Here at Mid-Riffs we are no fans of education consultants and their edubabble. Especially hucksters who are willing to use their academic credentials to hustle taxpayers for money. These people charge exorbitant sums for their services while doing very little to improve actual classroom learning. So we were a bit concerned to learn that the Little Rock School District recently employed education hacks bandits consultants Picus and Odden (of Arkansas educational adequacy case fame) to compile a strategic plan for the district. A recently released draft of their report has been met with the approval of the community group the district formed to review the report and something bordering on revulsion from the Dem Gaz editorial staff. You can read the Op-Ed here if you have a subscription. Here are a few exerpts:

Somebody needs to translate this document into plain English, the way George Orwell once translated the political idioms and idiocies of his time in a brief but incisive essay that has become a classic, “Politics and the English Language.” Now the same service should be performed for education in ours. And in much the same way-first by repeating its pretentious newspeak, then saying what it all really means.

*********

Eye-rolling would be a more natural reaction to this highflown piffle. Do not be misled by the terms “minority” and “majority” for black and white students even if black students may now be in the majority in the school district. These euphemisms are used in place of black and white, which are considered dirty words in educanto and so must be censored. In a pinch, to avoid complete confusion, multisyllabic terms like African American and Caucasian may be used instead.

*********

Never refer to how well or how poorly students perform on tests but the “student performance situation.” Much as one would refer to war as the “human conflict situation.” Speak of “achievement gap” rather than how we have failed to educate our children, especially our black children. That way, somebody might have to take responsibility.

*********

The achievement gap between Caucasian and African American students in mathematics at the advanced levels has grown from about 20 to about 40 percentile points.

Translation: After all the millions of dollars We the taxpaying People have spent, after all the decades of wasteful litigation that have benefited only the lawyers involved, and after all the gibberish our “educators” have talked, our public schools are getting worse, not better.

*********

But to speak like this is to violate all the rules of educanto, a language designed not to transmit meaning but obscure it. Feel free to go through this report and pick out your own unfavorite part to translate into English, or attempt to. You’re fully entitled to do so. This study in educanto cost you, the innocent taxpayer, $200,760.

Don’t get me wrong, creating a strategic plan can be a useful exercise; however, the kind of cut-and-paste consultant speak  that Picus and Odden peddle is not worth the paper it’s printed on. To date Arkansans have given the dynamic duo (don’t ask me which one is Robin) $1 million plus for the privilege of listening to their drivel. Their latest iteration of gasbaggery cost taxpayers about $200k.

For a detailed critique of Picus and Odden’s work you can read Stanford economist Eric Hanushek’s particularly scathing piece which appeared in Education Next in the Winter ’07 issue. You can find a copy at his website here. Here are a few highlights:

So similar are the studies that at times it seems the copy function of the Microsoft word processor deserves to be listed among the authors.

*********

Picus and Odden … provide “scientific evidence” to support the claim that a specific set of policies can shift average student performance upward by three to six standard deviations, an extraordinary gain … If one then assumes a cumulative impact from giving students not just a single application but continuing treatment through grade 12, the gains reach astronomical proportions, somewhere in the range of 23 to 57 standard deviations … This, of course, is the stuff of science fiction novels, not research-based school policies.

*********

Why do different states and organizations pay ever-increasing amounts to see this research review when Google would bring up the most recent version immediately and without expense? The answer is simple. Clients want a bottom-line statement … Few people care about the “studies” on which consultants base their reports, or even their validity, because nobody really expects schools to implement these specific programs … Clients simply want a requisite amount of scientific aura around the number that will become the rallying flag for political and legal actions.

So why do people continue to pay for this ridiculous junk?  Because they lack either the ability or the temerity to lead.

It’s time our education leaders stopped passing the buck and started doing the job we pay them to do. And, if they must go to an oracle to know they need to do a much better job educating the district’s students, then I strongly suggest it’s time the people of Little Rock begin looking for new education leaders.