quite alot about the forms of
corruption that exist in our public and private K-12
education systems and how this misbehavior has greatly
degraded the performance of these schools from their full
potential. A longer discussion of these concerns can be
found on our page: What Ails Our
Schools.
One aspect of this corruption relates to the dishonest
reporting of student proficiencies by most state
departments of education. In our analysis of 2009 testing,
only two states were free of this kind of propaganda:
Massachusetts and South Carolina.
From the standpoint of economics, providing consumers with
bad information about the products and services in a
marketplace will lead them to make poor decisions- which
would include the passive acceptance of their children's
enrollment in an inferior local public school.
We think that an educational marketplace with honest
information about student proficiencies would tend to
increase the competition among schools (public and private)
which, in turn, would lead to performance improvements that
would be much less likely in the highly propagandized
environment in which we live.
We at Asora Education are making an attempt to replace this
propaganda with more realistic estimates of local school
proficiencies. If we can prominently display our
information in front of the consumers (parents and other
stakeholders) we may be able to remedy some of the harm
coming from this kind of corrupt activity. Thus our
guidebook projects may provide a cure to this disease of
lying- from so many state departments of education?
It Takes More Than A Village
We had a
set-back in our efforts to publish e-book versions of our
guidebook to the public schools in Maryland, Virginia &
Washington D.C. (when the e-publishers were unable to deal
with a book of this one's complexity).
But, in the meantime, we have published a paperback edition
of our book. The front and back covers of our book tell you
more:
[We
thank, ChloroFill, LLC for their generosity in allowing us
to use their art work. ChloroFill is a producer of
environmentally responsible building materials.
(www.chlorofill.com)]
and the back
cover:
The
book's extended title,
We later
hope to have our e-book available from the online
bookstores operated by Barnes & Noble, Borders, and
Apple's iBookstore. The book can be read on the color
e-book readers sold by these same stores. Also, our book
will be readable on Amazon.com's Kindle reader, but only in
black and white. We look forward to color Kindle readers
but we don't know when they will arrive?
In the meantime you can also purchase the book, either, in
e-book pdf format, or as a paperback by clicking
here to
reach the guidebook area of the Asora website.
Limbo Status Of Guidebook For The Northeastern United
States
As we
mentioned in the December 2010 update, we have assembled
nearly all of the state reported assessment data required
to prepare a guidebook for the ten states in the
northeastern United States- from Delaware and Pennsylvania
to Maine. This Northeastern Region encompasses a population
nearly four times that of the Potomac Region.
We don't currently have the financial or human resources to
complete this project. Maybe someone out there reading this
would like to collaborate? We aim to make some profit from
this effort even as we "profit" the parents and other
stakeholders when they benefit from our information.
Asora Has Moved To A Less Hostile Location
In
January, Asora Education Enterprises relocated to
Atlleboro, Massachusetts from our previous location in
Rhode Island.
Rhode Island was a difficult environment not only because
of a great deal of hositilty to market based education
reform, but also because policy makers and organizations
that purported themselves to be friends of free markets
were frequently dismissive of our efforts.
From the top to the bottom of the Rhode Island education
establishment (Governor's Office, Board of Regents, Rhode
Island Department of Education, and various School
Committees) not one accepted our offers of pro bono
assistance while some made efforts to discredit our work.
This was not a partisan issue. Players from both major
parties were obstacles to us.
Massachusetts, though having the best public schools in the
nation, still has many of the same problems seen in other
states. To the extent Asora engages in pro bono work in our
new location, we're hopeful that we can find partners
accepting of our talents. We look forward to more
harmonious relationships as we look for opportunities here
in Massachusetts.
Our
December 2010 Update:
December
Theme: Franchising Is Key To Reform
Those of
you familiar with the Asora Stellar Schools plans know that
our goal is the provision of K-12 instructional services in
real brick & mortar schools. Various kinds of online
instructional systems including digital content would be
provided to schools in a network.
A review of education industry developments shows many
vendors moving to provide instructional services very much
like those embodied in our business plan.
There is one organizational design feature of Asora Stellar
Schools that is not being addressed by other vendors:
establishing franchising networks of schools. We chose this
network format over rival structures, such as licensing and
wholly owned networks, because we think it is not only a
better match to the ownership structures of exisiting
schools but also because we believe it provides superior
incentives for developing excellent schools.
More
information about the advantages of franchising school
networks can be found our Why Franchising
Page. Our
business plan for Asora's Stellar Schools provides many
details about the relevant franchising arrangements. It
can be downloaded from our Reports on Development
Page.
It Takes More Than A Village
We are
still in the process of publishing the guidebook to public
schools and alternatives for the Potomac Region and will
first sell it as an e-book that can be read on a variety of
color e-readers as well as computer screens. The front and
back covers of our book tell you more:
[We
thank, ChloroFill, LLC for their generosity in allowing us
to use their art work. ChloroFill is a producer of
environmentally responsible building materials.
(www.chlorofill.com)]
and the back
cover:
The
book's extended title,
We soon
expect to have our e-book available from the online
bookstores operated by Barnes & Noble, Borders, and
Apple's iBookstore. The book can be read on the color
e-book readers sold by these same stores. Also, our book
will be readable on Amazon.com's Kindle reader, but only in
black and white. We look forward to color Kindle readers
but we don't know when they will arrive?
In the meantime you can also purchase the book, in pdf
format, by clicking
here to
reach the guidebook area of the Asora website.
Finally, we also look forward to printing paperback and
hardback versions of the book.
Status Of Guidebook For The Northeastern United
States
We have
assembled nearly all of the state reported assessment data
required to prepare a guidebook for the ten states in the
northeastern United States- from Delaware and Pennsylvania
to Maine. This Northeastern Region encompasses a population
nearly four times that of the Potomac Region.
Once we start generating revenue from the guidebook for the
Potomac Region, we should be able to launch this far more
ambitious publishing effort. As is the case for the Potomac
Region guidebook, the school-by-school proficiency
estimates will be freely available on our website but the
guidebooks will be our profit center.
We Can Help Providers Of Supplemental Services
Our
guidebooks are based on a premise familiar to providers of
supplemental services: Schools are often failing children
who can benefit from one or more of the services offered by
that provider.
For us at Asora it is more than a premise or assumption. We
have the proof. We have done the research covering tens of
thousands of schools to demonstrate quantitatively that
most students in most schools in most regions are below
grade level. Thus the premise gains additional stature
giving providers of supplemental services operating in
these areas additional data on which they can base their
marketing to families and other stakeholders who are
seeking help for children at risk of falling
behind.
Our
September 2010 Update:
September
Theme: Profits Can Drive Reform
A
familiar refrain among those pushing for education reform
is: “where is the funding?”
In every economic activity, whether within the government,
whether among non-profits, or whether in profit making
businesses a funding mechanism is key if that activity is
to continue and grow. Education is no exception.
One of our business activities has been our assessment
services. Our primary activity has been the production of
estimated NAEP proficiencies at the school and district
levels. At its root, it is a data analysis and publishing
endeavor. A secondary role of this effort is that of
providing marketing information to our Stellar Schools
project.
Until recently, this work was sold as a consulting service
in which typically a non-profit educationally focused
organization would hire us to produce these NAEP estimates
for the public schools within the states of interest and
additionally provide analysis about them. We profited
financially from this activity- albeit modestly.
Now we are developing guidebooks to public schools based on
the same kinds of analysis and data processing. We see the
provision of these NAEP estimates as an essential
ingredient to education reform. After all, parents,
educators, and other stakeholders need honest information
about schools if they are to act in the best interests of
the children attending them. The more information, the
better.
If we can earn significant profits from these guidebooks,
we can use a major portion of these positive cash flows to
reinvest in more books, more editions, and other means of
disseminating this valuable information. Thus,
the more the profits, the better it will
be!
To these ends we are in the process of publishing a
guidebook for the Maryland, Virginia, and Washington DC
region, while at the same time developing the data sets for
a much larger effort involving the northeastern United
States. More information about these two efforts follows
farther along.
It Takes More Than A Village
We are
in the process of publishing the guidebook to public
schools and alternatives for the Potomac Region and will
first sell it as an e-book that can be read on a variety of
e-readers as well as computer screens. The front and back
covers of our book tell you more:
[We
thank, ChloroFill, LLC for their generosity in allowing us
to use their art work. ChloroFill is a producer of
environmentally responsible building materials.
(www.chlorofill.com)]
and the back
cover:
The
book's extended title,
We soon
expect to have our book available from the online
bookstores operated by Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble,
Borders, and particularly at Apple's iBookstore. We
emphasize the latter because it sells books for the iPad
reader which can display color, which we use in some of our
graphics.
In the meantime you can also purchase the book, in pdf
format, by clicking
here to
reach the guidebook area of the Asora website.
Finally, we also look forward to printing paperback and
hardback versions of the book.
Our 2nd Guidebook Is For The Northeast
In our
most recent Asora update we suggested that our second
guidebook would pertain to the four states surrounding Lake
Michigan. We also suggested that our third effort would
concern an area we called “greater New
England.” Given the relatively lower marketing costs
we expect to have in the Northeastern United States, we
have begun work on a book for this region.
By the Northeastern United States we mean all of the states
northeast of and including Pennsylvania and Delaware- ten
states in all. At this time (early September 2010) we have
obtained most of the data needed to perform our analysis.
We hope to engage collaborators in this project. And we
hope to make a profit selling these books. If we can make
this project financially profitable, we’ll then be
able to extend the geographical coverage to the entire
Untied States and will be able to produce new editions
every two years (to coincide with the NAEP testing
calendar).
We Can Help Providers Of Supplemental Services
Our
guidebooks are based on a premise familiar to providers of
supplemental services: Schools are often failing children
who can benefit from one or more of the services offered by
that provider.
For us at Asora it is more than a premise or assumption. We
have the proof. We have done the research covering
thousands of schools to demonstrate quantitatively that
most students in most schools in most regions are below
grade level. Thus the premise gains additional stature
giving firms operating in these areas additional data on
which they can base their marketing to families and other
stakeholders who are seeking help for children at risk of
falling behind.
Towards The
Tutored Schoolroom
We were
pleased to organize a session on this topic at the recent
Education Industry Association’s annual convention-
held in July this year in Chicago.
My presentation, though introductory of the principal
speaker, concerned the history of the roots of online
instruction. Starting before Gutenberg, I traced how we
evolved from the in-person devoid of books learning
environment of those primitive times to the
“anywhere, anytime, and anything”
characteristics of what is possible in current times- were
educators to allow it. Click here to
see how we went from “there, then, not much”
paradigm to the one of “anywhere, anytime, and
anything.”
Cheryl Vedoe, the CEO of Apex Learning, was the principal
speaker of our session. She described how her company is
now providing online content and instruction at the high
school level for a number of brick and mortar schools
around the country. Apex courses are rigorous. This is
surely true in the sense that they “cut their
teeth” on providing AP courses online.
In such schoolrooms, the routine chores of teaching have
been automated thus changing the schoolroom into one that
uses tutors to help children master the blended sources of
information coming to them online and from the more
traditional books. Thus tutors replace teachers or teachers
morph into tutors.
Where To Go From Here?
For further
information, consider reviewing our home page where there are links to more detailed
descriptions of the services and activities of Asora
Education. Alternatively you might consider visiting
"What Was New" to learn more about our recent and
not so recent history.
Our
June 2010 Update:
June
Theme:
Reform
Is In Parents’ Hands
For too
long, too many Americans and parents of schoolchildren have
regarded education officials as the responsible parties for
ensuring the proper education in K-12 schools. While most
people agree that parents have the right to direct their
children’s education, most don’t think about
the parents’ obligations. We believe parents are also
responsible to supervise, arrange and manage their
children’s instruction. If parents agree, they will
do what they can and seek vendors providing the needed
materials and services. Below we discuss three activities
here at Asora that will help parents find ways to address
these needs.
Education Industry Association
Activities
Our
company, Asora Education Enterprises, has been a member of
the Education Industry Association (EIA) since 2006. We
have benefited greatly from the information shared by other
members at the Association’s two annual meetings.
This year we are pleased to be involved in two different
sessions at its 2010 Edventures Conference being held in
Chicago, July 22-24. More information about the conference
can be found at
www.educationindustry.org
. Our
roles at the conference are described under the next two
headlines.
Marketing Supplemental Services
Asora
Education is organizing a TableTalk discussion at this
summer’s Education Industry Association Edventures
Conference. It is entitled,
“Using Public School Guidebooks To Market
“Supplemental“ Services.”
In this discussion we plan to discuss how Asora’s
efforts in publishing such guidebooks can provide
information to parents and other stakeholders that will be
useful to them as they seek alternative and/or supplemental
services for children who have fallen behind as well as
those who are minimally proficient. In particular
guidebooks can provide lists of various organizations,
resources, vendors, products, and services. One of the most
important categories is that of after-school tutoring
services. While existing guidebooks and online versions of
them can help parents find a public or private school, they
generally will not help them find services that supplement
or replace the schooling being received by their children.
Asora does not aim to be a monopoly publisher of such
guidebooks and invites competition. There is more
discussion about Asora’s guidebook project below
under It
Takes More Than A Village.
Joining Tutors And Online Technology
As some
of you know, Asora has a plan to develop what we call
Stellar Schools that would employ self-paced online
instruction in physical schools. Other vendors are also
working in this area as well. Asora continues to seek its
niche in this area- and particularly seeks partners and
investors in this quest.
We recently have been excited to learn of a charter high
school in Chicago that provides most of its instruction
online in classrooms in which the teaching staff work as
tutors/facilitators. When the Education Industry
Association sought proposals for presentations at its
forthcoming meeting this July in Chicago, we offered a
session that would highlight this development. In this
session, which is now confirmed, there will be two
presentations: First, Asora will present an historical view
of self-pacing, group instruction, and distance
education. (You can download the
PowerPoint versions of that historical view
here.) That
should set the stage for Cheryl Vedoe, the CEO of Apex
Learning, who will describe how her company provides
online content and instruction for the VOISE Charter
School in Chicago and how this form of blended
instruction can grow in the K-12 space.
Get On Board The Time Machine To 1956
The just
mentioned historical view of distance education is based on
more than historical documents but includes Asora CEO David
Anderson’s own personal experience as a student in a
Television Physics Course he took in high school in 1956.
In his search for video clips of those lessons he has found
contemporaneous video of his physics teacher doing a
demonstration much like the ones that were in the course.
See that and more by boarding
the time machine to
witness aspects of distance education in its toddler
stage.
It Takes More Than A Village
We have
completed the guidebook to public schools and alternatives
for the Potomac Region and are looking at our options for
publishing it. The full title of our book reads,
“In the Potomac Region of Maryland, Virginia, and
Washington DC,
It Takes More Than A Village to
educate your child when our public schools are not up to
the task.”
Our guidebook answers the question: How do public schools
stack up in this three state region? And with this
information what
more parents
can do to ensure the proper education of their children.
Parents must do more than just choose a school for their
children. When the schools provide an insufficient
education (as they nearly always do in today’s public
and private schools) children need their learning augmented
by other means. The book addresses those needs under its
two themes of parental responsibility:
1. That of choosing a school
2. That of providing supplemental or alternative
instruction
The book aims to provide much of the information parents
will want to have to fulfill these obligations. You can
download a draft version of its main body by visiting
our Reports of
Regional Guidebooks page.
Starting A Small Stellar School
For
anyone who has read Asora’s business plan for Stellar
Schools, starting a school may seem like a daunting task,
but we think it will be easier than what one might first
surmise. What we are proposing is really not much more or
less than homeschooling that is done online. Many parents
master that role. Instead of doing it at home we do it in a
school. Here the parent is replaced by the
tutor/facilitator. The child or handful of children are
replaced by a larger group of children. We believe that
such a small school can be developed from resources already
available on the Web and in bookstores.
We think a school of perhaps ten children represents a good
starting place. With luck you may be reading about such a
school in forthcoming Asora updates.
Our
March 2010 Update:
March
Theme: A Genuine Race to the Top
We at
Asora® Education Enterprises like the concept of the
Race to the Top. On the
other hand, there are many powerful groups who don’t.
Led by teachers’ unions, these beneficiaries of the
status quo feel threatened by the implied reforms and will
work to limit and weaken any reform that might limit those
benefits.
Governors are Hijacking the Race to the
Top
We are fearful that the
Race to the Top is being
degraded into a “minor league” competition that
some have labeled the
Race to the Middle. (Jamie
Gass of Boston’s Pioneer Institute
http://www.educationnews.org/ed_reports/thinks_tanks/60099.html)
We are alluding to the current effort by the
National Governors’ Association
to
develop
Common Core Standards for
student achievement. We question whether such a group of
state based politicians and education officials
representing most of the states will succeed in negotiating
rigorous common standards. Their current proposed standards
are weak. Two states have already rejected them: Minnesota
and Massachusetts. Their reasoning? They didn’t want
to weaken their relatively higher standards they had worked
so hard to establish.
We have a defacto national standard in the content tested
by the Nation’s Report Card (the NAEP test), but
political considerations have prevented it from being
designated as such. We at Asora do regard the NAEP as the
primary national standard and will do so until better
criteria are established.
Looking ahead we think that national standards for student
competence (or anything else) need not necessarily be a
product of the states and/or the national government. They
could also be the product of non-profit national
organizations- as is the case in the field of accounting
where a private organization sets the standards and does
the testing of candidates for the CPA designation. In the
K-12 space we already have the ACT and SAT tests which
correspond to a set of “national standards”
developed by their respective non-profit organizations. A
large plurality of K-12 stakeholders already accept these
tests and the content standards on which they are based. At
Asora we are particularly interested in the ACT and how it
relates to the NAEP.
We see the standards of the NAEP, the ACT, and the SAT as
being roughly comparable and regard them as suitable
expectations for student achievement in the
Race to the Top. In
comparison we reject the
Common Core Standards in their
current form and moreover see no need for a political
framework such as the
National Governors’ Association
to be
the author of academic standards.
So what is Asora Education doing to compete in this quest?
All of Asora’s activities represent efforts to
improve student competency, whether in our work regarding
student assessments or in our work to develop more cost
effective schools. If this sparks your interest, please
read on:
Asora’s
Potomac Region Guidebook Project
The
three “state” region of the District of
Columbia, Maryland, and Virginia defines the geography of a
guide to public schools and school districts we are
presently generating. Using our mapping methodology, for
each school in this region we generate estimates of the
percentages of children who would have been assessed to be
NAEP proficient in their studies. We do this for reading
and mathematics at the 4th,
8th,
and 12th
grade
levels to provide realistic measures of student
competencies. We see two primary benefits from this:
1. We avoid
exaggeration and use a realistic criterion of what it means
to be at grade level: NAEP proficiency or better.
2. We enable stakeholders to make comparisons across state
lines, which will be of particular interest in and around
metropolitan Washington, D.C.
Given our interest in elevating student proficiencies, it
is critical that we focus on demographic groups needing the
most help. For each school, we also obtain and publish data
relevant to disadvantaged children, including what fraction
of each tested group is economically disadvantaged and what
percentages of each is proficient according to our NAEP
estimates.
We have developed some new metrics that focus on the
achievement of disadvantaged children. For example, we have
the
Least of These (LOT) Status Fraction, which
calculates the ratio of the proficiency of the
disadvantaged student subset to that of the entire tested
group at the school and/or district level. When this number
is close to one, it indicates a school or system that more
effectively educates the children of the Least affluent
families, which is an important social and educational
goal.
Other demographic information from the US Census relevant
to each school is also presented. For a glimpse of a
prototypical version and its accompanying
spreadsheets click
here.
As we complete the gathering of information for this
guidebook, we are already seeing interesting data patterns
that will be of particular interest to researchers as well
as other stakeholders. Some districts and schools appear to
do a better job educating the disadvantaged than others.
Charter schools, in particular, are showing great promise
in this regard.
As we complete the guidebook for the Potomac Region, we
will embark on one for the four state region surrounding
Lake Michigan. A third project we are contemplating will
cover the Hudson River Region, including the New York metro
area, and possibly extending to cover the entire region of
Greater New England.
In these projects, we’d love to find a way to include
the private schools as well, but their lack of
participation in the same tests taken by public school
children makes that unlikely in the near term.
We seek collaborators, co-authors, publishers, patrons,
etc. to help us finance, generate and distribute these
guidebooks.
Asora
May Organize A Workshop:
On Self-Paced Online Instruction In Real
Schools
Asora is
currently having discussions with the
Education Industry Association, of
which we are a member, about our proposal to organize a
workshop on futuristic schools at the
Association’s
20th Annual EDVentures
Conference, to be
held in Chicago this July. The subject schools would
primarily rely on web-based instruction assisted by various
kinds of tutoring. Our tentative title for this symposium
is,
Empowering the Schoolroom with Tutors and Self-Paced
Online Instruction.
One of
the motivating factors that have inspired this proposal
comes from Clayton Christensen and co-authors who wrote a
book last year,
Disrupting Class, that
made convincing arguments about how online K-12 education
will gain market share of approximately one-half by 2019.
If true, this prediction promises many opportunities and
raises a number of questions.
One of the most important concerns and challenges: How will
people and machines learn to work together in the provision
of online instruction in real schoolrooms? What is the role
of tutors in this? Will students perform better?
We hope to provide some answers and some conjecture in this
workshop by providing presentations in the following
topical areas (exact titles to be determined later).
1. Virtual schools operating in schoolrooms
2. Training teachers as tutors in this human and machine
based environment
3. Integrating and augmenting content from multiple vendors
4. Administering practice tests and proctored assessments
in an online system
5. Relevance of post-secondary successes with online
instruction in classrooms
6. Transitioning from a group instructional format in easy
steps
Many members of the Education Industry Association (EIA)
have or are acquiring expertise in these areas. If the
Workshop is approved, we hope to gather as many of them as
possible to make presentations in the workshop while
inviting others curious about these prospects and
opportunities. We have identified at least a half dozen
experts who will be invited to lead the topical
discussions.
If we are not able to organize this within the context of
the EIA we will consider finding a different venue for this
symposium- if sufficient interest is shown.
In either case I’d appreciate your comments and
feedback on this proposal- particularly if you would be
interested in participating or attending.
Asora is Encouraged by Success of Rocketship Education
Schools
We
recently read about a group of charter schools in San Jose,
California that utilize online instruction for a
significant part of a student's day. Operated by Rocketship
Education, which is a non-profit effort, several of these
schools predominantly enroll children from low income
families and yet have shown remarkable progress in
elevating student proficiencies well above district
averages.
We regard this as an important "data point" that suggests
online instruction can be a key ingredient in helping
children gain and maintain knowledge and skills needed to
prosper in school and later. It encourages Asora's Stellar
Schools effort to develop similar kinds of schools based on
online self-paced instruction (in real buildings.)
Our
December 2009 Update:
December
Theme Is "Free Labor"
As some
of you know, Asora Education Enterprises is
undercapitalized. Or perhaps more bluntly, Asora's only
marketable assets are its achievement test analysis work
and maybe its Registered Trademark.
Finding investment capital and sweat equity players has
been difficult. On the achievement test work we will now
undertake projects without initially securing a contract.
In the area of Asora's Stellar Schools, we will likewise
work gratis in helping prospective and existing school
owners explore our proposed learning formats.
Beltway
Tri-State Guide to Schools
Asora's
work in the area of studying achievement tests has mainly
been that of converting state reported student
proficiencies, which are typically inflated, to ones
consistent with the Nation's Report Card or NAEP. By
estimating NAEP proficiencies for schools in adjoining
states, it is then possible to compare schools across state
lines, which may be of interest to stakeholders in
multi-state metropolitan regions. There are a number of
multi-state combinations of interest, including the
tri-state areas surrounding Chicago, New York, and
Washington D.C. We are going to focus on the latter first.
Getting
a Small Stellar Foothold
In our
efforts to find school operators who might want to adopt
the Stellar Schools instructional format, we have
concentrated mainly on existing schools. In doing so we
have neglected an important niche market for which Stellar
Schools may be a very good fit: Small schools with less
than 100 students. As a matter of fact, our business plan
discusses schools being composed of one or more 50 student
units. Below that number, loss of scale leads to higher per
student costs, but they can remain manageable depending on
the details of the situation.
If the Stellar School model allows efficient operation at
smaller school sizes than the alternatives, it should be
attractive to "communities" that seek small schools but
previously could not afford the types available. Among the
opportunities here are, religious schools serving
relatively small numbers of children that might pertain
just to the children of a congregation, private schools in
sparsely populated suburban or exurban areas, and public
schools that for whatever reason serve only a small
population of students. In this latter category, there is
Monhegan Island, off the coast of Maine, which reportedly
has only 7 students in its public school!
Our
September 2009 Update:
September
Theme Is Assessment Corruption
Asora
Education Enterprises would not be in the business of
mapping exaggerated/inflated state reported proficiencies
onto the NAEP scale if there were no deceptive state
assessment systems. Many can be regarded as corrupt in that
they knowingly continue the deceptions despite the evident
harm they do. We have examined, to different degrees of
specificity, over two dozen states’ assessment
systems. Only two, South Carolina and Massachusetts, do not
grossly distort their students’ proficiency levels as
compared to the NAEP. An essay we wrote on this subject,
“Exaggerations in Public Education Assessments: When
is it deception? Is it sometimes corruption?” can be
downloaded from our
Reports on Reform page.
Asora
Can Help The Race To The Top
The U.S.
Department of Education Secretary, Arne Duncan, is
conditioning the distribution of his department’s
allocation of Stimulus money on the recipient state’s
good behavior with respect to a number of favored reforms.
The department is encouraging states to compete with one
another as to which has the better reforms as part of the
department’s Race To The Top. One of the sought
reforms is that of making state assessment systems more
robust and better aligned with the NAEP. When they are not
so aligned (as in 48 of 50 states) Asora’s mapping
service can be used to make estimates regarding local
school and district performance as a temporary substitute
for a properly functioning state-testing regime.
Studying The Great Pretender:
Tennessee
Recently
we have been making local estimates of NAEP proficiency for
Tennessee public schools and districts. In the course of
that work we have reviewed the state published
proficiencies from its TCAP testing system and compared
them to those of the NAEP, as anyone with an Internet
connection can do. Not only does Tennessee exhibit the
highest inflation nationally, according to one survey, but
is also has such extreme inflation for ethnic groups that
it claims high school Hispanic students are equally
proficient as their White cohorts, in sharp contrast to the
NAEP proficiencies showing Hispanic students’
proficiency percentages less than half that of White
students. Our preferred hypothesis for this unexpected
result involves abuses in the provision of special
accommodations in the testing. Alternative explanations of
outright cheating, doctoring scores, cooking books, etc.
though possible, are unlikely.
Special
Accommodations Violate The Precepts Of Good
Science
The
practice of Special Accommodations is mostly based on
theory that student testing should be used to boost
children’s self esteem as opposed to the idea that
testing’s main purpose is to measure a child’s
knowledge and skills. Giving special accommodations to
children who are blind or have other handicaps, unrelated
to their academic skills, is a worthwhile practice if the
alternative testing measures student capabilities in the
same units as the testing for non-handicapped children.
However, it appears that special accommodations are mostly
given to children who have learning disabilities and other
characteristics that are related to their academic skills.
Providing them with special accommodations has the effect
of measuring their skills with a different metric. In other
fields of science, using inconsistent metrics in the
measurement of phenomena would be considered academic
misconduct. But in education, the inconsistent metrics of
special accommodation are not only allowed, they are
mandated in the laws and regulations pertaining to public
education! In Asora’s Stellar School assessment
systems, special accommodations will not be provided except
to blind students.
Publicity
On Replacing Defective State Assessment
Regimes
Nearly
all state operated public school assessment systems use
tests that are inconsistent with the NAEP. Even in the two
states where the inflation is not significant
(Massachusetts and South Carolina) their state operated
testing systems are vulnerable to political manipulation.
In Asora’s home state of Rhode Island, where the
NECAP test is used, the testing regime suffers from at
least six defects, including the structural conflicts of
interest that arise when testing and instruction policies
are set within the same government unit. We think an
independent agency or organization should manage the
testing. We would seek to use a test with a national
reputation, such as the ACT tests, which are given in
grades 8 through 12 in many schools nationwide. ACT test
results are easily linked to NAEP proficiencies when the
ACT scoring distributions are known- as is the case in
Illinois.
We are currently making presentations in Rhode Island on
these problems and will soon offer them to groups in
Connecticut, Maine, New Hampshire, New York and Vermont,
which are the other states using or considering the use of
the NECAP tests. The popular image of NECAP is that of a
step towards reform. The reality is that NECAP is a major
part of the problem. It’s surely not part of the Race
to the Top. Rather we see it clouding the issues, which we
believe retards effective reform.
The
Asora Guidebook Project
Why
isn’t there a “Zagat’s” guide to
schools? We are considering the benefits and profits that
may ensue from writing guidebooks for major multistate
metropolitan regions. In such areas as New York metro,
Washington D.C. metro, and even the three state region
around Chicago, there may be interest in comparing schools
across state boundaries, which is currently difficult given
the inconsistent testing systems. With our NAEP proficiency
estimates calculated for each school in such regions, these
comparisons would be easier. We’d love to find a way
to include the private schools as well, but their lack of
participation in the same tests taken by public school
children makes that unlikely in the near term. We are
looking for partners in this project: equity and sweat.
Encouraging
Protestants to Consider Stellar
Schools
While
all sectarian groups have interests in K-12 education,
Protestants have a peculiar historical affiliation with
public education and the group instructional models on
which it is based: They were its founders in the early
16th
century,
after the Reformation. As public education took hold in
19th
century
America, it was almost exclusively affiliated with the
Protestant outlook. Catholics in America saw this and
established their own schools to preserve their sectarian
values. Because of this historic connection, Protestants
have tended to rely on public schools for their
children’s education. Even in recent decades, when
public schools have lost their Protestant sectarian
attributes and have become quite secular in their
approaches to education, most Protestants continue to
patronize them. We can think of two reasons why Protestants
might consider Asora’s Stellar Schools as a solution
for their children’s educational needs:
First, through the Asora self-paced online instructional
system, the curriculum can be tailored to provide that
combination of core curricular subjects and electives that
would reflect the church's values and religious beliefs.
Second, through the Asora instructional system, student
proficiencies can be greatly increased as the model is
designed to eliminate social promotion and the dysfunctions
that accompany it.
Our
June 2009 Update:
June
Theme Is Assessment
To use
the phrase, “A Perfect Storm,” probably
overstates the coincidental nature of recent developments
at Asora Education Enterprises. However, every recent
activity has had assessment as its key component or at
least as an important aspect.
Honest
Assessment Drives Reforms
The need
for honesty in public school assessment reporting may go
unanswered within the public systems. Thus private testing
and certification proposals should be considered. We have
written on this in our report, "Making Tests And Diplomas
Honest Will Drive Reform." It's here for download from
our Reports on Reform
page.
Tipping Point
There
are now several indicators that online instruction has
entered a rapid growth phase and will affect nearly all
aspects of K-12 education going forward- if for no other
reason because of its low cost. Perhaps our realization of
this sudden surge in Online Education has been late and
delayed by our earlier blindness to what was going on
around us. As the two book reviews (below) suggest, online
instruction will dominate in about ten years. We had better
get busy doing our part!
Assessment
As Profit Center
Those of
you who have explored our business plan (available in
our Reports on
Development area)
know that it has many facets. In terms of instructional
modes of operation it proposes up to 15 different
options within each course of study. The only one
required, however, was the assessment component’s
proctored examinations. In every other instructional
mode, the student will be free to use it or not. Implict
in that will be the freedom for students to take their
instruction elsewhere. It suggests that we design our
service to have two profit centers: instruction and
assessment. Our brand will depend more on the latter-
perhaps much in the same way that the accounting
industry’s designation of CPA relates to the
“test” and not to the learning process.
New
Mappings
One of
Asora Education's services has been the estimation of what
local schools and districts would have attained on the
Nation’s Report Card or NAEP. The ELQ method we
employed converted or mapped the state reported (and almost
always inflated) proficiencies into ones on the NAEP scale.
We now have written a fairly detailed report that derives
the old or Simple ELQ method and derives a new more
accurate Piecewise Continuous ELQ method. It checks the
errors of the methods in simulated examination environments
and then applies them against known demographic groups
proficiencies on the two exams. The report
ELQ-Mappings.docx and its
supporting spreadsheet
ELQ-Derivation.xlsx are
downloadable from our Reports on Reform
page.
Discovery Of Enhanced Deception
Our
analysis in the Mappings work brought us face to face with
some of the harms inflicted by the states' almost routine
use of inflation in reporting assessment proficiencies.
Though always there in the published data we had not
realized the extent to which inflation is different for
different demographics. It’s small in good schools
and large in schools where disadvantaged children
predominate. How convenient for making public schools
“look good!” It serves inflation in small
portions where only a small amount is needed to make the
schools look good. And for the truly dysfunctional schools
it ladles giant servings to make the horrible appear barely
passable. For the public education propagandists it
optimally apportions the deception to where it is needed
the most- to cover up the worst situations the most.
Taken
For A R.I.D.E.
As an
example of the Enhanced Deception just mentioned we wrote
an op-ed piece for a Rhode Island newspaper. “Taken
For A R.I.D.E.,” refers to the Rhode Island
Department of Education and its use of inflation to make
the good look better and the bad look not so awful. It is
on our Reports on Reform
page
for your perusal or download.
Liberating
Learning - Book Review
Scholars
and policy analysts Terry Moe and John Chubb (both are
both), have written the book, “Liberating
Learning,” which is a very interesting review and
prognosis of how online instruction will grow and help
reform public schools. As is my habit, I generally write an
online book review on the Amazon.Com website when I
purchase books from the site and I did so for this
excellent book. Their book was, more than any other input,
influential in convincing me of the Tipping Point mentioned
above. It is on our Reports on Reform
page.
Disrupting
Class - Book Review
Another
book we reviewed is “Disrupting Class.” It also
makes arguments about how disruptive innovation will
develop within the education sector and confirms we are at
or beyond this Tipping Point. My review of it, "Good wheat
- Too much chaff," is also on the Reports on Reform
page.
Our March 2009 Update:
Public
School Achievement Test Deceptions
Most,
but not all, stakeholders in public education are aware
that state reported student proficiencies in mathematics
and reading are significantly exaggerated above the
well-respected Nation's Report Card (also known as the
National Assessment for Educational Progress or NAEP).
Asora consulting has reviewed recent trends in state
reported proficiencies and found 12 cases with an
additional type of deception: Not only are the
proficiencies exaggerated, but they are reporting (false)
gains in 8th grade reading proficiencies when, in fact, the
NAEP shows them declining.
The states practicing this double deception, ordered from
worst to least in terms of the false gain are: NY, WY, NM,
RI, AR, NH, VA, IL, ND, LA, ME & AL. In Rhode Island
and New Hampshire, we believe that a narrow curriculum
coupled with teaching to the test may account for the false
gains.
Three reports covering these matters are available.
NECAP-op-ed.doc is taken
from an op-ed piece that discusses the Rhode Island
situation.
NECAP-sequel.doc extends
that analysis to include New Hampshire and Vermont.
Finally,
DoubleDeceptionDozen.doc discusses
the twelve states practicing the double deception. All
three reports are available from our Reports on Reform
page.
Education
Industry Association Foresees Large Role For Online
Instruction
At its
annual Washington, DC meeting, members of the Education
Industry Association (EIA) were briefed on the outlook for
various specialties within the field. We learned that
publicly traded companies engaged in online instruction
comprised one of the very few market sectors to see its
stock market valuations rising over the past year.
Additionally, we saw estimates that online instruction will
comprise 50% of all K-12 instruction by 2019- as compared
to about 1% currently.
Developing
Asora's Brokerage Services For Online
Instruction
During
the past quarter Asora has contacted many prospective
online providers to learn more about their offerings. We
have also been developing a list of private schools-
beginning with the New England states- that we are now in
the process of contacting. For more information, please see
our Courseware
Brokerage page.
Offering
Public Speakers
Asora
Education Enterprises is offering public presentations
about its many projects and accomplishments. For further
information, please see our Asora Speakers
Bureau.
Building
A High School Physics Course
We are
currently considering the creation of a Stellar Schools
high school physics course that would build on the
prototype
we
developed last year. By doing so, Asora would be able to
offer this course to schools and homeschooling students.
With such a course operational, suppliers of other
courses would better understand the instructional
formats unique to Asora's Stellar Schools.
Our
December 2008 Update:
Everyone
Is Using The 500-Year Old Protestant
System
As
mentioned elsewhere on this site, the age-based group
instructional format that has been used in nearly all
public and private schools was developed long ago by the
Protestants during the Reformation as a way to improve
literacy among the laity. Needless to say, Catholic
parochial schools also use this traditional mode of
instruction. Given that social promotion is a pervasive
characteristic of age-based group instruction, the time has
arrived to replace the latter with a format that
structurally prevents social promotion: self-paced
tutoring. This is what Stellar Schools and their online
self-paced instructional systems are designed to do. The
relevance of this to Catholic schools is discussed on our
page devoted to Catholic
education.
Asora
To Establish Courseware Brokerage
As we
take steps to develop Stellar Schools, we are now taking
the first step in which we would provide online
instructional services. This path begins with the
development of brokerage
services that
would match school clients with providers of
instructional courseware and other services. This
service will commence in January 2009. Then Asora will
have two revenue generating activities: The brokerage
services and the ongoing achievement test analysis work.
Asora's
Achievement Test Studies Reveal Pervasive Social Promotion
In American Public Schools
Over the
past 15 months, our consulting arm has generated estimates
of how thousands of individual public schools would have
performed on the Nation's Report Card. We find, in every
state and region studied, high levels of social promotion
in every public school- including the very best schools
where 20% or more of the children are promoted beyond their
skill levels. In the worst schools the percentages socially
promoted generally exceed 95%.
This information convinces us that instructional systems
need to be structured to prevent social promotion. Stellar
Schools online self-paced instruction is designed to do
that. These studies also provide us a marketing tool we can
use to publicize the problem, which can help us "sell" the
Stellar Schools concepts.
Click here
for
more information about the achievement test services. We
also have reports on these studies available from
our Reports on Reform
page.
Asora's CEO Lost Election But Spread The
Word
Asora
Education Enterprises' CEO, David Anderson, failed to
unseat the incumbent State Representative (from
Providence's Upper East Side). Campaigning, nevertheless,
had several important benefits. Based on many conversations
with voters, we found that they are well aware of our
dysfunctional public schools and yet feel powerless to help
reform them. The campaign's platform included many school
reform proposals (all consistent with developments towards
online education) some of which might take root and maybe
lead to incremental improvements. Yet there is also a
public apathy that suggests reforming public schools will
likely not succeed given the lack of public pressure on
school officials. This public lethargy suggests that
reforming private schools, as envisaged by our Stellar
Schools project, may be the more fruitful path to
success.
Our
September 2008 Update:
Education
Next Will Report On Choice
Paul
Peterson, editor of Education Next, told an audience of
think tank education experts that his publication will soon
release information about school choice systems around the
world that will show a strong relationship between the
degree of choice available and the proficiency of students.
Such information is welcome as it will encourage the
enlargement of the opportunities for innovators to develop
alternative schools and methodologies. This would make more
room for Asora to participate.
Asora
Analyses of State Achievement Tests
Continuing
its work for stakeholders around the United States, Asora
has now completed work analyzing how local schools and
districts would have performed on the NAEP in six states:
Oklahoma, New Hampshire, New Mexico, Pennsylvania, Rhode
Island, and Vermont. As we've noted before a similar
picture emerges in each of these states: Social promotion
affects every school and even the best public schools have
very large fractions of their students below grade level.
Asora is seeking a contract to do all of the public schools
in the United States. Recent discussions with
GreatSchools.Net may
lead to such a result. Or could lead to imitation (in
which others would use our openly available
methodologies) to accomplish the same goal.
Asora
CEO: Candidate For State Assembly
David
Anderson is now engaged in a political campaign for the
Rhode Island General Assembly where he would represent its
4th district (located on Providence's East Side). See
his campaign website for
details. Given the severely dysfunctional status of the
state's public education system, well over half of his
political efforts are focused on it. Given the part-time
nature of this body, he will be able to continue the
Asora developments after his election. To avoid
conflicts of interest he will propose Stellar School
"like" solutions for public schools, but will suggest
the use of other vendors such as K12, Inc. to provide
the courseware.
From the point of view of public policy he is proposing:
1. The state adopt internal reforms of schools,
including honest
reporting
of test results, Regent's diplomas (given to students who
are actually proficient), alternative certification, and
more online instruction.
2. The state adopt what we call external reforms by
introducing funding mechanisms (scholarships, tax credits,
vouchers) to give all parents a choice in selecting the
schools their children attend. He would also change the
labor laws to allow multiple unions to represent workers
according to the workers' individual choices. This would be
a form of a right to work law.
Asora
Speakers Bureau
Asora
Education Enterprises will offer public speakers to venues
interested in K-12 education reform. Please use our
contact page
to
request further information about having one of us make
a presentation at your location.
Our
June 2008 Update:
Asora
Looks At Protestant And Other Sectarian
Schools
We have
now added some information that might be of interest to
Protestants and other sects regarding their interests and
responsibilities in the education of their children.
Asora's Stellar Schools, or the non-profit version, can
help. Please check Asora &
Protestant Etc. Education for
more information.
Asora
Looks At The World's Schools
Recently
reported research from the American Institutes for Research
now
allows us to estimate levels of proficiency in other
developed countries with respect to math and science
achievement levels they would have obtained on the
United States' Nation's
Report Card.
While not all countries are covered, enough European,
Anglophone, and Asian states are included to tell us
that roughly 40%, 30% and 50% of 13 year old students
are proficient in these subject areas, respectively.
This means that social promotion is a world wide
educational problem because, at best, only about half of
the world's students (of those tested) are found to be
proficient (at or above grade level).
Asora
In Switzerland
CEO
David Anderson was invited to make a presentation (June
16th) at a symposium organized at the Ecole Polytechnique
Federale de Lausanne where he spoke about "Self-Paced,
Online Physics Instruction." Given the fact that social
promotion appears to be a world-wide problem, we announced
that we have decided to look beyond the United States for
potential partners in the development of Asora's Stellar
Schools. You can view/hear the
speech from
our physics page.
Asora
At The Vatican
As a
part of our European visit we made some efforts to meet
with Catholic education authorities at the Vatican when we
visited there in late June. Although we were unable to
secure an appointment for such a meeting on this visit, we
plan to continue our efforts to offer our ideas that would
potentially benefit Catholic schools around the world.
Prototypical Physics Course
Example
Until
now, the Asora website provided only one example of how a
Stellar Schools course might operate. That is the Algebra 1
segment found elsewhere on this website. We have now begun
the development of an AP level high school Physics With
Calculus course. In it we have made further improvements to
the Stellar Schools instructional model. By viewing the
introductory Lecturette
#1,
site visitors can glean much about the twelve
instructional modes being planned for this course (and
similar ones for most of the other subjects in the core
curriculum). Please visit our page on Asora
Physics to
learn more.
Asora
Analyses Of The NECAP States
Continuing
its work for stakeholders around the United States, Asora
partnered with the Ocean State Policy Research Institute
(where CEO Anderson also plays a role as Education Fellow)
to examine the achievement test proficiencies reported in
the states of New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Vermont- all
of which use the NECAP (New England Common Assessment
Program). Consistent with its previous studies in the
states of Pennsylvania and Oklahoma as well as with its
work for individual counties in California, New Jersey, and
Massachusetts, a similar picture emerges: Social promotion
affects every school and even the best public schools have
very large fractions of their students below grade level.
Of the six tests administered by the NECAP, we were pleased
to learn that one of them, its high school mathematics
test, has proficiencies that are no longer inflated
relative to our NAEP estimates. The worst NECAP/NAEP school
in the NECAP states is Hope IT High School in Providence
where less than 2% of its 11th grade children were found to
be proficient. Despite that statistic, nearly all of those
tested will receive high school diplomas next year. Go
figure!
Asora
Extends Its Work For Oklahoma
In
addition to our achievement test analysis service in which
we predict what proficiency percentages individual schools
and districts would have obtained on the NAEP, we have been
working with the Oklahoma Council of Public Affairs
to disseminate
relevant estimates of local schools and districts to media
outlets in the various Oklahoma localities. Written as
op-ed articles, we have used mail-merge to provide locality
specific information as to the best and worst schools at
the various grade levels within the state's counties and
districts.
Asora
Announces Appointment of CMO
Susan
Anderson has accepted our offer to manage Asora's marketing
operation. As Chief Marketing Officer, Susan will be
responsible for the relations with and the development of
investors, suppliers, collaborators, and customers.
Asora
CEO Will Run For State Assembly
David
Anderson recently announced his candidacy to run for the
Rhode Island General Assembly where he would represent its
4th district (located on Providence's East Side). Given the
severely dysfunctional status of the state's public
education system, about half of his political effort will
focus on it. Given the part-time nature of this body, he
will be able to continue the Asora developments after his
election. To avoid conflicts of interest he will propose
Stellar School "like" solutions for public schools, but
will suggest the use of other vendors such as K12, Inc. to
provide the courseware.
Asora
Speakers Bureau
Asora
Education Enterprises will offer public speakers to venues
interested in K-12 education reform. Please use our
contact page
to
request further information about having one of us make
a presentation at your location.
Our
March 2008 Update:
Registration of Asora® Trademark Complete:
Asora
Education Enterprises received its Certificate of
Registration for its trademark from the United States
Patent and Trademark Office in late
February.
Demolishing
Inflation In Oklahoma & New Jersey:
Asora's
primary revenue producing activity has been consulting in
the specific area of analyzing state administered
achievement tests. Typically, states report markedly higher
numbers of children as proficient as compared to the
Nation's Report Card. Our analysis converts these inflated
proficiencies to ones consistent with the Nation's Report
Card (NAEP) on a school-by-school basis.
During the winter, Asora Consulting added Oklahoma and New
Jersey to the states where it has analyzed reported
achievement test proficiencies of public schools and public
school districts. All schools and districts were evaluated
in Oklahoma while only those in Hudson County were studied
in New Jersey. While we see some quantitative differences
among the jurisdictions we've studied, the picture of
pervasive social promotion is a constant characteristic.
Our earlier studies evaluated schools in Rhode Island,
Pennsylvania, Bristol County in Massachusetts, and Ventura
County in California. Click here for more
information.
Currently discussions are underway with various patron
organizations about adding another eight states to our
"portfolio."
Asora®
Business Plan Revised:
The Asora business plan revision is now complete and
available here on
Asora's website (in the files ExSum2008.doc
and FullBP2008.doc).
Our previous plan was undercapitalized and required nearly
ten years to reach a profitable status. This plan requires
significant investment capital, of at least $40 million,
but it foresees profits in the fourth year. There is quite
a lot of detail in our plan and it takes 150 pages to
describe it!
We are well aware that there are other paths to Stellar
Schools, including the marriage of existing businesses. For
example, joining an online provider, with a content
provider, to an existing school network would be one avenue
of development.
Starting these schools in the non-profit world is another
alternative and is one we are encouraging through our plans
for a non-profit Stellar Schools Development Corporation.
More information on that can be found on its
website.
Reform
Ideas Presented to Rhode Island Regents
In his
role as Education Fellow of the Ocean State Policy Research
Institute, Asora CEO David Anderson made a presentation to
the Rhode Island Board of Regents, who direct its K-12
public education system. He reviewed the evidence
suggesting social promotion is a primary cause of our
dysfunctional systems. He advocated a three-phase reform
strategy that would convert the state's schools into ones
resembling Stellar Schools. His presentation,
RI_Regents_01.doc, is
available in our report download
area.
Stellar Schools Go To Switzerland
As a
part of a physics symposium to be held in June at the Ecole
Polytechnic Federale de Lausanne, in honor of retiring
Swiss physicist Ralf Gruber, David Anderson will speak on
"Self Paced, Online Physics Instruction." European
education systems, though often more efficient than their
American counterparts, also suffer from the ills of social
promotion. Thus, the remedy of Stellar Schools may have
application outside of the United States.
Asora Adds New Management Officers:
We are
pleased to announce two new players to our team. They are:
Jon
Scott of Providence, Rhode Island: COO
Jon is serving as our Chief Operating Officer. He has
devoted his life to helping children. He's done that in a
number of ways, as a lobbyist in Washington advocating for
financial aid, as a consultant to group home providers, as
an athletic coach in children's sports, and as a
politician- who most recently ran for the U.S. Congress.
Jon also chairs the Board of Trustees of the Ocean State
Policy Research Institute.
Jay
Jacot of Newport, Rhode Island: CFO
Jay brings to his position of Chief Financial Officer a
background in business management and forensic accounting,
among others. Jay also serves as a Director of the Ocean
State Policy Research Institute where he is the treasurer.
Asora
Supports the Ocean State Policy Research Institute
Asora
Education Enterprises have provided various services to
this newly established Providence based "center-right"
think tank, mostly on a pro bono basis. CEO David Anderson
is also an Education Fellow of the
Institute.
Stanford Report on Education and Economic Growth:
Their
relationship is discussed in a current article in
Education Next, authored
by Eric Hanushek, Dean Jamison, Eliot Jamieson and Ludger
Woessmann.
Our review of it:
Duh! "It's not just going to school but learning that
matters," say the authors. They quantify this by showing
that if, measured by student cognitive skills, the US K-12
system (24th place out of 50 countries) were as good as
Canada's (9th place out of 50) then our GDP would be
significantly higher than it is- enough so to pay for all
US K-12 public education costs out of the difference (about
$500 billion dollars).
Stellar Schools are designed to be signficantly better than
Candaian schools so their widespread adoption and imitation
should have robust economic benefits.
Our December 2007 Update:
Asora
Trademark To Be Registered:
Asora
Education Enterprises was notified in December that we will
have our Trademark AsoraTM
registered
in January 2008 if no one successfully appeals its issue.
Asora Consulting Work In
Pennsylvania:
Asora
Consulting added Pennsylvania to the regions where it has
analyzed all public schools and public school districts. As
in its earlier studies of schools in Rhode Island and
Ventura County in California, there is considerable
evidence of massive social promotion taking place.
Click here for more
information.
Currently discussions are underway with various research
organizations about adding Arizona, Connecticut, Kansas and
Tennessee to our list of states we have analyzed.
Asora®
Business Plan Revisions:
We are currently in the middle of revising our business plan. Our analysis of the demand for private school services has been thoroughly revamped to show that private schools have been doing a poor job of attracting students compared to past performance. As public schools lose market share, home schools seem to be capturing nearly all of it. Private schools seem to lack the incentives to grow and expand. The stagnation of private schools is inconsistent with rising standards of living wherein many more parents can afford private education and yet are not pursuing it. We think that this is understandable in the non-profit world. We believe that appropriately designed for-profit private schools will be able to gain market share and we intend Asora's Stellar Schools to be part of that expansion._______________
Our September 2007 Update:
Bifurcation of Effort: The Three Websites
The Stellar Schools effort, as mentioned elsewhere, is now being pursued in two separate efforts: one is the for-profit effort supported by this website, AsoraEducation.Com, and the other is its "sister" non-profit effort supported by the website StellarSchools.Org. A third website, StellarSchools.Com, is the original website of the Stellar Schools effort and is now simply a conduit or "fork in the road" website allowing access to the other two just mentioned.
We Think Social Promotion Is The Culprit
The low student proficiencies we have observed in our studies of K-12 achievement tests in several geographic locations within the United States are, almost by definition, the result of lax social promotion policies in public and private schools. Given that Stellar Schools are designed without age based grade levels and will require mastery of each subject for students to advance, these schools will elliminate the phenomenon of social promotion and thereby help cure its associated ills.
Business Plan Revisions Underway
Our former business plan for Asora's Stellar Schools, while plausible and even conservative in its projections, was not viable in the sense that the time horizon to profitability was far too long into the future (9 years). This long ramp-up period was due, in part, to our minimalist approach to our initial capital requirements. Our new plan, still being formulated, will achieve profitability in approximately three years, based on a significantly larger initial capital investment.
Report Card for Ventura County, California
Asora Consulting was recently engaged to map all public schools operating in Ventura County, California. This region's schools perform at about the national average. Social promotion, is rampant, and we estimate that only 33% of the graduates (from a median high school) actually earned their diplomas.
We currently have a draft report available (VenturaProfNums.doc) which can be downloaded from our website. The complete report awaits our analysis of Ventura's private high schools, which we expect to undertake shortly.
Completed Rhode Island's Report Card
We have made NAEP scale estimates for every public school and district in Rhode Island. Given our interest in Rhode Island public and private K-12 education, we have undertaken this project on a pro bono basis. Two reports, RIProfNumsBasic.doc and RIProfNumsTech.doc, provide the details and are available from our Reform Reports page.
Asora Consulting Offers Mapping Service
Our consulting service, which performed the just mentioned work in Ventura County and which is now finishing the Rhode Island analysis, is available to provide similar analyses for other jurisdictions within the United States. Please contact us if you are interested.
Our June 2007 Update:
Stellar Schools Development Corporation (SSDC)
Arguably our most important current task in the development of Stellar Schools is the creation of the non-profit collaborating organization that will likely work with Asora to develop schools and services. We have three or four individuals who have expressed interest in becoming trustees of the board but no one has been interested in being the President of the board. The principals of Asora are prohibited by federal law from board participation if the relationship between them and the non-profit is less than "arms length." Thus David Anderson cannot play that role. He can, however, work for the SSDC either as an employee or as a consultant.
During this period we have also produced a list of tasks that need to be completed before SSDC can commence its operations as a 501(c)(3) organization.
Getting Catholic Educators on Board is Like Herding Cats
Our hope has been to find a person influential in Catholic education for the position of President of SSDC. We say this because we think Catholic school systems might play an important role in Stellar School development and could become important customers who would benefit greatly from the more cost effective Stellar School operating format. But our attempts to interest Catholics have produced no significant interest to date. In response to over 400 queries sent to influential Catholics, we found no interest and, in fact, had only 5 responses in the form of acknowledgments. We sense apathy that goes beyond normal response rates to such missives.
Meeting With Charles Lavaroni & Donald Leisey
We met with Charles Lavaroni and Donald Leisey in California in early April to discuss issues that confront entrepreneurs working in the education field. Lavaroni and Leisey are pioneers in the field of for-profit education who together coauthored a book on the subject. They and others present at the meeting cautioned that our current business plan may be attempting to do too many new things at once. A common thread of the response I received from them was to "keep it simple." When we think about how one can simplify the Stellar Schools development process we are often concluding that we should start from an existing business that already performs some of the component operations. K12, Inc. comes to mind.
School Reform News Article
In the April edition of School Reform News, David Anderson authored a guest article, "Integrity Is Remedy for Harms Caused by Social Promotion," in which he discusses the question as to whether these "harms" constitute child abuse and if so what to do about them.
Education Industry Days Meeting in Washington
At the annual Education Industry Association meeting in Washington there was much discussion about the status and reauthorization of the No Child Left Behind legislation. We learned that Senator Kennedy has introduced legislation aimed at making state administered achievement tests align better with the well respected National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). A staffer from the relevant Senate Committee told us that the legislation would encourage interim measures such as mapping the often inflated state achievement test scores onto a scale consistent with the NAEP. We had already been working in this area and as a result took encouragement to focus more in this area. The story of our expanded work thereby inspired now follows:
Removing the Inflation from State Tests
One way to build market demand for Asora's Stellar Schools is to publicize the failures of our competition. Achievement tests are a means of measuring the successes of schools but only if their scoring criteria adhere to accepted national standards. As it is most states publish achievement test results for their public schools that inflate the results to make their schools look far better than they really are. In terms of the percentages of students claimed to be proficient (at or above grade level) the states typically announce far more students proficient than what is published by the NAEP- and in many cases double the number! Since the NAEP cannot report results at the district or school level, stakeholders are left in the dark to wonder how students are performing locally.
To remedy that problem we have developed a method to predict what the NAEP score would have been at a school or in a district. We have used the statistical properties of idealized achievement test scores to create a simulated examination environment in which a pair of testing regimes can be related. From our understanding of these relationships we have devised a mapping procedure to convert the inflated state reported student proficiencies to ones aligned with the NAEP. The theory told us that our errors would be comparable to the sampling errors of the original NAEP results, but at first saw no means to confirm that prediction. Our report on this, MapToNAEP.doc, is available to download from our Reports on Reform section.
Applying the NAEP Mapping to Rhode Island
We have used our mapping technique to report the NAEP consistent proficiencies for all school districts and all high schools in Rhode Island. This is a state which reports student proficiency percentages very nearly double what the NAEP measured in the state. We have made an attempt to publicize our results but the media and the schools are reluctant to acknowledge our work. The results for urban high schools in Providence were far worse than our original pessimistic estimate: The percent proficient (at or above grade level) has been only 2 to 4 percent in its four general high schools. We believe there are several dozens of states with similar situations crying out for redress. If we can publicize these failures, we think it will help us develop interest and support for our efforts to improve K-12 education. The details are in our report, GrtrPvdProfNums.doc, downloadable from our Reports on Reform section.
NAEP Performance of Ethnic Groups
Later we realized that we could use NAEP published statewide proficiency results for ethnic groups and compare them with the predictions of our mapping. Doing so verified our conjecture that the errors were about the same size as the original sampling errors, lending credence to our results. In doing this we were shocked by the very low proficiencies for blacks and hispanic students and were reminded of President Bush's well known quote about "the soft bigotry of low expectations." These children are simply pushed through the system by the social promotion policy and then handed a diploma. Little effort seems to have been made to help them acquire grade level skills.
Asora Consulting to Offer Mapping Service
Based on our seemingly reliable results from our mapping formulas we have begun to offer consulting services in this area to other organizations and individuals. Please contact us if you are interested.
Our March 2007 Update:
Establishing Our Non-Profit Affiliate
As foreseen in our business plan for the Stellar Schools Company (now renamed Asora Education Enterprises) we are now seeking "founders" for our non-profit organization, The Stellar Schools Development Corporation (SSDC). Please contact us if you'd consider helping this effort. We plan to incorporate SSDC in Rhode Island and seek 501(c)(3) status. The latter, if awarded, will give us tax exempt status and will provide donors with deductions for their contributions. As required by the federal statutes, the non-profit affiliate cannot be under the control of the for-profit Asora company. Rather the relationship is required to be "arms length." To accomplish this, Asora will help launch the non-profit organization but will separate itself from the governance of SSDC. We contemplate various kinds of contractual relationships between SSDC and the for-profit Asora company- but within the concept of "arms length" independence.
Exploring Catholic Education
We continue to focus on Catholic parochial schools as prospective partners in Stellar Schools. Their systems are of interest for two principal reasons:
1. They could benefit from the high quality instructional content and from the low costs of providing it. We share the concern that some Catholic schools are forced to close when they become insolvent. We think the Stellar Schools format could help rescue them.
2. Given that the Catholic systems already have networks of schools, they could be an invaluable partner in developing various aspects of Stellar Schools.
We believe that our recent decision to have parallel non-profit and for-profit organizations focusing on Stellar Schools provides a non-profit environment in which the Catholic systems can more comfortably participate. We think it removes concerns over possible negative aspects of involvement with for-profit enterprises. So, for example, rather than developing a franchising network, we believe that a licensing network would be the more appropriate organizational arrangement.
In keeping with our expanded focus on Catholic education, we have added to our list of correspondents a number of leaders and experts from the Catholic school systems and from their institutions of higher learning.
Please also see our page on Catholic Education.
Roles of The Stellar Schools Development Corporation
We see three important roles that the non-profit Stellar Schools Development Corporation can play:
1. It can act as a research and development organization to test and develop the various components of the Stellar Schools instructional systems. This is the role foreseen in the business plan (available on this website.)
2. It can operate schools- both in developmental as well as in operational modes.
3. It can provide scholarships to students needing financial support to attend its schools.
Unlike the presumption in the business plan that the non-profit entity would transition into the for-profit company, we avoid the difficulties implicit in such an approach by having both organizations live on indefinitely. Since the non-profit SSDC will provide most of its technologies and methodologies on an "open source" basis, there need not be any formal arrangement to allow the for-profit Asora Company to benefit from them. However, we do intend to protect the intellectual property of courseware developers who can therefore expect some compensation for their efforts.
More details about the Stellar Schools Development Corporation are included in its Strategic Plan available on this website.
Roles of Asora Education Enterprises:
The for-profit business effort intends to operate in a number of areas in which it has competence. While its main and longterm goal is the operation of one or more franchising networks of schools based on the Stellar Schools instructional system, in the short run it is begining to operate in other areas. Taken together, Asora is now or will be providing the following kinds of services:
1. Consulting. This is currently limited to providing advice to others who are seeking to apply Stellar Schools concepts.
2. Tutoring. We now offer tutoring in mathematics and physics and will extend our coverage as the staff enlarges and acquires competency in other subjects. Since the Stellar Schools instructional format entails a tutoring component we shall also train and manage personnel to perform these tasks in school settings.
3. Substitute teaching. In our early years we will supplement our revenues by offering substitute teachers to a variety of private schools. This activity will probably be phased out as we mature.
4. Productions/Publishing. The courseware we will use to deliver our K-12 instructional content will be created by our productions/publishing arm. Video and other online content will be generated in production facilties- either in-house or under contract with others. Content purchased or leased from other suppliers will be modified and extended by our productions unit. Since the Stellar Schools format requires content in both digital and hardcopy versions we shall also operate as publishers of such material- including textbooks when "trade" books do not meet our specifications.
5. Testing. Asora will generate the appropriate software and data bases to conduct its assessment regime for each of its courses. While this will be integrated into its own courseware, Asora will offer testing services to other schools outside of its networks as appropriate.
6. Franchisor. When Asora or others, such as the Stellar Schools Development Corporation (SSDC), have perfected the model schools employing the Stellar Schools instructional systems, then Asora will build one or more franchising networks of local schools. In its franchising operation, Asora, will subsume several of the other aforementioned roles just listed.
Establishing a Brand and a Trademark
You may wonder the provenance of Asora as our new name? We recently benefited from some good advice on branding and trademarks. (Thank you, Dick!) Given that it is easier to obtain a registered United States Trademark if the name is not already in use, we have chosen the name Asora which is not in my dictionary and has never been a registered trademark.
Asora was formulated from an acronym based on the Stellar Schools defining features:
A. Academic emphasis
S. Self-paced learning
O. On-line instruction
R. Rigorous content
A. Assessment curriculum
The latter expression "assessment curriculum" needs elaboration: It refers to our definition of the curriculum as being the universe of examination questions applicable to any given course.
Once we have met the prerequisite requirements for requesting a registered trademark, we shall proceed with the application. In the meantime we shall use the less formal trademark designation- as in Asora(TM).
Our January 2007 Update:
Milton Friedman, RIP:
We were recently saddened to learn of economist Milton Friedman's passing. As an ardent supporter of school choice and arguably the inventor of government provided school vouchers, he inspired many to work alongside him for greater parental choices in education. The Stellar Schools project was conceived, in part, as a way to provide effective parental choice by developing more efficient and cost effective schools within the private sector. Stellar Schools also benefited from his constructive commentary- particularly with regard to the problems of wholly owned networks (Edison Schools) in the development of private school networks. This strengthened our resolve to use the franchising format. He will be missed.
Developing Schools of the Future:
It is becoming more and more apparent that schools of the future will depend on Internet based technologies. This will be true regardless of the venue of learning- whether at home or in brick and mortar buildings. Stellar Schools, as elaborated elsewhere on this website, are designed to exploit the best instructional methods, the best technologies for delivering content, and the best organizational structures for managing the operations required for success in schools of the future.
Seeking Participants:
We have continued our efforts to make our ideas and plans available to an increasingly wider circle of prospective collaborators and other interested parties. Thus, if this is your first update it is likely that you've been recently added to our list of Stellar School correspondents.
What School Reform News Said About Us:
In the September 2006 issue of School Reform News, published by the Heartland Institute, an article about Stellar Schools was featured. Included were some comments on our effort from education experts. Ken Calvert, Headmaster of the Hillsdale Academy, said, "The potential is there for a great educational model, so I hope [Anderson] can get it up and running." Education professor Guibert Hentschke, of the University of Southern California, also said regarding Stellar Schools, "This type of model would definitely force [existing] schools to improve their standards in the wake of competition."
The Search for a Model School in Rhode Island
For reasons of convenience and because of the large number of private schools in Rhode Island (about 125) we conducted a survey in hopes of finding a school with an advanced curriculum with which we might collaborate. My survey had another purpose: to find suitable schools that my three-year old granddaughter might attend in the future. So far, I've not found one that would be appropriate for a collaboration but the search will continue. In the meantime the Advanced Math & Science Academy Charter School (AMSA) in nearby Massachusetts is of great interest, particularly in regard to their curriculum, and I hope to visit it soon.
SchoolsTrademark Application Denied:
The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has refused our application to have "Stellar Schools" granted a trademark. We appealed their initial ruling but were unsuccessful. Another enterprise, Stellar International Institute, has an existing trademark which was deemed too close to our proposed trademark. The examiners were concerned that there is not room for two educational enterprises to have the name "stellar" in their marks. Our appeal was based on the fact that the Stellar International Institute was a post-secondary institution while in comparison ours is K-12. In rejecting our appeal they noted that either organization may wish to offer services in the market niches of the other and thus the trademarks, if ours was granted, would lead to confusion in the marketplace.
We accept their decision and will be searching for a more unique label for our enterprise. One possibility is "Sirius Schools." Given that the star Sirius is the brightest in the night sky it has a similar connotation to our current appelation of Stellar. If you have any ideas on this, "send them in."
Singapore Math Copyright Issues:
For some time, Stellar Schools had been planning to implement a curriculum similar to that used by the Hillsdale Academy. However, in the mathematics area we explored whether Hillsdale's use of the Saxon Math series was best. We have tentatively concluded that Singapore Math may be superior and as a result have been considering its use.
We requested the publishers of Singapore Math to give us permission to make digital copies of their texts with the understanding that we'd compensate them for any "dilution" of their intellectual property. We were refused.
Subsequently, we have begun to review the so-called Fair Use Doctrine in patent law and some court decisions in that area. It appears that under certain circumstances it is probably legal to make digital copies without the publisher's permission. However, we intend to work with the publisher on this and have advised them of our thinking on this matter.
As an alternative we would consider authoring our own texts in both formats: hardcopy and digital.
Seeking Catholic Partners:
We sent email communications to a number of Schools of Education at Catholic post-secondary institutions soliciting the interest of Catholic educators in the prospect that Stellar Schools (or something similar) would benefit their systems of parochial schools.
Of several dozen such communications we received expressions of interest from a handful of educators with whom we hope to have further discussions.
Given the likelihood that the Stellar Schools operational format would be less expensive than that of existing Catholic school systems there is the possibility that marginally solvent schools could be saved from bankruptcy. An added benefit for their systems is the higher quality of the content and instruction implicit in the Stellar Schools model.
We also seek Catholic participation for reasons beyond its benefit to them: we believe that their parochial systems provide a good environment for developing the prototypical schools and networks. We shall seek to involve them in Stellar Schools R&D. To the extent they participate in the development of Stellar Schools we intend to offer them an ownership stake in the enterprise that would allow them to receive income from the business that would subsequently be developed.
Seeking Mergers
We are open to joining with other enterprises that are developing similar kinds of schools. The possible relationships can be of many different types. We could be bought. We could purchase. We could merge. We could be a consultant. This could be done in the for-profit or non-profit environments.
Stellar School Consulting
Given our current status as an enterprise with a vanishingly small staff together with our scant level of capital we are also making ourselves available to consult. We are eager to help new schools and others develop, test, operate, and maintain instructional formats and other features consistent with our ideas for Stellar Schools. One of the beauties of our approach is that it can be implemented on a small scale- basically one course and one student at a time.
Our August 2006 update:
The Big Time:
The outlook for Stellar Schools (or something similar) is very bright. There is a confluence of wonderful new and inexpensive technologies and the great unmet need for a better system of K-12 education that should translate into a very large marketplace for new kinds of schools. Revenues in this industry within the United States will be well in excess of $200 billion annually.
Our Stellar Schools will rely on distance education, which historically used television before it exploited web-based systems. Anyone who has bought an HD capable LCD television recently already sees the merging of television with the Internet as these monitors can display in either format. Broadcast networks are now putting content on the Internet and as the on-demand component of television services grow, more and more of the Internet will infuse what we view on television. When we think about the production of online lessons we need no longer think in terms of web page productions alone- rather we can imagine using the vast production capabilities of existing television networks to produce our lessons, lectures, and supplementary audio/visual materials. Thus distance education will come full circle back into the television industry by the virtue of this "merging" of technologies.
When we say "Big Time" we mean that big players, as just mentioned, will be involved given their expertise and the large revenue rich marketplace to be served. It is much more likely that the content taught in Stellar Schools will be produced by such media professionals than by Anderson in a back room.
If you are as optimistic as we are, then find a way to join us in this effort. Or you take the lead, and we'll help. With the future of Stellar Schools in mind let's now consider how to develop them.
Ways Forward:
A good way to think of the existing Stellar Schools “organization” is that it is a potential broker of educational services and supplies to individuals, families and schools seeking those services and supplies. Unlike so many other business/organizational formats, that of the broker requires little to no financial capital. It is also instructive to realize that even in its fully developed state, our plan envisages a continuing “broker” role for the organization.
The question we face is how can we grow from something that exists only on "paper" to a successful system of schools? We need help answering this question.
We believe that building Stellar Schools from “scratch” would be wasteful when there are already so many suppliers of related services that could be involved in the efforts. Elsewhere on our Website we present Stellar Schools Opportunities wherein we describe some of the collaborations that might bear fruit. Further elaboration of that can be found in our new report: The Way Forward, which is accessible from our New Reports Page, where you can learn more details about these possibilities.
A Recent Speech:
Profitable Education in Stellar Schools: Franchising Robust, Self-Paced, Web-Enabled K-12 Schools, with Applications to Non-Profit and Public Schools
You can download its text VideoOverviewText or if you can view the Video. Or you can download the Video File itself.
Continuing Outreach:
Given our limited budget for marketing to potential collaborators (whether investors or players) we have worked to extend the group of correspondents who receive our seasonal updates. Since April of this year we have added approximately 300 new contacts to our list. Since our prototypical schools (as currently planned) will be non-profit we have been adding a number philanthropic foundations to our list. A large number of new contacts, who are members of the Education Industry Association (EIA), were added as well. I conversed with many of them at their EDVentures 2006 Annual Conference in Denver this July. Finally, the Stellar Schools Company, itself, is now a member enterprise of EIA.
Further publicity for us is anticipated in the publication, School Reform News, where two articles in the September 2006 issue are relevant. One will concern Stellar Schools and the other discusses external reforms of public education (that also peripherally involve Stellar Schools). One of the articles, on External Reforms, is available on this Website.
Reforms “Beyond” Stellar Schools:
Prompted by the Better Government Competition of Boston’s Pioneer Institute we spent some time developing proposals how Massachusetts should reform its systems of public education. Knowing the likely futility of accomplishing such reforms by bureaucratic/legislative means, we also developed proposals that private individuals and groups can pursue that would also encourage public school reforms- we call these external reforms. As we just mentioned above, an article on External Reforms is on the Website.
EDVentures Conference of the
Education Industry Association:
We went to Denver in July to meet with many other educational entrepreneurs and to learn about many recent developments- some relevant to Stellar Schools. There is more happening in the industry of interest to our project than we had known about. From the many ideas and individuals we met we realize that there are many unexplored avenues to investigate as we go forward.
Possible School Collaborations:
To develop the curriculum and all the associated courseware for a K-12 school is a major undertaking so we have been seeking to find existing schools that already have courses of instruction similar to what we seek.
The Meaning of Stellar:
On more than one occasion we've been asked about the origin of our enterprise's name: Stellar Schools. The "schools" part should be obvious, but the Stellar part was born out of two thoughts. First, we seek excellent schools- as in "stellar." But we also intend to hire star teachers to produce our online content and thus in a second sense our teachers will be "stellar."
Our April 2006 Update:
Local Publicizing of Our Efforts:
Most of our present efforts now are focused on finding players and investors in our business. To that end we have been out in public forums giving speeches. Whenever I meet someone new, I generally tell them about Stellar Schools. You'll never know who might be interested. For example, when I met Mikhail Gorbachev in early April, I told him about our effort. He was interested. During the ensuing conversation several photographs were taken allowing us to depict a portion of it in our Gorby Toon.
Alternatives to a Hillsdale Collaboration:
Our hopes of developing a collaborative relationship with Hillsdale Academy, in which we'd jointly develop an Online version of their curriculum, have been diminished by a lack of interest on their part. This has led us to seek other possible partners for collaboration. To this end we have been conducting a survey of private K-12 schools in the Providence, Rhode Island area. Several have curricula approximating the rigor of Hillsdale and a few go beyond it. None of them have a widely distributed published version such as the one put out by Hillsdale and thus none of them is as well known for its curriculum.
Developing Intangible Assets:
We have filed to have "Stellar Schools" registered as a U.S. Trademark. It is not yet taken by any other enterprise so it seemed prudent to take it now. We hope to protect some of our business methods with patents. Additionally, our Web domain StellarSchools.com is a current intangible asset that we hope to maintain indefinitely.
The Gang of Socialists Yet Persist in Bush's Department of Education:
In the U.S. Department of Education are numerous offices and directorates that might have been expected to take a friendly view towards Stellar Schools. And indeed the Office of Educational Technology allowed us to provide commentary about its National Education Technology Plan on its Website. However, such was not the case for the EROD (Education Resource Organizations Directory) maintained within the Office of the Chief Information Officer. When I attempted to list my information about Stellar Schools in EROD, I was told that the for-profit nature of my enterprise would preclude participation. I appealed this decision to the CIO himself who subsequently sided with the forces antagonistic to for-profit enterprises. I intend to pursue this dispute with Secretary Spellings' office when I have time to do so.
Perhaps a small benefit of this disagreement is that it reminds us of the entrenched Washington bureaucracy that is unresponsive to administration policies and of its fairly well-known left-leaning, anti-business tendencies.
Problems in Public Education:
As we have been out on the lecture circuit speaking about Stellar Schools, we've had feedback to the effect that people want to know more about the problems we are trying to remedy. They seem very interested about dropout rates and other public school pathologies. To learn more about this check out What's Wrong With K-12 Education, elsewhere on this Website.