Jersey Jazzman, our reliable New Jersey blogger, has the story about the decision by Camden’s school board to turn down four charters that the Christie administration and the local Camden Democratic boss badly wanted.
The charter lobby may have overplayed its hand. Looks like popular pushback. Looks like local board doesn’t want to hand over the keys to charter operators. Showdown ahead.
I am interested in learning more about what happened yesterday in Camden, New Jersey. The school board there turned down four charters. Is this the beginning of public awareness, or local politics?
Here is the news from a reader:
Please check out what happened in Camden NJ yesterday. The Mayoral appointed BOE turned down all proposals for Renaissance schools that were being proposed under the Urban Hope Act, a bill aimed at privatizing schools in urban areas in New Jersey, but requires BOE approval to work. The Camden BOE even voted down the KIPP proposal put forth by the godfather of Camden George Norcross – who sees himself as the city’s savior. The Board had the wisdom and courage to vote down these proposals because of the amazing energy and dedication of a handful of residents who have been to every meeting, held meetings of their own and stood in fearless opposition to money and corruption. Inspiring!
http://www.courierpostonline.com/article/20120926/NEWS01/120926001?
The Wake County board fired its superintendent, General Anthony Tata, who had been hired by the previous board majority. That previous majority was elected with a pledge to end the district’s nationally recognized desegregation plan.
The vote to dismiss Tata was 5-4.
General Tata previously worked in D.C. as chief operating officer for then-Chancellor Michelle Rhee. He is a graduate of the Broad Superintendent’s Academy. He was known as a hard worker and an outspoken conservative who was a political commentator on conservative websites.
Liza Featherstone wrote a fascinating analysis of the anti-union film “Won’t Back Down.”
To whet your appetite, read this:
“Despite scapegoating teachers’ unions, ‘Won’t Back Down’ is not an anti-teacher movie. Most of the teacher characters—especially Nona, played by Viola Davis—are heroic. That’s because one of the film’s messages is that busting teachers’ unions is better for teachers. In one scene, a meeting to discuss the possible takeover, Nona argues that losing the union will be worth it, “because we’ll be able to teach the way we want.” (The movie is vague on Nona’s pedagogy and why the union prevents it. In real life, charter teachers certainly don’t have any more control over curriculum than public school teachers do.) It is a ruling-class wet dream: workers who are happy to help destroy their own institutions. By giving up the organization through which they wield power, the fictional teachers reason, they will gain more power.
We have wandered deep into the swamp of Upsidedownlandia. Yet the same paradox colors the film’s view of parent power. The movie celebrates parents rising up and taking control of their children’s education—in order to rid themselves of all representation. Though the film does not discuss such pesky governance matters, a “takeover,” in real life, usually means that the school is run by a private organization with limited accountability to the public. While the state does decide ultimately which charters to shut down, there is no oversight by the school board, nor the city government, and certainly not the parents.
Salon writer Andrew O’Hehir absolutely nails the anti-union, anti-teacher “Won’t Back Down.”
He opens by saying: “Someone needs to launch an investigation into what combination of crimes, dares, alcoholic binges and lapses in judgment got Viola Davis and Maggie Gyllenhaal into this movie. Neither of them seems likely to sympathize with its thinly veiled labor-bashing agenda and, way more to the point, I thought they had better taste.”
I won’t spoil your fun in reading the review. It is hilarious and spot-on.
NYC parents organized a protest outside the opening of “Won’t Back Down.”
The parents say they don’t want corporations taking over their schools and their children. They know how little the corporations care about equity or children.
They put a video of their demonstration on Youtube called “Educating Maggie.”
The star Maggie Gyllenhall says on camera that she had no idea the film that demonizes teachers union and public education would be controversial. Maggie’s mother was a politically active screenwriter and was previously married to the well-known leftist historian Eric Foner. How can Maggie be so clueless?
Maggie needs educating. It’s never too late to learn.
What defines an abusive relationship?
Has teaching become an abusive relationship?
Why do teachers remain in jobs where they are treated like infants or meek wives?
More important, how can they stand up and say enough is enough? See “Chicago, Teachers Strike”
Go to “Rotten Tomatoes” and post your review here.
Bill Moyers reports on ALEC this week.
I hope he pays attention to what ALEC is doing to American education.
It has a bold agenda of privatization. It has model legislation for charter schools and vouchers.
It wants to destroy the teaching profession. It has model legislation for alternative certification so anyone can teach.
It promotes cyber charters, even though they get terrible results for children.
It has written model legislation so that governors can create a charter commission to over-ride the wishes of local school boards.
ALEC’s proudest moment these days is its “parent trigger” legislation, which is being promoted by the film “Won’t Back Down.”
I hope Bill Moyers pays attention to these things.
Yesterday I posted an interview in which President Obama expressed his views about education.
I wanted you to read it in its entirety without my comments.
Here are my comments.
First, the President acknowledged that he was not a very good student when he was in school. He said that he was “mediocre.” Several readers have asked: Does the President think that his teachers should have been fired because he didn’t try? Did he have bad teachers? Were they responsible for his poor performance or was he?
Second, the President lauded the idea of merit pay, paying teachers more if the test scores of their students go up (and firing them if they don’t). No one has told him that merit pay has failed wherever it was tried. No one has told him that it failed in Nashville in 2010, it failed in New York City in 2010, it failed in Chicago last year. Yet his administration has allocated $1 billion for more merit pay. Why doesn’t someone tell him?
Third, the President said that teachers in Denver are very happy to be paid more for performance. No one explained to the President that the Denver ProComp plan contains extra pay for taking on harder assignments, and that the Denver teachers opposed the pay-for-scores legislation that was imposed on them by the faux reformers two years ago. But Denver has little to show for its “reforms.” Denver is no national model. Read Gary Rubinstein’s post on the unimpressive results in Denver. The scores in Denver (which is what the President means by “results”) remain well below the state average.
Fourth, the President referred to class size. He said that he talked to teachers in Las Vegas who were unhappy that their classes at the opening of school had 42 students, and it took a few weeks to get them down to 35-38. The President didn’t say whether he thought that it was okay to have 35-38 students in an elementary school class. I wish the reporter had asked whether any of the classes at Sidwell Friends have 35-38 students.
Fifth, the President lauded his administration’s Race to the Top as he talked about “results,” but he seems unaware that it has no evidence to show that it will produce results. States and districts are now spending hundreds of millions of dollars to tie teacher evaluations to test scores, and not one of them can show that schools are better or kids are learning more because of this unproven method. Where are the successes? Not in DC, which has been practicing Rhee-form since 2007 and is still one of the nation’s lowest performing districts; not in Chicago, where teachers recently struck over poor working conditions and lack of necessary resources for students; not in New York City, where the scores collapsed in 2010 after the state acknowledged that it had gamed the testing system; and not in New Orleans, where an almost all-charter system is ranked 69th of 70 districts in the state and 79% of the charters are rated D or F.
Sixth, the President says he really likes charter schools. But nowhere does he acknowledge that charters are recreating a dual system of publicly funded schools in the nation’s cities and are now starting to expand their “market” into affluent districts where there are no “failing” schools. Nor does he acknowledge that numerous studies find that charters don’t get different results than public schools if they serve the same students. Why does he want two systems, one regulated, the other deregulated? I wish the reporter had asked those questions.
I could go on, but you get the idea.
The President has many more pressing issues to think about, both foreign and domestic. He wants to win the election.
But he is woefully misinformed about his own education policies, about the absence of evidence for them, about the lack of results, about the harmful effect they are having on students and teachers and the quality of education, about the shared assumptions of Race to the Top and the failed No Child Left Behind. He doesn’t seem aware that his own policies require “teaching to the test,” which he says he opposes.
He has not heard the voices of teachers and parents. He is not changing his policies. They will fail as No Child Left Behind has failed because they are based on flawed assumptions about teaching and learning, and because they are based on carrots and sticks.
Carrots and sticks work for donkeys, not for professionals.
Diane Ravitch's blog 