Ra Rmanuel has not disguised his dislike for public education or his love for charter schools. After all, he closed more public schools at one time –50–than any other school district in U.S. history.
Well, how about this? An independent report found that Chicago public schools outperformed Chicago charter schools, especially in reading, but in math as well.
“Austin community activist Dwayne Truss said neighborhood schools are burdened by negative stereotypes.
“There’s heavy marketing that somehow neighborhood schools are a horrible place and charter schools are better,” Truss said, adding, “we don’t have that advocacy in the political arena to say, ‘Hey, Mr. Mayor, we need to look at these numbers.’ ”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Here’s yet another another example of how the marketing of charter schools has been an example of, “Don’t let the truth get in the way of a good story.” Thank you for exposing yet again the big lie that charters are always better than public education. Message to parents: Caveat emptor.
Well, yes, but, as always, these comparisons are based solely on test scores, specifically in math and reading. Test score growth can be accomplished through intensive focus on teaching to the test, narrowing the curriculum to focus solely on tested subjects and possibly even cheating. One of the principals even admitted that her schools test scores improved because she focused intensely on reading. That public schools are going down the same test focused path that charters already blazed (and are doing it better) is not necessarily good news. Public schools may be beating charters at their own game, but, personally, I’d rather they not play that game at all.
Yes, thank you Dienne! I didn’t share this article when it made the rounds simply because it celebrates test scores. Dwayne is right, there is much to be celebrated in our neighborhood schools, but not this. By focusing on the test scores as if they prove anything forces more and more schools to be pushed down the edreform path. Neighborhood schools that up their scores are doing so by copying the very bad practices of edreform: hyper-focus on tested subjects/test prep, increasingly abusive behavior modification techniques, cultures of pressure and fear. Now that I am going back into a CPS classroom, I have seen it all first hand. Let’s not reward bad practices.
“Let’s not reward bad practices.”
You’re being nice, Katie, to us the word “bad”. Those practices are UNETHICAL as they go against what is known to be proper teaching practices AND IMMORAL as they harm children by taking away opportunities for a more fuller, complete teaching and learning process and using them as a means-test scores, to an end-gathering bogus data.
Whether these educational malpractices are done by charter or community public schools doesn’t make a difference, they are still UNETHICAL AND IMMORAL.
I’m glad you brought this up, Duane. I’ve been struggling all week trying to find the balance between keeping my mouth shut in my new job (I don’t have tenure) and deciding what choices I will make when forced to implement something I consider unethical and immoral. Do I play the long game, and do the best I can trying to minimize the damage to kids, or do I speak up when something is just….wrong? I’ve been getting very mixed messages.
Many of my great teacher activist friends are telling me to be silent in the face of injustice-to save my job. I certainly understand teachers with family constraints who feel that’s necessary, but that’s not my situation. How do I look my kiddos in the face and implement unethical practices? How do I look at myself in the mirror knowing I’m complicit? Why are teachers everywhere STILL accepting that it is necessary to play along even when we know it hurts kids?!?
Katie,
As I exhorted Chris in Florida on the subsequent post: Do not let them take away your own humanity. Is it worth it to you to be forced to lose that humanity? I can’t answer that for you but there are many different ways to fight back. I’ve been talking one on one with parents, students, teachers, administrators, community members and anyone else who will listen, discussing with them, giving them readings, trying to draw them out of their GAGA ways.
Needless to say I’m known as a bit of an iconoclast around my neck of the woods. One doesn’t have to be completely outlandish/outspoken in one’s iconoclasm but one can still effectively change minds, one at a time. It seems as that’s about the best I can do at the moment.
Thanks for the work that you do with those whose life situations have left them in what most consider a less than desirable condition.
And I wish I had an answer to your last question. Because if we did we could get to the heart of the matter. Maybe that’s the problem, that there is a lack of “heart”.
Katie,
Learn from my example and keep your trap shut. I am being bounced from school to school in Newark and the picture is not pretty. My more compliant colleagues are comfortably perched and are not under fire like me.
I would run the story under a different headline, but it’s important and our people need to be able to use the information it contains.
The corporate reformers expected to be able to produce higher test scores by using all the toxic policies demanded by their “accountability” systems, plus roster scrubbing, plus outright cheating. Their product is so defective, their child-victims can’t deliver the scores they need. I truly believe this result has blind-sided them.
I think all it shows is that low income students test better in public schools for the same reason higher income children test better everywhere: they’re better cared for.
Colleagues, my year has started. I have 80 minutes a day with these 69-72 kids (and counting), for a semester. I swear I’ll take care of them and teach them all the chemistry I can, as well as power and agency, with all my strength. Leave us alone with your buzzwords. Yes, that will raise their scores on the spring high-stakes tests, but never as high (on average) as the cohort in Lexington. And, if I tried to squeeze more scores out of them, the result would be harm, not benefit.
This is a rotten, rigged game. The Corporate Reformers have lost it, though, and the world needs to know that.
Do you have 69-72 kids at one time? My classroom would’ hold that many.
Lord, no, not all at once!. They’re in three sections.
On day four, we all did an experiment with the Bunsen burners, and it went off without a hitch. This leads me to wonder if the teachers who are having trouble with classroom control actually need to pass out boxes of kitchen matches?
chemteacher,
It suits the reformers’ agenda better if scores do not go up. The purposes of the plan are to abolish public education and develop a corps of teacher temps. They are succeeding masterfully.
“Asked why CPS keeps opening charters when neighborhood schools show higher growth, CPS spokesman Bill McCaffrey said many kinds of CPS schools have improved.
“These improvements are now our baseline standards,” he said, “and we will consider this data and other factors as guides when deciding future policies and investments.”
Like they couldn’t get a baseline under Arne Duncan or Paul Vallas or any other “reform” CEO in charge of CPS since mayoral control began in 1995? Rahm has been at the helm for 3 years now, it’s too late to call this a “baseline.” What a boatload of doggy-do, especially when it’s so evident that “future policies and investments” have already been determined in the business plan to privatize public education.
Nearly 20 years of the business model in education here tells me that it’s time to get rid of all the politicians and non-educator business people who have been running the show and let genuine educators call the shots!
The propaganda machine is multifaceted in that it is not just about charter schools vs public schools but also the destruction of teacher unions, cutting funds from public schools, destroying the credibility of teachers and educational researchers–economists and statisticians are the new experts.
It is about money for any public service, including schools, and whether public servants are friends or enemies or just so dumb they need to be micromanaged by turnaround specialists.
It is about distracting attention from greed by blaming teachers and kids for the economic downturn. Too much of the rhetoric destroying the public schools comes from the collective voice of cowards and cheats who tanked the economy.
It is about rewriting history, especially of the civil rights movement.
It is about teaching science and why knowledge about science is worthwhile.
It is whether we wish to have a mono-cultural society with diversity automatically viewed as a threat or learn to live with and appreciate the reality that the once clear majority is becoming the minority.
The odd thing that brings all of these threads together is that education does matter. Otherwise it would not be such a flashpoint or worthy of the huge investments in trying to shape one best view of it, cut off debate, and kill the messengers with propaganda masquerading as advocacy.
I am among many grateful for this corner of the vast and rapidly changing universe of a forums for discussions of issues.
Even so, all politics is local.
Diane knows that. That is why tracking the elections and voter turnout has become such an important feature of this blog.
I’ve been reading THE PHANTOM TOLLBOOTH with my kids, and I think the following passage about sums up my views on testing and the “reformers'” approach to “education”:
(Milo, his watchdog Tock and the Humbug have arrived at a fork in the road with three branches all leading to Digitopolis. The Dodecahedron is trying to help them.)
“”Then perhaps you can help us decide which road to take,” said Milo.
“By all means, he replied happily. “There’s nothing to it. If a small car carrying three people at thirty miles an hour for ten minutes along a road five miles long at 11:35 in the morning starts at the same time as three people who have been traveling in a little automobile at twenty miles an hour for fifteen minutes on another road exactly twice as long as half the distance of the other, while a dog, a but, and a boy travel an equal distance in the same time or the same distance in an equal time along a third road in mid-October, then which one arrives first and which is the best way to go?”
“Seventeen!” shouted the Humbug, scribbling furiously on a piece of paper.
“Well, I’m not sure, but–” Mile stammered after several minutes of frantic figuring.
“You’ll have to do better than that,” scolded the Dodecahedron, “or you’ll never know how far you’ve gone or whether or not you’ve ever gotten there.”
“I’m not very good at problems, “admitted Milo.
“What a shame,” sighed the Dodecahedron. “They’re so very useful. Why, did you know that if a beaver two feet long with a tail a foot and a half long can build a dam twelve feet high and six feet wide in two days, all you would need to build Boulder Dam is a beaver sixty-eight feet long with a fifty-one foot tail?”
“Where would you find a beaver that big?” grumbled the Humbug as his pencil point snapped.
“I’m sure I don’t know,” he replied, “but if you did, you’d certainly know what to do with him.”
“That’s absurd,” objected Milo, whose head was spinning from all the numbers and questions.
“That may be true,” he acknowledged, “but it’s completely accurate, and as long as the answer is right, who cares if the question is wrong? If you want sense, you’ll have to make it yourself.”
“All three roads arrive at the same place at the same time,” interrupted Tock, who had patiently been doing the first problem.
“Correct!” shouted the Dodecahedron. “And I’ll take you there myself. Now you can see how important problems are. If you hadn’t done this one properly, you might have gone the wrong way.””
In the book, everything is all jumbled up and nonsensical until Milo rescues the princesses – Rhyme and Reason. I think we need to find them ourselves.
I know this is an aside, but I just read a very discouraging article in The Daily News about our new chancellor, Carmen Farina….same as the old chancellor, but seems to be doubling, doubling down on “reformer” mantra. What a mistake.
http://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/fari-thinks-big-article-1.1921954
I’m going in to my 5th year of teaching in NYC. I’m so depressed about going back. I can’t take another year of 5 minute drive by faked evaluations. I can’t take another year of seeing good teachers set up. I’m so tired and depressed. I can’t do this anymore.
Don’t give up now. Change of minds and hearts is happening across the nation. And the politics are changing drastically, and that will continue to bring this change into policy, law and practice.
RL
I am concerned. Do you have other job options? No one should go to work feeling so distraught over having to go there. We all have down days (weeks, months) but you sound pretty desperate. If a job change is not possible then perhaps some pharmaceutical intervention would help you. It is certainly worth a try and you are worth it. There is a Latin phrase out there that says, “Don’t let the bastards get you down.” Please seek assistance to find what will work for you.
Find a new career RL. If you are young, you have options. This ain’t getting better.
I am glad to see an independent report showing that public schools still beat the charters at their own game. What is really compelling is that they managed to do it at the same time their budgets have been repeatedly cut. Charters should be outperforming public schools by far. They are not. The only reason for continuing the charter expansion is private profit potential.
More evidence that reform strategies (profit and testing) do not improve teaching and learning. Numerous, comparative, peer reviewed studies produce similar results demonstrating the failure of charter schools to improve test scores (Arnie/reformers definition of effective schools). These studies and reports of fraud, cheating, inflated salaries for the CEO’s are dismissed. Clearly the purpose of RTTT becomes clearer with each report. that the single purpose of reform is to transfer public education assets to the profiteers.
Good work! Particularly because politicians like the mayor have used public schools as political punching bags for a decade now.
It’s amazing how resilient they are. Politicians keep trying to knock them out, and they manage to prevail.
Can anyone explain to me why we’re paying hundreds of people in government to work AGAINST our schools? Any idea why we’re paying these people? If they want to work for a charter management organization, why don’t they go do that? They’re free to go! No reason they should stay on a state or city payroll! I recognize they’re bored by our unfashionable and “traditionalist” public schools. I think they should follow their dreams and go work for the schools they admire and promote, which obviously aren’t public schools.