Archives for the month of: May, 2012
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Corporate Reformers Love Lofty Goals

By dianeravitch
May 21, 2012 //
12

One of the favorite tactics of corporate reformers is to set lofty goals.

We have learned over the past twenty years that you can’t have reform without goals.

I remember back when No Child Left Behind was passed, and it included the goal (mandate, actually) that all students in grades 3-8 would be proficient by the year 2014. (By the way, if anyone wonders, I was not an architect of NCLB. I wasn’t involved at any point in writing it. That distinction goes to Sandy Kress, Margaret Spellings, Education Trust, and maybe even Rod Paige, who was Secretary of Education.)

I remember the six  national goals set in 1990 by the nation’s governors and the George W. Bush administration. Goal one was, “By the year 2000, all children in America will start school ready to learn.” There was also, “By the year 2000, United States students will be first in the world in mathematics and science achievement.” The Clinton administration added two more national goals I don’t think any of the national goals were met, but there were no punishments attached to them so they quietly disappeared.

With NCLB, everything changed. Suddenly, there were real consequences attached to not meeting a goal (100% proficiency) that no nation in the world had ever reached.

Schools that persistently failed to make “adequate yearly progress” would eventually be closed or turned over to a private management company or turned into a charter (same difference) or taken over by the state or staff would be fired. At the time, none of these sanctions had any evidence behind them. They still don’t. No state had ever taken over a school and made it a better school. Charters had almost no record at all. And private management companies had failed to demonstrate that they knew how to “fix” schools with low scores.

So now we have moved on to higher levels of goal-setting, since that is what business strategists like to do. Reformers must have goals! And goals must have accountability!

When I was in Detroit, the local business-civic groups that wanted to take over the schools said that if they were given a free hand, the graduation rate would rise to 90% in ten years. Well, why not 100%, as long as they were making promises? Why only 90%?

In Indianapolis, a local group of corporate reformers has proposed the usual remedy of privatization and promised remarkable achievements, come the by-and-by.

In Philadelphia, the former gas company executive who is currently in charge promised that if the plan he purchased from the Boston Consulting Group were adopted…well, you know, a dramatic increase in test scores, graduation rates, etc.

As I wrote just yesterday, Mike Miles—the Broad-trained military man who holds his troops in low regard—pledged grand goals for 2020.

But my current favorite goal is the one pledged by John White, the Broad-trained Commissioner of Education in Louisiana. White has promised that by 2014, all students in Louisiana would be proficient. (http://louisianaeducator.blogspot.com/2012_05_06_archive.html). Now, the reason I especially like this goal is that the timeline is so short. That means that we can hold Commissioner White accountable for results in only two years! If 100% of Louisiana’s students are not proficient in 2014, he has failed.

Now there is a man willing to stake his career and reputation on his goals. That’s impressive.

I wouldn’t exactly take that pledge to the bank, but I think we should treat his promise seriously and hold him to it in 2014.

Diane

Categories Broad Foundation, Indiana, Louisiana, Michigan, Philadelphia

Charter Schools Vs. Catholic Schools

By dianeravitch
May 21, 2012 //
10

Charter schools contribute directly to the collapse of Catholic schools in the inner city, according to new research by Abraham Lackman, a scholar in residence at the Albany Law School in New York. With the help of a friend, I got an URL: https://sites.google.com/site/neifpe/home/pdffiles/120307Lackman.pdf. And here is a report of his findings in the New York Daily News: http://articles.nydailynews.com/2012-02-22/news/31088718_1_charter-schools-catholic-schools-new-charter

Lackman was chief of staff for the New York State Senate Finance Committee between 1995 and 2002, which included the year (1998) when the legislature authorized 200 charter schools. In a paper called “The Collapse of Catholic School Enrollment: Dissecting the Causes,” Lackman demonstrates that Catholic schools close as charters open.

Catholic school enrollments dropped precipitously in the nation and in New York state over the past decade.  In New York state, K-8 enrollments in Catholic schools fell by a staggering 43%, from 202,000 to 115,000 from 2000 to 2010. Charter schools were not the only cause of the decline—demographics and the cost of keeping the schools open played a role too–but the advent of charters, he says, was a “significant and growing factor.” Between 2006 and 2010, 89 Catholic schools closed in New York state as 95 charter schools opened. About 30% of the students who leave Catholic schools go to charters.

He estimates that every new charter draws 100 students from Catholic schools. As another 280 new charters open in New York—thanks to Race to the Top—Catholic schools will lose another 28,000 students to charters. In the competition with chartesr, he says, the outlook for Catholic education is bleak.

It is not hard to see why charters would drive Catholic schools out of business. When a charter opens in a working-class neighborhood, it  blankets the area with flyers and posters and postcards promising to provide a rigorous, college preparatory education for free. “For free” matters. The poor and working-class families that typically rely on Catholic schools in urban districts have trouble paying even a modest fee of $3,000-5,000 per child.

There is a difference, however. The Catholic schools have a proven record. They are safe, well-disciplined, and get consistently good results. Many of the new charters are not good schools and will not provide a quality education. They are almost certain to have a high turnover of both teachers and principals, offering not a community but instability.

A large part of the Catholic schools’ success derives from the fact that they are faith-based and that they sustain a sense of genuine community, as well as stability. To me, and I am not Catholic, the success of Catholic schools depends on maintaining their religious identity, that is, keeping the crucifixes in the classrooms as well as the freedom to speak freely about one’s values. If Catholic schools turn themselves into charters hoping to survive, they make a huge mistake. They will have to abandon their religious identity, give up the faith-based nature of their school. That is no way to save Catholic schools.

As a supporter of both public education and Catholic education, I have a solution to the dilemma. Public money for public schools, and private money for Catholic schools. Just think of the billions that have been poured into charter schools for a tiny percentage of the nation’s students (is it 4% now?). Imagine if the same money—or even half of it—had been devoted to building a foundation for the future of Catholic education. We would then have a far better public school system, free of the internecine battles over resources between public school parents and charter parents. And Catholic education, which serves its students so faithfully and so well, would be preserved for future generations.

Note to philanthropists and hedge fund managers: Can’t you see the great return on investment that would come from saving Catholic schools in urban districts?

Diane

Categories Catholic Schools, Charter Schools

Saving Poor Kids from Failing Schools?

By dianeravitch
May 21, 2012 //
9

Several people sent me a video of Glen Ford of the Black Agenda Report skewering Corey Booker, the mayor of Newark, and Howard Fuller of Black Alliance for Educational Options as sell-outs for a rightwing agenda. See it here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JdPACwRgw04

 I must say there was nothing in the video that surprised me. Back in the late 1990s, when I was involved in three different conservative organizations, there was a concerted effort to find and promote black advocates for choice. The leaders on the right wanted to promote charters as a boon to minorities and the poor. The pitch was, “We are saving poor kids from failing schools.” After all, they couldn’t very well go to state capitols and say, “Please pass charter legislation so that we can get government off our backs.” Or, “please pass charter legislation because we can’t get vouchers.”

So the strategists on the right devised a clever campaign that was irresistible to liberals and conservatives alike: Create privately-managed schools to save poor black and Hispanic kids. Republicans would like the privatization aspect and liberals would fall for the “save poor minorities” part.

It worked.

Diane

Categories Black Alliance for Educational Options

Enter the New Dallas Superintendent

By dianeravitch
May 20, 2012 //
13

The new superintendent of the Dallas public schools, Mike Miles, is off to a rousing start. He is a military man, and he thinks in terms of organizational goals, the mission, the beliefs.

The story about Miles’ plan appears in the Dallas Morning News behind a paywall, so I can’t link to it.
But here are the essentials:
Like his predecessors, Miles has a long list of impressive goals.
He wants the district to embrace “a vision and a mission of raising academic achievement, improving instruction and not accepting excuses.” (What were they doing before Miles arrived?)

He said at a meeting of the school board:

“We cannot just post it and market it and put it in little brochures. We have to practice this,” said Miles, adding that he wants 80 percent of DISD employees to be “proficient” on those beliefs in a year. It is not clear how he plans to test the proficiency of all DISD employees, whether the test will be multiple-choice, and whether the test will be created by Pearson.

By 2020, he says, the graduation rate will be up to 90% from the 2010 rate of 75%.
By 2020, SAT scores will jump by 30%, and 60% of students will achieve at least a 21 on the ACT.
80% of students will be workplace ready, as determined by assessments created by the business and nonprofit communities.
He will create a new leadership academy to train principals in one year, based on what sounds like NYC’s unsuccessful one.
Teachers will be observed up to ten times a year, and these observations will factor into a pay-for-performance plan.
All classroom doors must be open all the times. so that teachers may be observed at any time, without warning.
Principals will have one year “to demonstrate that they have the capacity and what it takes to lead change and to improve the quality of instruction.” 
Miles did not say how he intends to measure whether principals have this capacity.

By August 2015: 

“At least 75 percent of the staff and 70 percent of community members agree or strongly agree with the direction of the district.

At least 80 percent of all classroom teachers and 100 percent of principals are placed on a pay-for-performance evaluation system.At least 60 percent of teachers on the pay-for-performance evaluation system and 75 percent of principals agree that the system is “fair, accurate and rigorous.”

Create a rubric to assess the professional behavior and effectiveness of each major central office department.
Miles is one heckuva corporate reformer. Nothing in his plan refers to the quality of curriculum, instruction or teaching. Nothing about meeting the needs of children. It’s all about the carrots and sticks, all about the shape of the container.
He not only has big goals, but he demands that DISD employees and the community agree with him. Wonder if Pearson has a test for that?
Diane
PS: I neglected to mention, when I put up this post, that Mike Miles is a 2011 graduate of the Broad Superintendents Academy. Perhaps that explains why he is focused solely on organizational and management goals and overlooks anything having to do with raising the morale of teachers or addressing the needs of children. Thanks to commenter Jack Stansbury, for reminding me of the BS background.
Categories Broad Foundation, Dallas

Why College-for-All is a Sham

By dianeravitch
May 20, 2012 //
18

The corporate reformers like to say that everyone must go to college if they want to have good jobs in the future.

Now, let me be clear that I love education and I think everyone should get as much education as they want and should keep on getting better educated all their life. Thanks to the Internet, the means of self-education are easy and inexpensive.

But I don’t think that college-for-all is a reasonable goal. There are many young people who don’t want to go to college; they shouldn’t be forced by social pressure to do so. College changes if it is turned into a higher level of compulsory education. It becomes like high school or even junior high school if unwilling and unready students are pushed into college.

And the very claim that the jobs of the future require a college education is not true.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, most of the jobs that will open up in the next few years do not require a B.A. In fact, only about 25% do. The other 75% do not. They need on-the-job training.

http://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2009/11/art5full.pdf

Look at Table 3 on page 88.  Look specifically at the next to last column, “Total job openings due to growth and replacement needs, 2008–18”. You will see that approximately 23% of all job openings require a bachelor’s degree or more (adding up the numbers for the bachelor’s degree line, and those above it).  Approximately 67% require a high school degree OR LESS.

For illustrations of occupations that will have the most openings, look at Table 5, beginning on p.93. Be sure to focus on the numeric column, not the percentage column. (An occupation with very few members can have a very large percentage growth with relatively few openings, so this percentage column is misleading.)

So,  yes, we should be preparing students for a variety of vocations and let them know that it is honorable to build a house, to install plumbing and electricity. And we should do that as we fulfill the basic function of public education, which is to prepare them to vote, to serve on juries, to be the citizens who sustain our democracy into the future.

By the way, top-ranked Finland has an excellent program of technical and vocational education in high school; about 40% of its students choose this track, and they can change at any time.

So, yes, go to college if you want to learn more. Take a degree in ancient Greek or philosophy or archeaology or sociology or whatever interests you. Don’t go to college to get a job. Go to college to learn.

Diane

Categories Higher Education

Yuck: US DOE Supports For-profit Entrepreneurs

By dianeravitch
May 20, 2012 //
4

Yesterday I engaged in an unexpected exchange on Twitter with Justin Hamilton, who is press secretary to Secretary of Education Arne Duncan.

It started after I retweeted a blog by master-teacher Nancy Flanagan. Nancy’s blog took issue with a listing of the up-and-coming stars of American education, which focused heavily on the entrepreneurial sector and forgot teachers. Nancy listed some of the outspoken teachers who are emerging stars in the profession, like Julie Cavanaugh and Brian Jones, two New York City teachers who starred in “The Inconvenient Truth Behind ‘Waiting for Superman.'”

When I retweeted Nancy’s blog, I asked “Who will transform education: entrepreneurs or educators?”

I don’t have the exact sequence, but Jersey Jazzman (one of my favorite bloggers) recapitulated the tweets and blogs here: http://jerseyjazzman.blogspot.com/2012/05/weasels-in-department-of-education.html?spref=tw.

Before long, Hamilton responded to my tweet by saying that we should not choose between entrepreneurs and educators, but should count on both of them to transform education.

We then had a lively exchange, in which I made clear, in tweet after tweet, that my reference to “entrepreneurs” referred specifically to the for-profit education industry, which seeks to get rich by coming up with new ventures in education. In our twitter exchange, I referred specifically to the for-profit charter industry (most charters in Michigan for-profit) and also to the for-profit cyber charters,which make big profits and get poor results. I asked why Secretary Duncan has never spoken out against the depredations of this industry, which uses lobbyists to buy access to children.

Hamilton responded with an ad hominem tweet, saying that I was an entrepreneur because I get paid to make speeches and to write books.

That seems to be the default position of the U.S. Department of Education, to go personal when they can’t defend what they are doing. A year ago, Secretary Duncan claimed that “Diane is in denial” after I debunked his claims about miraculous turnarounds that happen by firing the staff. (See my earlier post “Psychologizing Female Critics”).

My takeaway from our exchange: the US Department of Education welcomes for-profit entrepreneurs and will never turn its back on them, no matter how paltry their results or how constricted their definition of “education.” The advance of corporate greed into the education sector, in my view, has nothing to recommend it. Corporations will seek to replace teachers with computers, will shave costs wherever possible, and will deliver a product that is as cheaply produced as possible in order to maximize profits. I fail to understand what that has to do with education, as I understand the meaning of the term.

Diane

Categories Corporate Reformers, Duncan, Arne, Education Reform, U.S. Department of Education

Why Do We Spend So Much on Testing?

By dianeravitch
May 20, 2012 //
10

A parent in Texas wrote to say that she couldn’t understand why the state was paying Pearson $100 million a year while laying off teachers. She’s right. This is crazy. She pointed out that in addition to the direct cost of the state testing, schools and districts now had to pay people whose sole job is the care and feeding of the testing monster. One district is hiring a testing coordinator for each of its five high schools, More money diverted from the classroom. At the same time the cost of testing grows, the budget for public education shrinks.

She sent me this article from an Austin newspaper: http://www.kxan.com/dpp/news/local/austin/educators-parents-fight-testing-system. Sandy Kress, who was the architect of NCLB and is now a lobbyist for Pearson, strongly defended the testing system, saying that young people would be closed out of good jobs if they didn’t take all those tests.

Now, be it noted that this claim is utterly false. Students in independent schools (such as the one that Kress’ own children attend) do not take all those tests and they presumably will not be shut out of the good jobs in the future. http://jasonstanford.org/2012/05/the-lone-staar-rebellion/

Furthermore, there is no reason to assert that taking state tests prepares anyone for good jobs in the future. Where is the logical connection? How does testing prepare you to get a better job? The testing regime now in force penalizes students who exhibit imagination or divergent thinking. Entire generations of Americans have gotten good jobs without being subjected to test prep and annual high-stakes testing.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (http://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2009/11/art5full.pdf, p. 88), most new jobs will not require a college degree.

And where is the evidence that taking all those state tests is the best way to prepare for college? Again, none of the children who attend elite independent schools take those tests and they seem to have a high rate of success in gaining admission to selective colleges and universities.

Really, the test salespeople and lobbyists for the testing industry have sold the American people a bill of goods. Either we buy their product, and more of it, and pay them for prep materials, and pay them for test security, and pay test coordinators, or no one will get a good job in the future.

Don’t believe it.

Diane

Categories Pearson, Testing, Texas

Why Does David Coleman Dislike Fiction?

By dianeravitch
May 19, 2012 //
43

The answer to the question posed in the title of this blog is: I don’t know. I can’t imagine.

In fact, I don’t know how one develops imagination without reading fiction.

I have been told by several people who attended David Coleman’s lectures that he speaks disparagingly of fiction. That’s why the Common Core standards permit 50% fiction in the early grades but only 25% fiction in high school.

I don’t get it.

First, because teachers should make that decision.

Second, because I can’t imagine a well-developed mind that has not read novels, poems and short stories.

I love poetry. I compiled two anthologies–“The American Reader” and “The English Reader” (the latter with my son Michael)–in large part because I wanted to preserve and pass along the poems I love.

I love poems that rhyme and romantic poems. I love John Greenleaf Whittier’s “Barbara Frietchie” (“Shoot, if you must, this old gray head,/But spare your country’s flag,” she said).

I love Whittier’s “Barefoot Boy” (“Blessings on thee, little man/Barefoot boy, with cheek of tan!”)

I love Eugene Field’s “Little Boy Blue” (The little toy dog is covered with dust/But sturdy and stanch he stands”); it makes me cry.

I love Robert Frost’s “Road Not Taken” (“Two roads diverged in a wood, and I–/I took the one less traveled by,/And that has made all the difference.”)

I love Joyce Kilmer and Edna St. Vincent Millay and Countee Cullen, and James Weldon Johnson, and Langston Hughes, and Carl Sandburg, and…so many more.

There are so many novels that I loved and still love. When I was in high school, we read George Eliot’s “Silas Marner” and thought it boring and pointless. I read it as an adult and found it deeply moving. I also loved “Middlemarch” and so many other novels.

Maybe David Coleman thinks that education is wasted on the young. But how sad it would be if future generations of young people never read the poems and stories and novels that teach them not only how to think but how to feel, how to dream, how to imagine worlds far beyond those they know.

Diane

Categories Coleman, David

In Praise of Leonie Haimson

By dianeravitch
May 19, 2012 //
2

One of the people I have come to admire most in the past few years is Leonie Haimson.

You may not know Leonie, but you should. Leonie lives in New York City. Her children attend public schools. She is New York City’s leading parent activist. She created an organization called “Class Size Matters.” She was a founder of Parents Across America.

For many people in New York City, especially parents, Leonie is their main source of news about public education in New York City and the nation. Leonie created a listserv (nyceducationnews@yahoogroups.com) and the New York City parent blog (http://nycpublicschoolparents.blogspot.com/).

Long before I had my own blog, I began blogging for the New York City parent blog and got to meet some of the smartest and most dedicated parents and teachers in the city.

In addition to being a tireless organizer, Leonie is also a talented writer. Her own blogs, both on the New York City parent blog and at Huffington Post, are always incisive. She is a brilliant analyst of research and is able to take apart whatever claims are made in studies, reports, and press releases. No one is able to put anything over on her. And she is fearless: She goes after the powerful with data, knowledge, and the wrath of a parent who cares deeply about children, and not just her own children.

It’s important to note that Class Size Matters and Parents Across America operate on something less than a shoestring. I tried at one point to get foundation funding, but every door was closed to a genuine parent group. As we know, the astroturf groups collect millions to advocate for privatization and to attack teachers. Since Leonie worries about class size and speaks out against privatization, she is not in tune with the agenda of the faux-reform movement.

I am on the board of Class Size Matters. We meet once a year. Needless to say, the board is unpaid, as Leonie is unpaid. She testifies at City Council meetings, at Assembly hearings, she issues press releases, she is a one-woman campaign to restore sanity to the New York City public schools and to public education across the nation. There have been times–rare, to be sure–when she felt discouraged. And I reminded her that it was our duty to outlast all the bad ideas now swamping education.

Those bad ideas will in due time be publicly understood to have failed. And when they are, one of those  most responsible for revealing their flaws and for pointing the way to wiser policies is Leonie Haimson.

Class Size Matters will have its annual dinner on June 12, honoring Regents Kathleen Cashin and Betty Rosa, both of whom have bravely resisted the popular tide of high-stakes testing and mean-spirited accountability. If you live in or near New York City, please come: http://nycpublicschoolparents.blogspot.com/2012/05/please-join-us-june-12-for-fourth.html

Diane

Categories Education Reform, Honor Roll, Parent Groups

Psychologizing Female Critics

By dianeravitch
May 19, 2012 //
10

I received an email the other day from one of my email friends—that is, someone I have never met but have become very friendly with—and he made an interesting observation. He said he was reading Gail Collins’ book When Everything Changed, about the amazing changes in women’s lives since the mid-1960s, and he realized something that he wanted to share with me. He said, your critics have a habit of psychologizing their criticism of you. That is, instead of engaging with the substance of what I write, they look for some deep motive. This is simply a form of condescension, in this case, a male reaction to a female with whom they disagree.

He quoted Arne Duncan, who said, “Diane is in deep denial.” He quoted another critic who said that I was “angry,” though the critic didn’t say why I was angry. It all sounded like a version of the old saw that a feminist was acting as she was because of her hormones or some hidden grievance. We can’t take the little woman too seriously because she….

Now the emails that flowed between the New York City Department of Education and lobbyists for charter schools have been released and they continue in the same vein. I am described in them as “deranged,” a “dangerous crackpot,” “dishonest and platitudinous,” and “slippery.”

At no point does it appear that anyone discusses or debates my serious concerns about privatization. None of these men attempts to challenge or refute what I wrote. No, all these guys can do is to demean, condescend, and insult.

My correspondent put all this into context. These men are reacting by psychologizing my motives. Is that what men do when they think no one is listening and that no one will see their emails?

Diane

http://nycpublicschoolparents.blogspot.com/2012/05/crowd-sourcing-up-till-now-secret.html

http://www.edwize.org/foiled-again-an-inside-look-at-joel-kleins-war-against-public-schools-and-teacher-unions#more-11644

Categories Duncan, Arne, Klein, Joel, NYC, Ravitch, Diane
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