Archives for the month of: November, 2012
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Democracy for Sale?

By dianeravitch
November 20, 2012 //
8

Somebody is dumping a lot of campaign cash into state and local races.

Michael Petrilli of the conservative Thomas B. Fordham Institute is convinced that the teachers’ unions are the Evil Empire. He says that the unions play Goliath to the poor reformers’ puny David. He says the unions were responsible for the defeat of right-wing Education Idol Tony Bennett in Indiana and the decisive repeal of the Luna Laws in deep-red Idaho.

Wow, who knew the teachers’ unions were so strong in those two red states?

I will wait to hear from readers in those two states about whether their unions are so powerful.

But while we wait to hear from them, let’s consider the race between teacher Marie Corfield and her Republican opponent, Assemblywoman Donna Simon.

Simon raised almost $500,000, much of it from business and industry, you know, the working families’ friends.

Corfield, who had the temerity to disagree with Governor Chris Christie, raised about $175,000. The hedge fund guys called Better Education for NJ Kids (B4K) gave Simon $109,000.

What did the Goliath of New Jersey politics–the New Jersey Education Association– give Corfield?
A whopping $8,200. Oh, yes, some other teacher group gave her $1,000.

At last count, Simon was slightly ahead of Corfield, who wanted a recount.

Some Goliath. Some David.

Categories Corporate Reformers, New Jersey, Unions

Students Who Disgrace Themselves in Public

By dianeravitch
November 20, 2012 //
53

Students for Education Reform at New York University and Columbia University plan a march to demand that the New York City United Federation of Teachers and the Bloomberg administration reach an agreement on test-based teacher evaluation. These groups are off-shoots of Democrats for Education Reform, the group founded by Wall Street hedge fund managers, the guys with annual incomes in the multiple millions, most of whom went to elite private schools.

The members of SFER pay more in tuition each year than a typical teacher’s annual income. They are students at elite universities. They obviously do not know that testing experts have found the evaluation system called “value-added assessment” to be inaccurate and unstable.

Why are they pushing teachers to accept an invalid measure? Why are these students, many of whom went to private schools that never use standardized tests, so eager to impose standardized tests on public school children and their teachers? Why do they want to see teachers rated and fired based on the results of standardized tests?

They should act like students, read the studies conducted by Jesse Rothstein of Berkeley, Linda Darling-Hammond at Stanford, and the joint statement of the National Academy of Education and the American Educational Research Association.

They should not disgrace themselves in public by promoting ideas they do not understand.

Categories Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Democrats for Education Reform, Education Industry, Teacher Evaluations, Testing, Unions

Why Cheat When You Are Winning?

By dianeravitch
November 20, 2012 //
2

Newark’s Robert Treat Academy is under investigation for possible cheating on state tests.

This charter school has been highly praised by the media and politicians as “proof” that “poverty is not destiny.”

As Jersey Jazzman points out, and as Bruce Baker has documented, the school stacks the deck by taking very small numbers of students with special needs, small proportions of English language learners, and smaller proportions of the poorest students as compared to the Newark public schools. In brief, the school enrolls very few of those likely to get low scores.

Cherry-picking students while claiming that you are enrolling the same kids as the public schools is….cheating.

Categories Charter Schools, New Jersey, Testing

EduShyster on the Michigan Plan to End Public Education As We Know It

By dianeravitch
November 20, 2012 //
17

Just to show that great minds think alike, here is EduShyster’s description of the Michigan plan to end public education as we know it.

The plan was designed by the deep thinkers at the free-market think tank called the Mackinac Center.

She calls it a reform “turducken,” which is one reform wrapped inside another, all of them together accomplishing the long-held dream of the extreme right: abolish public education and replace it with a market-driven system, with minimal regulation, minimal oversight, free choice for all, and profits for the plucky.

Sort of like the stock market. Just where you want your children’s future to be decided, right?

I wonder whether Governor Snyder will get a special award from ALEC as the first state to take the bold move of dis-establishing public education?

Categories Accountability, ALEC, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Democrats for Education Reform, Education Industry, For-Profit, Michigan, Privatization

For-Profit Colleges in Trouble

By dianeravitch
November 20, 2012 //
8

No tears from this corner for the for-profit sector in higher education.

It is losing market share and closing campuses as students figure out that the degree from a for-profit college is not entirely respectable.

John Hechinger again proves he is at the top of his game as an education writer.

He knows how to follow the money.

Remember the old days when we didn’t use terms like “market share” to talk about education?

Categories For-Profit, Higher Education, Privatization

Michigan Plan to Dissolve School Districts

By dianeravitch
November 20, 2012 //
30

As readers of this blog know, Governor Rick Snyder of Michigan is determined to break up public education and encourage privatization as rapidly as possible.

He has been relying on a group called the “Oxford Foundation” to devise his plans. As we now know is customary among corporate reformers, the group is named deceptively. it has nothing to do with Oxford and it is not a foundation. while the website has a section about “transparency,” the website contains no names.

Transparency is for the little people.

This article in the Detroit Free Press identifies the leader of the “Oxford Foundation.” He is Richard McLellan, a lawyer who was a founder of the free-market think tank Mackinac Center. Like the Center, he is a strong advocate of vouchers.

McLellan’s time has come. He has the ear of a governor who hates public education as much as he does.

And guess who is funding the privatization activities? Eli Broad.

They will say it is for the benefit of poor minority children. Don’t believe it.

Poor and minority people never benefit by destruction of the public sector.

When the public sector is privatized, follow the money.

Categories Budget Cuts, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Education Reform, For-Profit, Michigan, Privatization, US Education, Vouchers

The Real Story Behind the Bridgeport Election

By dianeravitch
November 20, 2012 //
7

The recent election in Bridgeport, Connecticut, was a major setback for corporate-style “reform” in that city.

The mayor launched a well-funded campaign to persuade voters to give up their democratic right to elect their school board and to give him control of the public schools.

Miraculously, despite his huge advantage in money and power, the mayor lost. The voters said no. Democracy won.

As Stamford attorney and civil rights advocate Wendy Lecker explains here, the state government has disregarded the message. Governor Dannell Malloy continues with his regime of high-stakes testing, school closings, nullification of local democracy, and privatization, carried out by State Commissioner of Education (and charter advocate) Stefan Pryor.

Categories Charter Schools, Connecticut, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, For-Profit, Privatization, Testing, Vallas, Paul

That Teeny Tiny Number of Irreplaceables

By dianeravitch
November 20, 2012 //
2

Bruce Baker is one of my favorite bloggers. He is smart and irreverent. He is not awed by big names. He actually was a teacher before becoming a researcher. He has the technical skill to crack the statistical analyses that others generate to make spurious claims. Unlike many with the same skill set, he is willing to call a phony a phony. You might say he is our Premier C.D. (Since I have taken a personal pledge not to use vulgarisms on this blog, I will give you a clue to help you figure out what a C.D. is; it is a Cr-p Detector).

In this post, Bruce shows what nonsense The New Teacher Project report “The Irreplaceables” is.

TNTP, you may recall, was founded by either TFA or Michelle Rhee, depending on whom you heard from last. Its purpose was to stock urban districts with shiny new teachers (like TFA) to replace those burned-out veterans with low expectations. Although TNTP is an advocacy group that seeks and wins contracts from urban districts, and although it has a self-interest in certain policies, it nonetheless turns out studies and reports to support its self-interest (fire bad old teachers, hire and retain new teachers). It is not surprising that advocacy groups crank out self-serving “studies,” but it is surprising that the media so often takes them seriously, sort of like taking advice from tobacco companies about the wisdom of smoking.

In his analysis of the latest bit of TNTP puffery, Baker demonstrates how unstable value-added measures are. He reviews the ratings for thousands of NYC teachers and finds that there are very few who remain in the top 20% every single year. In fact, he discovers only 14 in math and 5 in ELA out of thousands of teachers! He writes, “Sure hope they don’t leave.”

Categories New York, Race to the Top, Teacher Evaluations

Help This Small Community By Signing Its Petition

By dianeravitch
November 19, 2012 //
10

The town of Scottsburg, Indiana, has fewer than 10,000 residents.

There is a proposal before the City Council to open a charter school.

This will split the town.

Some public school parents have started a petition to ask the City Council and the Mayor not to open a charter school.

Please sign the parents’ petition.

And be sure not to sign any other petitions on the change.org website or you may find yourself part of an organization you don’t want to belong to.

Ironically, this is the town where the recently defeated State Superintendent Tony Bennett got his start.

Help save public education for the children and families of Scottsburg.

 

Categories Charter Schools, Indiana

Why Local School Boards Are Targeted for Destruction

By dianeravitch
November 19, 2012 //
27

A local school board in Florida rejected the application of a for-profit charter operator.

The board said they had had a bad experience with the last charter school, which closed for low performance.

They also knew that this applicant had some problems, financially and academically.

When the Metro Nashville school board rejected the Great Hearts charter because of its inadequate plans to serve the diverse students of the city, the TFA state commissioner went berserk and withheld $3.4 million in state aid from the district.

Corporate reformers hate local school boards because they can’t control them.

In the last election, they spent millions to try to buy seats on some local boards but there are so many of them. They bought the Indianapolis school board; they previously bought the Denver board. But they suffered setbacks in Austin, Santa Clara County (where they spent $250,000 to defeat Anna Song, yet she won in a landslide, spending only $6,000).

Independent thinking drives corporate reformers crazy.

They want a free market in schooling.

They want charters to open wherever and whenever they want.

They say, “Let the consumer sort them out. If parents choose a bad charter, it’s their choice.”

That is why the Georgia referendum created a commission that will be stacked with privatization advocates.

That is why ALEC has model legislation to enable state commissions to overturn local decisions.

You see, the people closest to the public schools cannot be trusted by corporate reformers to do what they want. They might oppose privatization, and reformers value privatization more than local control.

Only governors, mayors and state superintendents know what is best to reform schools.

Only Wall Street hedge fund managers know what is best to reform schools they never attended, schools they would not send their own children to.

The farther removed the corporate reformers are from the community, it seems, the more they think themselves suited to make decisions for its children.

Even allies of the Obama administration think that local school boards are an obstacle to reform and want to see them disappear.

And that is why local school boards are targeted for destruction by corporate reformers.

Categories Education Reform
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