Archives for the month of: July, 2012
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What the Microsoft Culture Is Doing to Education

By dianeravitch
July 7, 2012 //
19

Paul Thomas has written a blog that explores the destructive nature of the Microsoft culture and how that culture is now affecting and demoralizing public education. Thomas is reacting to an article in Vanity Fair that is a must-read.

The “cannibalistic culture” that Thomas critiques is derived from a method of employee evaluation called “stack ranking,” where every unit is required to rank everyone in the unit, to identify the best, the average, and the worst, no matter how good everyone might be. By design, someone loses.

This competitive culture has not been good for Microsoft and is wreaking havoc on American public education, whose goal is equal educational opportunity, not the survival of the fittest. It is ruinous for collaboration, on which good schools depend.

It turns out that “stack ranking” is also known as “forced ranking,” and that it is a common practice in some big corporations. It was popularized by Jack Welch of GE. The idea was that you rate your employees from best to worst, and fire the worst. If all of them are really doing a terrific job, that’s too bad, you fire the bottom batch anyway, and repeat the process again next year.

One of the reasons I strongly recommend that you read the article in Vanity Fair is for the comments that follow. Here are a few samples:

I worked for IBM for a long time, and I definitely agree that “stacked ranking” in a company immediately and effectively kills all creativity in a team. No matter how brilliant anyone (or even everyone) on a team is, the majority of them will be relegated to mediocre-to-poor ratings year-after-year, while one or two of their higher-profile counterparts take the top rankings. Depending on the team, these top-ranked may truly be the best in the group, or they may just be more friendly with the manager or have a role within the team that gives them more exposure to their superiors. These rankings, as meaningless as they are, then affect every aspect of an employee’s career, from raises and bonuses to advancement opportunities, to job security during periods of layoffs. When I left IBM I promised myself I would never work for another company engaging in this absurd practice.

Taking platform developers and throwing them against hard goals and deadlines kills your ability to adapt. Management and project stakeholders end up making too many decisions about the technology away from the people who know it best – the people building it. To show progress and keep management happy, engineers shift their focus to tangible deliverables and ignore the pieces management can’t understand, like the underlying architecture. You start going down the path of building lots of bells and whistles, but nothing solid that you can competitively leverage.

Stack ranking is where they throw all the people in a work group together in a pit and let them eat each other. Afterward, the survivors are ranked according to ability by people who don’t actually work with them directly, thus permitting the lead to apologize in a credible fashion when someone who has been an excellent employee for at least 12 years (rarely less – and if you’ve been there over 15 years, you have a bullseye on the back of your head) given gleaming gold stars for performance for the last six months, suddenly has a big fat goose egg review and is escorted out the door for nonperformance issues.

At Enron, the same practice was called “Rank and Yank.” The traders who made the most money were ranked at the top. The ones who made the least were  yanked. And we know what happened to Enron.

Categories Corporate Reformers, Education Reform, Gates Foundation, Bill Gates

TFA Alum Criticizes Reform in Philly: Video Disappears

By dianeravitch
July 7, 2012 //
15

Dr. Camika Royal, a 1999 Baltimore TFA alum, recently spoke at the opening of the TFA training institute in Philadelphia and she gave the incoming TFA corps members a dose of hard-earned reality. Philly is a hotbed of corporate reform ideas right now, with a plan drafted by Boston Consulting Group to privatize as much as 40 percent of the public schools, cheered on the the wealthy and powerful local titans.

When I wrote this post yesterday, I was able to link to a YouTube video of the  speech. Gary Rubinstein, a critic of TFA and former TFA corps member, told me about the video. However, after Gary posted about it, it was mysteriously taken down and is now available only to those with “permission” to view it.

In her 7-minute speech, she told the new teachers, who were there to “make history,” to “save” the children and to “close the achievement gap,” some of what she had learned since teaching in Baltimore and earning her doctorate in urban education.

Here is a snippet of the speech, thanks to Gary Rubinstein. Gary has printed portions of the speech on his website. Originally, he had a link to the entire speech, but that is no longer available.

Dr. Royal said:

Recently, there has been a constant state of flux and reform producing lateral movement but little to lift us higher or take us forward.”

“The mayor appointed school board was disbanded and replaced with a governor appointed school reform commission whose latest reform plan is to educate by abdicating its responsibility for the schools   that have been most  difficult to manage.”

“It doesn’t matter what you see, or what you’ve read about schools and educators here, don’t believe the hype.  Our schools are more than the lie of successful charters and failing districts.  Our educators are more than the false dichotomy of good vs bad, of us vs. them.”

“By and large, educators here are not bad.  Educators here are tired.  Educators here are reform weary.”

“Our students are more than test scores, graduation rates, and disciplinary issues.”

“Our education is more than failure rhetoric and the achievement gap misnomer.”

It is a shame that someone felt the need to take down the video of Camika Royal’s speech. It shows a woman who thinks for herself and does not spout the party line. We all need more of that kind of independence and critical thinking.

Categories Education Reform, Philadelphia, Teach for America TFA

Governor Scott: Is Florida Testing Too Much?

By dianeravitch
July 7, 2012 //
13

Good grief! I knew that the anti-high-stakes testing movement was making headway, but this is unbelievable.

Governor Rick Scott of Florida now wonders if the state is testing too much.

Parents in Florida have been complaining for years that their children are over-tested, that too much instructional time is wasted on test prep, that too many millions are thrown away on testing instead of teaching.

And now the governor is wondering too.

Will wonders never cease?

Categories Accountability, Education Reform, Florida, Testing

The Economist Loves Privatization

By dianeravitch
July 7, 2012 //
14

The Economist magazine has two articles (here and here) about the “success” of charter schools in the U.S., which they admiringly refer to as privatization.

Charter advocates here might be embarrassed by the praise, as they prefer to call themselves “public schools.”

The Economist recognizes that charter schools are experiments in privatization, not simply another form of public school.

Unfortunately the magazine distorts the research on charter schools beyond recognition to justify its praise of privatization and free markets.

After a lame attempt to discredit the CREDO study–the one that found that only 17% of charters outperformed a matched neighborhood public school–the magazine nonetheless portrays charters as the sure cure to “save” black inner-city children. It seems that only private entrepreneurs know the secrets to educating poor black children.

Even charter advocates in the U.S. usually acknowledge that the academic results of charters are mixed, at best. There are some that get high test scores, some that get low test scores, and most that get scores no different from public schools.

The Economist articles do not acknowledge that charter schools typically serve fewer children with disabilities, and fewer children who are English language learners. They also exercise the right to remove students who don’t comply with their strict disciplinary code and return them to public schools.

And in the magazine’s lavish praise of New Orleans charters, it conveniently overlooks the fact that New Orleans is the next-to-lowest ranked district in the state of Louisiana, 69th out of 70. It is a very low performing district in a low performing state.

Also, the magazine ignores the disastrous results of the fastest growing segment of the charter world, and that is, the for-profit cyber-charters.

Why do charters require so much hype and spin to thrive? Why not admit that they face the same problems as public schools if they enroll the same children? Why not admit that the most successful charters spend more money than regular public schools? Why so much pretense?

Categories Charter Schools, Education Reform, For-Profit, Privatization

Charter School Parents Get Angry

By dianeravitch
July 6, 2012 //
12

In New Orleans, the Algiers Charter School Association hired a management consultant from New York City to address their problems. Some of their schools have very high scores, and some have very low scores (critics say they are dumping grounds to help the other schools).

The management consultant fired central staff, reassigned principals and embarked on his own plan to shake things up.

This is what happened, as reported in “The Lens”:

ACSA puts controversial personnel moves on hold after crowd chants: “Raza must go”
 
BY , CHARTER SCHOOL REPORTER. JULY 2ND, 2012

More than 300 mem­bers of the Al­giers com­mu­nity gath­ered at the Mc­Donogh 32 Lit­er­acy Char­ter School to speak out against re­cent fir­ings and the trans­fer of suc­cess­ful prin­ci­pals to fail­ing schools within the char­ter or­ga­ni­za­tion.

A call and re­sponse chant of “Raza must go” and “erase the board” came fol­low­ing the end of an un­of­fi­cial pub­lic com­ment sec­tion and dis­rupted the reg­u­larly sched­uled Al­giers Char­ter School As­so­ci­a­tion board meet­ing Thurs­day, June 28.

“Raza must go” is a ref­er­ence to Amir Raza, a con­tro­ver­sial leader who worked as a con­sul­tant to the Al­giers Char­ter School As­so­ci­a­tion, and who was re­cently hired as in­terim Chief Aca­d­e­mic Of­fi­cer.

The board made it clear that the pub­lic com­ment ses­sion, held be­fore the meet­ing was called to order, would not be part of the pub­lic record. Ac­cord­ing to board mem­bers, the pe­riod for pub­lic com­ments was un­of­fi­cial be­cause it did not re­late to any ac­tion items on the meet­ing agenda.

At­ten­dees’ shouts over­pow­ered ef­forts to call roll, read min­utes, and re­view fi­nan­cial state­ments. After a few min­utes of try­ing to begin the reg­u­lar meet­ing, board re­treated into ex­ec­u­tive ses­sion to dis­cuss per­son­nel is­sues while com­mu­nity mem­bers chanted: “Shame on you.”

“I need peo­ple on the board to call an ac­tual meet­ing to ad­dress our ac­tual ques­tions. Can you or can you not call a spe­cial meet­ing?” asked com­mu­nity mem­ber Mitchell Thomas. The crowd waited in si­lence for the re­main­der of his al­lot­ted two-minute speak­ing time.

“You knew Mr. Raza was an issue here for us. I think you de­lib­er­ately left this off the agenda,” Edna Karr teacher San­dradee Gray said. Gray’s com­ment ap­peared to echo a gen­eral frus­tra­tion within the crowd.

Val Exni­cios of the Al­giers Neigh­bor­hood Pres­i­dents’ Coun­cil also had con­cerns.

“It is the opin­ion of all six­teen pres­i­dents that Mr. Raza ex­hib­ited the ut­most lack of re­spect, ex­treme ar­ro­gance, and an un­com­pro­mis­ing de­meanor,” Exni­cios said. “We could not, under any cir­cum­stances, work with Mr. Raza for the ben­e­fit of the ACSA [Al­giers Char­ter School As­so­ci­a­tion].”

Teach­ers and com­mu­nity mem­bers also spoke out against the rash of re­cent fir­ings re­lated to Raza’s ef­fort to re­form the schools.

“You say there’s a short­age of math and sci­ence teach­ers. There was no short­age until you fired all our cur­rent teach­ers. Tell me, are you fill­ing these po­si­tions with cer­ti­fied teach­ers or Teach for Amer­ica? I do not want my stu­dents to be guinea pigs for TFA [Teach for Amer­ica],” Gray said.

Many spoke on be­half of O. Perry Walker Prin­ci­pal Mary Lau­rie, whose trans­fer to Al­giers Tech­nol­ogy Acad­emy drew ire from the crowd.

Mar­tin Berhman Char­ter Acad­emy Prin­ci­pal Rene Lewis-Carter faced trans­fer to fail­ing Mc­Donogh 32.

After an hour-long ex­ec­u­tive ses­sion, the board re­con­vened and re­versed its staffing de­ci­sions.

An an­nounce­ment pro­vided by the board said, “At the ACSA board meet­ing last night, the board de­cided to fur­ther con­sider par­ent con­cerns and will meet with man­age­ment and lead­er­ship to dis­cuss the re­ported per­son­nel changes that were sup­posed to take ef­fect June 29. To that end, NO prin­ci­pal and cen­tral of­fice per­son­nel changes will take ef­fect today. The board will pre­sent its de­ci­sions at a spe­cial meet­ing Tues­day, July 3.”

Willie Zan­ders, a lawyer for the par­ents’ group op­pos­ing Raza’s re­forms, an­nounced an ad­di­tional meet­ing July 5 at 5:30 p.m. in the Casimier Love Out­reach Chris­t­ian Cen­ter on Opelousas St. in Al­giers.

Categories Charter Schools, Education Reform, New Orleans

Keep Following the Money in Philly, part 2

By dianeravitch
July 6, 2012 //
3

The Citypaper in Philadelphia learned that the city’s major foundation (William Penn) is funding the privatization forces, and the foundation didn’t like it. It launched pushback in other media.

What appears to be unquestionably true in the offensive and counteroffensive is that powerful people are mobilizing to turn many public schools in Philadelphia over to privately run charters or even to voucher schools. This move was predictable in the wake of the report by the Boston Consulting Group, one of those big management consulting teams that prefers private management to public government control. Wherever you find the advice of Boston Consulting Group, you will find a plan to privatize public schools.

Despite loud public demonstrations in support of community schools, the wealthy philanthropists and businessmen of Philadelphia do not like to be thwarted. It annoys them when unimportant people who send their children to public schools have the nerve to oppose their plans to “save” those children. How dare they? Who cares what “the little people” say? Why don’t they just listen to their “betters”?

Categories Boston Consulting Group, Corporate Reformers, Education Reform, Philadelphia

Follow the Money in Philadelphia

By dianeravitch
July 6, 2012 //
9

One man and one foundation decides what’s good for Philadelphia. One sharp-eyed investigative reporter learned the details.

That foundation–the William Penn Foundation–used to be concerned about equitable funding for the children and public schools of Philadelphia.

No longer.

The William Penn Foundation brought in the Boston Consulting Group to develop a plan to redesign the Philadelphia school system, and that plan predictably involved a heavy dose of privatization. If you ask business consultants what to do, their answer is always the same: bring in private entrepreneurs who keep their eye on the bottom line, who look on children as a profit or a loss, not as if they were their own children.

The Boston Consulting Group’s “Blueprint” ran into heavy opposition from parents. But don’t expect the privatizers to quit. They have more aces up their sleeve.

Categories Accountability, Boston Consulting Group, Charter Schools, Education Reform, Philadelphia, Privatization

The Scarlet Letter in New Orleans

By dianeravitch
July 6, 2012 //
16

I received an email from an educator in New Orleans who read my post about the proposal by a management consultant to require low-performing charter schools to  post their grades on the wall and on their clothing. The informant said  that the proposal to the Algiers Charter Schools Association was not merely theoretical. It was already imposed at the McDonogh #32 charter school. He or she sent me two photographs: One showed the school’s letterhead, declaring it has a grade of F, the other showed a public banner with the school’s F grade and its goals for improvement boldly displayed.

I think most educators would consider this practice of public shaming to be a barbaric remnant of another century, not even the 20th century.

What next? Dunce caps for the children? Public dunking for the teachers? Enforced silence for all? No breakfast or lunch until the scores go up? Or will the educators–teachers and administrators–have the school grade tattooed on their foreheads?

To think this came from a management consultant firm. I wonder where they have been successful in the past. Which corporations have they “turned around” with their strategy of public humiliation? Or is it reserved only for educators and schools?

Apparently, humiliating students is not all that unusual. A New Orleans contact sent me this 2007 story about a charter school where students are handed a sign that says “YET,” meaning they have not yet met expectations; for three days, they must wear the sign around their neck, are not allowed to talk to other students and must eat lunch alone. Apparently, shaming works.

Is this something that white college graduates do to poor black children? I can’t imagine that these teachers were treated this way when they went to school. I would not tolerate these techniques for a minute if it were my children or grandchildren.

Categories Charter Schools, Education Reform, Louisiana, New Orleans

The Only Egg in NYC’s Basket Is Broken

By dianeravitch
July 6, 2012 //
18

After ten years of mayoral control of its public schools, New York City has only one strategy to “reform” the schools: Closing existing schools and replacing them with many new small schools.

You would think that after ten years with one person in charge, holding the unlimited power to do whatever he wants, the schools would now all be successful–that is, if he actually had a good idea about how to improve the schools.

But no, the game of closing schools continues, meaning that every year a new group of schools will be single out for a shutdown. As readers of this blog know, the New York City Department of Education (i.e., Mayor Bloomberg) decided to shut down 33 schools this year. When powerful politicians in Queens complained loudly, the closing list dropped from 33 to 24. When the city realized that it could scoop up about $40 million in federal funds by calling the schools “turnarounds,” rather than just closing them outright, the 24 became “turnaround” schools, in which at least half the staff was fired.

But an independent arbitrator ruled that the “turnaround” plan violated the teachers’ union contract, so everyone who was just fired got reinstated, unless they decided to take whatever job they had lined up in the meanwhile. At last writing, Mayor Bloomberg was steamed that he lost “binding” arbitration and announced his intention to sue to overturn the arbitrator’s ruling, which apparently is only “binding” if it goes the way the Mayor wanted it to go.

So here is an additional twist to this story.

The city’s dependence on closing schools and opening schools relies heavily on one study, which said that the city’s small high schools had a higher graduation rate. The brilliant Gary Rubinstein decided to take a closer look at this study and found it to be flawed. How sad that so many lives of students, teachers and administrators have been disrupted, how many careers ruined, how many communities fragmented, based on a theory that lacks evidence.

How sad too that this path of destruction and ruin is considered “reform.” No, not reform. Destruction, chaos, upheaval. And not in the best interests of students.

Categories Accountability, Bloomberg, Michael, Education Reform, NYC

George Will’s Surprising Take on the Chicago Battle

By dianeravitch
July 6, 2012 //
9

George Will is confused about who is right and who is wrong in the battle between Mayor Rahm Emanuel and the Chicago Teachers Union.

And that’s a good thing, because one would expect this doughty conservative to stand firmly, loudly, and uncompromisingly in opposition to the union.

But he didn’t.

Granted, he doesn’t know that CTU is part of the American Federation of Teachers, not the National Education Association. And he doesn’t know that the name of the NEA was settled in 1857, not just recently to deceive people and “blur the fact that it is a teachers’ union.”

Granted, he thinks the auto industry was fatally wounded by its unions, not by its shortsighted managers, who never figured out that American consumers wanted fuel-efficient cars, not gas-guzzlers.

And then too, he makes the common error of claiming that spending on education in the nation is up while “educational attainments have fallen.” One of his researchers should have looked at the latest reports of the National Assessment of Educational Progress and told him that test scores are at their highest point for every group in history.

But he then does something startling. George Will rejects the central premise of the reformers’ argument. He abandons the “no excuses” philosophy of Michelle Rhee and Arne Duncan. He says that poverty and family collapse affect students’ ability to succeed in school. He says that social order in Chicago is in disarray, even though Arne Duncan and former Mayor Richard Daley proclaimed their plan to be “Renaissance 2010.” Reminder: 2010 is past and gone. There was no Renaissance. What remains of those “reforms”? Little progress, if any, and a legacy of crumbling families and weakened communities.

Says Will:

The city is experiencing an epidemic of youth violence — a 38 percent surge in the homicide rate, 53 people shot on a recent weekend, random attacks by roving youth mobs. Social regression, driven by family disintegration, means schools where teaching is necessarily subordinated to the arduous task of maintaining minimal order.

Emanuel got state law changed to require unions to get 75 percent of the entire membership rather than a simple majority to authorize a strike. Some people thought this would make strikes impossible. The CTU got 90 percent to authorize. Lewis’s members are annoyed, and are not all wrong.

If you count only those members who cast a vote, Karen Lewis won authorization to strike by 98 percent of the members.

George Will is right. Karen Lewis’s members are “not all wrong.”

Quite an admission from the nation’s most eminent conservative columnist.

Categories Accountability, Chicago, Duncan, Arne, Education Reform, Rhee, Michelle
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