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The Great Accountability Scam

By dianerav
May 10, 2013 //
3

Crazy Crawfish here writes a brilliant post about The Great Accountability Scam.

He is writing about Louisiana and the Recovery School District, but what he describes applies with equal force to every “reform” scheme in every state and even to Race to the Top.

What he explains is the destructive and failed theory of action that is the very heart of the corporate reform movement.

It goes like this: use test scores to fire teachers, fire principals, close schools, and shatter communities. Create a swath of destruction that falls hardest on poor children, their families and communities. Cover your tracks by declaring success where none exists.

His prime example in this case is Louisiana’s Recovery School District. It has been recognized in the media as a national model, but it is a failed experiment that has benefited its promoters, not students.

RSD is a prime exemplar of the Great Accountability Scam.

Here are his concluding thoughts (but open and read it all):

“What if all these resources we spent taking over school districts, firing teachers, and displacing children were used instead to improve the schools in which they already reside – dozens of these schools now lay shuttered and vacant statewide while the children are bussed to campuses clear across their communities. This is done to disguise how poorly we’ve served these children while we hope taking their temperature over and over and telling them to “get better” will finally work. What if instead of just testing children and holding them “accountable” we held ourselves accountable as a society and worked to improve their plight? All this testing and test prep is not helping our students catch up, and it may actually be bringing everyone else down as well. In Louisiana to disguise this fact John White has changed the “grading scale” and intends to change it yet again next year and every year we continue to employ him. John White will guarantee the scores go up, for what they’re worth, but our students will eventually tire of teachers just taking their temperatures when they show up for school, and who could blame them?

“Kill the RSD, and hand the schools back over to their communities where they belong. The RSD experiment we’ve forced on our children has failed, and miserably so. Instead of spending all that excess funding on bringing in out of state charters and temporary teachers, train the teachers we have, provide funding for universal pre-kindergarten, afterschool programs, restore music and the arts and provide tutors and recruit mentors from the community for children. There are thousands of people just waiting to help, if the state will back off and return to a support role instead of the tyrant it has become under Paul Pastorek and John White. Teachers are trying, but they can’t tackle this task alone.

“I suppose it comes down to whether you want a solution or simply someone to blame. Bobby Jindal just wants a talking point for his futile presidential aspirations; John White wants to help out-of-state vendors, so they can hook him up for a lifetime of perks and positions once he leaves Louisiana. If you are a citizen of this state, if you care about the students, the children, the teachers, your fellow citizens, our way of life and our future, then you need to kick these guys out and take back our schools. Kill the RSD and rescue our teachers and students before it’s too late.

“It’s about time we held our failing leaders responsible. RSD has been in place for almost 7 years and has mostly all new students, and every year it is vying for worst district in the state with two to three times the resources. In my book that deserves an F- and the creators of it should be held accountable.

Categories Accountability, Closing schools, Education Industry, Louisiana, Privatization, Race to the Top

Chicago: Three day March Planned to Protest School Closings

By dianerav
May 9, 2013 //
11

This just in from the Chicago Teachers Union, which is fighting to preserve public education in that city. The mass closure of 54 public schools is unprecedented in American history.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE CONTACT: Stephanie Gadlin

May 9, 2013 312/329-6250

StephanieGadlin@ctulocal1.com

Thousands prepare for a three-day march against school closings as Chicago’s mayor continues his assault on working-class people under the guise of education reform

CHICAGO – As the city braces itself for the largest assault on public education in the country, thousands of parents, students, teachers, clergy, citizens and community leaders are preparing for a “long march” against school closings on May 18, 19 and 20. Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) President Karen Lewis said the non-violent demonstration is necessary because “we have a mayor who refuses to listen to reason, research and logic,” in his campaign to destroy 54 school communities which will impact about 50,000 children.

The 30-plus mile march is themed, “Our City. Our Schools. Our Voice,” and will include simultaneous routes from the West and South sides of the city. Protestors intend to walk each day past many of the 54 school communities slated for closure and their efforts will culminate in a mass demonstration downtown. It is sponsored by the CTU, the Grassroots Education Movement, SEIU Local 1, Unite Here Local 1 and Chicago PEACE, an interdenominational coalition of clergy leaders from across the city. Donations are pouring in from across the country.

“Despite the testimony of thousands of parents, teachers and people who work and live in the school communities impacted, Rahm Emanuel is dedicated to entering the history books as having destroyed the most public schools in one year than anyone,” Lewis said. “He refuses to listen to independent hearing officers, law enforcement officials, educators, researchers, parents and the students themselves. We have no choice but to use the power of organizing and direct action to engage in what will be a long fight to restore sanity to our school district.”

The march kicks off at 10:00 a.m. on May 18 on the South Side at Jesse Owens Elementary School, 12450 S. State St., and on the near West Side at Jean de Lafayette Elementary School, 2714 W. Augusta Blvd.

“School closings hurt children academically and the mayor’s plan will also put thousands of students’ safety at risk and many public school employees may lose their jobs,” Lewis said. “We must do whatever is necessary to stop this assault on the working class and the poor. Instead of just getting angry we must organize. Tell Emanuel, the Board, the school CEO and their corporate sponsors that this is our city, these are our schools and we will use our voice to fight for justice.”

Independent hearing officers reviewed the Chicago Public Schools’ list of 54 slated closings and have recommended removing 14 from the list saying those schools don’t meet the state standards and are in violation of the law. The mayor’s hand-picked Chicago Board of Education will vote on the issue on Wednesday, May 22. Shortly thereafter, a massive voter registration drive will commence throughout the city.

###

Categories Chicago, Closing schools, Emanuel, Rahm

Chicago Will Close Down Some of Arne’s “Turnaround” Schools as Failures

By dianerav
May 8, 2013 //
22

This is an astonishing story.

In 2002, Arne Duncan began his infamous policy of shutting down schools in Chicago with low test scores.

Among the schools he closed was Dodge.

Dodge parents were outraged that their school was handed over to a private turnaround operator, but Duncan assured them it was for the best.

Fast forward to 2008, when President-elect Obama announced that he had picked Arne Duncan as Secretary of Education.

The event was held at Dodge Renaissance Academy, which the President praised as a “perfect example” of a turnaround school, an exemplar of Duncan’s great success.

Sadly, Chicago Public Schools is now closing Dodge Renaissance Academy as a failing school, along with Williams, another of Duncan’s “turnaround” schools.

What do you think this does to the children, the parents, and the community?

When is it okay to say that it is better to help struggling schools than to close them?

Categories Accountability, Chicago, Closing schools, Education Reform

Texas: The Surefire Plan to Destroy Public Education

By dianerav
May 8, 2013 //
37

You think it can’t happen here?

You think your state is immune?

Read about the war on public education in Texas and think again.

Some part of this radical agenda is being promoted in almost every state.

Yours too.

This comment was written by Bonnie Lesley of “Texas Kids Can’t Wait”:

“I worry a lot whether public schools will continue to exist in some states. Our organization, Texas Kids Cant Wait, has felt overwhelmed at times this legislative session about the sheer number of privatization bills, all either sponsored by Sen. Dan Patrick or by someone close to him. We have been battling a big charter (what is in reality the gateway drug to privatization) expansion bill, a parent-trigger bill, opportunity scholarships, taxpayer savings grants, achievement district, “FamiliesFirstSchools”, home-rule districts, vouchers for kids with disabilities, online course expansion, numerous bills to close public schools and turn them over to private charter companies, and on and on. A friend said it is as if they threw a whole bowl full of spaghetti at the wall, believing something would stick.

Every one of the ALEC bills we have seen introduced in other states has been introduced in Texas this year.

The privatizers have also held hostage the very popular bills such as HB 5 to reduce testing significantly unless their privatization bills advanced, and advance they have. So lots of folks are playing poker with kids’s lives and futures.

What keeps many of us fighting 20 hours a day and digging into our own pockets to fund the work is our understanding that these bills are not the end game. We’ve read the web sites, beginning with Milton Freidman’s epistle on the Cato Institute’s website, that lay out the insidious plan we are seeing played out. We have also read Naomi Klein’s brilliant book, Shock Doctrine.

First, impose ridiculous standards and assessments on every school.

Second, create cut points on the assessments to guarantee high rates of failure. (I was in the room when it was done in the State of Delaware, protesting all the way, but losing).

Third, implement draconian accountability systems designed to close as many schools as possible. Then W took the plan national with NCLB.

Fourth, use the accountability system to undermine the credibility and trust that almost everyone gave to public schools. increase the difficulty of reaching goals annually.

Fifth, de-professionalize educators with alternative certification, merit pay, evaluations tied to test scores, scripted curriculum, attacks on professional organizations, phony research that tries to make the case that credentials and experience don’t matter, etc.

Sixth, start privatization with public funded charters with a promise that they will be laboratories of innovation. Many of us fell for that falsehood. Apply pressure each legislative session to implement more and more of them. Then Arne Duncan did so on steroids.

Seventh, use Madison Avenue messaging to name bills to further trick people into acceptance, if not support, of every conceivable voucher scheme. The big push now as states implement Freidman austerity budgets to create a crisis is to portray vouchers as a cheaper way to “save” schools. The bills that would force local boards to sell off publicly owned facilities for $1 each is also part of the overall scheme not only to destroy our schools, but also to make it fiscally impossible for us to recover them if we ever again elect a sane government. Too, districts had to make cuts in their budgets in precisely the areas that research says matter most: quality teachers, preschool, small classes, interventions for struggling students, and rigorous expectations and curriculum. See our report: http://www.equitycenter.org. Click on book, Money STILL Matters in bottom right corner.

Eighth, totally destroy public education with so-called universal vouchers. They have literally already published the handbook. You can find it numerous places on the web.

Ninth, start eliminating the vouchers and charters, little by little.

And, tenth, totally eliminate the costs of education from local, state, and national budgets, thereby providing another huge transfer of wealth through huge tax cuts to the already-billionaire class.

And then only the wealthy will have schools for their kids.

Aw, you may say. They can’t do that! My response is that yes, they most certainly will unless you and I stop it!”

Categories Accountability, ALEC, Alternate Route To Certification, Budget Cuts, Charter Schools, Closing schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, For-Profit, On-Line Education, Pre-K, Privatization, Race to the Top, Teacher Evaluations, Testing, Texas, Vouchers

Will My School Die?

By dianerav
May 6, 2013 //
17

The teacher who wrote this post reequired anonymity, for obvious reasons:

I am writing to tell you about a situation at my school — Shea High in Pawtucket, RI.

At the start of last year, both Shea and Tolman High (the only two non-charter public high schools in Pawtucket) were told that they had failed to make AYP as per NCLB and would have to undergo transformation. Note that since RI has accepted RttT, last year was the last possible year that this could have happened.

Despite high poverty, transience, ESL population, etc. the only AYP target that Shea had failed to meet was for graduation rate. It had remained stagnant at about 59% for three years, just barely failing to meet the target of 60%.

When the announcement was made last year that we were to undergo transformation, we were told that this would involve at the very least the removal of our principal (a fantastic, very bright, and driven man who had been principal for about ten years and whose leadership was one of the greatest reasons we had managed to make AYP in every other required category). As we had only failed to make AYP by a fraction of a percent, and we knew that a high transience rate contributed greatly to our low graduation rate, teachers and other stakeholders scrambled to locate students who had simply disappeared over the years.

At this point I should interject that under NCLB, RIDE [Rhode Island Department of Education] had been given some leeway in determining how many years a school had to make AYP before transformation was necessary. The decision to limit the number of years to three had been made AFTER our three year stagnation streak had begun. Think of that what you will.

I was one of those teachers scrambling to locate lost students in the hope of finding some who had actually graduated but had been labelled dropouts because the school system had lost track of them. Every student counted as we were only off by a fraction of a percent. I was able to find one, a boy from Ethiopia whose sister had taken an ESL class of mine. The family had moved from Rhode Island to North Dakota and he had graduated from high school there.

In the end, we were able to prove that our graduation rate had actually risen above 60% for one of the three years of stagnation. Unfortunately, RIDE refused to accept this new data, claiming that it was “too late” to take it into consideration (my first thought was to wonder if it would also have been considered “too late” to consider new data if we had been caught cheating, but I digress). Transformation would go ahead as planned. Our principal, Dr. Christopher Lord — an excellent, dedicated administrator with a great reputation in education circles around our small state — was out.

At a recent meeting with our transformation director, I learned that the baseline graduation rate used in our transformation plan was 67%. This seemed very strange to me, as our school was in transformation specifically because its graduation rate was below 60%. At first I had thought that the graduation rate for the third year of stagnation had been altered upwards due in part to the work teachers had done locating missing graduates, and I was livid.

When I asked at the meeting, our transformation director originally indicated that this was the case. However, after further research it seems that the transformation director (who was not in the system last year and could not have remembered the mad scramble for data I mentioned above) may not have fully understood my question.

After consulting several officials and reading the transformation document, I learned that the baseline was 67% because that was the most recent year data was available for — 2011, the year AFTER the three year stagnation. I also learned that the sudden “jump” in graduation rate was due to new methodologies being used downtown which resulted in a more accurate picture of who had actually graduated from high school.

I still have some serious issues with our transformation situation.

First, there is the fact that RIDE’s decision to limit the number of years schools had to raise their graduation rates to three years came sometime in the middle of our three year stagnation. I know that “fair” is a four-letter word, but something doesn’t smell right about this.

Second — why did Pawtucket decide to implement a new, more accurate system for determining graduation rate at the WORST possible time? One year earlier and we would have shown more than adequate growth and been off the hook; one year later and we would have had a much lower baseline graduation rate from which to determine a transformation target. Whoever made this call was either asleep at the wheel or not interested in seeing Shea and Tolman succeed at transformation.

Finally — given our baseline of 67% graduation rate, it was decided that our transformation target should be 78% by 2014-2015 and 80% by 2015-2016. To put this into context, the RI state average graduation rate is currently 77%, and this is almost sure to go down as we implement Gist’s plan to require all students to get a 2 or more on the NECAP in order to graduate. Even if the average graduation rate does NOT go down, it is possible that Shea — one of the poorest and most challenged high schools in the state — will raise its graduation rate to higher than the state average but still fail to hit its transformation target because it doesn’t beat the state average BY ENOUGH.

We have been told, over and over, that if we do not meet the transformation targets then it is likely that we will all be fired and only 50% of us will be hired back. I do not personally believe that Pawtucket or RIDE wants to do this, because if they had wanted to do it they could have done so last year when they chose instead to go with transformation. What I fear will come to pass is that Shea will fail (by design) to meet its transformation targets and teachers will be taken aside and told that Pawtucket and RIDE have agreed to do them a BIG FAVOR — they will be allowed to keep their jobs, but only if some MAJOR concessions are made.

Or maybe they will fire us all and agree to rehire 100% of teachers who will sign a new contract that the union hasn’t been consulted on. Of course these last thoughts are just idle ones, but they do concern me.

Categories Closing schools, Race to the Top

High-Stakes Testing of Students in Special Education

By dianerav
May 4, 2013 //
46

Louise Marr sent this from her book:

**********£*******
“Every spring, the Philadelphia public school students take the standardized tests, or PSSAs. (Starting in 2013, the district has switched to a different test called the Keystone Exams.) These tests are a huge part of how schools are evaluated and rated. It is from these scores that Annual Yearly Progress (AYP) is determined. There is a big push to prepare the eleventh graders for the tests from the beginning of the year to test day, usually after the first of the year. This particular year at Vaux, the students took the test over a course of several days. They were divided into several different classrooms for three to four hours in the morning, with two teacher proctors per room. All eleventh graders take the test, even the SPED students. Schools across the country take statewide tests very seriously, because of the implications that they present. In the five high schools where I have taught, there has been a common atmosphere at test time: the school is quiet and rules must be strictly enforced. In the classroom that I proctored at Vaux, it was sometimes a challenge to maintain the serious atmosphere.

There were five students in the room I proctored. Four were SPED students. One was MMR, and read at first grade level. He was given the same test. After a few minutes, he put his head down, because he did not understand the reading. Teachers are not allowed to help, only to say, “Do the best you can.” He didn’t even bother to ask.

Takierrah and Courtney were working on their tests, until Courtney looked up and caught Takierrah looking at her.

“Stop looking at me!”

“You’re ugly, I will f*** you up.” “I can’t stand your black ass.” “You’re black too!”

“No, I’m light-skinned.”

“You’re still ugly.”

“I’m cuter than you.”

“Get outta my face.”

“I’m not in your face, because if I was, I would f*** you up.”

They did manage to settle down without a physical confrontation,
but this scene made a huge impression on me. These tests would be used to evaluate the progress of our school. They were obviously way above the comprehension level of the Special Education students, yet the students were not given any accommodations at all. When I asked an administrator about this, she just shrugged, “That’s just the way it is.”

From the book, “Passed On: Public School Children in Failing American Schools”
by Louise Marr. Chapter 3: No Longer a Special Education

Categories Closing schools, Special Education, Teacher Evaluations, Testing

“Education Drained of Its Humanity”

By dianerav
May 3, 2013 //
6

This thoughtful and provocative essay by Shawn Gude situates present-day corporate reform in its historical context. Gude shows the connections between early 20th century social efficiency and the present-day demand for testing, standardizing, and data-based decision-making.

Here is an excerpt:

“There’s a special resemblance between the struggles against scientific management, or Taylorism, and today’s teacher resistance to corporate reform schemes. Just as factory workers fought top-down dictates, deskilling, and the installation of anemic work processes, so too are teachers trying to prevent the undemocratic implementation of high-stakes testing and merit pay, assaults on professionalism, and the dumbing down and narrowing of curricula.

“There are more obvious parallels: Proponents of scientific management counted some prominent progressives in their ranks, just like the contemporary left-neoliberals hawking education reform. The nostrums of both Taylorism and the education accountability movement paper over foundational conflicts and root causes. Many of those who espouse education reform cast their solutions as unimpeachably “scientific” and “data-driven,” yet as with scientific management partisans, the empirical grounding of their prescriptions is highly dubious. And proponents of scientific management and corporate school reform share an antipathy toward unions, often casting them as self-interested inhibitors of progress.”

And here is another excerpt:

“When education is reduced to test prep, rich curricula and the craft of teaching are imperiled. The vapid classroom of neoliberal school reform mirrors the vapid workplace of Taylorism. Teach for America, which implicitly advances the idea that the sparsely trained can out-teach veteran educators, engenders deskilling and deprofessionalization. Non-practitioners dictating to practitioners how they should do their work mirrors management’s disciplining of workers; both militate against work as a creative activity. The appropriation of business language — the head of the Chicago Public Schools is the “CEO” — reinforces the idea that schools should be run like corporations. Merit pay individualizes and severs educators’ ties to one another, forcing them to compete instead of cooperate. So too with the anti-union animus that neoliberal reformers and scientific management proponents display.”

Read the essay. You will understand the roots of the corporate reforms of our day.

Categories Accountability, Closing schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Education Reform, Teach for America TFA, Teacher Evaluations, Teachers and Teaching, Testing, U.S. education

Teachers: Deasy Killing Off Crenshaw High School

By dianerav
April 30, 2013 //
13

Teachers at Crenshaw High School are trying to stop the executioners’ axe from falling on their school, as it has fallen on so many others. Is it too late?

They write:

“The last few days have been hard to bear—especially for those of us who want UTLA to become an organizing union, which puts forth our vision for how we can best educate our kids. Last night, teachers at Crenshaw High School—who, despite the most valiant and strategic fight we’ve seen yet against a reconstitution, had been forced to reapply for their jobs under the district’s “magnet conversion”—began receiving news about whether they’d been rehired for year. The news has been very bad.

“More than 30 teachers at Crenshaw — half the faculty — have been “rejected” by the hiring committee so far, including UTLA Chair Cathy Garcia, West Area UTLA Board member Alex Caputo-Pearl, and multiple veteran African-American teachers, who not only teach at Crenshaw, but make the area their home, and who, now, will not be allowed back to teach the kids at their own “home school.”

“In addition to being a part of militant actions against the reconstitution, once the re-application process started, the faculty organized the majority of teachers to re-apply, believing that “that this is our school, we are part of this community, and we won’t be pushed out without going through every piece of this struggle we can, even a re-application process.” Everyone was clear-eyed about the process – that it would be a kangaroo court, with decisions essentially a forgone conclusion. But teachers agreed to go through it anyway, and push it into the light of day, because stability was important for the students. They’re why we’re all here in the first place.

“This news about Crenshaw is devastating, not only because it further destabilizes another inner-city school that serves students of color. It’s worse because Crenshaw, despite ongoing district neglect, had worked, through years of organizing and investment in instructional innovation, to become a model for bottom-up, genuine reform. The teachers at Crenshaw, working in partnership with students, parents, community members, and university scholars, had created a nationally-recognized model for educating students of color: The Extended Learning Cultural Model (ELCM).

“The ELCM is the single most groundbreaking, all-encompassing model for genuine education transformation attempted at an urban high school. The ELCM combines cutting edge instructional pedagogy with community-based internships, leadership opportunities, and activities that connect to the students’ classroom learning. This “extends learning” out into the community. The model also included parent workshops to further support student learning and development. The ELCM was a model to educate the whole child in each and every one of his/her ecosystems: classroom, home, and community.

“And the model was working! The work of the students, teachers, parents, and community members at Crenshaw had garnered the attention of the Ford Foundation, who awarded Crenshaw a $250,000.00 grant to pilot their work, with the promise of more money to come. In addition, WASC, the accrediting board, who threatened to remove Crenshaw’s accreditation just a few years before, praised the work of the faculty and staff, and the newly created stability and “espirit d’corps” of the entire Crenshaw community under this new model. Test scores rose significantly in 2011-12. All of this success occurred in spite of years of district neglect, and a virtual revolving door of administrators (more than 30 in the seven years since Crenshaw’s accreditation was threatened). The ELCM was turning Crenshaw around. All that was needed was stability, and perhaps (dare we say it) even some district support.

“What did LAUSD do instead? They destroyed it. Superintendent Deasy went after Crenshaw this past year, ignoring all of the gains recognized by the Ford Foundation, WASC, and the actual data (which spoke for itself). Deasy HAD to destroy the Extended Learning Cultural Model. And, he made Crenshaw High School a huge political priority. The ELCM was a direct threat to him, his top-down philosophy of education, and his authority as superintendent. The ELCM was not created by him or the District. It operated largely independently of him and the District (though the school invited him to be involved in a positive manner, several times over the last two years). Teachers and parents raised their own money for it, which must have been upsetting for our superintendent—to know that peon teachers and parents had direct lines to international foundations over him. The ELCM is based on education as a tool for critical thinking and contribution to social justice, not education to create more workers for a market and business model, as Deasy promotes. It had the support of prominent academics of color, with whom Deasy could not stand toe-to-toe. It was led by progressive unionists, not District hacks. The ELCM was, pure and simple, a direct threat to Deasy, and he knew he had to destroy it. So he did.

“Deasy blamed the years of inadequate progress not on district ineptitude (as WASC clearly noted), but on the teachers. He called the school a failure, and decided to institute more of the same: reconstitution. This time – cleverly, because it brings in more resources and connotes positive change — under the guise of a “magnet conversion.” He very specifically obliterated the Social Justice and Law Academy, by rejecting ALL of its architect teachers – this was the Academy that had planted the seeds for the ELCM more than any.

“The results so far have been the same as at Fremont, Jordan, Manual Arts, and Muir: teachers were forced to reapply for their jobs, and almost all of the veteran/activist teachers have not been rehired. And just like all the other reconstitutions that came before it, big UTLA did not have the power or strategy to stop it. While some officers have provided valuable but limited support in communicating with District officials, the two big things that the Crenshaw community needed UTLA’s help with were not able to be put together – help to organize the other 6 schools that are being magnetized so that the relatively strong 7th school, Crenshaw, won’t be left out on a limb; and investment in public relations, community ads, etc., to frame the whole “magnet conversion” city-wide as a destabilizer. Just like with Public School Choice, teacher evaluations, etc. – when UTLA goes issue by issue, one by one, school by school, we lost.

“The ELC Model at Crenshaw is what the Schools LA Students Deserve Campaign is really about. This is the kind of work community partners and UTLA can be showcasing. But as dark as this time has been, the fight is not yet over. We may have lost a key part of this battle at Crenshaw, but the fight to preserve the ELCM is just beginning. And, students and parents, again, are finding their footing after this blow. Again, this is an incredibly innovative, student-centered educational model. It was attempted by teachers, working in partnership with students, parents, and community members. And it worked. Remember that. Remember what WE can do to counter the fake reform proposed by the district, the billionaire Boys Club, and the neoliberals who want to impose a corporate model on public education.”

More to come on the ELCM soon.

In Unity,

Cathy Garcia
UTLA Chapter Chair, Crenshaw High School

Joseph Zeccola
UTLA Year-Round Director
Design Team Leader, The Social Justice Schools at Maya Angelou Community High School

Categories Closing schools, Los Angeles

DFER, EdTrust, et al Insist on High-Stakes Testing for California

By dianerav
April 29, 2013 //
9

I don’t understand this story.

It says that “civil rights groups” demand that Arne Duncan turn down a request for a waiver from a group of districts in California.

Since high-stakes testing invariably ends up with poor and minority kids at the bottom of the bell curve, it is hard for me to understand why civil rights groups would demand more of it.

Since accountability typically means that schools enrolling the neediest kids get closed, why would civil rights groups want more of it?

Since high stakes accountability invariably means that those who teach the most vulnerable children are likely to be fired, why would civil rights groups want more of it?

One possible answer to the puzzle is that Democrats for Education Reform is listed as a “civil rights group.” DFER is an organization created by Wall Street hedge fund managers to promote more charter schools and more testing (but not necessarily for those who teach in charter schools). Just recently, the California Democratic Party singled out DFER and StudentsFirst as fronts for Republicans and corporations.

Maybe this letter to Duncan is DFER’s revenge on California. (DFER recommended Duncan to Obama for his job as Secretary of Education.)

Categories Accountability, California, Closing schools, Corporate Reformers, Democrats for Education Reform, Duncan, Arne, Federal Waiver, Poverty, Privatization

The Legacy of Michael Bloomberg

By dianerav
April 26, 2013 //
7

Leonie Haimson and I have written an article in the current issue of The Nation about Mayor Bloomberg’s 12-year control of the public schools.

The article unfortunately is behind a pay wall. If you can find a copy at your newsstand or library, I hope you read it. You will find a perspective quite different from the tabloids.

Categories Bloomberg, Michael, Charter Schools, Closing schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Education Reform
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