Archives for the month of: June, 2012
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How Charter Schools Get a Bad Reputation

By dianeravitch
June 25, 2012 //
37

The best investigative reporter in New York City–and possibly in the nation–is Juan Gonzalez of the New York Daily News.

Gonzalez writes about politics and occasionally writes about the politics of education. He has written some of the biggest scoops about the inner workings of the New York City Department of Education. He won the George Polk Award in journalism for reporting about the Citytime fraud, a giant high-tech scam in which a contractor ripped off the city for years and eventually agreed to repay almost $500 million.

This morning he revealed that Eva Moskowitz is seeking a big increase in her management fees from the state because she claims to be running a deficit. Today, he writes, the State University of New York is likely to approve “a huge 50% increase in the per-pupil management fee of one of the city’s wealthiest, biggest-spending and most controversial charter school operators.”

Gonzalez writes that “The Success Network, in fact, is a fund-raising colossus, having received $28 million from dozens of foundations and wealthy investors the past six years, and millions more in state and federal grants.” It has reported huge surpluses to the IRS, currently $23.5 million.

Last year, it spent more than $3 million on marketing and recruitment to drum up applicants for its much-ballyooed lotteries. The more applicants for every seat, the more Success Academy looks “successful.” It is a marketing tool in which people and their children are used to get more charters for Success Academy.

Whenever there is a public hearing about closing schools, hundreds of Success Academy children and parents are bused in–all wearing identical T-shirts–to insist on closing more public schools so that Success Academy can take their space and open more charter schools. Why would charter students demand more charters? They are already enrolled in one and they can only attend one school. They are used. You can imagine the opprobrium that would be heaped on a public school principal if he or she hired a bus to take children to public hearings to demand more space or more funding. The principal would be called out, rightly, for using the children and would be fired.

Today Success Academy will appeal for more public funding. It gets whatever it wants from city and state officials (Eva’s charter PAC–called Great Public Schools– made a $50,000 contribution to Governor Cuomo’s campaign).

This is how charters get a bad reputation.

Categories Charter Schools, Education Reform, New York, NYC

The Fraud Continues (2)

By dianeravitch
June 25, 2012 //
6

A reader commented on an earlier blog about the way the system demands a high success rate and will not tolerate honest marking. If a student fails, it will be considered the teacher’s fault, so it is best to inflate the scores. If a teacher is honest–especially in a “turnaround” school–the teacher will be fired. As Secretary Arne Duncan used to say, “We are lying to the kids.” Now we are lying to the kids and to ourselves.

The fraud continues. Teachers will inflate the scores. Administrators will pressure them to do so, because the administrators will lose their job if the scores and pass marks don’t go up every year.

Someone tweeted me the other day to ask who should be blamed when there is cheating: the teachers or the system. The answer is obvious when teachers and administrators work in a system that gives them this choice: Produce higher scores or be fired. Few people want to be fired. Most people put a high priority on feeding their family and paying the mortgage.

Who caused the collapse of the auto industry: the “bad” workers on the assembly line or the people who made decisions about what to produce?

This came from an administrator:

I don’t usually reply to what I read, but am up early today, thinking about the school year before I get dressed to go to graduation. I am a supervisor of a social studies department in a NYC public high school. I am thinking about how many extra pull-out programs, after school review sessions, etc., it took this spring to get the same number of students to pass our two Regents exams as we had last year. Why is that? Because too many students listed as level 2 readers could barely read and write when they came to us, too many students came to us thinking all they had to do was show up in class most of the time to pass and too many students never got the preparation they needed to become high school students. This lament is not a condemnation of elementary and junior high school teachers. We know the kind of pressure they have been put through to pass 80% or so of their students. However, high school is the end product. Many of the students we have in our school today have little or no hope of graduating on time. If high schools aren’t vigilant about failing those who do not successfuly complete their work, too many students will be paying for remedial courses in college. The pressure is on. The smoke and mirrors continues. And the emperors (choose the appropriate names) aren’t wearing any clothes.
Categories Accountability, Education Reform

More Shame for the College Board

By dianeravitch
June 25, 2012 //
14

Readers may recall that I posted a blog criticizing the College Board for its shameful campaign attacking American education. The ad says that the education system is “crumbling” and calls on the presidential candidates to talk more about education.

The College Board asserts that American education is bad and getting worse.

I received two great responses. One came from the brilliant scholar Yong Zhao, now at the University of Oregon. He makes reference to a valuable comment by Brian, which follows Yong Zhao:

I was going to provide some data to debunk the College Board’s claim that “our schools are performing at a level far below almost every other major industrialized nation. And the statistics continue to get worse every year” with some historical data, but Brian beat me to it with a list of great sources.Here I add some information from the College Board (http://media.collegeboard.com/digitalServices/public/pdf/ap/rtn/AP-Report-to-the-Nation.pdf ) that seems to contradict its own claim:7.3 point increase since 2001 in the percentage of U.S. public high school graduates earning AP scores of 3 or higher…More graduates are succeeding on AP Exams today than took AP Exams in 2001Since the College Board has been pushing the AP courses as a rigorous academic experience and the AP exam an academically demanding test of students preparedness for college, this shows the U.S. education is not getting worse every year, right?

The AP story may reveal the motivation behind the Ad and the Don’tForgetEd.org campaign—more customers for College Board products paid by tax dollars.

According to the College Board 2011 AP report, the number of students who took the AP exam more than doubled in a decade: 431,573 in 2001 to 903,630 in 2011. And an Associate Press storyhttp://www.deseretnews.com/article/765574199/AP-for-everyone-AP-classes-growing-in-popularity-as-schools-look-to-raise-standards.html?pg=allin May 2012 says “2 million students will take 3.7 million end-of-year AP exams.” The fee for each AP Exam in 2012 is $87 and that is $321.9 million total.

For low-income students, the Feds provide $53 per exam, meaning we, the taxpayers are paying for students to take the AP exam. 612,282 out of the 903,630 in 2011 were taken by low-income graduates paid by the taxpayers. Not a problem for me, if it truly helps the students. But it is not. It is just one more way to demoralize the struggling poor students. From the Associated Press story:

Nationally, 56 percent of AP exams taken by the high school class of 2011 earned a 3 or higher, but there are wide disparities. The mean score is 3.01 for white students and 1.94 for blacks. In New Hampshire, almost three-quarters of exams earn a 3 or higher; in Mississippi, it’s under a third. In the District of Columbia, more than half of exams score a 1.

More importantly, plenty of evidence showing that the AP does not really benefit. “AP courses provide little or no additional post-secondary benefit,” writes economist Kristin Klopfenstein and her colleagues http://www.aeaweb.org/assa/2005/0108_1015_0302.pdf and “Even a score of 5 on an A.P. test is no guarantee of a college grade of A in the same subject,” said Harvard’s Philip M. Sadler, who directs the science education department at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center of Astrophysics.http://roomfordebate.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/12/20/the-advanced-placement-juggernaut/

So might we hypothesize the following chain of reasoning behind the College Board campaign? (I know it sounds quite cynical):

American education is crumbling
Government should invest in improving education
Improving education means increasing college going and completion rates
To increase college readiness and success, you need “rigorous curriculum” and standards
And who provides that?

Readers who want to see the historical performance of US students can read my blog post at: http://zhaolearning.com/2011/01/30/%E2%80%9Cit-makes-no-sense%E2%80%9D-puzzling-over-obama%E2%80%99s-state-of-the-union-speech/

And here is Brian’s comment in response to Peter Kaufmann of the College Board:

Brian

Mr. Kauffmann, I can’t believe you rely on disproven talking points to make your points. I expect better from an employee of The College Board.

Here are some references for you to check out so you can update your talking points with actual, provable facts. It’s an academic tradition, you know:

1. “. . .American universities graduate three times as many qualified science and engineering students each year as can be absorbed in these fields. (Source: Science and Engineering Indicators, 2008)”

2. From GoodEducation:
“Back in 1964, American 13-year-olds took the First International Math Study and ended up ranking in 11th place. Considering that only 12 nations participated, including Australia, Finland, and Japan, our next-to-last performance was pretty abysmal. Other international tests American students have taken over the years have also never showed that we were in the top spot. It’s a myth that we’ve fallen from our glory days.”

3.The 2010 Brown Center Report on Education:
http://www.brookings.edu/research/reports/2011/02/07-education-loveless

4. From the OECD Report from which your talking point comes from:
“The number of Americans earning college degrees has been steadily rising, from 11% of the population in 1970 to 30% in 2010. Younger Americans, however, are not keeping pace with their peers in other developed countries, so among 34 countries in the OECD report, we have fallen to 15th place in the percentage of 25 to 34 year olds with college degrees.”

You seem to have left out the part about it being the 23-34 year-old cohort that is slipping behind. Analysis of the report also states that one of the probably causes of the lag is that the price of a college education in the US is higher than anywhere else in the world and is subsidized to a far lesser degree probably due to the low to median tax rate in the US compared to the rest of the world.

Also, you neglect to mention the good news from the same report:

From SV[e]F:
“The 500-page OECD report is a treasure trove (overused term, but true in this case) of amazing statistics and many of them place the U.S. in good standing.

– 99% of our K-12 teachers meet state qualifications.
– Even though classroom instruction time has taken a hit, we still exceed the OECD average at 1,068 hours for high school.
– Ditto for class size; it’s increasing but remains lower that most other nations.
– Despite the high price tag for a college degree, graduates more than make up for it in future earnings and lower unemployment rates.
– The unemployment rate for high school drop outs is 15.8%, but for college graduates it drops to 4.9%.
– College graduates earn about 87% more over their lifetime than high school graduates who don’t go on to college.

The facts seem to negate the panic your advertisement and your quote of talking points invites.

The problem, as it always has been, is poverty, lack of governmental support through tax dollars, austerity budgets, and lack of political will . I wonder if The College Board plans on addressing these issues through your PR campaign?
Categories Education Reform, Testing, US Education

No More Kindergarten?

By dianeravitch
June 25, 2012 //
21

A reader writes:

One of the most shocking pieces of news out of the Pennsylvania school funding crisis created by Gov. Corbett was the cost-cutting plan by many districts to ELIMINATE KINDERGARTEN. What an incredibly stupid and short-sighted idea. It would take decades to recover from such a decision.

The kindergarten idea was introduced to the United States in the 1870s, an import from Germany.

It was first established in St. Louis, which was in the forefront of educational innovation in those times due mainly to a far-sighted educator named William Torrey Harris. Harris believed in the importance of a sound public education. He believed in teaching the classics. He believed that maintaining good public schools was a public responsibility.

Now, in Pennsylvania, due to relentless budget-cutting, many districts are planning to eliminate kindergarten. Thus, what is called “reform” today brings us back almost to where we started. We are turning back the clock, privatizing schools (it’s the civil rights issue of our time, remember?), increasing class size (to close the achievement gap?), cutting the arts and physical education (frills?), and now districts find that the public doesn’t want to pay for kindergarten. I can’t remember which part of the reform agenda that is. Can you?

Diane

Categories Budget Cuts, Education Reform, Pennsylvania

How to Strike Terror into Hearts of the Powerful

By dianeravitch
June 24, 2012 //
3

Parents in Oakland have had enough. They organized a protest march against the closing of five schools in minority neighborhoods, assisted by Occupy Oakland. Hundreds marched to express their reaction to the decimation of their children’s schools. Whose idea was this? The community has a voice and they are learning how to use it.

Categories Education Reform

How Choice May Kill Public Education

By dianeravitch
June 24, 2012 //
75

A reader posted a comment that I think is profound. The more that people begin to see education as a consumer choice, the more they will be unwilling to pay for other people’s children. And if they have no children in school, then they have no reason to underwrite other people’s private choices.

The basic compact that public education creates is this: The public is responsible for the education of the children of the state, the district, the community. We all benefit when other people’s children are educated. It is our responsibility as citizens to support a high-quality public education, even if we don’t have children in the public schools.

But once the concept of private choice becomes dominant, then the sense of communal responsibility is dissolved. Each of us is then given permission to think of what is best for me, not what is best for we.

Here is what the reader wrote:

Parents have always been free to direct their personal funds to the private schools of their choice, for what they see as the additional private benefit of their own children.
But people pay taxes to support the public school system whether they are parents or not.  If only parents are given a choice in the type of school system that tax dollars support, then only parents of school-age children should pay school taxes, and based on the number of children in school.
Private individuals are not entitled by any consideration of the common good to divert public funds for the sake of private corporate profit and personal religious preferences.
When people start seeing education as a private commodity that parents buy for their own children — just another personal choice, like whether to buy designer duds or that hot new toy — then we are going to see a taxpayer revolt like we have never seen before, and public-funded education will cease to exist.

Categories Charter Schools, Education Reform, Vouchers

In Michigan, the Debate Continues

By dianeravitch
June 24, 2012 //
11

Dave Murray and I are having a great discussion about the future of public education in Michigan.

He has been interviewing conservatives about my blogs that describe the death of public education and local control in Muskegon Heights and Highland Park, Michigan, where emergency managers have decided in their wisdom and total control to close down the public schools and give the community’s children to for-profit charter operators.

He quotes someone from the conservative Mackinac Center for Public Policy who says he has no problem with for-profit charters taking control of the children and asks how that is different from buying textbooks or food from for-profit companies. Well, why not just sell the children? Some years back, Jonathan Swift had a modest proposal for the starving people of Ireland. He suggested that they fatten their children and sell them as meat for the rich. (Satire, in case you didn’t know.) In Michigan, conservatives evidently think it is just fine to hand them off to a profit making corporation that runs low-quality schools and makes money doing it.

I haven’t decided whether the embrace of for-profit schooling is reactionary or radical. I don’t think it is conservative. Conservatives typically respect traditions and institutions and small-scale human values. They are not, one supposed, amenable to wiping out traditions and institutions to satisfy the demands of the marketplace, otherwise we too would be selling our children.

One thing I know for sure: Michigan has an obligation to educate its children, even if the people representing their parents failed to balance the books. If the government of the great state of Michigan has determined that public education doesn’t work and that democracy doesn’t work, then the problems of Michigan run far deeper than the fate of these two small districts.

Diane

Categories Education Reform

The Fraud Continues

By dianeravitch
June 24, 2012 //
23

Secretary of Education Arne Duncan likes to boast of the success of the turnaround model, in which the principal is fired along with at least half the staff or the school is closed. “We can’t wait,” say the reformers. Here is a report from a turnaround school.

This email came today from a high school math teacher in a “turnaround” school:

       Pushing teachers to pass everyone is a widespread practice now.   Anyone who has more than a 15% failure rate in a class, not hard to do in math, is called downstairs and asked to explain what the problem is.  At this time of decision about who will be back next year, many see fit to pass almost everyone to stay off the radar and be asked to return. 
       The new principal issues orders which are often contract violations but no one challenges her because they need to work.  I hope you understand how hard it is to do this. If you know Ms. XXXXXX, please don’t tell her I said any of this.  There used to be a television show, “Dallas.” Oilman JR Ewing’s famous line:”Once you lose your integrity, the rest is a piece of cake” is really how it is now.   Hoping the State will kill the turnaround model.  It’s not helping anyone. All of this is confidential. Like others, family needs to be cared for.  
       Grade inflation, score inflation, and social promotion all in one package. As Secretary Duncan used to say, ” We have to stop lying to our children.”
       No wonder college remediation rates remain stubbornly high. Some success.
Diane
Categories Accountability, Duncan, Arne, Education Reform, Race to the Top

Will This North Carolina Judge Protect the State’s Children?

By dianeravitch
June 24, 2012 //
6

On Monday, a Superior Court judge in Wake County, North Carolina, will decide whether to permit the for-profit corporation K12 to open an online charter school for the state of North Carolina. K12 received preliminary approval from the Cabarrus school district, after K12 promised the district 4 percent of its revenues. That’s a nice commission for this little district but a disservice to the other children of North Carolina.

The majority of school boards in the state oppose the online school, because its revenues will come directly out of their public school budgets. By opening this school, students across the state will have more crowded classrooms and fewer resources.

Numerous studies have shown that online schools get worse results than brick-and-mortar schools. Their students get low test scores, and their graduation rates are abysmal.

K12’s Ohio Virtual Academy has a four-year graduation rate of 30 percent. For black students, it is only 12 percent. In Colorado, the Virtual Academy has a graduation rate of 12 percent, and only 9 percent for black students.

By contrast, the graduation rate in North Carolina is 78 percent overall, with 71.5 percent for black students and 69 percent for Hispanic students.

A study of cyber charters in Pennsylvania showed that the virtual charters get worse academic results than either public schools or brick-and-mortar charter schools.

Recently the New York Times published an expose, revealing that K12 aggressively recruits students, many of whom drop out in the first year; K12 keeps the tuition money, however. Churn is the key to its success, so it pays handsomely to bring in new students as the current crop leaves. The Washington Post showed how K12 picks the poorest district in a state, so it can claim the maximum tuition reimbursement for its corporate coffers.

The corporation was founded by former Secretary of Education Bill Bennett, junk bond king and ex-felon Michael Milken, and Wall Street financier Ron Packard. Packard, formerly of Goldman Sachs and McKinsey, is now CEO; he received compensation last year of $5 million, all of it from taxpayer revenues for public education.

Why would North Carolina want to waste taxpayer dollars on a for-profit corporation that gets worse results than North Carolina’s own public schools?

Why take money away from the successful public schools of North Carolina to enrich a for-profit corporation that offers a low-quality education?

Diane

Categories Education Reform

A Scholar in Michigan Defends the Schools

By dianeravitch
June 24, 2012 //
7

I have been hoping that professors would step up and join the struggle to save our nation’s public schools from the stealth attacks on them. I don’t know if I can use the word stealth any more. It’s out inrt he open, as the privatizers grow bolder and more confident. What other political movement can claim bipartisan support, even as it seeks to destroy a basic public institution?

Rodney Clarken, a teacher educator in Michigan, stepped up to the plate. He was outraged by the constant attacks on his students, his graduates, and the schools they work in. He wrote the following comment, which includes a link to his book refuting the attacks. I urge you to read it.

I began sharing some reactions to Michigan governor’s special message on education reform with the teacher education faculty at my university. Since then it has morphed into a book that I have published online called Education Under Attack-What Schools Can and Cannot Do and How Popular Reforms Hurt Them (http://rodclarken.wordpress.com/published-works/).Though his message was just another in a series of attacks on education by politicians from around the country, this one was from my governor and these policies would hurt my students and the teachers and schools with whom I worked. I had felt for some time that what was being said about education was untrue, unfair and showed a lack of respect and disregard for educators. The political and paternalistic rhetoric assumed educators were not doing their jobs, the education system was “broken” and that certain reforms were going to “fix” it.

I did not feel the evidence to support the critics claims that education was broken and that their policies would fix it existed; therefore, these reforms did not meet the standard of truth. I did not feel their efforts were motivated by compassion and a sincere concern for our children and their proper education; therefore, they did not pass the test of love. Moreover, I did not feel their policies increased the likelihood of fairness for all people in our society; therefore, failing the criterion of justice.

One problem was that many of these reform proposals work against what their proponents claim to be supporting and that they subvert the best interests of education and society. It was my hope that educators–given their experience, expertise, dedication, loyalty, wisdom and commitment to excellence in education–would be provided with a greater voice on these matters of vital concern to the welfare of our nation and world. As an educator, I felt a moral obligation to do what I could to contribute to raising that conversation to a more reasoned, civil and balanced discourse.

Many critics of education stated purpose has been to create the best schools, teaching, teachers and teacher education, but I do not believe many of these policies are in the best for education or our society, and I question the motivations behind them.
Categories Accountability, Education Reform, Michigan
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