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24 Mar, 11 tweets, 5 min read
My newest piece is an end, FINALLY, to my year-long series on the rise and fall of the Bush/Obama Education Reform era.

I have been working on this ever since @toad_spotted wrote the wonderful Waking from Meritocracy, that included this passage:
americanmind.org/features/the-d… Image
Now, if you know anything about the history of Ed reform, you are stunned by the brilliance of the Napoleon metaphor.

My series is for those who don't understand why the metaphor is so apt.
So here it is, The Rise and Fall of Bush/Obama Ed Reform

Volume 1: The Road to Glory
The rise of charters, NCLB, TFA, and the beginning of federal control. #SchoolChoice #teachertwitter #education
educationrealist.wordpress.com/2019/12/29/bus…
Volume 2: Zenith
Bush handoff to Obama, who with Arne Duncan consolidated federal power with waivers, merit pay demands and, of course, Common Core.
educationrealist.wordpress.com/2019/12/30/bus…
The way up was by president. The way down was, er, multi-faceted.

So I started with Common Core. In 2013, I wrote an awfully prescient article arguing (counter common wisdom) that the math standards were too high, and this would all end with a flinch.
educationrealist.wordpress.com/2013/11/09/cor…
Volume 3: Core Meltdown Came.
For the reasons mentioned in previous article, high school math didn't change at all. Elementary school was a different matter. Parents were pissed off. Also, politics.
educationrealist.wordpress.com/2020/01/26/bus…
Next, I wander into the land of metaphor while trying to explain to people exactly why Common Core was doomed to fail. It involves Fatal Attraction and The Sopranos.
educationrealist.wordpress.com/2020/03/23/bus…
Volume 5: Why Didn't They See Common Core Fail Coming?

Something that's a bit insider baseball, but is *so* important to understand about all education policy. No one wants to accept reality.
educationrealist.wordpress.com/2020/04/11/bus… Image
Then I learned I really needed to write in coffeeshops, which were closed. Long gap til the next. Significantly, I wrote in a place that wasn't home.

Volume 6: Core Damage
Sure, kids didn't improve. But what if they actually were hurt by Common Core?
educationrealist.wordpress.com/2020/10/05/bus…
I was all set to wrap up, but then when I got to the Value Add section, it demanded more attention.

Volume 7: Victory over Value Add

The thing is, value added metrics only work if the principals aren't going to juke the stats.
educationrealist.wordpress.com/2021/01/01/bus…
Volume 8, It All Came Tumbling Down, which was really the seed that kicked off the series. I wrote an early form at @Steve_Sailer 's blog, that led Toad to ask about a history. Triumphs are always temporary. Goes both ways.
educationrealist.wordpress.com/2021/03/24/bus…

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More from @Ed_Realist

EdReal Profile picture
29 Apr
Podhoretz is, as always, wrong on facts while he's being a smug and arrogant prick.

It doesn't matter at all what the population of the *city* is, but rather the population of the public schools.

Whites and Asians are both 15% of public school children. Image
In other words, whites aren't nearly as interested in going to the specialized high schools as Asians are (and the whites who are interested are disproportionately immigrants).

In fact, whites and Asians get accepted at almost identical rates.
But whites aren't interested in the specialized high schools.

That's a problem. That is, by the way, ALWAYS the problem that people are trying to fix by ending the test. They *say* they want more diversity. But what they *want* is more whites.
Read 13 tweets
EdReal Profile picture
19 Jul 20
@CandideIII @Steve_Sailer @jbarro Doesn't matter, as I keep saying, as colleges have been weighting grades far more than SAT scores for close to 20 years. And the reason Asians have moved ahead is a combo of things, but major change in test is part of it.
@CandideIII @Steve_Sailer @jbarro That is, the issue is grades, not test scores. And elites going to private schools are getting very good grades. There was just a study showing private school grade inflation is greater than public.
blogs.edweek.org/edweek/high_sc…
@CandideIII @Steve_Sailer @jbarro The white kids getting hit hard by the Asian dominance in grades are not the elites that Douthat is yapping about, but the middle and upper middle class--the kids that are being shut out of the elite publics by Asian grades and don't have the connections or money for private unis
Read 5 tweets
EdReal Profile picture
25 May 20
@Steve_Sailer @CharlesNegy I still don't think that's quite right, although I agree that Asians did lose a key battle because Napolitano is no longer concerned about white support. But it's grades, more than SAT scores, that hurts whites vis a vis Asians.
@Steve_Sailer @CharlesNegy It was the post 1997 change, when the UCs made GPA 75% of the admission decision, that Asians dominated over whites. Meanwhile, blacks and Hispanics in majority minority schools, had GPAs they could never achieve in diverse high schools. educationrealist.wordpress.com/2017/08/01/gpa…
@Steve_Sailer @CharlesNegy I would argue that whites simply have quit trying to get into the UCs. Unless their kid has a 4.0 in their sophomore year, there's no point in even trying. It's gotten worse since 2006, after the second SAT change, when they reduced the weight of the subject tests.....
Read 10 tweets
EdReal Profile picture
20 Mar 20
1. Burr, etc, sold their stock, knowing that investors would panic.
2. Investors panicked.
3. Because investors panicked, pressure on fed/states grew even though public less than concerned.
4. Quarantine, creating real econ depression.
5. WSJ--hey, maybe panic was dumb.
But panic is what the *investors* did, not the public. No matter how dire the politicians got, no matter how serious the warnings, there are *lots* of people who think this is nonsense.

So it's hideous that Burr lied, but any non-Senator could have sold in January as well.
The media really doesn't understand its role in this, which is pretty horrible. They CREATED the pressures. Along with lawyers. Because what any modern society needs is an activist media and eager lawyers.
Read 9 tweets
EdReal Profile picture
25 Nov 19
On my drive up here, I was listening to @JonahDispatch and @smarick on The Remnant. It was very wonky, on things I don't usually fuss about, but there was like a five minute interlude I found very interesting--I mean, the whole thing was fine, but this was revealing.
@JonahDispatch @smarick Jonah was going on about how our ed schools present a Zinnian version of the universe, and that this is what teachers are taught and go out and teach their kids.

Andy Smarick pushed back , saying yeah, that's what the top schools do, but teachers are ideologically diverse
@JonahDispatch @smarick Jonah responded by saying yeah, but you know how all reporters want to work for the Times and the Post (pre-internet), so they all skew left, so too do teachers.
Read 14 tweets
EdReal Profile picture
19 Nov 19
The next time all the reform yutzes talk about "getting kids away from failing schools", remember that it's the lawsuits that *prevent* schools from protecting non-sped kids from out of control sped kids that do a lot to create "failing schools", particularly at ES level.
I mean, this is basically what Pondiscio's book describes SA doing to kids with far fewer problems, and lots of folks said whoooohooo go Success Academy!
What we used to do was create separate schools for severely disabled kids. The parents sued. Hence mainstreaming.

Here's a terrible thing: no matter what you do, severely disabled kids will have tough lives in institutional settings.
Read 8 tweets

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