Lloyd Lofthouse

Study: Closing Schools Doesn’t Increase Test Scores

The greed-is-great corporate reform movement to replace the public sector, including the traditional public schools, with for-profit corporate schools has FAILED while destroying one of the best public school systems in the world that other countries once studied and copied. In other words, the “Make America” slogan that Trump used was working hard decades ago to Make America White and Poor Again.

gadflyonthewallblog

*Jan 26 - 00:05*

You might be tempted to file this under ‘No Shit, Sherlock.’

But a new study found that closing schools where students achieve low test scores doesn’t end up helping them learn. Moreover, such closures disproportionately affect students of color.

What’s surprising, however, is who conducted the study – corporate education reform cheerleaders, the Center for Research on EDucation Outcomes (CREDO).

Like their 2013 study that found little evidence charter schools outperform traditional public schools, this year’s research found little evidence for another key plank in the school privatization platform.

These are the same folks who have suggested for at least a decade that THE solution to low test scores was to simply close struggling public schools, replace them with charter schools and voilà.

But now their own research says “no voilà.” Not to the charter part. Not to the school closing part. Not to any single part of their…

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Lloyd Lofthouse

9 responses to “Study: Closing Schools Doesn’t Increase Test Scores”

  1. Susan Lee Schwartz Avatar
    Susan Lee Schwartz

    My 2040, whites will be in the minority, and that group of racists are a minority of whites, and they will make trouble… but the minority is still THE MINORITY. This nation is going to see unsettling times… but none more unsettling that a car mowing down a woman, or police armed to the teeth, pepper spraying protesters.

    Reply
    1. Lloyd Lofthouse Avatar
      Lloyd Lofthouse

      We can cross our fingers and hope it doesn’t get worse than a car mowing down one woman and police using pepper spray on protestors and not machine guns and grenades. But if we look at what happened in the Balkans after the Soviet Union collapsed, it can get much worse.

      “More than four years of war have turned once-beautiful Yugoslavia into a living nightmare, and into one of the bloodiest battlefields in Europe’s recent history. … After the collapse of the Soviet Union, democratic movements swept across much of Eastern Europe, including Yugoslavia. With the election of non-communist governments in four of Yugoslavia’s six republics, the Federation began to crumble and ethnic divisions resurfaced. … By the time the United Nations dismissed Yugoslavia from its General Assembly, some 20,000 people had died and up to 2 million had become refugees from fighting and “ethnic cleansing.”

      http://www.cnn.com/WORLD/Bosnia/history/index.html

      Can that happen in the United States? With Fake President Trump or someone else similar to him, YES! The U.S. needs a uniter – not a divider.

      Reply
      1. Susan Lee Schwartz Avatar
        Susan Lee Schwartz

        Ah, as always, informed by your enormous knowledge of history, your prodigious memory and an intellect that reveals itself through all that you say and write — you always ask the EQs –/the Essential Questions, that are the BIG IDEAS, here, at the Ravitch blog, and in your correspondence.
        What a pleasure it is to read and to write here, Lloyd

        We can only guess and pray that within our nation, are people who, like you, know our history, know right from wrong, grasp the values that made us the GO-TO place for ordinary folks… until the corporate entities created a network of wealthy gods.

        At OEN, the publisher Rob Kall, another brilliant mind, reminds us that we need to nourish an outlook that predicts our success in changing things. My pessimism is not welcome.

        I think the worst is going to happen, as climate change affects our economy, and the wars and lawlessness that are raging around the world take its toll on all humanity.

        3 decades ago, siting in a restaurant in NYC and talking to someone about Taylor Caldwell’s “The Captains and The Kings” and hr “death Merchants,” a man who was listening to my conversation came over, and said, “You do know that the world is run by 16 cabal.” and he left.

      2. Lloyd Lofthouse Avatar
        Lloyd Lofthouse

        When he said 16 cabals was he talking about 16 different groups. If so, one of them is in Russia led by Putin. Another one is in China led by the CCP’s Polit Bureau. The U.S. seems to be divided into two or three groups.

  2. Closing failing schools does not help students, or their neighborhoods. Support is what they need and should get! | The Love Chronicles

    […] via Study: Closing Schools Doesn’t Increase Test Scores — Lloyd Lofthouse […]

    Reply
  3. Susan Lee Schwartz Avatar
    Susan Lee Schwartz

    I posted the article at https://www.opednews.com/Quicklink/Study-Closing-Schools-Doe-in-Best_Web_OpEds-America_Corporate_Education_Policies-170826-895.html#comment671093
    with this comment
    “Read a s Diane Ravitch, explains The Broken Promise of School Privatization. https://dianeravitch.net/2017/06/18/detroit-the-broken-promise-of-school-privatization/
    “Also, Howard Ryan, writing in Monthly Review, analyzes the sources of support for corporate reform and privatization. https://monthlyreview.org/2017/04/01/who-is-behind-the-assault-on-public-schools/

    Ryan writes:
    Over the past three decades, public schools have been the target of a systematic assault and takeover by corporations and private foundations. The endeavor is called “school reform” by its advocates, while critics call it corporate school reform. Finnish educator Pasi Sahlberg has given it the vivid acronym GERM–the global education reform movement. Its basic features are familiar: high-stakes testing; standardized curricula; privatization; and deskilled, high-turnover faculty. In the United States, public schools have become increasingly segregated, destabilized, and defunded, with the hardest hit in low-income communities of color.
    Nevertheless, while the political conflicts and social ramifications of the school reform phenomenon are well known, basic questions about the movement remain underexamined. Who really leads it? What are their aims and motives? After briefly taking up the statements of the reformers themselves, I will turn to the views of their progressive opponents, and offer a critique of three influential interpretations of the school reform movement. Finally, I will present my own theory about this movement, its drivers, and its underlying aims”
    A large body of research, however, challenges the merits of high-stakes testing and other elements of the corporate school reform package. It is also at least questionable whether the reformers really believe their own statements.
    The reformers’ interest in school improvement appears, in a number of ways, to be less than genuine, to mask a different agenda. They prescribe models for mass education that they do not consider suitable for their own children. They sponsor think tanks to produce “junk research” praising their models, while ignoring studies that contradict their models. They insist that full resourcing of schools is unimportant or unrealistic, and that “great teachers” will succeed regardless of school conditions, class size, or professional training.”

    You will find it interesting to see how he weaves together the various strands of the corporate reform movement.

    Reply
    1. Lloyd Lofthouse Avatar
      Lloyd Lofthouse

      I think there are two groups behind this movement to destroy the public sector, and there probably is some merge between the two. Most if not all of the tech people led by Bill Gates are in it for more wealth and/or to create their concept of a utopian society guided by high-tech and/or the future led by an AI that their corporations will profit from. The other faction is led by ALEC and the Koch brothers who want to get rid of the U.S. Constitutional Republic that was created by the U.S. Founding Fathers and replace it with a wild-west brand of libertarianism where only the wealthy that can afford mercenary protection will be safer than the rest of us when we live in a culture without laws to guide it. But there will be laws because many of the ALEC billionaires are also Christian extremists and they want to create an authoritarian theocratic dictatorship where the libertarian aspect is only for the 1-percent and the rest of us live under the iron thumb of their perception of a god.

      Reply
      1. Susan Lee Schwartz Avatar
        Susan Lee Schwartz

        I agree, completely.
        You and I both have a wide knowledge of history, and we read the ‘future history’ genre of science fi, and thus, we have some ideas about what happens when the powerful monied interests take over any society.
        I believe that there is obscene wealth at the top, people who have the wealth that once only nations possessed. They see the rest of the the human race as serfs, and want to see the population of the earth diminished, especially by those they see as vermin.

        Corruption attends societies where there is great wealth running the show. From time immemorial, when the top guy had the wealth and power, the rest of the people had no voice in what happens to them.

        At OEN, where I write, everyone knows that the ‘deep state… the Kochs, and their ilk, run the show, and care little for our rights or the laws. They create a situation where the people are consumed with just trying to put food on the table, and a roof over their heads, while being able to afford anything and everything else.

        A stressed citizenry is required ( we do remember German in 1939?.

        The destruction of the schools is crucial to such dictators. An educated citizenry is anathema; and with their total ignorance comes the control of information — thus we have the endless propaganda put out by them — ‘fake news’ and ‘alternative facts’ drown the people in noise, until they tune out events.

        They control the media, and the government, and no one controls that impulsive, ignorant, incompetent, immoral parasite who is our president, but THAT is just fine with them as the DISTRACTION is just what is needed.

        “Reality will contort itself to match his imagination” He doesn’t even need to sign laws, let alone accurately describe what he wants to do. He is in the White House; the world and time.bend.http://www.newyorker.com/news/amy-davidson/donald-trumps-unintelligible-presidency?mbid=nl_TNY%20Template%20-%20With%20Photo%20(160)&CNDID=45272181&spMailingID=10898147&spUserID=MTgwNzgwOTcyMzEyS0&spJobID=1142093226&spReportId=MTE0MjA5MzIyNgS2

        Declaration of Disruption: — Here’s the truly worrisome thing: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/04/opinion/trump-declaration-of-disruption.html?emc=edit_th_20170704&nl=todaysheadlines&nlid=50637717

        “The disruption is only going to increase, both because he’s facing criticism that seems to trigger him psychologically and because his theory of management involves the cultivation of chaos. He has shown throughout his life a defiant refusal to be disciplined. His disordered personality thrives on mayhem and upheaval, on vicious personal attacks and ceaseless conflict. As we’re seeing, his malignant character is emboldening some, while it’s causing others — the Republican leadership comes to mind — to briefly speak out (at best) before returning to silence and acquiescence. The effect on the rest of us? We cannot help losing our capacity to be shocked and alarmed.We have as president the closest thing to a nihilist in our history — a man who believes in little or nothing, who has the impulse to burn down rather than to build up. When the president eventually faces a genuine crisis, his ignorance and inflammatory instincts will make everything worse.”

      2. Lloyd Lofthouse Avatar
        Lloyd Lofthouse

        Talking about SF that predicts the future. I went to see “Bushwick” Friday afternoon. Most critics didn’t care for the film and it did have some flaws but overall, it pointed out how the White Racist Alt-Right and their Voldermort and/or Dart Vader will attempt to take over the United States and when that faction’s militia run into resistance, they will resort to ethnic cleansing and killing anyone else, even whites, that don’t agree with them, to achieve their balkanised goals.

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