Emily Talmage has been working hard for Maine schools. She is a tireless citizen journalist who has dug and dug and dug some more to uncover some of the ugly roots that Competency Based Education has put down across the country, with those roots running deep in her own state (the decision by somebody, somewhere, to roll out the new CBE in Maine, a quiet little state with a big loud governor, must be an interesting story of its own).

At any rate, if you are not a regular reader of Saving Maine Schools just because you don’t live in Maine, don’t let that stop you. It should be on your don’t-miss list.

Apparently, as we’ve learned over the last week, one reader is not a fan. Here’s the story.

Last Saturday, Talmage took aim at Robert Marzano. Marzano has been at the reformster business for over two decades, hopping on the educonsultant train back in the early nineties when Outcome Based Education first reared its unattractive visage, and he’s been at it ever since, with a stew of semi-researched recommendations for school reform, teacher observation, and instructiony ideas.

Source: CURMUDGUCATION: Robert Marzano Takes on Edublogger

Grading the States: A Report Card on Our Nation’s Commitment to Public Schools

Source: Grading the States | Schott Foundation for Public Education

Dr. Marzano calls himself an education expert. His specialities include competency-based education and teacher observation.

Dr. Marzano, who has long been in the education reform business, recently acquired the Reinventing Schools Coalition.

According to the recently revamped Reinventing Schools website (they dropped the “Coalition” because “RISC” sounded too risky), their “story begins in the early 1990s in a rural Alaskan school district comprised of a native population as well as other groups.”

All sorts of miracles happened, “news about the dramatic success in a small Alaskan town traveled far and fast and Chugach received the prestigious Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award in 2001.”

Now read here to learn what really happened in Alaska. (Hint: The Gates Foundation, who funded the start-up of the Reinventing Schools Coalition, was part of the project the whole time, and the award was planned.)

Source: Who is Dr. Marzano? – Save Maine Schools

You have to laugh at the state of education in Florida (and to some extent, the US). While NAEP scores continue to rise throughout the country for 30+ years, you still have people screaming for the latest fad to save us. In the case of Florida, they bought into Marzano’s “causal” framework.

Let’s start with the most obvious problem: it’s ridiculously convoluted. If I were asked to create a parody of an evaluation system, I couldn’t possibly make something more hilarious than Marzano. Even they state it “works best” with a year of planning and training. What the hell kind of evaluation system requires a year of EITHER, yet alone both? (Answer: A very bad one.) If you are going to invest this kind of time (and the resources) into a program, you better have extremely high expectations for it. Sadly, pretty much everyone with a modicum of intelligence knows that this is not going to change anything (yet alone significantly for the better). It shouldn’t be necessary to have to tell ostensibly well-educated people this, but a simpler (and thus more easily/better understood) system will work better than a complicated one.

How many “elements” (items) are in it? The answer is 60, in four “domains” (edu-speak for “areas”; you can’t charge $23/book for using simple language!). The evaluation system would be better as a bulleted list of “suggestions”–it would have saved millions of dollars. In that role (a list of “good suggestions”), Marzano is just fine.

Source: Venting My Cynicism: The Insanity of the Marzano Evaluation System…

Fun Fact: Between 2005 and 2017, the federal government withheld $580 billion it had promised to spend on students from poor families and students with disabilities.

Fun Fact: Over that same period, the personal net worth of the nation’s 400 wealthiest people ballooned by $1.57 trillion.

Source: Report: US Shortchanged Public Schools by Hundreds of Billions of Dollars Over Decades | gadflyonthewallblog

"The Gates Foundation as the world's largest philanthropy issued its latest "Goalkeepers" report on Tues, urging for more comparable student assessment data worldwide and help getting girls through their schooling."

Hey Bill, LEAVE OUR KIDS ALONE!https://t.co/m68ZeuwzqL

— Marla Kilfoyle (@marla_kilfoyle) September 23, 2018