Archives for the month of: August, 2012

Not Needed: Carrots and Sticks

August 13, 2012 //

A librarian and a teacher of teachers responds to the New York Times’ editorial demand for more carrots (merit pay) and sticks (firings) for teachers in schools with low test scores.

Re “Carrots and Sticks for School Systems” (editorial, Aug. 6):

It is not surprising that many school managers do not distinguish between high- and low-performing teachers. Most schools are still based on an industrial model of moving students through an assembly line of classes and grades to achieve outcomes measured by standardized tests.

Standardized teaching can be done by mediocre teachers using scripted lessons. Excellent teaching requires well-honed judgments about individual students based on observation, information from a robust assessment program, and a great deal of knowledge and informed intuition about young people. These qualities are not encouraged or rewarded by a culture of standardization but rather of professionalism.

Nor will teachers improve using “carrots and sticks.” Excellence does not come from negative reviews, the possibility of promotions or even salary increases based on merit. Excellence is encouraged by the intrinsic rewards teachers seek, which come from a school’s commitment to their continuing development as professionals.

JAMES O. LEE
Devon, Pa., Aug. 6, 2012

The writer is an adjunct instructor at Saint Joseph’s University.

To the Editor:

Your editorial, which calls for punishing and rewarding teachers based on the academic growth of their students, is mired in outdated notions of motivation. As Daniel H. Pink makes clear in “Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us,” 21st-century workers are motivated by three things: autonomy, mastery and purpose. This is especially true for educators.

At my diverse urban public school, my principal rewards good teaching by praising and videotaping the best teachers, setting them up as role models for the rest of the faculty. He chooses these master teachers as members of the leadership team, which advises the principal on both school policy and mission.

Teaching is a collaborative, communal effort. Teachers were file-sharing back when files were housed in metal cabinets.

Punishing and rewarding teachers based on student test scores only incentivizes a drill-and-kill, teach-to-the-test mentality. It puts teachers in a competitive rather than collaborative environment.

Good principals have always been able to get rid of bad teachers. We need to focus on the recent research on motivation and move beyond carrots and paddling.

SARA STEVENSON
Austin, Tex., Aug. 6, 2012

Categories Accountability, Merit pay, Teacher Evaluations, Teachers and Teaching

Advice to My Readers: House Rules

By dianeravitch

August 13, 2012 //

When this blog started, I imagined a cozy conversation among friends, which it was, in my virtual living room.

But as the weeks went on, the daily readership began to exceed 10,000, and the living room sometimes seems crowded.

I hope it continues to grow. We can move from my living room to the nearest football stadium and take turns at the microphone.

The only dark cloud, to be frank, is that a very small number of people take up a disproportionate amount of space in the comments section.

Sometimes they are angry, because they don’t like our conversation, so they jump in again and again and keep saying, “I am right and you are wrong.”

I welcome dissidence, so I welcome them too, as it keeps us on our toes.

There is room for them too in my living room.

But I remind our dissidents that this large living room has rules of courtesy.

If you become rude, if you become insulting, if you continue repeatedly to try to dominate the discussion and shout down others, I’ll ask you to step outside.

If you don’t, I’ll eject you.

Fair enough? That’s the house rules.

Categories Personal

A Nice Hat Tip from England

By dianeravitch

August 13, 2012 //

A reader in England writes this.

The blog has readers around the world, literally on every continent. Most readers, of course, are in the U.S., but followed by readers in Canada, the U.K., New Zealand, Australia, Korea, Japan, Russia, Israel, and dozens of other nations in South America, Africa, Latin America, Europe, and Asia, and on and on, even some small islands.

Isn’t the Internet wonderful? Hats off to social media!

We are everywhere!

Categories International

The Reformers’ Game Plan

By dianeravitch

August 13, 2012 //

This reader offers a succinct summary of the reformers’ game plan. He might have added additional elements: a) budget cuts to disable public schools; and b) laws that remove accountability and transparency with privately managed charters; c) evaluating teachers on a bell curve, so that half will always be “below average,” thus creating a “crisis”; d) demanding 100% perfection, 100% proficiency and saying that anything less proves failure.

You can see it played out in state after state, especially in those with Republican governors, and in the pronouncements of the U.S. Department of Education, and it is fully developed in the Romney education agenda. They think that that private management of public education is the wave of the future, preferably it is generates profits for investors, and they are doing their best to make it happen:

First, the reformers have yet another scapegoat [to blame] for poverty. Now it’s the schools that are at fault, not the destruction of our social safety net, not the elimination of worker protections, not the imposition of fair taxation that enables the government to maintain our national infrastructure, and certainly not the actions of the 1% to extract all of the wealth of the U.S. economy for themselves alone. We don’t need to fix the failed and irrational policies of the past thirty years. No! We just have to reform the schools with for-profit charters, voucher plans and virtual “distance learning” that just happens to divert more tax money to … wait for it … the 1%!

And of course, never mind how all of these reforms are failures. By the time the public is fully aware of that fact, it will be too late to change and we’ll be on to the next scapegoat.

Second, this is just another impossible goal against which to conclude our schools are failures. The logic here is brilliant: Set the standard so impossibly high that the schools will be failures by default. Keep the focus on the unions and test scores, so the public won’t make the real connections between the economics policies of the past three decades but instead will follow the reformers in blind rage.

Categories Budget Cuts, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, For-Profit, Privatization, Race to the Top, Teacher Evaluations, Vouchers

Deja Vu for This Miracle Charter School

By dianeravitch

August 13, 2012 //

Two months ago I wrote a post about a charter school in Oakland that had been the beneficiary of a massive public relations campaign, abetted by gullible journalists at the Wall Street Journal, Jonathan Alter, and others eager to declare the triumph of the charter idea.

I mention this again because a reader sent a comment extolling this school as an example of what charters can accomplish, if freed of all regulation by the state.

The school–really three schools–is the American Indian Charter School. According to legend, it served the poorest of the poor, the needy children of American Indians, and through the grit of its founder Ben Chavis, it rose to become one of the highest performing schools in the state.

Then came news of an audit, and it was a shocker.

It seems that Chavis was under investigation because millions of dollars were missing. Closer investigation indicated that the school was enrolling East Asian children, not American Indian children.

The Oakland trustees narrowly decided to renew the school’s charter because of its high test scores.

Question: Is it enough to get high test scores, by any means necessary? Or it is appropriate to expect that those who receive public funding will act with full disclosure and integrity, not to enrich themselves but to provide for the school and the children?

Here is part of the article linked above:

Between mid-2007 and the end of 2011, the school paid Chavis, his wife, Marsha Amador, and their various real estate and consulting businesses about $3.8 million, the auditors found. Many of those payments were made with state and federal facilities grants in the form of construction contracts to Chavis’ companies — business deals for school construction work that never went out to bid.

Meanwhile, the school’s weak governing board did little to stand in the way, auditors found. For a short period of time last year, Chavis served on the board while he was employed as the organization’s director and his wife was handling the books.

“The lack of due diligence and internal controls by the governing board has effectively granted the founder and his spouse unrestricted access to the assets of the organization and implied authority to enter into a variety of business arrangements for personal gain,” the report stated.

Other findings included the opening and closing of bank accounts without approval and $25,700 in credit card purchases billed to the school with no authorization or apparent benefit to the school. They included airfare, restaurant, hotel and retail bills from out-of-state, including the North Carolina town where Chavis owns a farm; DirecTV; Giants tickets; and costs related to another venture, which foundered after the investigation became public — the opening of a charter school in Arizona.

Chavis announced his retirement before the start of 2007-08 school year and returned to the school as director in 2011. He said at a recent hearing that he was a paid adviser during some of the time in between.

Chavis could not be immediately reached for comment.

Although Chavis did not found the original school, his name and reputation are most closely associated with the organization. A Lumbee Indian from North Carolina, he overhauled the academic program when he took over as director of the original school in East Oakland’s Laurel District in 2000.

The new curriculum emphasized reading, writing and math and eliminated much of the school’s Native American cultural teachings. Chavis instilled a strict and unorthodox discipline system that would bring notoriety to the school, sometimes using humiliation to motivate students to behave.

The most famous example of Chavis’ brand of discipline is a student head-shaving that took place at a school assembly, with parent permission, after the boy was caught stealing. Today, few if any of the school’s students are Native American.

Chavis announced his retirement shortly after the Oakland school district’s charter schools office began raising concerns about his conduct. That spring, the East Bay Express published a story about an explosive incident involving a Mills College professor and graduate students who had come to tour the school. An African-American graduate student said Chavis cursed at him and aggressively kicked him out of the school — claims that Chavis later acknowledged to be true, saying it was because the student came late.

The Oakland school district’s charter school office, under new leadership, again expressed concerns this year when one of the three schools, American Indian Public Charter School II, applied for a renewed charter. The charter office recommended that the Oakland school board deny the charter renewal, potentially closing the school.

But at a packed hearing in which Chavis entered to rousing applause, the Oakland school board went against the charter school office’s recommendation and, in a 4-3 vote, allowed the high-performing school to stay open.

Chris Dobbins, an Oakland school board member who supported the school at that meeting, said Wednesday afternoon that he couldn’t “tear the school apart” because of the alleged improprieties of its leader. Even now, he said, he didn’t have an easy answer.

“At the end of the day, it’s hard to argue those test scores,” he said. “It’s a really hard question.”

Read Katy Murphy’s Oakland schools blog at www.IBAbuzz.com/education. Follow her atTwitter.com/katymurphy.

evidence against chavis
The Fiscal Crisis & Management Assistance team published the below findings about apparent conflicts of interest and misappropriation of funds at American Indian Model schools — mostly by its founder and current director, Ben Chavis:

Publicly funded construction contracts for school improvements with Chavis’ personal businesses were “not supported by formal contracts, competitive bidding or authorization by the governing board.” That is a violation of federal regulations and could result in the loss of all federal funding to AIMS schools.
In addition to wages and construction income, Chavis collected $2.8 million from the schools through rent and storage fees he charged as the school landlord, additional construction projects and a mandatory summer program run by his private business. Some checks from a school bank account were written to Chavis’ companies and signed by Chavis.
In all, the schools made $3.8 million in payments to Chavis, his wife and their businesses from 2007-08 through the end of 2011.
Chavis’ wife, Marsha Amador, provided financial administrative services to the schools. Her duties included general accounting; processing accounts payable; compliance reporting to local, state and federal agencies; and assisting with an annual audit.
Chavis’ personal and unrelated business expenses were commingled with purchases for the AIMS schools.
About 35 percent of the credit card purchases paid for from the schools’ accounts — $25,700 — “were inappropriate or lack proper authorization.” Many of the purchases originated out of state.

Categories Accountability, California, Charter Schools

A Mississippi View of Charter Schools

By dianeravitch

August 13, 2012 //

A reader in Mississippi writes:

Why build separate schools for a select few? Why create separate laws and separate governing bodies for these schools? Why not change existing laws for ALL schools?? What the hell kind of country are we living in where our tax dollars can be used to operate a school that is not open to all children??? I have always considered myself lucky to have been educated in a post-segregation American school system. Unfortunately, it is starting to look as if my children won’t be so lucky. I won’t allow this to happen in my community.

Categories Charter Schools

About Race to the Top for Districts

By dianeravitch

August 13, 2012 //

With the launch of Race to the Top for school districts, the U.S. Department of Education demolishes federalism,

Congress should de-fund the Race to the Top.

Arne Duncan has absolutely no justification for foisting his unfounded, evidence-free ideas on the nation’s school districts.

Should every school district look like Chicago, one of the nation’s lowest-performing districts, which he led for eight years?

A reader in Louisiana writes:

http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/campaign-k-12/2012/08/_the_money_will_be.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+CampaignK-12+%28Education+Week+Blog%3A+Politics+K-12%29#

MY COMMENT:

“The competition comes as the Education Department, which has focused on state-level reform in previous Race to the Top contests, switches gears and tries to use money to advance its education ideas at the local level. . . “

Translation – This RTTT motive, like the first RTTT initiative, is to bring about FEDERAL GOVERNMENT CONTROL of PUBLIC education which has served as a model of a democratic system of taxpayer, voter, citizen local control by elected school boards. This FEDERAL GOVERNMENT CONTROL is covertly accomplished by requiring state, and now local, PUBLIC education systems to voluntarily, under the guise of “helping schools become engines of innovation” and similar crapola rhetoric, give up their control in order to gain desperately needed funding.

The FEDERAL GOVERNMENT TAKEOVER is assisted by “reformers” who have infiltrated state and local levels as “policymakers” – school board members, legislators, state board of education members and most prominently Chambers of Commerce and other BUSINESS/CORPORATE interests. Their primary role has been to convince the public that our public school system in toto is an abject FAILURE so as to open the dialogue for replacement by “autonomous” CHARTERS and PRIVATE/PAROCHIAL SCHOOL VOUCHERS. This under the guise of CHOICE.

Interestingly, the U.S. Dept. of Ed under a DEMOCRATIC Administration in the interests of government control has teamed up with the REPUBLICAN corporate ANTI-GOVERNMENT takover in the interest of privatization. Strange bedfellows. This dichotomous relationship is bringing about what may predictably become the most destructive undermining of our Democracy that has ever taken place.

The U.S. Dept. of Education has NO AUTHORITY to dictate or influence state education policies such as curriculum and funding, but it believes it has found a way to circumvent that restriction by bribing states and now districts to bring about initiatives like the Common Core Standards, de-centralization of local school systems, budget decisions and teacher evaluations – to name a few.

THE U.S. DEPARTMENT OF EDUCTION NEEDS TO BE CHALLENGED IN COURT FOR THIS EGREGIOUS OVERSTEPPING!!!! WAKE UP AMERICA .

Categories Duncan, Arne, Race to the Top, U.S. Department of Education

When Will Public Schools in Texas Close Down?

By dianeravitch

August 13, 2012 //

The new AYP figures are just out in Texas, and only 44% of the schools in the state made adequate yearly progress.

Next year it will be a lot worse.

By the rules set out in the NCLB law, the schools that can’t make it in a five-year frame will have to do something dramatic:

They can turn into a charter school.

They can fire all or most of the staff.

They can be taken over by a private management firm.

They can be taken over by the State Department of Education.

Or, they can do some other kind of major restructuring.

Well, folks, sorry to say that public education in Texas is heading for a cliff.

Remember that it was the “Texas miracle” that put the whole nation on the magic school bus to privatization.

Please, Texas school boards, keep passing those resolutions against high-stakes testing.

And here’s an idea: If nothing changes (and it won’t), just don’t give the tests next year.

If you want to keep public education, don’t give the tests.

Unless, that is, you want to give your public schools to some private company to run.

Categories Accountability, NCLB (No Child Left Behind), Texas

Anyone Want to Promote This Woman and Her School?

By dianeravitch

August 13, 2012 //

I just got an email from an advertising firm offering me access to a charter founder in Tucson. The assumption is that since I blog, I’m looking for story material. It is a reasonable assumption. I am always looking for story material, but I have a hard and fast rule. I never do anything suggested by a paid agent for anything or anyone. I get requests from PR people all the time to write about whatever they are promoting. I delete at once. I get solicitations of that kind and this kind every day, often several times a day. Now that I have a daily blog, I get more and more. And I will never abuse my readers’ trust by promoting anything of the sort. If I review a book–and I do and will–it’s because I happen to like it, not because I want to sell it. If I mention my own book, I’ll tell you to go check it out of the library, if you still have one.

Reading this made me think about the money that charter schools spend on marketing and advertising, which public schools don’t have. And how public money intended for education should not be wasted on advertising and marketing and promotion to recruit students.

Here is the latest promotion. What is amusing is the bad grammar (“due to budget cuts being cut dramatically”) and the reference to “privately-funded charter schools,” she forgot to call it a public school!):

Hello,

With the closure of schools and cutting back of student programs due to budget cuts being cut dramatically, the popularity of privately-funded charter schools continues to grow. If you are working on any back-to-school pieces or anything on charter schools, I want to offer you an experienced third-party expert for any stories you might be working on.

Raena Janes, Director and Founder of La Paloma Academy, Heritage Elementary School and Liberty Traditional Charter School, is actually EXPANDING her school network and student programs. Through her charter schools, she’s providing Arizona, and the rest of the nation, a new model for education. She was recently featured in Family Circle Magazine for doing the impossible and raising millions of dollars to build her charter schools. Her curriculum focuses on much more than just education– she and her educators believe in making children great citizens with strong character traits. Miss Janes has invaluable educational insight that would be useful for a story.

I’m sure you’re aware of the Obama administration’s emphasis on charter schools and education secretary Arne Duncan’s Race to the Topinitiative. Miss Janes has invaluable educational insight. She is one of the dedicated individuals who believe she could transform public education and did. If interested, we could set Janes up with an interview for any upcoming editorials and she can, first-hand, tell you how her curriculum is changing the way children are being educated.

I encourage you to visit http://www.lpatucson.org/ or http://hesglendale.org/ to learn more. Please let me know if you have any questions or would like to set up a time to talk to Raena.

Best,

Categories Charter Schools