Klein Lied to the National Press Club in Australia

Check out the latest report from the Australian organization Save Our Schools. Here is an excerpt from Klein Lied to the National Press Club:

New York City Schools Chancellor, Joel Klein, was exposed as a dissembler at his National Press Club address in Canberra last week. Under forensic questioning from The Canberra Times’ education reporter, Emma Macdonald, Klein resorted to lies and deceptions to justify his claims of increases in student achievement in New York City schools.

Macdonald challenged Klein on his claims by citing national reading and mathematics assessments which show that there has been no improvement in student achievement in NYC since 2003, except for 4th grade mathematics. She questioned him on whether the grades given to schools in this year’s school progress reports had been manipulated by reducing the cut-off scores to achieve an A or B.

Klein denied both charges. He said that Macdonald was wrong on both facts. His response was to falsely assert that the cut-off scores for school grades had not been reduced, falsely claim that New York State tests were a better measure of student achievement than the independent national assessments, and to selectively cite evidence about the success of African-American students.

Check out the entire document, complete with bibliography.

By the way, it was our own Steve Koss who first figured out the cut-off scores had been manipulated in this way: Don’t Like the Results? Change the Scale!

See also the report by the Australian Education Union, Joel Klein and the New York School Accountability Model

Joel Klein gets mixed reviews down-under

The Australian media continue their refreshingly skeptical coverage of Joel Klein’s promotion of his educational policies during his visit down-under.

Expose bad schools, says US educator (Sydney Morning Herald)

The Education Minister, Julia Gillard, is pushing for states and territories to adopt a similar system of transparency in Australia. On Monday she softened the blow for disadvantaged schools by announcing $500 million in funding to help them to entice good teachers.

But the woman Mr Klein described today as "a bold and fearless leader" should be warned. The US model has come under attack for its narrow measure of what made a school good.

A 2006 study by the US Centre on Education Policy showed that so much emphasis was being put on reading and maths that it caused a decline in teaching of history, science and the arts.

A similar model in Australia could leave little incentive for schools to improve teaching in subjects other than the "basics" measured. Sport, music, art and foreign languages could suffer as schools sweat to meet indicators.

Big business dominates educational planning (Sydney Morning Herald)

Joel Klein is in Australia to "spruik" his business-friendly school reforms courtesy of the giant Swiss bank UBS, the recipient of a multibillion-dollar bail-out from Swiss taxpayers, and dubbed the "world's biggest subprime loser" by The Age.

The federal Education Minister, Julia Gillard, "welcomes the active involvement of UBS" in education reform. Since her recent US visit, she has been championing the "remarkable outcomes" she claims Klein has achieved in New York, where he is the chancellor of the city's education department.

Klein, who was previously chief executive of the international media company Bertelsmann (and who had an article on this page on Monday), believes schools should be run more like businesses, and is an enthusiastic promoter of "charter" schools, some of which are operated for profit. He told Fortune magazine, "We're converting the role of the principal into a CEO role."

On occasion, according to The Nation magazine, Klein has referred to children as cars in a shop, a collection of malfunctions to be adjusted. Teachers, he said, needed "to look under the hood" to figure out the origins of the pings. …In the US, as much as a quarter of the school year can be devoted to test preparation. The assessments are supposed to show where the students have gaps in their knowledge so lessons can be adjusted. For the first few years of any testing regime, as students get used to sitting standardised tests, as teachers learn how to teach to the tests and as schools narrow their curriculums, test scores tend to improve. So it is not surprising that New York students are getting better scores in the national standardised tests.

This enables Klein to claim great educational improvements even though a national study released earlier this year using 2004 data found that New York has one of the worst graduation rates in the US, 43rd out of 50 large cities. Gillard is preparing to adopt key elements of Klein's business approach for use in Australian schools on the basis of Klein's ability to improve student test results, without examination of what those test results really represent. Will she unquestioningly adopt the business mantra of "standards, assessment and accountability" in the face of opposition from education experts?

Education is not a business and corporations that have made such bad judgments with regard to their core business, like banks, shouldn't be poking their gnomic noses into our schools.

US educationist talks tough on schools The Age (Melbourne)

In his speech, Mr Klein said his controversial methods, including standardised testing, had transformed the culture of his city's schools from one of excuses to one of performance.

But Australians are divided over Mr Klein's approach. Vicki Froomes, one Melbourne educator who worked with the New York schools Mr Klein threatened to close, said teachers would "teach to the test".

Ratings scheme for schools fails the test for improving them The Age (Melbourne) EARLIER this week on ABC2, Virginia Trioli asked federal Education Minister Julia Gillard if she agreed with Rupert Murdoch, who, in his Boyer Lectures, called Australia's public education a disgrace. Murdoch had said: "The failure of these schools is more than a waste of human promise and a drain on our future workforce, it's a moral scandal." "I'd have to say I think Rupert Murdoch is making a lot of sense," Gillard said. …The only qualification that Murdoch has to judge our schools is that he owns about 70 per cent of capital city daily newspaper circulation. When billionaire media magnates speak, the rest of us listen. The same cannot be said for the other American citizen, New York schools chancellor Joel Klein, who Gillard has brought to Australia, "impressed" by his education reforms, especially school league tables, which had produced "remarkable outcomes". Rubbish. Internet comments on the test results show the improvement in school performance measurement comes from manipulating the tests by prepping students. Klein also makes claims about the results that cannot be supported by any fair analysis. Statisticians who have examined the results say they can be explained by random error. Klein, a corporate lawyer and political apparatchik, is here to spruik the virtues of Gillard's wacky plan to publish a rating system for schools. Critics point out that the system, based on experience in Britain and the US, "names and shames" poorly performing schools whose output is predictable based on socio-economic background and lack of funding. The schemes' great political virtue is that it allows governments without any real commitment to raising the standard of poorer schools to appear to be doing something. The NY Times blog also reports on Klein’s trip.

Australians agree: Joel Klein is a fraud!

Media clips from Joel Klein’s visit to Australia.

From the Melbourne Age: [In NYC] Students are required to sit standardised tests, schools get an annual report card grading them from A-D and F ...Schools that need help get resources to improve but if they fail to lift their game, they are closed or restructured — and more than 70 have been shut.

His critics argue that the measures are too punitive, that he relies too heavily on standardised testing and that the improvements to his students' results are not significant.

"The only independent check on student achievement in New York City shows a completely different picture from that claimed by Klein," said Save our Schools convener Trevor Cobbold. "The results of the National Assessment of Educational Progress administered by the US Department of Education shows that student achievement in New York City has stagnated since 2003. The achievement gaps between blacks and whites, between Hispanics and whites and between low and high-income students are as large as they were when Klein began to overhaul the system."

Sydney Morning Herald : While Mr Klein says student scores have vastly improved under his watch, analysis by Diane Ravitch, a research professor of education at New York University and senior fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University and the Brookings Institution in Washington, shows the scores have been mainly flat or declining.

A former Productivity Commission economist, Trevor Cobbold, the convener of Save Our Schools, said reported improvements in New York schools had been artificially inflated and lacked credibility. "The results of the national assessment of education progress administered by the US Department of Education show the student achievement in New York City has stagnated since 2003," he said. "Adopting such a model in Australia would lead to inaccurate and misleading comparisons of school performance."

An Australian education authority, Brian Caldwell, professorial fellow at the University of Melbourne, said: "If we were looking for international examples, we should be looking at countries like Finland that has no national testing scheme. Their schools operate with a high degree of autonomy and they focus on making sure their teachers are well trained."

Angelo Gavrielatos, of the Australian Education Union, said the US performed 29th in science and 35th in mathematics in OECD assessments. "The New York model is not one Australia should emulate."

ABC News: AEU (Australian teacher union) president Angelo Gavrielatos says it would be counter-productive to take New York as an example. "We shouldn't be looking at importing flawed ideas from overseas. Let's look at importing successful ideas from overseas," he said.
"Australia getting advice from the US on how to do education is like Ian Thorpe getting advice from Eric the Eel." He was referring to the Sydney 2000 Olympics, when a swimmer from Equatorial Guinea took almost two minutes to swim the 100-metres freestyle.

Canberra Times : The federal Education Minister, Julia Gillard, claims that reforms such as reporting individual school results are ''working'' and have produced ''remarkable outcomes''. She says that there has been continual improvement in student achievement in New York City under Klein.

These assertions are refuted by test results in reading and mathematics. National tests show that average student achievement in New York City schools has stagnated while state tests show a mixture of increases and declines, with no consistent pattern of improvement.

The National Assessment of Education Progress tests conducted by the US Department of Education show no statistically significant change in average student scores for reading in grades 4 and 8 between 2003 and 2007 in New York City. They show a small improvement in Grade 4 mathematics but no improvement in Grade 8.

They also show that there was no improvement in average reading scores for low income, black and hispanic students in either Grade 4 or 8. There were small improvements in average mathematics scores in Grade 4 for low income, black and hispanic students. In Grade 8 mathematics, there was no improvement for black and hispanic students, but a slight improvement for low income students.

The Australian : During Mr Klein's week-long visit in Australia, sponsored by global financial firm UBS, he will promote the tools underpinning the accountability system adopted in in New York.

He addressed a forum in Melbourne yesterday on leading transformational change in schools, will address the National Press Club in Canberra today, and tomorrow will speak at a corporate dinner hosted by UBS on strengthening the links between business and schools.
Mr Klein's visit comes ahead of a looming showdown between the commonwealth and states and territories at the meeting of the Council of Australian Governments on Saturday over the reporting of school performance.

Addressing the forum yesterday, Mr Klein was effusive in his praise for Education Minister Julia Gillard, and described her speech outlining the Government's commitment to transparency in schools as one of the "greatest" on education reform he had heard. "The level of courage in a public official isn't as rare as I sometimes thought," he said….

Mr Klein received a mixed response from the 100-strong group of educators and policymakers at the Melbourne forum. While teachers generally supported boosting accountability and empowering parents, president of the Australian Secondary Principals Association Andrew Blair was concerned that tests for ranking schools were simplistic. Mr Blair said measurements of performance should cover multiple methodologies, beyond "raw grabs" of test data.

Mr Klein said multiple measurements risked covering up underperformance. "The more we have multiple measures the risk is we dilute the power of accountability," he said.

A warning to Australians: don't let your kids suffer, as have ours!

This week, Joel Klein is visiting Australia to promote his educational policies and perspective. To alert Aussies to the disinformation campaign he will likely be spreading, we have deconstructed a recent interview on Australian TV with Klein, carried out by journalist Kerry O'Brian, and aired last month on Australian TV.

[The full video of the Klein interview is here and the transcript here.]

Question: "You can't have a system corrupted or distorted by a principal under pressure or a principal that wants to boost his or her status by encouraging teachers at the school to go soft on the students in tests to help them cheat in effect?"

JOEL KLEIN: "It's happened on a handful of occasions since I’ve been here and we’ve terminated principals, terminated a couple of teachers at one point, but I don't think systematically that's a powerful explanation.

And even before our system there was a Federal system here in the US under "no child left behind." So schools are under a certain amount of pressure, but I don't think somebody is going to imperil their livelihood by taking the risk of trying to have students cheat on exams."

In reality, there is now rampant test prep in NYC schools – as well as many serious allegations of cheating – few of which are ever followed up by this administration, even when the allegations are based on reliable evidence from people on the ground. In fact, many principals have been promoted and given bonuses whose schools have seen large and unexplained boosts in test scores. See for example this article, detailing allegations about cheating at one school, where test scores jumped 30 points in one year, where Chancellor Joel Klein spoke at the school's graduation while wearing a "Best School in the Universe" T-shirt.

In fact, Klein doesn’t appear to care what’s causing test scores to rise, as long as they do. And as pointed out by independent experts like Diane Ravitch, as well as in the NY Times and elsewhere, test scores on state exams have not been matched by NYC's results on the more reliable national assessments called the NAEPs. Indeed, an analysis of NAEP scores between 2003-2007 reveals that NYC came in 10^th out of 11 urban school districts across the nation in changes in test score changes over the course of this administration.

JOEL KLEIN: "The class sizes have reduced…”

Actually, Joel Klein has stubbornly refused to reduce class size, the top priority of NYC parents, even when it means ignoring the law. As a result, our class sizes remain the largest in the state and among the largest in the nation, despite hundreds of millions of dollars allocated by the state to reduce class size.

In a 2006 audit, the State Comptroller found that only 20 additional classes were formed in NYC schools over the baseline figure, despite $89 million in annual state funds specifically allocated to reduce class size. The audit concluded that “while the [NYC] DoE was receiving State funding… it was reducing its own support for early grade class size reduction and using it for other purposes.” The NY State Comptroller proposed a number of recommendations to improve compliance with the law– all of which the Chancellor rejected.

Then again, this past September, the NY State Education Department found that despite commitments by the city to use millions of dollars in new state aid to reduce class size, instead “53.9% of New York City schools reported that either class size or pupil-to-teacher ratio increased in 2007-08.”

Accordingly, over 80% of NYC parents say that there has been no improvement in class size under this administration, and 86% of NYC principals say that they are unable to provide a quality education to their students because of excessive class sizes at their schools.

JOEL KLEIN: "The President of our [teachers] union, who's also the President of the National Union, she said on the first day of school this year in September that she had been traveling around the US and no place, in any urban area, was comparable to the work that we're doing. In fact he word she used was that New York City had become a beacon."

Among NYC teachers, there has been overwhelming disapproval of the leadership and policies of Joel Klein. Last year, the NYC teacher’s union released its own survey, showing that 85% of its members believe that Klein has refused to provide the support and resources they need to succeed; 85% disagreed with his emphasis on high-stakes testing; and 83% said that he had put other interests above the learning needs of the children.

According to Klein’s top spokesperson, only two out of twenty of the top administrators at the Department of Education are long-term educators; instead, he has largely staffed the Department with corporate consultants and attorneys.

In the past few weeks, thousands of teachers in NYC and elsewhere have signed petitions, warning President-elect Obama not to appoint Joel Klein to his administration, because of his misguided policies.

Check out this petition, which has been signed by nearly 4200 educators in NYC and nationwide:

"The NYC Department of Education under Joel Klein has been run like a ruthless dictatorship -- with no input from parents or educations. Teachers have not been respected, consulted, nor listened to. And little thought has been devoted to how the policies he has imposed on our schools have been destructive to the children and their futures...While focusing on test scores, he has consistently ignored the crisis of overcrowding in NY schools. Thousands of children are being given special services in hallways or in closets."

See also this petition, signed by more than 3600 teachers and academic experts nationwide, in opposition to Joel Klein's "vision of privatized, corporatized, and anti-democratic schools."

QUESTION: "How do you answer the critics who say your school statistics are flawed because of wild statistical fluctuations or results from year to year, which suggest fundamental flaws?"

JOEL KLEIN: "I don't think that's a fair criticism. I've actually studied the statistics. There are some year to year fluctuations that are significant, but that's because schools that weren't making progress refocused and decided that the risk to them was they were gonna close.

"And so they decided that they would focus much more effectively on promoting student performance. But all of these things will come out over the years, meaning this is not a one year or two year experiment.”

Some year-to-year fluctuations? School grades have widely varied between one year to the next, which is not surprising considering they are primarily based on one year's worth of test score gains or losses, which experts have shown to be 30-80% random.

See this analysis by Daniel Koretz, an expert on testing and statistics from Harvard, pointing out that three quarters of NYC schools that received an “F” last year received an “A’” or “B” this year. As Koretz writes:

“It strains credulity to believe that if these schools were really “failing” last year, three-fourths of them improved so markedly in a mere 12 months that they deserve grades of A or B ...This instability is sampling error and measurement error at work. It does not make sense for parents to choose schools, or for policymakers to praise or berate schools, for a rating that is so strongly influenced by error.”

Aaron Pallas and Jennifer Jennings of Columbia University have concluded that “The progress measure…is a fruitless exercise in measuring error rather than the value that schools themselves add to students.”

As another of their summaries suggest, “a Monkey [could] Do a Better Job of Predicting Which Schools Show Student Progress in English Skills than the New York City Department of Education."

In short, NYC parents and teachers have this advice for Australians: Do not be fooled by either Klein or his claims.

Achievement has not significantly improved under his leadership. Instead, his administration has consistently misused millions of dollars meant to reduce class size that would have provided children with a better chance to learn, while spending millions more in taxpayer funds on expanding the bureaucracy with high-paid corporate consultants, no-bid contracts, and more testing in our schools.

Along the way, he has stubbornly refused to listen to parents, teachers and academic experts who have pointed out the destructive impact of his policies.

Take heed -- and reject these policies that will cause your kids to needlessly suffer -- as have ours.