The National Opportunity to Learn Campaign has one of the very best critiques of Michelle Rhee’s report card for the states. The states doing the least for children get the highest scores. The states enacting policies that ignore the needs of children do best by her logic.
In the 990 form for StudentsFirst, it says the organization defends the interests of children.
The National Opportunity to Learn Campaign says it does not.
Jesse Hagopian a teacher at Garfield High School in Seattle, explains why every teacher in the school voted to boycott the MAP test.
The teachers at Garfield are an inspiration to friends nd supporters of public education acros America.
They are champions of students, and they are already on the honor roll for their courage and heroism.
I am pleased to add Michael A. Rossi, Jr., of Madison, New Jersey, to the honor roll as a hero of public education
Superintendent has served long and faithfully in the public schools. He is proud of his district. He is a career educator. He is a leader.
He is a hero for speaking out forcefully and publicly about he insane overload of “reforms” piled on the schools all at the same time: the new evaluations, the a common Core, the new assessments, just to name a few. Superintendent Rossi calls it “a train wreck.” He is right.
No organization can absorb so many untried changes of course, so many unproven experiments, without crashing.
At a certain point, one must wonder–as I do–whether the multitude of new tasks is intended to break the school system, to induce havoc, and to bring it to a halt. When state and federal leaders create chaos, Are they doing it to encourage parents to flee their community schools? Is this another way to promote the privatization they admire?
Think of it. The biggest retail store in the US and maybe the world sells the weapon of choice for mass murderers, the Bushmaster AR-15. This was the weapon used to kill a dozen people in a movie theater in Aurora, Colorado. It was the weapon used to murder 20 children and six educators in Newtown, Connecticut. And it is easy to buy one at your local Walmart.
Walmart may be the biggest gun shop in the nation.
All that money gets funneled into a family and a foundation that is devoted to privatizing public education. Last year, the Walton Family Foundation gave out $159 million to education groups. Almost all were promoting or providing vouchers and/or charters. In 2011, Walton gave $49,5 million to Teach for America, which staffs privately managed charters and produces leaders like Michelle Rhee, John White, and Kevin Huffman, all of whom advocate for vouchers, charters, and for-profit schools. Members of the Walton family underwrote charter legislation in Georgia and Washington State last fall. Georgia already had charters, so it was necessary to add a constitutional amendment allowing the governor to appoint a commission to authorize charters when the local school board rejected them.
Give this to the Waltons. They are consistent. They don’t believe in regulations or government supervision. They don’t believe in local control. With their vast resources, they know what’s best for everyone: a free market where everyone is armed and everyone goes to any school, any time, any place, no certified teachers, no unions, low-wage employees, no state oversight. It works for Walmart.
If we all speak out based on our knowledge and experience, we can turn this privatization movement around. It is led by people who know nothing about teaching or children. They are obsessed with data and incentives and punishments. Their bad ideas keep failing.
From a reader:
Hi Diane.
This is the first time I have commented on your blog but I have been reading your posts since the blog’s inception. Please know that you inspire me and keep me going. The reason being, you give me hope that we, as public school teachers, have a voice out there fighting for us.
I have been teaching for 12 years in a small upstate New York city school. We are ravaged with 75% poverty and developmentally innappropriate expectations for our kids from the Common Core. There is no “soft bigotry” of low expectations, just expectations WAY out of the zone of proximal development (Vygotsky).
I have seen the corporate reform agenda taking shape for years and have seen main stream media’s narrative of it’s benefits. It’s demonization of us public school teachers. It frustrates me to such a degree that it is hard to have hope for change. You give me that hope. You inspire me to get the message out to my collegues. To speak up at meetings and generally be the voice of dissent in this otherwise brainwashed, “duped” society. Thank you for that. And thank you for continuing this fight against the monster that is the pritization movement. Enjoy your break. It is well deserved.
The governor-appointed emergency manager who was put in charge of Muskegon Heights public schools decided to privatize the schools, fire the teachers, and hire a for-profit charter operator, Mosaica.
The governor and his rightwing allies are certain that a for-profit corporation will succeed where public education failed. You might say that Govermor Rick Snyder is following Andy Smarick’s belief that you can’t improve low-performing schools, you have to close them down and start over with new management.
So far, the Muskegon Heights takeover has been a disaster. Michigan Public Radio has been running a series about Muskegon Heights and learned that at least 25% of the newly hired staff left before the end of the first semester. The students are reacting to the turmoil by constantly testing their teachers, which makes it harder for the teachers to control their classes and harder for students to learn, as teachers come and go.
The company claims it had only 60 days to start up the school and that it hired the “best” teachers. But more likely the best teachers were not applying for a job in an impoverished district that pays $35,000 a year.
As readers may recall, I started a new book last June.
I finished it and turned it over to the editor on January 15.
The manuscript was nearly 600 pages.
In print form, it should be about half that length.
If you have been reading the blog all along, you know what is in the book.
Now it’s time to catch a break.
I am taking a one-week vacation starting January 31.
The blog will still be here every day, as I will have some pieces in the pipeline and I have invited some of my favorite bloggers to write guest posts.
This will be the year that the public begins to see who the corporate reformers are and the havoc they are wreaking on schools and communities.
Diane
Eleven elementary schools in Sacramento are going to close.
All are in low-income, diverse communities.
Some are high-performing re test scores.
Please, someone, write and explain.
Apparently it was Mayor Bloomberg who scuttled talks between the city and the unions. The unions wanted a sunset clause, the mayor demanded no sunset clause.
According to Ernest Logan of the supervisors’ union, most districts have a sunset clause:
““The CSA and the DOE were closing in on a final agreement on January 16, just before midnight. However, moments later, the Mayor intervened, demanding an agreement for an indefinite period of time,” Logan said.
“It is important to know that the overwhelming majority of school systems throughout the state have reached a one-year agreement in order to evaluate and modify it later to better serve our children. The state law provides for a one-year evaluation plan and the mayor supported the enactment of this legislation,” he added in a statement.”
Jersey jazzman dissects John Merrow’s report on the Case of the Missing Memo.
Why won’t DCPS release the memo?
What secret does it contain?
Will John Merrow keep digging?
How many doors closed on him when he asked questions about the cheating scandal?
How many people refused to talk to him?
Why?
Why did he not include any of this stonewalling in his documentary?
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