A comment on Ben Austin’s open letter to me:
“Why would Ben Austin insert his own and his brother’s story in an open letter to you? And just for good measure, the annoying phrase, “…kids trapped in failing schools…” I am so sick of this refrain because it sounds like the rich and powerful really care. The parent tricker law is an outrage as are so many of these ALEC-induced mandates that are driving the joy out of teaching and learning.
“Here’s how we fix the schools. Go to the private schools where the elite send their children and watch what their teachers do. Recreate it like they do on HGTV (High/Low Project) and voila! Answers to all your problems. Be sure to include high paying jobs for the parents and safe neighborhoods. If you can’t provide the jobs, how about a welcoming space for parents in the schools??? It could happen.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Speaking of inequities, I wish someone would take a look at this http://www.recordnet.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20130602/A_NEWS/306020323/-1/A_NEWS07 and explain this to California taxpayers.
If the rich don’t want us to have what their children have, then we must advocate for it ourselves. Their sheer hypocrisy renders their opinions – but not their power, alas – invalid with regard to educating other people’s children.
It’s always other people’s children’s who must be educated according to the power elite’s rules; it’s always mostly other people’s children who fight our wars overseas, and it’s definitely only other people’s children who should have to enter indentured servitude in order to achieve a higher education.
Other people’s children: that’s the mantra of the 1%.
“…kids trapped in failing schools…”
I, too am way over that phrase.
How about “families trapped in dangerous neighborhoods”?
Or “families trapped in dead end, minimum wage jobs”?
Or “families trapped by violence”?
Isn’t it interesting that schools in “nice neighborhoods” don’t fail?
(at lease until CCSS gets its hands on them)
We could go on and on about what goes on in struggling communities.
But the trouble has very little to do with the school.
This is a good place for push back against the ridicules narrative of “failing schools”.
We all need to call out that bit of dumb every time we hear it.
You raise some good questions; it’s just important that we don’t over-distill the nuance out of the discussion. School success is the result of a non-linear equation. In other words, simply toggling one variable up or down doesn’t necessarily produce the desired effect(s) on the system as a whole. There are a lot of synergistic factors, overlapping phenomena, social, psychological, cultural, economic,politics forces…
“Nice” neighborhoods and “Dangerous neighborhoods” are just a bit too simple to use as meaningful descriptors, and it makes me uneasy when such an important and multi-faceted issue gets reduced for convenience’s sake to oversimplified terms.
I suspect that a lot of Truth may be found in your simple but eloquent couplet: “We could go on and on about what goes on in struggling communities. But the trouble has very little to do with the school.” 🙂
I think that the Government thinks that by legislating controls into the school systems via testing and such, that somehow that “order” will spill over into the surrounding community. Idiots. They have it backwards. Make communities better places (not necessarily by imposing “order” though, LOL) and –poof!– betcha the school environments, and consequently the quality of the educational experience, gets better too.
Ang could have said low income and higher income neighborhoods, but that still would have meant dangerous and nice, because that’s reality –at least in urban areas.
I grew up on the south side of Chicago, when it was made up of primarily middle and higher income families, and the public schools there were considered to be very good then. Things changed when middle and higher income families feared integration and fled the city for the suburbs. Many low income families moved into the middle income areas and all of the schools I attended there have since made it to the “failing schools,” turnaround, and closure lists. I’ve gone back there to visit and had beer bottles thrown at my car. I consider it to be dangerous and not very nice now –and I really miss what it used to be.
The higher income south side neighborhoods that I lived in differ, The schools I attended there have not been labeled as failing, because other higher income families moved in to replace the families who left. I consider those areas to still be nice and safe to visit.
It’s all about income and the multiple levels of strife and stress that people in poverty face.
Andrew,
Speaking of distillation, how about distilling down the problems of public schools into schools in poor neighborhoods versus private, expensive, elite schools. When that is the argument, who can disagree, right?
But that leaves out a whole bunch of the rest of us out here, and we are aware of it. What about us? We don’t have gangs and every-day violence filtering into the fabric of our public schools. And while there are children who live in poor families and those that have “bad” families, they are not the norm and our schools and school community do their best to take care of their basic needs (food and even clothing). Yet, our schools still struggle to produce results that are satisfactory given the time our children spend in school and the money that goes there.
All due respect to Diane, but she focuses on the severed carotid while the rest of the body is riddled with wounds that are losing blood slowly but are just as damaging.
We could end hunger in this country. We could make sure kids in areas like Watts have access to decent grocery stores with good foods. Interesting we never hear the likes of Ben Austin & his corporate backers talk about that. Aren’t they always talking about “kids first” ?
Quote: “I am so sick of this refrain because it sounds like the rich and powerful really care.”
*deep breath*
And I am sick of the so-called “good-guys” resorting to such verbiage. If you have righteousness on your side (whoever wrote that comment), you don’t need to resort to the kind of name-calling that makes it impossible for that righteousness to be taken seriously. Nothing torpedoes credibility more than histrionics, hyperbole and stereotyping.
I guess it’s politically correct to bash the “rich and powerful.” NOT. Quite the contrary: It makes one sound bitter, petty, petulant, trite, childish, immature and short-sighted. This isn’t an OWS encampment; it’s supposed to be a serious discussion. 99% vs 1% talk is so last year. Talk issues, please.
Ang raises some good issues, but I disagree that the notion of the “failing” school is a misnomer. They exist. And the fault is not all governmental. But not all schools that under-perform are “failing,” and “failing” cannot be measured by any metric that NCLB or RttT produces. Test scores are largely red herrings, as are graduation rates and other convenient decontextualized data.
We need to start by improving the lives of the children in our communities, and everything will grow from that. Education can’t be treated by “titrating” test scores and grad rates. You start with kids when they’re in pre-K-3 and you establish a good foundation. You support the families (within reason – we certainly don’t need to overburden the taxpayers with a burgeoning welfare state). You provide healthcare to ALL minors. You make schools safe places. You make then nice places. “Temples,” Rob Lowe’s fictional character in The West Wing said once. You return autonomy *mostly* to education professionals, and you get the government as much the hell out of the process as you can. Then, you get rid of social promotion and the IDIOTIC idea that ALL students must graduate high schools and go to 4-year universities, and you bring back internships, externships, vocational ed, school-to-career, and you plug in to students’ interests and skills and support them on THEIR course, not force them down yours. ELIMINATE UTTERLY the stigma of not going to university, and restore the honor and dignity to blue-collar work. You punish welfare fraud, alimony cheats, tighten up enforcement on unemployment, social security, food stamps and disability scams (it’s not a cliche or a stereotype , I’ve seen it all) and that will allow some of the resources thus saved to help out a little more to those who are playing by the rules. And you punish offenses against children like the people committing them are freaking Al Qaida. You protect and defend the kids. You give kids every shot possible. You don’t GIVE them the diploma, and you don’t lower the standards to give the diplomas to those who are “close” because you “feel for them.” — you give them the OPPORTUNITY to earn it honestly through the sweat of their own efforts, but you support the heck out of their efforts: Provide the support systems, the institutions, and the TEACHERS (unfettered from as much bureaucratic BS as possible), who should be the go-to people at every step of the kids’ journey from pre-K through grade 9, 10, 11, 12, voc ed, GED, military, peace corps, work world, or college, wherever they choose to go. You lead the way, but you don’t drag them. Some won’t make it. It’s pure perfectionist fallacy to freak out about those who don’t . They are not valueless human beings; they just need something else. Help them find it.
But stop snapping at rich people like we’re all so ticked off that they just don’t write a fat check to solve the problems for us. IT’S NOT THEIR JOB.
IMHO.
Andrew
What you say is so true…but YOU see these students as HUMANS…..
and..The Testing Hierarchies see them as DATA……DATA…DATA…MORE TESTS AND MORE TESTS.
The Greedy S*O*B’s take the Green and SEE ONLY $TUDENT$
.
Andrew,
Well said. I am shaking your hand.
Thanks 🙂 Please excuse the blood on my knuckles.
AK,
That blood on your knuckles didn’t come from my face. I’m way too quick for that to happen-ha ha-even at almost fifty eight you wouldn’t be able to touch me. Rhetorically speaking, eh!! (Actually physically also). Remember “make love not war”.
“But stop snapping at rich people like we’re all so ticked off that they just don’t write a fat check to solve the problems for us. IT’S NOT THEIR JOB.”
I don’t want the rich folks to “write a fat check”. I want them to stop stealing what is rightfully ours with which we could solve our own problems. If you don’t understand that that’s what’s happening with neoliberal policies promoted at every level of the government with help from billionaire backers looking to swell their coffers, you’re not paying attention.
I guess some people just won’t get it until they’re eating out of garbage cans. By which time it will be a bit late to complain, let alone do anything about it.
Them, us, us them, … this is exactly what I’m talking about. Your last paragraph, specifically, is the kind of rhetoric that helps no one in any way.
Actually, Andrew, it’s the reverse. Your capitulation isn’t helping anyone – nothing is going to get better until we realize what’s happening and take steps to fight back. Just like that little turtle named Mack when it came to unseating Yertle the Turtle.
And you can claim all you want that 99% talk isn’t convincing anyone, but what really isn’t convincing is your shilling for the 1%. I hope you’re at least getting well paid for it – it might tide you over for a while after they decide you’re not such a useful idiot after all. Oh, oops, did I name call? Sorry, let me go buy you a fainting couch.
“There’s class warfare, all right, but it’s my class, the rich class, that’s making war, and we’re winning.”
Warren Buffett, NY Times, 11/26/06
Some people commenting on this blog point out class conflict, and how it plays out in the schools. Those funding and implementing so-called education reform are waging it.
You make a long list of sensible suggestions, Andrew, and then throw it all away by scolding people who point out the workings of Mr. Buffett’s indiscreetly-spoken truth.
We are not “snapping” at the rich: we are trying to defend ourselves and our students from their self-interested aggression, which comes nested in lies and half-truths.
Let the rich stop directing virtually all economic growth towards themselves (an indisputable fact) and you might get less of an “Them, us, us, them” attitude from people who, if you haven’t noticed, are seeing their living standards decline.
Until then, we’ll risk offending your sense of etiquette.
Dienne and Michael,
Love you both.
As always…”missives” from planet reality.
Keep speaking truth.
Thank you.
So, in essence, you are calling for a moratorium of acknowledging and questioning the fact that the Broad Foundation, the Gates Foundation, the Waltons, the Business Roundtable, the Chamber of Commerce, the IMF, the World Bank. the hedge funders, and so many others have stated quite clearly for many, many years that their goal, as rich people, is to take over the function of public education and change it to a profit-driven, business-oriented marketplace BECAUSE they have all the money? Really? That’s the problem?
From the Broad Foundation 2009/2010 report:
“With an agenda that echoes our decade of investments—charter schools, performance pay for teachers, accountability, expanded learning time, and national standards—the Obama administration is poised to cultivate and bring to fruition the seeds we and other reformers have planted.”
and the Gates Foundation:
“Gates funding was so large and so widespread, it seemed for a time as if every initiative in the small-schools and charter world was being underwritten by the foundation. If you wanted to start a school, hold a meeting, organize a conference, or write an article in an education journal, you first had to consider Gates (“Power Philanthropy” in The Gates Foundation and the Future of Public Schools, 2010).”
You say “IT’S NOT THEIR JOB.” and you are right. It’s not their job to oversee public education nor to impose their vision of the future with absolutely no input from the stakeholders, the parents, the students, the teachers, the school boards, and the voters. Yet they quite openly say this is what they are doing and we are not supposed to take issue with that?
Tone arguments are a classic tool of the privileged to shut down dialog with those whom they encounter who don’t share their privilege.
Exactly. Very well said.
“the fact that the Broad Foundation, the Gates Foundation, the Waltons, the Business Roundtable, the Chamber of Commerce, the IMF, the World Bank. the hedge funders, and so many others have stated quite clearly for many, many years that their goal, as rich people, is to take over the function of public education and change it to a profit-driven, business-oriented marketplace BECAUSE they have all the money?”
Prove it.
Andrew, I don’t have to prove it. Kathy Emery and Susan O’hanion already have, in 2004:
and so have Michael Fabricant and Michelle Fine:
and so has Pauline Lipman:
I could go on. You have to do the reading to decide for yourself whether it’s been “proven” yet that the reformers are doing what many have shown they are doing. And then there will be Diane’s own book, coming out soon.
Yes, Chris, those are really great resources.
Don’t forget Duncan’s role in all of this. One of the keys to privatizing public education is mayoral control, which often includes the elimination of elected school boards –also on the ALEC agenda– effectively removing democracy from education, since mayoral appointed school boards usually just rubber stamp whatever the mayor wants, as in Chicago.
Duncan, a non-educator, got his career in education as a result of mayoral control in Chicago and he urges other cities to follow suit. In 2009, when he spoke at a forum with mayors and superintendents, Duncan promised to help more mayors take over. He said, “At the end of my tenure, if only seven mayors are in control, I think I will have failed,”
Duncan also offered to do whatever he could to make the case for mayoral control, “I’ll come to your cities,” Duncan said. “I’ll meet with your editorial boards. I’ll talk with your business communities. I will be there.”
Notice he made no mention of speaking with the real stakeholders of education, such as parents, educators and citizens?
Andrew, it is our job as a society to fo the best to make sure everybody succeeds. You bring up issues of cheating and people taking advantage of the system. Yes, that happens, but that doesn’t mean we don’t take care of people anyway. The rich as not absolved from this problem. They are part of this country and need to take responsibility for it as much as anybody else.
As well, it’s naive to not see a relationship between poverty and wealth. Not everybody can be rich in our system; it seems to create poverty, pervasive poverty. Our system creates winners and losers, and the winners need to care about this. They also need to trust those who can do a good job with it (AKA teachers) to do so and stop pushing harmful policies.
“99% vs 1% talk is so last year”
Oh really? Tell that to all of us in the 99% who continue to live from one low paycheck to the next and with no benefits whatsoever.
Did the billionaires from America’s most highly profitable corporations stop exploiting workers, like the Waltons? Their six heirs have more wealth than the bottom 40% of our entire nation combined but they pay employee wages that THEY KNOW are unlivable, so they provide their workers with info about how to apply for food stamps and other government assistance. So American taxpayers subsidize Walmart.
The Waltons doled out $69M last year just to “shape public policy” in education, which means pave the way for privatization. Tell THEM that “IT’S NOT THEIR JOB” “to write a fat check to solve the problems for us,” since they call those checks “investments” and there are strings attached, BIG time. Their intention is to determine the course of education in this country, the same as Gates, Broad and other free-market neo-liberals, as they stand to make huge profits from privatization and from generations attending military style charter schools learning to become compliant worker bees who are willing to accept low paying jobs.
WAKE UP, ANDREW! Class warfare is happening in our country right now, with billionaires on the attack and low paid workers from Walmart and other retailers fighting back and striking: http://org.credoaction.com/petitions/stand-with-striking-walmart-workers
More than anywhere else, class warfare has been playing out in education, because that is where the billionaires and their neo-liberal political lackeys chose to make their stand and their biggest investments, shutting down and privatizing schools under the guise of “civil rights,” while they seek to expand mayoral control and eliminate elected school boards, so there is no more democracy in education and they can feed at the $600B a year trough of public education funding.
If you really care about public education, you need to stop turning a blind eye to what’s happening all around you and defend it from the 1%, because following the ALEC playbook, they are dismantling it at an alarmingly rapid rate at this point and soon there will be nothing left to defend.
You want to simplify this down to “class warfare,” making you guilty of the grossest form of reductionist fallacy. You strip all nuance, detail, and the zillion nonlinear factors that affect reality, and you make it a clean system, and claim you have the upper hand. It’s not that simple.
The Waltons’ alleged “evils” do not make all billionaires evil, as some of the posters on this thread seem to want to say. It’s amazing how progressives who decry discrimination as the basest form of evil feel free to engage in it when it suits their purposes.
You wrote: “If you really care about public education, you need to stop turning a blind eye to what’s happening all around you and defend it from the 1%,” making two crucial errors. One, you assume you know me; your assumption that anyone who does not agree with your agenda de facto is anti-public education is myopic and petty. Two, you clearly have not read my blog, because I despise the current model of corporatization of education, and you would know that if you read me a little. The difference is that I don’t reduce it to a simple us vs them. I ascribe blame in parts, not in wholes. Schools, even teachers, share in it some. I say “some.”
And what you fail to understand is that Gates et all, the so-called “free market neo liberals” (love the name calling by the way, very classy) is that all they can do is create the products and market them, it still takes a district or a site administrator to sign a name on the dotted line and allocate funds and make the conscious decision to purchase the product or program and then implement it. In other words, at some point in the process, SOMEONE in the local-area educational realm – principal, teacher, superintendent, county exec – has to agree to be complicit by implementing the program(s). All they have to do is say no. Follow Gandhi. If there is fallout from such “civil disobedience” then LET THE CONSEQUENCES COME, and then let the public see that the monstrousness of those who would punish schools and districts for defending their kids and preserving their autonomy.
IF Gates is so monstrous, schools should stop taking grant monies from his foundation. if RttT is so monstrous, schools should refuse their funds, opt out of their rat race 9as some are doing, it seems) etc… We need to stop with the rhetoric of victimization, and be more proactive.
You will never EVER win converts to your cause by keeping up with the outdated and hyperbolic 99/1% nonsense rhetoric. All you are doing is preaching to the small group of people who were already predisposed to think like you in the first place.
Andrew, you are completely ignoring and dismissing the roles of the Broad Academy and TFA in inserting people into the positions you speak of expressly so they will sign on that dotted line and .
Then there’s the role of ALEC in passing legislation written by these same reformers, after making sure that they’ve wined and dined those same legislators and ensured high campaign contributions for their reelection. Who runs ALEC? Who funds those think tanks? Who pays for the astroturf groups?
Too bad you continue to wear blinders, Andrew, and lash out at those who don’t.
Just regarding education, as a ground zero educator, I would hope that other American educators know AT LEAST as much about what’s been going on here as they know in England: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/mar/27/chicago-teacher-strike-against-school-closures-and-privatization and in Australia: http://www.solidarity.net.au/54/fighting-the-market-in-schools-lessons-from-us-teachers/
But you don’t even know what it’s called or that free market education “reforms” are grounded in Milton Friedman’s neo-liberal plan to privatize education: http://www.cato.org/pubs/briefs/bp-023.html
I’m guessing you also don’t know how implementation of Friedman’s plan in Chile is what led to Chilean students protesting for free education over the past two years, Friedman’s Failed Privatizaon of Education in Chile: http://modeducation.blogspot.com/2011/08/thousands-protest-failed-education.html
There’s a lot of info out there on the neo-liberal playbook:
The Powell Memo: http://reclaimdemocracy.org/powell_memo_lewis/
The Broad School Closure Guide:
Click to access school-closure-guide1.pdf
ALEC Exposed: http://www.alecexposed.org/wiki/Privatizing_Public_Education,_Higher_Ed_Policy,_and_Teachers
Also informative reads:
When Billionaires Become Education Experts:
http://www.aaup.org/article/when-billionaires-become-educational-experts#.UbPBt0C8-Zc
Got Dough? How Billionaires Rule Our Schools
http://www.dissentmagazine.org/article/got-dough-how-billionaires-rule-our-schools
Get back to us when you are awake.
The inequitable distribution of wealth in this country is persistent and still widening between the haves and the have nots, thus, it remains relevant: http://www2.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/power/wealth.html
When 1% have the means to pay to direct our system of education and government, I think it’s important to remind the country that the rest of us are in the majority. It’s democracy that will be our saving grace, if the billionaires and their political lackeys don’t manage to take that away, too, such as by eliminating elected school boards, gerrymandering, requiring voter IDs, etc. –all the tricks they’ve been trying in order to put limits on democracy.
This is a real knee slapper! That someone who so vehemently claims to “despise the current model of corporatization education” would refer to the use of the term “free market neo liberals” as “name calling” and sarcastically label that as “very classy,” is such a hoot! It reveals that he has absolutely no clue whatsoever about what is going on in our world or even what it’s called. Thanks for the belly laugh, Andrew!
Suggest you read about free market liberalism in education before accusing people of “name calling” http://urbanhabitat.org/19-1/weiner
If there are any US billionaires involved in education “reform” today who are not venture philanthropists that support the agenda to privatize public education etc., I would love to know who they are.
Andrew, Name all these good guys who you’ve sorted out individually.
Diane, Do you know of even one?
Andrew et al,
My analysis built over 45 years as an educator is that there are vast differences between the billionaires who are donating money and those who are implementing plans to reform public education to suit their agendas, whether purely philanthropic (as the Annenbergs long ago), or as a devious way to increase personal fortunes.
Gates Foundation, for all the heavy hits, has done some remarkable things worldwide in bringing education to children who would have had little to none. Add Buffet to this group.
Waltons and Murdoch seem totally free market greed based and do not hide it. They have reaped so much lucre at the expense of society that their motives are clear and disgusting.
Bloomberg is one of the prime capitalists in America and in the world and his decisions seem to follow his reputation. He has made huge mistakes with NY schools and his choice of Joel Klein tells us about his slanted views that he rationalizes as clear headed business logic.
And then there is Eli Broad, a financier who knows the insurance and building industries, and as one of the major accumulators of art, is respected for his art knowledge if not for his arrogant personality. He has built, through stealth and determination, the Broad Foundation which has a tentacle in too many organizations nationwide, and has truly created the personnel which is destroying American public education. I write about this so often so shall not add more, but is the one I find most egregious.
It is important not to paint all of these billionaires with the same brush. But their joint efforts, and their combined wealth, are the prime danger to American democracy. Include in this mix the ability to buy legislators as with Citizens United. It is the giant paradigm shift of what was a fairly integrated society (at least more so than most other nations) which we were since WW 2, to the most economically disparate society in the world, which we now are.
And now I am going for a walk in the California sunshine, but with the admonition that we here must not tear each other down, but find the middle ground to go out in unity and beat back those who want to destroy public education.
Don’t discount the role Gates’ has assumed in trying to shape education in America, including teacher evaluations, as well as the profits he stands to gain from his involvement in all the technology that’s being pushed, including the warehousing and sharing of private data to vendors through InBloom.
KJ I just did an analysis from the California Dept. of Ed (CDE) website on these school districts. Either the information on the CDE website is totally false or the information the reporter has is totally false. The variations in the numbers is vast to say the least.
In 1970 my friend, Richard Arthur, took over Castlemont High School in Richmond, Ca. There were constant gun fights and eventually the principal was shot in their office. He did not even have fistfights after he took over. Over 50% dropout to almost 0% and to college from 5-65% in less than 4 years. He had the first parent centers, he got them food, psychological help, jobs and such. Then the SLA came and assinated Marcus Foster the superintendent and tried to kill Richard twice. Then he moved back to L.A. and helped to found Whitney High School one of the highest performing public high schools in the U.S. for 25 years. The key is letting the students know and prove it to them that they are what is important. They have been fooled so many times it will make your head spin. Where they care they are successful, where they do not they are not. Also, you have to figure there is no perfection at the same time. The point is that if he did it then and I have seen it more since why not now. Why not get those successful principals who actually have done this together in a room and put together the success package and it is really general principals.
I know Castlemont in Oakland, is there one in Richmond? I used to teach in Oakland and Emeryville and surrounding areas. Not a pretty picture, though I was not there in its halcyon days, I suppose.
I would caution cleaving to statistics like “Over 50% dropout to almost 0% and to college from 5-65% in less than 4 years.” The dropout stat seems more meaningful than the college stat, but both are simple data points which, out of context, mean less than we often want them to mean.
In the case of Oakland in the 70s, I don’t know, honestly. All I can do is compare what you say to my own experiences at a charter school East Palo Alto overseen by the Stanford STEPpies, Linda Darling-Hammond, et al… They bragged about their 90% college admittance rate, but the school was an unmitigated disaster… 50% annual staff turnover, unbelievable crime, violence, dissent, and the most grotesque padding of grades I’ve ever seen (they replaced grades with narrative-themed letter-codes that had a conversion factor that made it almost impossible for any student to actually receive a failing grade)– the kids did not graduate, the teachers graduated them, pushed them through the system, thought they were doing them a favor, they wrote their application essays for them, did everything in their power NOT to hold students accountable for any meaningful standards (because that would be somehow hegemonic). Every progressive cliche you can imagine was writ large at that school. It was an eerie, cultlike cabal, staffed largely by Stanford STEP grad students because they couldn’t find enough professionals who would stay around more than a year to staff the place.
It’s easy to graduate students, it’s easy to get students INTO college, it’s much harder to meet students where they are, and be honest about and TO them, and give them what they need, and help them help THEMSELVES move forward.
Like I said, I don’t know that Oakland details from back when you were talking– Emeryville 1997-8 (under J.L. Handy, ex- of Compton… now THERE’S a story…) and Oakland from 2003-6. It sounds like he did some good things, and I don’t want to diss what I don’t know about… I just can’t help but notice that our tendency to celebrate statistics is fundamentally the same thing as RttT celebrating test score, is it not?
AS I understand it, under Mr. Austin’s tutelage, those kids are still trapped at that failing school.
If he’s concerned, why didn’t he do something to help them?
Who in the H*ll is FAILING in the so called “FAILING SCHOOLS”??
If a child does the very best that he/she can do then that child will be successful……
If any person always does the very best that he/she can do then that person will be successful..
All of this mumbo jumbo wordy bunch of cr*p goes always straight back to the basics…..
Look again at ” DILBERT'”
SAME TEST given to the monkey, the turtle,the fish, the alligator, the elephant, and the giraffe…..
TEST-“GO CLIMB THAT TREE!!”
Judge each and Grade each on their abilities
If each did the best that they could do….if they tried to do the impossible…then by d*amnit they are successful..
They can swim…eat the top of trees…each has a purpose that has been overlooked with these ONE SIZE FITS ALL TESTS .
Why do these schools fail???
The students feel as if they have no purpose except to pass the same D*mn tests that everyone else has to pass…and the test is made for the academia. talented…..
The Tests are fraudulent and do not measure the latent talents of these young people…These talents remain hidden and these students are not able to funnel their talents in any direction…barred because of the “One Track Minds” of the “Academia Testing Hierarchy”
Come on people…… Diversity and Purpose……Students know the teachers that treat them with respect and truly care that they will learn to use their talents for a successful and productive life…
For the academically talented…they are in awe of the talents of others…but in 2013……education is going down one road and have minimized the importance of any other skills or talents that make this world colorful and productive.
Students who are not successful on this One Track Testing Trip are the ones WE ARE FAILING……..WE…WE…FAIL THESE STUDENTS BY NOT STANDING UP FOR WHAT IS RIGHT!
And has Mr. Austin stood up for the academically talented? For classes and schools that DON’T minimize other skills and talents.?
The students are in a worse fix now than they were before — they can’t really complain to the schoolboard. From here, it’s court or nothing.
They don’t exist to the extent they are ballyhooed to exist in movies and press, and even so-called failing schools educate good students with good results. Back at the old Office of Educational Research and Improvement (that dates me, doesn’t it), we had research that indicated the best way to tell whether a kid was going to succeed in school was to count the books in the kid’s home. Educated parents, and parents with monetary resources, have kids that perform better, academically, than the average kid, and much better than most schools’ averages.
Condoleezza Rice pointed this out at the GOP convention, it’s still true: We can predict how well a kid will do on the state test by Zipcode.
Here in Dallas we have two of the top ten high schools in the nation, and within four miles, a dozen failing high schools. Does anyone think for a moment that the school district gets inspired to make those two schools work, then forgets how to do it as soon as the administrators walk in the high school around the corner?
We have failing communities. Schools can help provide some flotation to keep a community above water. But schools cannot pull entire communities up higher than the school itself, since the school floats in the same water.
Didn’t these guys study Archimedes at all?
“we had research that indicated the best way to tell whether a kid was going to succeed in school was to count the books in the kid’s home.”
!!!!!! I’ve mentioned this research to so many of my colleagues, but I’ve never actually been able to find it! I’ve only heard tell. Can you link it! I would love that!
Love your last paragraph. You have a literary soul 🙂
With regard to your first paragraph, of course they exist, and of course Hollywood exaggerates things. I used to teach in one of the school systems made popular by one of the more popular of those silly movies, and anecdotally, while the details were all Hollywood, and therefore, completely wrong in the small-scale, the overall sense of flailing about uselessly was pretty much dead on.
The reality is that private schools don’t have all the answers either. Some of those students struggle with issues as well. I attended public school and my sister went to a private religious school. She and one of her classmates committed suicide. So the grass isn’t always greener on the other side. All children need a lot of TLC in our schools and it takes quality teachers and an abundance of appropriate resources to be able to assist children with obtaining an education which will help them to be all that they can be.
Dear Ben Austin,
Cry me a frikkin’ river.
Really. My father killed my mother, but what has that got to do with anything except my own personal demons? I still live by a strong moral code.
As tragic as such critical events in our lives are, they cannot be used as excuses for adults who have no moral compass –especially someone who was disbarred by the California State Bar precisely because he did not take the required course in ethics!
Go take that ethics course, Ben, and learn the difference between being a genuine, humanitarian civil rights worker who advocates for maintaining the democratic rights of marginalized groups and being a self-serving mercenary willing to sell himself to the highest bidders, regardless of their malevolent intentions and threats to democracy.
“I still live by a strong moral code.”
And this is so important. I agree with this post through and through, with the caveat that your well-placed concern for “maintaining the democratic rights of marginalized groups” does not cross the line into socialism.
AK: I have to say, you lost me there. I get the annoyance with the rhetoric here, the refusal to support arguments with facts, and the populist froth. But what’s the concern about crossing “the line into socialism”? There are some really paranoid theories that some people here believe in — e.g., the one about how the charter school movement is really a coordinated plan to ruin neighborhoods and depress property values so the “privatizers” can move in and buy it up on the cheap. But the notion that the U.S. is heading toward socialism is probably even more paranoid.
On the other hand, maybe I misread your comment.
Flerp, what you call “paranoia” has been investigated and highlighted before. Interesting that you call out the other commenters here for “not supporting arguments with facts” and writing “populist froth” yet you yourself did not engage in due diligence.
“Charter Schools and the Profit Motive”
“What happens is the investors who put up the money to build charter schools get to basically or virtually double their money in seven years through a thirty-nine percent tax credit from the federal government. In addition, this is a tax credit on money that they’re lending, so they’re also collecting interest on the loans as well as getting the thirty-nine percent tax credit.”
“Typically, after an Imagine-managed charter school gets approval to open, Schoolhouse Finance, Imagine’s real estate arm, purchases a campus and charges the school rent. After the school begins to pay that rent, Schoolhouse sells the campus to a real estate investment trust, which then leases it back to Schoolhouse.
The charter school eventually sends rent payments – in one case upward of 40 percent of the school’s entire publicly funded budget – to two for-profit companies.”
http://stateimpact.npr.org/florida/2012/01/11/real-estate-investors-find-market-in-charter-schools/
“Real Estate Investors Find Market in Charter Schools”
“A Miami Herald investigation documented the tangled business ties between charter boards and management companies that are often for-profit. One management company, Academica, collected almost $19 million in lease payments from schools they operate.”
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/post/the-big-business-of-charter-schools/2012/08/16/bdadfeca-e7ff-11e1-8487-64e4b2a79ba8_blog.html
“The Big Business of Charter Schools”
“Anchor: You’ve invested in retail centers, ski parks, you’ve got charter schools, you’ve got movie theaters…. If you could buy one thing right now, David, one type of asset in real estate, what would it be?
DB: Well, probably the charter school business. We said it’s our highest growth and most appealing sector right now of the portfolio. It’s the most high in demand, it’s the most recession-resistant. And a great opportunity set with 500 schools starting every year. It’s a two and a half billion dollar opportunity set in rough measure annually.”
http://www.stltoday.com/news/local/education/imagine-schools-real-estate-deals-fuel-company-growth/article_dbf9b959-0c73-586c-97e7-6fca3a729b39.html
“Imagine Schools Real Estate Deals Funding Company Growth”
“Imagine Schools Inc., the nation’s largest charter school operator, runs six charter schools in St. Louis. Together, their performance on state standardized exams is worse than any school district in Missouri.
Nevertheless, those schools are generating millions of dollars for Imagine and a Kansas City-based real estate investment company through real estate arrangements ultimately supported with public education money.
The deals are part of a strategy that has fueled Imagine’s national expansion. In most cases, Imagine sells its buildings to another company that leases them back to Imagine, with the schools themselves shouldering the rent with public funds.”
So if the charter school industry and the hedge funders are knee-deep in buying real estate, renting it at high prices to charters who use taxpayer money to pay that rent, and then they get to collect enormous tax benefits, why is it paranoid to think about a “coordinated plan to ruin neighborhoods and depress property values”? Especially after the bust of the real estate bubble and the subsequent hubris of the big banks stealing houses out from under people with no fear of government reprisal.
In the Chicago Public Schools (CPS), most of the charter management organizations (CMOs) are given space in CPS buildings to run charter schools for $1 a year in rent. Public funds are also provided for them to buy and construct buildings, so charter schools are a very low risk venture here for edu-preneurs: http://www.substancenews.net/articles.php?page=3632
Funny how socialism is just fine when it’s to the benefit of capitalists like CMOs and Walmart, who has more employees getting public assistance than any other US company: http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-wal-mart-wages-20130607,0,7202028.story
Chicago is shutting down 50 neighborhood schools due to a very questionable formula that has classified those schools as “under-enrolled” as well as a budget deficit claim, at the very same time that it has plans to open 60 new charter schools. Considering the $1 rent that CPS charges to charter schools for using its buildings, it’s not difficult to imagine where a lot of those new charters will be going…
To Chris @ 6:46 PM
ROCK STAR!
Great info, thank you.
ATTENTION KAREN LEWIS:
Since neo-liberalism is an international threat to public education, Lois Weiner wrote, “to defend public education in this country, teachers and their unions must help develop an international response to neoliberalism—one that puts justice and equity at the forefront of the union’s program for education and develops alliances across national borders.”
Karen, Have you met the UK’s Mary Bousted, General Secretary of their teachers’ union, the Association of Teachers and Lecturers (ATL)? Mary is a career teacher with a PhD and she held her own very well against Michelle Rhee (who’s been exporting corporate education “reform”) in this face off: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-18592185
Educators in the UK are dealing with many of the same issues that we are here and I think Mary has done a much better job at addressing them than our national union leadership: http://www.atl.org.uk/publications-and-resources/report/2013/2013-april-mary-bousted-speech.asp
Maybe you and Mary can collaborate together, as Lois suggested? (Australia is another country to consider working with as well.)