Twitter Feed Analysis: February 14-21

In the week of February 14-21 the major trends on Twitter #edpolicy and #edreform were the extension of NCLB waivers to New Mexico, negations behind NY teacher evaluations, the appearance of Secretary of Education Arne Duncan on Jon Stewart’s Daily Show, and the activity behind new “parent trigger” laws.

The No Child Left Behind waivers have now been extended to 11 states with the newest addition this week being New Mexico. The waivers give the states more flexibility to implement their own grading for schools. Last year almost 90% of that state’s public schools didn’t meet NCLB’s requirements (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/02/16/no-child-left-behind-new-_n_1281658.html). As many as 28 more states along with DC and Puerto Rico have applied for such a waiver (http://www.roosevelttorch.com/sections/opinion-editorial/states-leave-flawed-education-law-behind-1.2703375#.T0PC4fEgfTQ). In order to receive a waiver states must be prepared to implement their own system of teacher and school evaluations. The White House has called the waivers a stopgap measure to address the overburdening evaluation issue under NCLB until congress can pass improved education reforms.

After a contentious run up to a deadline in New York to reach agreement on teacher evaluation regulations, a deal brokered out between Governor Cuomo, state legislators, and union leaders calls for “independent validators” to monitor and rate teachers as a second opinion to school principals. The observers will be licensed educators contracted from a company to observe 50-80 teachers that have been rated as “ineffective” by their principals and will observe their classrooms three times per year. “If an evaluator concurs with a principal’s finding that a teacher is ineffective for a second consecutive year, city officials can begin a new, expedited termination process. Currently, the burden of proof is on the city, making the dismissal process lengthy and difficult” (http://www.nytimes.com/schoolbook/2012/02/20/struggling-teachers-to-be-scored-by-independent-observers/). This system of evaluation is currently in place in New Haven Connecticut and has reportedly led 36 teachers in that city to resign or retire. The idea is that supposedly ineffective teachers will leave on their own instead of facing an embarrassing process towards extermination. http://gothamschools.org/2012/02/17/in-new-havens-experience-validators-dont-lead-to-firing/

Education Secretary Arne Duncan’s appearance on the Daily Show was largely received as “robotic” and “cliché-filled.” (http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/thu-february-16-2012/arne-duncan) Jon Stewart was pressing in rehashing criticism from the education community that the Race to the Top reform did not promote the innovation and creativity that it supposes to support. A critical review that circulated around twitter by Washington Post’s blogger Valerie Strauss took aim at Duncan’s inability to “deviate from his talking points” http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/post/jon-stewart-tries-to-talk-to-arne-duncan/2012/02/16/gIQATPNVJR_blog.html. Quoting Strauss: “Stewart tried again and again to get Duncan to have a real conversation, but Duncan seemed to never directly respond to a question, always coming back to one of his talking points. He even said that ‘teachers have been beaten down,’ again without betraying any recognition that many teachers blame his policies for this state of affairs. What we learned from this exchange (the part that was televised) is that Stewart displayed a great grasp of the issues and the consequences of Race to the Top, and Duncan, well, not so much. I don’t need to say that something is wrong with this picture, so I won’t.”

Elsewhere on Twitter, a host of activity around “parent trigger” laws shed light on a new and contentious issue acting on education reform. The laws give the parents of children enrolled in public elementary and high schools the unprecedented capacity to make decisions about a school such as hiring a new principal, converting a school into a public charter school, or closing a school completely, all after gathering signatures from a 51% majority of all parents (http://midtown.patch.com/blog_posts/op-ed-parents-and-students-cant-wait-for-the-parent-trigger-act). So-called parent trigger laws were first passed in California in 2010. Texas and Mississippi have since enacted similar legislation, and 22 additional states are now considering trigger bills. Mostly this reform had been cheered by a number of education oriented groups and its expansion across the states has been fueled by major voices such as Michelle Rhee, Arne Duncan, and the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation. The first action taken by parents with these new powers from Compton, CA was declared invalid because of signature and dating problems. Now the battle has moved to Adelanto, CA where parents turned out in throngs to sign petitions to overhaul Desert Trails Elementary School. Outside groups such as the right-wing ALEC coalition, seeing the desperation of the parents from afar, have moved in to push their own agenda on the school. By organizing signatures to enact trigger legislation, ALEC has gained around 70% of parents’ signatures (http://colorlines.com/archives/2012/02/adelanto_calif_–_seated_in.html). Many parents however have now complained that the petitions they were presented with had been distorted. One of the two petitions that were signed by parents was designed to transform Desert Trails Elementary into a charter school – a proposal many said they were never told. The other petition still aimed high in transforming the school, but left out the controversial charter school takeover. Many parents are now trying to rescind their signature on the charter petition, but ALEC denies that they misrepresented the petition claiming all signatures valid. Critics of the legislation now point to this example and the power it gives to outside organizations with their own agendas to act on a community’s schools. With the battle still raging, Hollywood has been all over the drama and policy debate surrounding the desert community of Adelanto. “Won’t Back Down”, a film by 20th Century Fox, will be released in September starring Viola Davis from “The Help” and Maggie Gyllenhall (http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/21/movies/viola-davis-and-maggie-gyllenhaal-in-parent-trigger-film.html?_r=2).

Elsewhere on Twitter, the anomaly known as Rick Santorum produced an anomaly of criticism towards the President over education reform. In a crowded week of attacks aimed at Obama, Santorum took to Columbus, Ohio in a speech to chastise the idea of federal government planning for schools. While he and his wife took to home-schooling their children, Santorum did not suggest that government should get out of education completely. Though the federal government contributes less than 11% of total education funding to primary and secondary schools, “Republican candidates have called for a cutback in this formula, which has had bipartisan support for decades, saying they would give block grants to states and local districts while repealing federal requirements” (http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/19/us/politics/santorum-criticizes-education-system-and-obama.html?_r=3&hp).

Perhaps the biggest outlier of the week – and perhaps the most comedic/ambitious reform proposal – was a tweet and accompanying blogpost (http://www.andrewkmiller.com/2012/02/4-ways-to-use-massively-multiplayer-online-games-in-the-classroom/) suggesting “4 Ways to Use Massively Multiplayer Online Games in the Classroom.” The tweeter, a self-proclaimed regular MMORPG player, considers game-based learning to be potentially very successful. His blogpost was inspired by a story out of Massachusetts. Quoting the Massachusetts Institute of Technology website: “With a new $3 million grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the MIT Education Arcade is about to design, build and research a massively multiplayer online game (MMOG) to help high school students learn math and biology… The game will be designed to align with the Common Core standards in mathematics and Next Generation Science Standards for high school students and will use innovative task-based assessment strategies embedded into the game, which provide unique opportunities for players to display mastery of the relevant topics and skills. This task-based assessment strategy will also provide teachers with targeted data that allows them to track the students’ progress and provide valuable just-in-time feedback.” (http://web.mit.edu/press/2012/mmog-stem-development.html).

In a broad analysis of the twitter feed this week, I found that most of the chatter was quite critical, especially towards Arne Duncan’s appearance on the Daily Show. Many also denounced New York’s teacher evaluation system, especially the proposals that had popped up prior to the one that was actually agreed upon. Furthermore, while there were many people excited about the spreading of trigger laws, there were almost as many voices on twitter completely blasting their not-so-obvious aspects especially with respect to charter schools. In light of what has come out of previous week’s twitter feed, this week seemed relatively doldrums as there weren’t any big events, meetings, or announcements regarding education policy nationally. The twitter feed mirrored this with tweets on lots of orthogonal and minor issues and few patterns or discussions/responses. I suspect that in the coming weeks more NCLB waivers will hit the twitter feed – because of the fact that so many states applied for them in the second wave – and that parent trigger laws could play a larger role nationally in light of talk about such upcoming legislation in many states.

Lastly, the study I have chosen to propose for class reading comes from the National Education Policy Center and reviews the January study from the National Bureau of Economic Research which reported that a student’s having high performing teachers contributed to their higher future earnings. The review does not reject the earlier study’s findings, but criticized their methods of statistical extraction and proposes that policy makers “tread cautiously in their reaction” to the report. http://nepc.colorado.edu/thinktank/review-long-term-impacts

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