Jersey Jazzman continues his series of posts in which he closely examines the record of Joel Klein’s tenure as chancellor. One of the claims of that era was: “Look at our scores. We are better than the upstate cities.”
Archives for the month of: January, 2013
The state of Oregon accuses two men of scamming the taxpayers by inflating enrollment figures in their online charter schools.
The schools–at least ten of them–were opened in conjunction with local school boards.
Apparently no one was supervising their claims.
The state wants the pair to repay $17 million plus nearly $3 million in costs and damages.
This is the danger of deregulation. There may be superintendents who would steal if they had the opportunity but they are watched by too many eyes. Maybe they get away with some thousands, but never millions.
A report from Indiana:
Vic’s Statehouse Notes #106– January 17, 2013
Dear Friends,
Yesterday’s committee vote on Senate Bill 184, the voucher expansion bill, was delayed until next Wednesday’s meeting. This gives us all more time to send additional messages of opposition before the vote.
Voucher Expansion
Senator Kruse announced at the beginning of yesterday’s Senate Education Committee meeting that the vote on SB 184, the voucher expansion bill, as well as on two other bills would be taken at the January 23rd meeting. The only bill voted on as scheduled was Senate Bill 189, which was passed 9-0 with bipartisan support after being amended.
I have no inside information about SB 184, but sometimes bills are delayed in this manner because the sponsor doesn’t have the votes lined up to pass the bill and wants more time to try to find the votes. Whether this is true in the case of the sibling voucher bill is up to speculation, but the net result is that the bill still has not passed the committee and public school advocates have until January 23rd to reach more Senators, especially those on the Education Committee, to share your deep opposition to sending more public money to private schools through an expansion of vouchers for siblings. In many legislative districts, this weekend will be the first “Third House” or “Crackerbarrel” meetings in which legislators meet with constituents back home. I hope public school advocates will show up at such meetings with the message that public schools need more support and supporting private schools with more vouchers is the wrong priority. Go to it!
Common Core
Senator Kruse then turned yesterday to a hearing on SB 193, the Common Core bill, subject of two rallies and much debate prior to the hearing. Many of us in fighting the voucher bill in 2011 argued that private schools should not want vouchers because the strings that come with public dollars will take away the independence of private schools. That is exactly what has happened in this case and should prompt a reassessment of the full consequences of the voucher law.
As I listened to the story of how the fight against the Common Core began in Indiana, I learned that private school independence has already been corrupted by the voucher program. Senator Schneider, in introducing his bill to take Indiana out of the Common Core program, described how two parents in his district came to him greatly concerned that their voucher-accepting parochial school was changing its textbooks and curriculum to comply with the Common Core curriculum and the new assessments to come, since voucher schools must take the state assessments. These parents were greatly distressed by the changes they traced back to the Common Core curriculum, especially in math, and thus, a movement to overturn the 2010 decision of the Roundtable and the State Board was born.
Without the voucher program requirement that schools accepting vouchers must take the state tests, the private school could have ignored the Common Core and used textbooks and tests that fit its preferred curriculum. Now this huge public policy debate with national implications is being driven by private and parochial school parents and the outcome will impact every public and private school in Indiana. The voucher law has thus entwined public and private schools in an unanticipated way through the Common Core curriculum battle.
The hearing, which Senator Kruse noted began at 1:37, went on until 7:00pm last night. The Senate Chamber and gallery were standing room only and some 50 chairs were filled in the hallway outside the Senate Chamber. The vote on SB 193 is scheduled for the next meeting, January 23rd.
House Education Committee
The first meeting of the House Education Committee was held this morning at 8:30am. House Bill 1012 amending the law governing the transfer of surplus buildings to charter schools was passed 12 to 1. The bill reduces the four year waiting period to sell a building to two years and includes a 30-day fast track procedure when a ready buyer is available. House Bill 1060 amending the law governing criminal background checks on teacher applicants was passed 12 to 0.
Chairman Behning announced that House Bills 1005, a complex bill regarding high school remediation, and 1295 regarding the IU School of Public Health would be given hearings at the next meeting on Tuesday, January 22nd. The new schedule for the House Education Committee is to meet every Tuesday and Thursday from 8:30 until the House convenes around 10:30.
Contact Senators
Senators need to hear again this week from the grassroots about Senate Bill 184. Please let them know of your opposition to expanding the voucher program in a way that will for the first time add new and expensive fiscal costs to the program. Other voucher bills have been announced, and strong resistance to this first one, SB 184, will help us fight the others down the road. The Senators on the committee to contact are as follows:
Chair: Sen. Kruse
Republican Members: Senators Yoder, Banks, Buck, Kenley, Pete Miller, Leising and Schneider
Democrat Members: Senators Rogers, Broden, Mrvan, Taylor
Thanks for all you are doing to support public education!
Best wishes,
Vic Smith vic790@aol.com
ICPE is working to promote public education in the Statehouse as efforts are made to take public money away from public schools through an expansion of vouchers. We are well represented by our lobbyist Joel Hand, but to keep him in place we need all members from last year to renew and we need new members who support public education.
Go to http://www.icpe2011.com for membership and renewal information.
Some readers have asked about my background in Indiana public schools. Thanks for asking! Here is a brief bio:
I am a lifelong Hoosier and began teaching in 1969. I served as a social studies teacher, curriculum developer, state research and evaluation consultant, state social studies consultant, district social studies supervisor, assistant principal, principal, educational association staff member, and adjunct university professor. I worked for Garrett-Keyser-Butler Schools, the Indiana University Social Studies Development Center, the Indiana Department of Education, the Indianapolis Public Schools, IUPUI, and the Indiana Urban Schools Association, from which I retired as Associate Director in 2009. I hold three degrees: B.A. in Ed., Ball State University, 1969; M.S. in Ed., Indiana University, 1972; and Ed.D., Indiana University, 1977, along with a Teacher’s Life License and a Superintendent’s License, 1998.
—
Julian M.Smith
4th Grade
Scipio, Elementary
Recently I wrote a post maintaining that choice had failed in Milwaukee, and that the city would be better off if it had a single public school system, doors open to all, receiving public support and public funding and civic energy. Uniting behind public education makes more sense than supporting three separate systems, none of which do well for studnts.
The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel published my post as an opinion piece. So far, my views have been critiqued by two other opinion pieces. One is by the research director of a free-market organization that advocates for vouchers, who says (ironically) that my call for unity around public schooling is “divisive.” This article gave me a hearty laugh.
The other article, by Patrick Wolf and John Witte also took exception to my blog post. They responded in an article in the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel and maintained that choice was a great success in Milwaukee and far better than public schooling.
This is my response to Wolf and Witte.
Milwaukee’s choice program is a failure. There are now three
separate systems—the public schools, with about 80,000 students; the
voucher schools, with about 23,000 students, and the charter schools,
with about 20,000 students.
There is very little difference among the three sectors in
terms of student achievement.
Patrick Wolf and John Witte do not agree. They think the
voucher and charter programs have been successful. They say that the
voucher schools have higher graduation rates, but critics who reviewed
their study say that about 75 percent of the original 9th graders were
not still enrolled in a voucher high school by the end of senior year.
With such high attrition from voucher schools, the graduation rates
are meaningless.
When the voucher and charter movements were first launched in the
early 1990s, advocates insisted that competition would cause the
public schools to improve. Governor Scott Walker still says so.
Advocates also said they wanted public funds to flow
to private and religious schools, because it would help minority
children.
But this has not happened. On the latest federal tests of math and reading, Milwaukee was one of the nation’s lowest performing urban school districts. Its performance was similar to the very lowest performing districts: Cleveland, D.C., and Detroit.
After twenty years of choice, the test scores of black
students in Milwaukee are similar to those of black students in
District of Columbia, Cleveland, Mississippi and Alabama.
Wolf and Witte claim that the choice schools do not skim the easiest
to educate students. When choice schools skim, it leaves the public schools worse off, with the most expensive students to educate
Wolf earlier admitted that 19% of the students in the Milwaukee
public schools have disabilities, compared to somewhere between 7 and
14.5 percent in the voucher schools. As Wolf told Education Week,
voucher schools typically accept students with mild to moderate
disabilities, which leaves the most severely disabled to the public
schools.
It is inefficient to run three separate school systems. Not only does
it triplicate costs, but it divides civic energy. All the people of
Milwaukee should work together to build a school system that meets the
needs of all the children.
Twenty years of experience with choice in Milwaukee demonstrates that
it is not effective or efficient to run three school systems. It does not meet the needs of children.
We should have learned that in 1954, when the U.S. Supreme Court declared
a dual school system to be unconstitutional.
This appeared on the New York City parent blog:
NYC Public School Parents
Independent voices of New York City public school parents
FRIDAY, JANUARY 18, 2013
Parents beware! NY and eight other states plan to share your child’s confidential school records with private corporations without your consent!
New York is one of five states that have agreed to share confidential NYC student and teacher data in Phase I with the “Shared Learning Collaborative” or SLC, a project of the Gates Foundation.
The other states and districts in Phase I include North Carolina (Guilford Co.), Colorado (Jefferson Co.), Illinois (Unit 5 Normal and District 87 Bloomington) and Massachusetts (Everett). Delaware, Georgia, Kentucky, and Louisiana are in Phase II, according to the Gates Foundation, intend to start piloting the system in 2013.
The data to be shared will include the names of students, their grades, test scores, disciplinary and attendance records, and likely race, ethnicity, free lunch and special education status as well.
These records are to be stored in a massive electronic data bank, being built by Wireless Generation, a subsidiary of News Corporation. News Corporation is owned by Rupert Murdoch and has been found to illegally violate the privacy of individuals in Great Britain and in the United States.
Over the next few months, the Gates Foundation plans to turn over all this personal data to another, as yet unnamed corporation, headed by Iwan Streichenberger, the former marketing director of a company called Promethean that sells whiteboards, based in Atlanta GA.
This new corporation intends to make this confidential student information available in turn to commercial enterprises to help them develop and market their “learning products.” This new corporation is supposed to be financially sustainable by 2016, which means either states, districts or vendors will have to pay for its upkeep and maintenance. All this is happening without parental knowledge or consent.
There are serious questions as to whether this plan complies with the federal law protecting student privacy, called FERPA (the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act), which allows states or districts to disclose students’ personally identifiable education records without parental consent only in very limited circumstances and under stringent conditions, none of which apply in this case.
Moreover, we have learned that this confidential information is to be put on a cloud managed by Amazon.com, with few if any protections against data leakage.
After our press conference with our attorney, Norman Siegel in October, the NY State Education Department finally released its contract with the Gates Foundation. As we feared, it only reaffirmed our concerns about the lack of privacy for children, the weak protections against data leakage, and the denial of the parental right to consent. Here is a letter from our attorneys expressing our concerns.
We believe that any state that enters into an agreement with the Shared Learning Collaborative, or its successor corporation, should at the very least be obligated to:
Release its contract with the Gates Foundation, notify all parents of the impending disclosure of their children’s confidential records, and provide them with the right to consent;
Hold public hearings for parents to be able to express their concerns about the plan’s potential to risk their children’s privacy, security and safety;
Explain how families can obtain relief if their children are harmed by improper use or accidental release of this information, including who will be held financially responsible;
Affirm that they will respect the privacy rights of public schoolchildren more than the interests of the Gates Foundation, News Corporation, or any other company or vendor with whom this confidential information may be shared.
Please see below; video of Khem Irby, parent activist in North Carolina, speaking before the Guilford school board about this issue last week.
Here is a fact sheet with this information you can download and distribute. You can also leave a comment on the Gates website here, if you think parents should have the right to consent.
For more information, please email us at info@classsizematters.org or call us at 212-674-7320.
Leonie Haimson at 1/18/2013
New York Commissioner of Education has warned New York City that if the union and the mayor don’t reach a deal on teacher evaluation, he will withhold over $1 billion, in addition to the $250 million already at stake in Race to the Top funding.
He is holding the children and their education hostage unless the parties submit to his will.
With his long (two year) history in a charter school, he knows all there is to know about how to evaluate teachers. His Uncommon Schools charter is known for incredible suspension rates. Does that affect evaluations? He doesn’t say.
How dare he cripple the education of 1.1 million students unless the teachers do as he tells them. Revolutions have happened for less.
A reader comments:
* *
What do the following major problems have in common?
1. Severe budget cuts to schools, bashing of teachers, lack of a broad based curriculum for developing critical and creative thinking students and cheating scandals?
2. Allowing civilians to buy assault weapons that can be used to murder innocent children and adults?
3. Inadequate mental health services?
4. Unaffordable health care services and millions of uninsured?
5. High rates of poverty?
6. Global warming, climate changes with bizarre weather patterns and allowing the destruction of the planet?
7. The crash of 2008 that led to a severe economic crisis?
8. Extreme materialism and money as top priority?
9. Special interest groups and corporations having greater influence on politicians than the people?
10. High crime rates and overcrowded prisons?
All of these problems reflect a deterioration of human values- the type of values which are humane and indicative of the ideals of humanity. Values such as kindness, caring for others, love, integrity and compassion make us good human beings. These values are the antidote and solution to many problems in the world today.
Certainly there are many people who display these values, but many more people with human values are needed if we are to reach a tipping point. For us to create a world that reflects love and caring for all it must begin with each individual. To reach critical mass the consciousness of more people must be raised so that the problems mentioned are unacceptable and not tolerated.
It is for each of us to get in touch with our humanity and with others to positively influence our leaders or replace them with people who will lead with human values. Are we as a human family willing to put into action those values which will create a better world for everyone? This is a question for each of us to answer.
Raymond Gerson
New York City is now in the midst of a school bus strike, stranding more than 100,000 students.
As usual, each side blames the other for intransigence.
But there are a few facts that should be remembered for context.
The Bloomberg administration has had complete control of the school system since 2002 and negotiated all existing contracts.
In 2006, then Chancellor Joel Klein gave a contract for $15.8 million to business turnaround consultants Alvarez & Marsal to reorganize the transportation program. Some of the executives were paid $500 an hour (plus expenses). On January 31, 2007, the buses adopted the A&M schedule for the first time. It was the coldest day of the year. Thousands of children were left stranded on bitter-cold corners. It was chaos.
Chancellor Klein defended the choice of A&M, saying they had saved the city at least $50 million.
Presumably, this is the system that the mayor now finds intolerable and outrageously expensive.
Alvarez & Marsal were previously known for its work in St. Louis, where they ran the district like a business for one year, collected $5 million, and left, shortly before the state declared the district o be in such bad shape that the state took control.
A&M’s last school assignment was in DC, where Chancellor Kaya Henderson hired them to review test security procedures, though they had no experience doing that.
Now that Michigan has become the 24th state to pass a “right to work” law, there is considerable confusion about the reasons for such legislation. Many corporations have long wanted such laws so they could be free of the demands of unions. Many rightwing politicians have wanted to decimate unions to remove their ability to fund liberal political campaigns.
This writer, Paul Cole, a labor activist, explains what the legislation means.
Representatives designated or selected for the purposes of collective bargaining by the majority of the employees in a unit appropriate for such purposes, shall be the exclusive representatives of all the employees in such unit for the purposes of collective bargaining in respect to rates of pay, wages, hours of employment, or other conditions of employment.
National Labor Relations Act (Sec. 9)
Under American labor law, unlike many other countries, when a majority of workers in a determined bargaining unit, vote to be represented by a union, that union becomes the exclusive representative of all workers in that unit. The purpose is to provide employees with a single, unified voice in determining their conditions of employment and the opportunity for employers to deal with one entity, instead of many competing ones, to establish the rights and responsibilities of both the employer and employees.
Federal law that governs private sector workers, as well as many state public employee laws, guarantees every worker who is represented by a union equal and nondiscriminatory representation – meaning unions must provide the same services, vigorous advocacy, and contractual rights and benefits. The guarantee applies regardless of whether the employee is a union member or not. All non-dues-paying employees are provided full union representation at no charge.
If you are not a member of the union, you are fully covered by the collective bargaining agreement that was negotiated between the union and your employer including wages, pensions, vacations, health insurance, seniority, and working hours.
The statutory right of exclusive representation mandates a “duty of fair representation” on the part of the union. It has the obligation to represent all employees fairly, in good faith, and without discrimination. The right to speak for all employees in the bargaining unit carries with it the corresponding duty to protect them as well.
Federal and state laws also guarantee that no one can be forced to be a member of a union, or to pay any amount of dues or fees to a political or social cause they do not support.
“Right-to-Work” laws make it illegal for employers and unions to mutually agree to require nonunion employees to pay fees to cover the benefits they legally receive under the collective bargaining agreement.
Fees have nothing to do with “forced unionism.”
Organizations such as the Chamber of Commerce, billionaire-funded conservative foundations and their Republican allies, want unions to be the only organizations in America that are required to provide benefits and services to individuals who pay nothing for them. This is the same as enabling some American citizens to opt out of paying taxes while making available all government services.
The real reason for the recent wave of “right-to-work” legislation, and other union weakening laws, has nothing to do with economic competitiveness but the weakening of the labor movement and its political influence. The only institution that stands in the way of the right wing’s domination of our nation’s political and economic system is the American labor movement.
This agenda was unmasked when Wisconsin State Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald explained that “this battle” is about eliminating unions so that “the money is not there” for the labor movement.
Last year, the Michigan director of Americans for Prosperity, chaired nationally by David Koch, said, “We fight these battles on taxes and regulations but really what we would like to see is to take the unions out at the knees so they don’t have the resources to fight these battles.”
In virtually every case, the state legislation is taken straight out of the Koch-funded American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) playbook.
It was Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. who said, “In our glorious fight for civil rights, we must guard against being fooled by false slogans, such as ‘right-to-work.’ It is a law to rob us of our civil rights and job rights. Its purpose is to destroy labor unions and working conditions for everyone… we demand this fraud be stopped.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 