Archives for the month of: September, 2012
« Older Entries
Newer Entries »

Las Vegas Teachers Will Lead The Reform Movement

By dianeravitch
September 9, 2012 //
6

A reader says that Las Vegas teachers are taking action to correct the errors of their elected board:

Here in Las Vegas teachers have moved so as to concentrate their votes. We will be able to remove a majority of the reform bent board. This last week we had to close several schools because the air conditioners failed. Our Superintendent outsourced most maintenance and spent millions on more consultants and tests, but refused to spend allocated money to maintain buildings. The board will be gone soon, we have the votes to remove at least four of them. Next thing you know they will be trying to tell teachers they can’t vote. They like appointed boards for this very reason.

Categories Accountability, Education Reform, Unions

An Answer from Molly Ball

By dianeravitch
September 9, 2012 //
12

Yesterday I responded to an article in The Atlantic claiming that Michelle Rhee was actually a “lefty” and was “taking over” the Democratic party.

I responded to the article.

Others have said that the writer, Molly Ball, was sending out an automated reply, but I got something slightly different.

What she says here is that she doesn’t understand why a Democrat would not support for-profit charter schools; or work closely with Governor Chris Christie to strip teachers of tenure and seniority; or work with Governor Rick Scott to promote privatization of public schools; or work with Governor Mitch Daniels to push vouchers through the legislature; or accept an award from the rightwing American Federation for Children in company with Governor Scott Walker.

What she says is that there is no difference between Democrats and Mitt Romney on education.

I hope that President Obama makes clear what the differences are.

Here is our exchange:

Hi Diane, thanks for the feedback. My intent with the story was not to mediate 
yet another round of the education-reform debate, but to illustrate the 
political inroads Rhee and her ideas have made, while noting, as you do, that 
they remain quite controversial. 

To answer your rhetorical questions, I don't see why a Democrat can't do any of 
those things. 

Best,
Molly
________________________________________
From: Diane Ravitch [gardend@aol.com]
Sent: Saturday, September 08, 2012 6:05 PM
To: Ball, Molly
Subject: From Diane Ravitch re Rhee

Would a Democrat work to promote a for-profit chain?

Would a Democrat work with Republican governors Rick Scott, Chris Christie, and 
Mitch Daniels?

What part of Rhee's agenda differs from that of the most rightwing Republicans?

What Democrat would have accepted an honor from the far-right voucher-loving 
organization American Federation for Children, which simultaneously honored 
Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker?

Nothing that Rhee advocates has ever succeeded.

Neither charters nor vouchers nor merit pay nor evaluating teachers by test 
scores has any evidence of improving education.

Diane Ravitch
Categories Democrats, Education Industry, Education Reform, For-Profit, Indiana, Obama, Privatization, Rhee, Michelle

Tomorrow, Wear Red for ED to Support Chicago Teachers

By dianeravitch
September 9, 2012 //
8

I will be wearing red in solidarity with the Chicago Teachers Union tomorrow, in support of whatever decision they make. If they should strike, they have my support. If they don’t, they also have my support. I am not giving my support unthinkingly or blindly. I support their right to bargain collectively. Knowing Karen Lewis, I believe she has the best interests of the children of Chicago in her heart. I believe in her and I believe in the teachers of Chicago.

One of our readers, GatorbonBC, posted the following comment.

If you know me well, you know I hold our WEAR RED FOR ED close to my heart. I also hold my CHICAGO teacher friends very close to my heart. They have taught me so much over the years. So, please… wear RED tomorrow. Show SOLIDARITY with Chicago teachers. They are fighting the same fight we are all fighting for our KIDS. They are fighting against high stakes testing, against the closing of public schools, against privatization via charter schools and virtual learning, against funneling public tax dollars to corporations … and against blaming teachers for everything wrong with our schools. FAIR CONTRACTS… please stand with Chicago. ~Wear Red for Public Ed !

Categories Chicago, Education Reform, Unions

NSBA Says: Stop the Budget Cuts!

By dianeravitch
September 9, 2012 //
0

The National School Boards Association has sent out an urgent bulletin to school boards across the nation warning about pending budget cuts by Congress.

If these cuts are not rescinded, every public school will see a new round of budget cuts, with fewer teachers and loss of vital services to children.

Please read this and do what you can to help.

 

NSBA Call to Action:  Urge Congress to Rescind Across-the-Board Cuts to Education (Sequestration)

Federal funding for education faces significant across-the-board cuts of an estimated $4.1 billion on January 2, 2013 unless Congress takes action.

Urge Congress to rescind the across-the-board cuts (sequestration) to education that are scheduled to become effective on January 2, 2013. 

 

The Budget Control Act of 2011 will impose across-the-board cuts of 7.8 percent or more to education and other domestic programs through a process called sequestration (the cancellation of budgetary resources), unless Congress intervenes. 

Please utilize NSBA’s talking points and background information, take the survey, customize and adopt the sample board resolution, edit and send a letter to your local newspaper editor, and write to your senators and representative regarding sequestration.  Your grassroots advocacy is essential to help mitigate these across-the-board cuts to education.

 

The Facts

  • The impact of a 7.8 percent cut to programs such as Title I grants for disadvantaged students would mean a cut of more than $1 billion, affecting nearly two million students. 
  • Special education grants would be reduced by more than $900 million, impacting nearly 500,000 children with disabilities.
  • English Language Acquisition grants would be cut by approximately $60 million, affecting an estimated 377,000 students. 
  • Sequestration’s budget cuts to these and other education programs would mean increased class sizes and less access to programs for children with special needs, as well as summer school, college counselors, early childhood education and after-school programming.

 

Most school districts have experienced significant budget cuts already in recent years, resulting in fewer course offerings, thousands of teacher and staff layoffs, four-day school weeks, loss of extracurricular activities, and reduced transportation services, for example.  If further budget cuts from sequestration were to occur, several school districts would be forced to cut even more essential services over the long term.  As Dr. Billy Walker, Superintendent of the Randolph Field Independent School District in Texas, stated “If sequestration is truly a 10-year project, the devastating budget cuts may force us to close our doors.”

 

Here’s one school board member’s perspective regarding sequestration in a letter she wrote to her representative:

“I understand that as a result of the Budget Control Act, across the board cuts for all programs will be considered.  I write today to give you an idea of what that would mean for our school and to urge you to reject across the board cuts in education…What I want you and the subcommittee to know is that even though they are not large amounts, these federal funds are what enable us to hire a second math teacher and third English teacher in our school.  In our annual budget process, of our $1,875,000 general fund, every single dollar is accounted for down to about $30,000 — the $30,000 is the only flexibility we have for unexpected expenses.  If our Title or IDEA funds are reduced even just a little, we would be looking at reducing a full teaching position because we have nowhere else left to cut.  With less than two math teachers, for instance, we have no chance of supporting enough math classes so that our kids can stay in math classes at least three years throughout high school even though we know that is critical.  With one less English teacher, we would have no real option to have meaningful writing courses in our school even though we know writing skills are also critical to their success beyond high school.”

                   -Sabrina Steketee, Chair, Jefferson High School Board of Trustees, Boulder, MT

 

Let Congress hear from you as well.  Utilize these talking points and background information.  Please take a moment to customize this sample letter and send it to your senators and representative. Also consider customizing and adopting the sample board resolution, take the survey, and edit and send a letter to your local newspaper editor. 

 

Also, please don’t forget to send NSBA a copy of your adopted resolutions on sequestration along with any published letters-to-the-editor that will help illustrate why Congress should reject sequestration and preserve funding for our schools.

Information can be emailed to kbranch@nsba.org. 

NSBA greatly appreciates your advocacy efforts!

 

Kathleen Branch, MEd, CAE

Director, National Advocacy Services

Office of Federal Advocacy & Public Policy

National School Boards Association

703.838.6735

www.nsba.org/advocacy

Categories Budget Cuts

A Teacher at Central Falls HS Will Not Vote for Obama

By dianeravitch
September 9, 2012 //
45

I have not decided how I will vote.

I will not vote for Romney.

How I cast my vote will be decided in the next few weeks.

This teacher has decided:

I am one of the thousands of stunned teachers, and life long Democrats who was amazed by the actions taken by the current Democratic leadership in the war against teachers. I was one of the teachers who was fired, then rehired at Central Falls High School in Rhode Island.

Without warning, bad evaluation, or cold reasoning I was made the pillar and brunt of national jokes and political finger wagging.

The greatest hurt came when this president, on national news, commended the “bravery” of the superintendent when she fired the entire staff of the high school.

Without knowledge or background on the extreme level of poverty, crime, or lack of funding, President Obama called me a bad teacher.

This is the direction of the war against teachers. Along with Arne Duncan and of course the teachings of Rhee I have seen first hand the devastation caused by amateur educational reformers.

Replacement Teaching Fellows from 60 day certificate factories have lasted as little as 24 hours, some I find crying in the bathroom. Promised money disappears into administrative accounts, and the blame for kids that can’t see the light of day for the crushing poverty they live in rests with teachers.

So, for the first time since I walked the blocks for McGovern I will not vote for ta Democratic president.

Categories Obama, Rhee, Michelle, Romney, Mitt

A Parent Reviews the Parent Trigger Movie

By dianeravitch
September 9, 2012 //
6

It seems as though all the really big publicity for the anti-union, anti-public school film “Won’t Back Down” is coming from parents and teachers. Here is a review by a parent.

But that really isn’t so, as NBC’s Education Nation is making a big deal of it, and will have a private screening at the New York Public Library for the upper crust. And you can bet that all the corporate funded activists who want to privatize public education will try to turn this into the fiction version of “Waiting for Superman.” Well, same producer, same goal.

This writer, who was president of her school’s PTA, says the movie demonizes the union. She wonders how the actors–who all belong to the Screen Actors Guild–feel about making a movie that attacks another union.

She writes:

I am all for parent power.  I am all for getting rid of the crappy, demoralizing teachers who should not be allowed to step foot in a classroom.  But, this movie made me sad.  I was really hopeful in the beginning of the film because it was about teachers and parents working together – not something you usually see in movies.  This wasn’t some public school movie where the wide-eyed liberal white teacher swoops in to the minority student school and teaches them violin and magically makes their lives better.  We don’t need any more of those either.  But, this was really a giant anti-union propaganda film that missed the mark.  And that’s too bad because it had the chance to really say something about how parents and teachers can make change – and how hard it really is to find great leadership, and what can happen if we put kids first.  There was NO mention of lack of funding at the school by the way, or lack of professional development for teachers, after school programs, etc.  Seems if you just hang lots of butterflies in the hallway and paint the halls you make a great new school.  That’s an insult to all the parents and teachers who really do work their butts off to make their schools better everyday.

But then, what would you expect from a movie funded by Philip Anschutz, a billionaire who funds anti-public school think tanks and other causes whose goal is to decimate the public sector and privatize everything?

 

Categories Corporate Reformers, Parent trigger, Parents, Unions

Do You Happen to Know a Billionaire?

By dianeravitch
September 9, 2012 //
15

Do you happen to know a billionaire? Or maybe someone with lots of millions?

Not just any old billionaire, but one who cares about supporting public education. One who thinks it is wrong to hand out children over to entrepreneurs. One who knows the difference between the free market and the commons.

I ask because of this comment that I received from a teacher in a northeastern state. I have edited it to obscure the identities of all involved, which was the condition for using it:

As part of research for my master’s degree, I interviewed [XX], whom I had gotten to “know” over Facebook. XX leads a local branch of StudentsFirst, funded by David Tepper and Allen Fournier, the billionaire hedge fund boys. By his own admission, XX fell into ed reform when he was unemployed. 
He’s not in this because of any deep abiding conviction to make schools better (though he may have developed an interest). He’s in this because he needed a job, is a private-school educated African American who speaks well and now controls a SuperPAC. It’s a chess game for him, and is quite addictive. He hangs out with Rhee and has addressed ALEC on several occasions.
He said two interesting things to me in our meeting. “I’m here because you’re not.” Translation – if the education establishment had taken on the issues, or at least been less complacent about messaging (the REAL problem in my opinion) there’d be no market for the “reforms.”  The second thing he said was, and I’m paraphrasing here, “Reform 1.0 was school choice. Reform 2.0 was tenure (for NJ). Reform 3.0 is we have a SuperPAC – we can elect candidates.

As I said, he’s developed an interest in education but he’s hanging with the wrong guys, and i told him as much. His real interest is in the chess game of politics, which is fascinating, especially when you have the resources to play for real.

Between the AFT and NEA we have millions of people on street level. Save Our Schools has thousands more folks. Where do we find super rich folks who can help us pay for someone like James Carville to craft our multi-level consistent message and actually get it out there? I’m asking you because I’m hoping you’ve run across them in your travels.

Categories ALEC, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Education Reform, Privatization, Rhee, Michelle, StudentsFirst, Teacher Tenure

More About That Atlantic Puff Piece on Rhee

By dianeravitch
September 9, 2012 //
3

Sharon R. Higgins is an Oakland parent activist. She diligently follows the money. Check out her website Charter School Scandals.

She sent the following comment:

Any article about Michelle Rhee published by the Atlantic Media Company should disclose Rhee’s extremely close ties to AMC’s CEO and owner, and his wife (David and Katherine Bradley).

The Bradleys hosted Rhee at their Massachusetts Heights home three times between January 2008 and March 2009, and it is extremely likely that there were additional times after that.
http://www.washingtoncitypaper.com/articles/36893/fund-and-games

It was also Katherine Bradley who, in 2010, ponied up the $100,000 fee for Anita Dunn’s PR to help improve the image of the intensely disliked Michelle Rhee.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/07/us/07rhee.html

Categories Education Reform, Rhee, Michelle

Will Chicago Teachers Strike?

By dianeravitch
September 9, 2012 //
13

Tomorrow is Decision Day in Chicago.

Mayor Rahm Emanuel has tried to bully the Chicago Teachers Union and its leader Karen Lewis.

Lewis was elected by the members because they knew she would stand up for them.

Emanuel has the support of the Wall Street hedge fund managers organization, somewhat absurdly called Democrats for Education Reform. He also has the other big-monied people in Chicago, as mentioned in this article in the Chicago Tribune, including billionaire Penny Pritzker.

The article mentions that DFER staged a protest at union headquarters to oppose a strike. I wonder how many hedge fund managers send their children to Chicago public schools. I am trying to imagine hedge fund managers marching in front of union headquarters and carrying signs. I am guessing that what happened was that they “staged” a protest, meaning that they hired out-of-work actors to carry protest signs. Maybe the unemployed actors have children in the Chicago public schools.

The great thing about having Karen Lewis there is that every teacher in America knows she will stand strong for them. She will not sell them out. And she will not sell out the children.

She knows that teachers’ working conditions are children’s learning conditions.

Both Rahm and Penny know that too. That’s why they don’t send their children to the schools for which they are responsible. They send their children to a school with small classes, lots of arts and physical education, a great library, experienced teachers, and a full curriculum. The school where they send their children doesn’t give standardized tests and does not evaluate teachers by their students’ test scores.

Categories Chicago, Emanuel, Rahm, Unions

What If Teacher Evaluation Is Not Broken?

By dianeravitch
September 9, 2012 //
6

The following comment is evidence that the corporate reformers’ narrative about the “broken” evaluation system is wrong. I say “wrong” as a euphemism. I actually think it is a calculated lie, one that has been promulgated to advance a political agenda: to eliminate collective bargaining rights, to eliminate seniority and tenure, to demand that teachers have zero job protections, not even due process. All of this will make it possible to fire “bad” teachers, with no hearings or delay. The “bad” teachers are the ones who can’t raise test scores every single year.

If you don’t agree with this train of thought, then you are branded as a paid lackey for the teachers’ union, a defender of the status quo, and worse.

But what if the narrative is a giant lie? What if the evaluation system is working quite well in most places? What if low test scores are caused not by “bad” teachers, but by socio-economic conditions that shape children’s interest in schooling?

What if our society has been sold a bill of goods, intended to distract us from addressing real problems?

This reader writes:

I taught in Westchester County, New York, for 35 years (retiring in June 2011).  I was on the faculty of two high schools and served as department chair in the second of those two.  In both schools, working with several administrative teams, I nearly always found administrators working in the collaborative, supportive way described in Carol Burris’s excellent and reassuring post.  This does not mean that I found all these administrators equally visionary or thoughtful or smart, but I found them all supportive and, when necessary, willing to rid the school of those who couldn’t rise to the its standards or fit its culture.  I rarely saw weak teachers tenured.  I saw a few tenured teachers eased out.  I agree that “[a]lthough…it makes sense to make the 3020a dismissal process shorter and less costly, it should never be easy.”  /  With all this in mind, I was struck by a recent New York Times’ article celebrating the fact that, last year only 50% of teachers up for tenure actually received tenure in the NYC schools. (Many were granted a 4th year to pursue tenure.)  The Times was convinced that this showed a rising standard of excellence.  But this ignores a fact widely understood in public schools: That a teacher should not be invited back for a third year unless he or she is clearly on the track to receiving tenure.  In 2010, according to the Times, 80% of candidates received tenure–a fact the article bemoaned, though 80% seems a little low to me.

Categories Accountability, Teacher Evaluations
« Older Entries
Newer Entries »