Eduwonkette Revealed - Phew, Now I Can Talk

Just a few weeks less than the first anniversary of the Eduwonkette blog, Diana Schemo in this week's NY magazine reveals Eduwonkette's real identity - Jennifer Jennings, a grad student at Columbia in the sociology department. Jennifer explains why she came out on her blog. Read her post and wonderful cartoon here.

And yes, I knew all along and am notoriously bad at keeping secrets, but she really scared the crap out of me - like if I squealed she would never work and I would have to send her money. Trying to keep a secret for almost a year for a yenta like me was torture.

She was a tough task master, making sure I didn't write anything too revealing. When we both attended an AERA event in March where Rotherham and Russo (and the Times' Jennifer Medina) were on a panel, we didn't sit together. She had to leave early and used some of my notes for her report. She was attacked by Rotherham for being connected to a crazy like me.

So let me say right here that though I've known Jennifer for 4 years that does not indicate agreement on her part with the stuff put out on Ed Notes.

Recently I spent an extended afternoon with Jennifer. Let me say this: there's no one in the education world where 4 hours of ed talk can be so enlightening - and mind wrenching - and thought provoking. One of the sad parts of our conversation was that her anonymity was interferring with her meeting too many people. It was clear she was planning an exit strategy from anonymity. The time frame seems to have been speeded up a bit.

There's a lot of areas where we agree and many where we don't. But don't be surprised if the crazies at the DOE who disparage Jennifer's exposure of their stats as biased go even further in attacking her for knowing the "wrong" people.

I personally pooh pooh research with an attitude of "Don' need no stinkin' research" to tell me what I instinctively know as a teacher. Like forget the class size research, even though the Tennessee study validates low class sizes. All teachers will point to class size as a major issue. But without research, what would all the researchers in education do? And all the pundits?

From the day I met Jennifer 4 years ago at a Walton HS (in the Bronx) press conference where the addition of small schools to an overcrowded building was an issue, I was impressed by the depth of knowledge of just about every ed issue out there. And the way she approached issues from the dual perspective of a researcher and a teacher.

She doesn't like to talk much about it but she did have some teaching experience in an urban setting and though brief, it was enough to inform her with a "teacher" mentality and that is how she approaches many issues. Thus, at no point will you find any hint of the teacher bashing that goes on amongst so many pundits. Maybe that is what upsets the DOE about her.

I remember telling people who bash the younger generation that with people like Jennifer there was a lot of hope. When I told her about ICE, she expressed interest in observing meetings as part of her research to see what it was all about. At that time ICE spent a lot of time debating education issues which many of us found more interesting than UFT electoral and caucus politics. She also recorded a special well-attended event we held at the old Stuyvesant building on small schools a few years ago.

Last September I had lunch with Jennifer on the day the Broad prize was announced as being given to Bloomberg/Klein at a "Pain Quotidienne" in the Village. She had been sending me some of the wonderful research she was into and it seemed a shame it didn't have a wider audience. (I had even spoken at PEP meetings using some of her research which I fuzzed up enough to keep her anonymous.) The Ed notes blog was about a year old at the time and I offered to publish some of her work.

She raised the idea of doing her own blog but also her reservations about it as she expresses in the reveal announcement on her blog. We talked about the idea of going anonymous as many bloggers do. We also spent a lot of time discussing the teacher effectiveness/quality issue that day. (We disagree in some areas.)

A few days later she sent me the prototype of her blog and and I was impressed. She went public a few days after that with a week long series on teacher effectiveness (worth reading again) that was very powerful.

I'm proud that Ed Notes was the first blog to announce her debut on her first day. Some major blogs plugged in the first day also. She got 300 hits that day.

By December, Education Week came calling with an offer to reach an even wider audience (she would not accept money.) There was never an expectation she would come under the kinds of attack she did for being anonymous." But the immediate impact she had was also unexpected.

Class Size Matters' Leonie Haimson is a good friend of Jennifer's and one afternoon after an event at Teachers College, I had the privilege of spending time with these two amazing ladies. Talk about brain power. Mine felt like a shriveling pea. When people ask why I am still doing this stuff 6 years after retiring, my answer is getting to know people like Leonie and Jennifer.

Leonie commented on her listserve soon after Jennifer's announcement:

Jennifer is beautiful and brilliant and it’s a relief not to have to keep her identity secret any more….She also did the seminal study of the “bubble kids” in Texas; see her study here and her WaPost oped here.

There will undoubtedly be many more pathbreaking studies to come – that is, if Bloomberg/Klein do not put out a hit against her.

Let’s hope her unmasking does not negatively affect her academic future!


Amen! Jennifer's real concerns about her notoriety affecting her ability to work in the academic areas will be tested. My sense without knowing anything about that world is that she may find it helps. Plus, she has garnered enormous respect. (Jeez, the very idea that Leo Casey and I agree on anything is frightening.)

Eduwonkette is not all about dry research. Her cleverness, charm, and fabulous wit came along with it.

Leonie unwittingly played a role in introducing Jennifer to someone who became a good friend.

"Class size really DOES matter," Jennifer commented.

Teacher Quality in Context...

...at Eduwonkette's place.

I have so much to say about the teacher quality issue that I can never properly organize it into a coherent piece and end up putting bits and pieces in various comments. Some day ... when it's not beach weather. But thank goodness there are people who are coherent out there.

One of the things ya gotta love about 'Wonkette is that she gets it about teacher quality. You knew that on her first day of blogging back on Sept. 23, 2007 when she was still at Blogger. (Is it not even a year when she seems to have been around forever?)

Her first week's posts are worth rereading:

Tunnel vision syndrome - The teacher effectiveness debate focuses only on a narrow set of the goals of public education, which may endanger other important goals we have for our schools.

No teacher is an island - The teacher effectiveness debate ignores that teachers play many roles in a school. Experienced teachers often serve as anchoring forces in addition to teaching students in their own classrooms. If we don’t acknowledge this interdependence, we may destabilize schools altogether.

Ignoring the great sorting machine - If students were randomly assigned to classrooms and schools, measuring teacher effects would be a much more straightforward enterprise. But when Mrs. Jones is assigned the lowest achievers, and Mrs. Scott’s kids are in the gifted and talented program, matters are complicated immeasurably.

Overlooking the oops factor - Everything in the world is measured with error, and the best research on teacher effectiveness takes this very seriously. Yet many of those hailing teacher effectiveness proposals missed out on Statistics 101.

Disregarding labor market effects - The nature of evaluation affects not only current teachers, but who chooses to join the profession in the future and where they are willing to teach. If we don’t acknowledge that kids that are further behind are harder to pull up, we risk creating yet another incentive for teachers to avoid the toughest schools.

She followed up on Jan. 31 soon after moving over the Ed Week:

Today she adds a piece on Jim Spillane's research with this intro:

The current policy discourse about teachers and teaching in the U.S. emphasizes the recruitment and retention of “high-quality” teachers, defined either by the teachers’ credentials, or their value-added influence on students’ achievement, or both. It has not, in skoolboy’s view, paid sufficient attention to the ways in which the school serves as a context for teachers’ work, shaping the conditions under which a teacher might be more or less successful in advancing students’ learning. Teachers don’t teach in a vacuum; the ability of the leaders in a school to set a direction, secure resources, facilitate professional development, and build a culture for teachers to work in concert has a lot to do with whether a teacher can be successful.

Read it all here.

And check out some of the stuff at the center for teacher quality (though on a cursory look I probably have some issues with their positions. However, their work on working conditions and how they affect TQ looks interesting.

I'm looking for a grant to do some research on how teacher effectiveness dropped when Bloomberg forced every school to install Snapple machines. Would I have to drink the stuff myself?

Elizabeth Green on Eduwonkette's Impact

Green does it again with today's article on Eduwonkette, proving Green is the only ed reporter in NYC, and maybe the nation, with her finger on all the buttons.

Note Rotherham's usual attack about allowing an anonymous blogger. "I don't think this is going to be remembered as Ed Week's finest hour."

Andy, this isn't going to be remembered as your finest decade.

Interesting that Eduwonkette blogged for over 3 months and was already having a major impact before Ed Week came calling - exactly why they did. And on her first day of blogging, Rotherham promoted her blog - I guess it was seeing his head on that chorus line gal's body. Maybe he still holds a grudge.

But ed notes had the scoop as we were the first to promote the blog on the first day it appeared. The Wonkette talked about my favorite topic that entire first week - teacher quality. In addition to all her other skills, she's quite a photoshopper.

Rotherham talks about Eduwonkette as "having skin in the game." Do you know one of his major points of proof? She once used me as a stringer to cover a panel that Rotherham was on.

Green writes:

"Call me old fashioned and curmudgeonly, but I can't stand it when the wonks break out in a 'research shows' chorus with no references," Eduwonkette wrote in one post. "If research so valiantly and definitively shows it, you should be able to tell us whose research shows it." Then she quoted a top city administrator, Garth Harries, as speaking at an event about research showing that teacher quality has a greater effect on student learning than class-size reduction and yet, upon questioning, not being able to cite any studies to demonstrate it.

I was the one who challenged Garth Harries at the event mentioned in the article when he put out the usual "research shows" story on teacher quality since no one has figured out exactly how to make that judgement. Klein (and Weingarten, unfortunately) often say the same thing.

But, holy cow, when it comes to Eduwonkette, both Randi and I agree. But wait till the day comes when Wonkette takes as close a look at the UFT as she does the DOE. Where is the research on union ineffectiveness? Oh, I forgot. The 2005 contract and its aftermath.

Here is the link to the NY Sun article.

One Big Happy Family - The Roots of Rotherham

One Big Happy Edu-Family at Chancellor's New Clothes.
where the Ed Sector gang is compared to, well, a gang of the Godfather type – Eli Broad as Don Broadeleone. The speculation in the comment section that Bloomberg is Fredo has it all wrong. My vote goes to Kevin Carey.

This was an excellent follow-up piece, with more hopefully to come, on Eduwonkette's groundbreaking post on interlocking directorates on Feb. 14 where she published her web of intrigue and caused just s slight reaction among the Rotherham Ed Sector crowd.

Jetblogged

So let's get this straight. I leave Tokyo at 11 AM on May 1 and arrive in New York at 10:30 AM on May 1.

I think I need a nap.

Before I go, make sure to read the great social justice teaching debate going on at Eduwonkette where Sol Stern and Bill Ayers do dueling guest editorials. Check out the various comments in all the posts - I chipped in a few, the gist of which...........
zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

When Eduwonks Attack

Andrew Rotherham and others exercised about some of Eduwonkette's surgical strikes at the heart of their pro-everything BloomKlein all the time, have thrown barbs at her for remaining anonymous, acting like there's no connections between the long reach of their Bloomie hero vindictiveness and someone who might one day look for a job. The fact that she asked me to check out the Rotherham/Russo/Medina/Colvin session at AERA (is Andy miffed that she may not have graced him with her presence) somehow taints her with my supposed lunacy.

Note that I am joined in my anti-everything NYC lunacy by such esteemed colleagues as NYC Educator, Leonie Haimson, Diane Ravitch and a whole core of NYC teacher bloggers who are beyond outrage at the phony ed reform movement. And probably 90% of the NYC teaching corps.


Here is Rotherham's silly post this on the Eduwonk blog.
The Wire
Not to rehash this entire debate but if Eduwonkette and Education Week want us to believe she's just some dispassionate observer of the education scene, especially the scene in New York City, so anonymous journalism is OK in this case, then it might not be such a good idea for her to use anti-everything NYC ed activist Norm Scott as her stringer...kinda, you know, blows her cover...but I did like her coverage!

Eduwonkette responded with this:
Marry Me, Eduwonk!: Boys, watch and learn from a Clinton-certified Don Juan - the passive aggressive flirting, truculent pet names, salacious locker room gossip, and wonky bickering all make me hot. Sure, you're already married - but after #9, polygamy is the new prostitution in New York.


I left this comment on his blog:
You don't read enough. I'm not only anti-everything NYC, but anti-everything Chicago and anywhere else that the phony reform movement to turn schools into factories is in operation. When it is clear that the PR expression "Children First" is really "Children Last" then you look at what's really going on behind the PR and oppose the entire program of BloomKlein.

I'm proud to be part of the NYC community where a host of respected teacher bloggers are on the same page as I am, in addition to influential parents on the NYC public school parents blog who have been persistent critics of the Bloomberg/Klein administration. Someone should point to a similar outpouring of support from parents and teachers in NYC for the mayor.

But then again, why listen to teachers and parents? You mentioned in your session at AERA that your survey shows teachers don't know much about educational policy. You know – NYC teachers are just a little busy marking those 150-170 papers a day from overcrowded classes and those 10 hour days the heroic "quality" teachers are expected to put in to save the world to have much time for these little debates.

As for Eduwonkette, whatever research she comes up with to support what we feel in our gut, is welcome. Why not take the research she puts out there and pick that apart instead of the irrelevant issue as to whether she is anonymous or not? No one seems to care except you and other pro-everything NYC people who get their words thrown right back in their faces and want to flush her out for purposes that seem awful suspicious.

A Web of Intrigue

UPDATED Tuesday, Feb. 19, 9 pm

Is there a vast neoliberal conspiracy to impose a market-based system on urban public schools in partnership with the business community leading to a move toward privatization, the weakening of teacher unions, and placing the focus of blame on the teachers (schools are looked at as failures because of poor teacher quality) and their contracts (seniority rules are worse than a tornado ripping through a school)?

Are we moving toward placing the control of public education into the hands of privateers and policy wonks whose basic knowledge of education comes from having once attended school (like letting someone who was once in the hospital with a sore throat perform operations)?

Are we seeing a further exacerbation of an already existing dual school system – one urban running under market forces that shut out parents and teachers; one suburban where elected school boards make decisions?

Has much of this agenda been driven by the neoliberal wing of the Democratic party? Research-based blogger Eduwonkette posted a web of connections between the various policy wonks backing the corporate takeover of urban school systems and has the Rotherham gang over at Eduwonk so worked up they are screaming for her head and trying to smoke her out of her anonymity. She fingers some members of Rotherham's Education Sector Board:

Jonathan Williams (Accelerated Charter School of Los Angeles); Bruno Manno (Vice Chair, Annie E. Casey Foundation); Ted Mitchell of the New Schools Venture Fund (NSVF).

So they all know each other, sniffs Rotherham.

I like Ed Trust West head Russlynn Ali, we've eaten together, had drinks, she's met my wife, seen my children, she used to work with Kevin Carey who now works with me, I think we share funders but I'm not sure...we both dislike the designated hitter rule...

Touchy, touchy, touchy. Our man doth protest too much. The last must be a subliminal reference to their being designated hitters gunning for the end of public oversight of public schools - but only for people in poorer, urban communities - wouldst they dare set foot with their market gimmicks in Scarsdale?

Rotherham, a major apologist for whatever mayhem BloomKlein perpetrates on the children, teachers and parents in the NYC school system says this in his bio:

Rotherham previously served at The White House as Special Assistant to the President for Domestic Policy during the Clinton administration. He managed education policy activities at the White House and advised President Clinton on a wide range of education issues including the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, charter schools and public school choice, and increasing accountability in federal policy. Rotherham also led the White House Domestic Policy Council education team...

We've run critiques of Obama's ed policy, but anyone doubt the Clinton connections to the attacks on public education? And of the slavish support of the UFT/AFT teachers union. (Explanation for their role in all this to come at a future date.)

Eduwonkette has clearly touched a nerve, with Rotherham shooting back with:

I'd also take it more seriously if she took a look at all the similar relationships around, just say, ed school accreditation, teacher certification, NCLB opposition, etc...etc...etc...

When you're caught with your pants down, attack. This looks like a nice project to keep him busy. While he's doing it, he should make sure to add up the dough each side has - maybe Bill Gates and Eli Broad will throw a few mil into the Educator Roundtable or Susan Ohanian for balance.

With some of the attacks on Eduwonkette being less than sophomoric ("she takes money like those girls we used to talk about in high school") one has to wonder if the ole boy policy wonks are just plain embarrassed that a girl can be so much smarter than them.

For your reading pleasure: The Corporate Surge Against Public Schools

Eduwonkette Goes to Washington...

....figuratively, that is. Jimmy Stewart better duck [for old movie buffs.]

Eduwonkette's blog is migrating over to the Education Week at this new address.

"I will not be an employee of Ed Week - they'll just be hosting the site. They're not responsible for my views, nor I for theirs."

That's good news, though we'll miss the funky pink atmosphere. The national exposure Ed Week can provide should be a plus for the good guys. Not bad for a blog a little over 3 months old.

Eduwonkette on NYC Performance Pay Plan

"I see this as an individual plan with an additional step - first, the school must meet benchmarks, and second, teachers can be differentially rewarded. Unless the committee of four announces upfront that bonuses will be distributed equally (can someone weigh in here about whether a distribution plan will be ratified upfront?), teachers are going to operate under the assumption that there will be unequal shares based on their students' test scores. Even if we see equal bonuses this year, the door is wide open and I see Mike and Joel on the horizon in a performance pay Mack truck."

Full post is here.

Eduwonkette on Teacher Effectiveness

For the past few months I've been using my 2-minute speaking time to "educate" the members of BloomKlein's Panel for Educational Policy (the rubber stamp replacement for the old Board of Education) on the concept of what makes for a quality teacher.

I will continue those attempts tonight. Of course, it all falls on deaf ears (except for Manhattan rep Patrick Sullivan), but why not at least point up the contradictions in basing an entire body of educational policy on the concept that the quality of a teacher has more impact than any other item - class size, socio-economic conditions, etc. I raised some of these issues in a Teacher Quality, Part 1 post. A key point is that all the forces - Broad, Klein, Weingarten, the Clintons - are aligned on the same page without any clear understanding, or interest, in the research on the issue.

Along comes a brand new blog by eduwonkette, clearly someone with a research-based finger on the trigger of many of these push-button issues. (I intend to raise many of these points as I can at the PEP.) Expect insights galore from this blog.

(Kickline roster (from left to right): Eli Broad (Broad Foundation), Kati Haycock (Ed Trust), Michael Bloomberg (NYC), Michael Petrilli and Checker Finn (Fordham).)

This week, eduwonkette will post a daily article on teacher effectiveness, touching on issues that all members of the kickline, which should include Weingarten and Bill Clinton (any photoshop people out there, feel free) have been ignoring.


Introducing eduwonkette
http://www.eduwonkette.com

The Teacher Effectiveness Kickline
From Eli Broad and Michael Bloomberg to George Miller and Checker Finn, we’re awash in chatter about measuring and rewarding teacher effectiveness. This week I’ll consider some of the problems with these proposals. What’s missing from this discussion, I argue, is a full exploration of their potential consequences for students, teachers, and schools.

Let me note that I am not opposed to measuring and rewarding teacher effectiveness in principle. But it’s more complicated than most commentators would like to acknowledge, and I hope this week’s postings will help us think about that complexity.

Monday: Acute tunnel vision syndrome - The teacher effectiveness debate focuses only on a narrow set of the goals of public education, which may endanger other important goals we have for our schools.

Tuesday: Neglecting the school as organism - The teacher effectiveness debate ignores that teachers play many roles in a school. Experienced teachers often serve as anchoring forces in addition to teaching students in their own classrooms. If we don’t acknowledge this interdependence, we may destabilize schools altogether.

Wednesday: Ignoring the great sorting machine - If students were randomly assigned to classrooms and schools, measuring teacher effects would be a much more straightforward enterprise. But when Mrs. Jones is assigned the lowest achievers, and Mrs. Scott’s kids are in the gifted and talented program, matters are complicated immeasurably.

Thursday: Overlooking the oops factor - Everything in the world is measured with error, and the best research on teacher effectiveness takes this very seriously. Yet many of those hailing teacher effectiveness proposals missed out on Statistics 101.

Friday: Disregarding labor market effects - The nature of evaluation affects not only current teachers, but who chooses to join the profession in the future and where they are willing to teach. If we don’t acknowledge that kids that are further behind are harder to pull up, we risk creating yet another incentive for teachers to avoid the toughest schools.