A Néw York City parent organization has created a report card for Michelle Rhee. Good read.
Archives for the month of: January, 2013
Parents across the nation are taking a stand against the use of tests to measure, rate, and rank their children.
Local school boards are passing resolutions against high-stakes testing.
People are increasingly angry that tests are being used inappropriately in ways for which they were not designed.
They are forming groups to protest.
One of the best organized groups functions in New York state.
It is called Change the Stakes.
It adopted a statement in opposition to high-stakes testing drafted by testing expert Fred Smith.
In addition to their concerns about narrowing the curriculum and demoralizing students, parents and educators want to know more about the testing. They want to know, for example:
“How many professionally designed and developed tests are being given in New York schools? What is
the purpose of each? When are they scheduled to be given? How much time is spent administering
each test? How many students and schools are involved? And how much money does each test cost
(the material, the scoring and the reports)?
Which publisher constructed or supplied each exam? Who owns the exams we are paying for? Which
ones are field tests—tests and questions that do not count but enable commercial publishers to develop
and sell exams for future use? Which exams are used to screen children for entry into special programs
or selective schools? Which must be passed as a basis for promotion or to fulfill graduation
requirements? Surely, the city and state know and can give us these details for the current year.”
The state and city education officials act as though they own the children and can do whatever they want without supplying even the most basic information to parents.
This is wrong. This is contrary to democratic control of public education. The people in charge don’t know more. They just have more power. And they are using it in ways that disrespects parents and educators.
This is a point by point replication of the ALEC agenda to privatize public education and abolish the teaching profession.
Follow this template and your state will get the same performance as Louisiana and DC.
The other dy we learned from an article on the Huffington Post that several top Democratic staff members quit Michelle Rhee’s StudentsFirst. One of them was Hari Sevugan, who had been a leading figure in the 2008 Obama campaign. Sevugan’s departure set off speculation about why he left: was it Rhee’s union-busting goals? Was it her advocacy for rightwing governors? Was it her support for privatization?
Sevugan dashed off a comment to this blog in which he insisted that he cares deeply about helping children, nothing more complicated than that.
This teacher-parent in Florida was inspired by the exchange to write this open letter to Hari Sevugan:
Hari,
I would like to say to you … I am a teacher and I am a parent. I see this reform from both sides. I see depleted public schools and public programs. I see our public funds channeled to corporate charter schools. I see those schools failing the communities, and most importantly, the children. I am not the only one who sees it.
I read, just today, that Michelle Rhee praised my state, Florida, for their education reform. I disagree. Last year, in Florida, we reviewed the testing results. We found that less than 10% of all Florida schools are charter schools, yet they comprised 51% of the failing schools in Florida. In some counties, such as my own, the only failing school was, in fact, a charter school. The same is true for many counties in Florida, including the very large Broward county.
How can you convince us that charter schools are the answer?
I don’t believe it is possible to convince us, parents or teachers, that lobbying for charter schools is for the benefit of our children. Certainly not when we can drive down our streets and find a failing charter school, or closed charter school, with huge profits that disappeared in the wind. These are our streets … these are our children.
I do not believe it is possible to convince us. I applaud you for coming on this blog and trying … but these are our kids. We know they deserve better. This is the civil rights issue of our generation. The separation now is between the haves and have nots. Charter schools are furthering that division. I get it that the charter vision sounds good on paper, but the reality proves differently.
We need to refuel and revitalize our public schools … not punish and privatize. Remember, It is a core Democratic value to ensure free and equal public education for all. We learned once, not so long ago, that separate is not equal.
Never was … never will be.
Just my opinion as a parent and teacher. I am simply an ambassador for my child… no fancy title or IPhone for me.
Jersey Jazzman decided to analyze Joel Klein’s claims of compelling progress in New York City during his tenure.
In this post, he takes a closer look at how New York City students fared on NAEP compared to other cities.
Some gains, but not as large as other, less heralded cities who took the same tests.
A reader forwarded this prediction and analysis of the forthcoming manipulation of school grades in Louisiana.
We will hear that scores are going up and that the achievement gap is closing.
Don’t believe it.
It is what as known as gaming the system.
This analysis was picked up and amplified by a blogger in Louisiana who knows the inside of the state Department of Education. This blogger describes the game as “John White’s White Lies”
Michelle Rhee issued her report card for American education and now we know what she stands for: privatization of American public education.
States that endorse charter schools, for-profit schools, the parent trigger, school closings, vouchers and online for-profit charters get high marks from Rhee.
States that bust unions, take away teacher tenure, and use standardized tests to evaluate teachers get high marks from Rhee.
States that support public education and resist efforts to privatize their public schools get low marks, especially if they support teacher professionalism.
Her top two states are led by the nation’s most rightwing governors and legislatures: Louisiana and Florida.
Rhee has at last dropped the pretense of bipartisanship and shown that StudentsFirst is a branch of ALEC.
This reader learned the secret of charter success. Make money by doing what the local public school did until the budget was cut. Ofer that service but without any of the overhead or services:
“After a couple of years in retirement, I decided to take an assistant’s job at a charter school in order to continue to be involved in the education of young people. I started working at the Audeo Charter School which is a part of a larger organization Altus which in turn is chartered through the San Diego, CA school district. The Audeo site I work at is set up in a bare bones large room in the office complex adjoining a shopping center. Audeo seeks students from the surrounding district, Moreno Valley, who have fallen seriously behind in credits and thus are unable to graduate from high school within an acceptable time frame.
“All routes for remediation and credit recovery available in the school district have been eliminated for these students, so they are more or less forced to drop out of the district and go to a place like Audeo. Quite the opposite from what charter schools claim, Audeo offers nothing new, individualized or innovative. It gives kids the same tired credit recovery packets that public schools have doled out for years and seeks to award credits if the students complete them in some minimally acceptable manner. For this service they get all of the state student aid that the public high school gets. While this appears to be very profitable, I don’t see why the tax payers should be contributing in this way to the enrichment of private investors.”
In a gracious and polite letter, AFT President Randi Weingarten asked Mayor Bloomberg to apologize for likening the New York City United Federation of Teachers to the National Rifle Association:
January 6, 2013
Mayor Michael Bloomberg
City Hall
New York, NY
Dear Mr. Mayor:
There are times when we say things in the heat of the moment that we regret. I hope that is the case with the comments you made on Friday during your radio show comparing the NRA with the UFT. They were offensive and way over the line. I strongly urge you to apologize to the thousands of UFT members and their leaders for making such incendiary and insensitive remarks—especially coming on the heels of the tragedy in Newtown.
You know full well that UFT members and other school employees do everything they can to make their schools safe and secure places so that children can learn and thrive. As educators, they take a solemn vow to keep their students safe. The instinct to protect, to serve and to love children is at the core of every educator and school employee. That’s why it is so disturbing and beneath the dignity of your leadership to compare educators or their union to the NRA—a group that promotes allowing terrorists to own guns; lobbies state legislatures to allow concealed guns in elementary schools, day care centers and on college campuses; and has worked closely with ALEC on getting 26 state legislatures to adopt shoot-first laws.
The educators, custodians and school secretaries of Newtown are members of the AFT, including three who died or were injured protecting children from this unspeakable tragedy. I have spent several days in Newtown with educators, parents and members of the community since that awful day. One of the first things I did was call the president of the UFT, Michael Mulgrew, on the day of the killings to ask for UFT’s assistance in helping to provide grief counseling to our Newtown colleagues. The UFT was one of the first organizations on the ground to provide these vital services, and the help is ongoing.
Mr. Mayor, we have worked together for many years. We have enjoyed a relationship based on mutual respect and being honest with one another. Whatever collective bargaining differences you currently are facing with the UFT—and during our time working together we had many ups and downs—it is neither appropriate nor responsible for you to compare the UFT with the NRA.
No one has taken on the NRA more aggressively than you, which also is why your radio comments were so disturbing. It undermines the great work you have done on gun safety to draw this comparison. For all these reasons, I ask you to make a public apology.
Sincerely,
Randi Weingarten
President, American Federation of Teachers
Alan Borsuk is a knowledgeable journalist who has covered education in Milwaukee for many years. He is now professing at Marquette, but still keeps a close watch on what is happening to education in Milwaukee.
In this article, Borsuk says that a new vision is needed to get beyond the stale and failed answers of the past. He is right.
Milwaukee has had vouchers since 1990. longer than any school district in the nation. The students in the voucher schools perform no better than those in the public schools.
Milwaukee has had charter schools for about 20 years. The students in the charter schools do no better than those in the public schools.
As the other sectors have grown, the Milwaukee public schools have experienced sharply declining enrollment. At the same time, the number of students with disabilities is far greater in the public schools than in either the voucher or charter schools. The latter are unable or unwilling to take the children who are most challenging and most expensive to educate. Thus, Milwaukee public schools are “competing” with two sectors who skim off the ablest students and reject the ones they don’t want. Most people would say this is not a level playing field.
Governor Scott Walker’s answer to the Milwaukee problem is to call for more vouchers and charters, and for virtual charters. But if the students in those schools are not outperforming the ones in the public schools after twenty years, why should those sectors grow? And we know from multiple studies that students in virtual schools do worse than those in brick-and-mortar schools.
More of the same is no answer. Doubling down on failure is a bad bet.
Yes, Milwaukee needs a bold vision.
It needs a reset.
It needs one public education sector, not three competing sectors. The time for dual- and triple-systems should have ended in 1954, with the Brown decision.
Milwaukee needs one public school system that receives public dollars, public support, community engagement, and parental involvement.
Vouchers and charters had their chance. They failed.
Now it is time to build a great public school system that meets the needs of the children of Milwaukee.
The children of Milwaukee need universal pre-kindergarten so that they arrive in school ready to learn. The children with high needs require small classes and extra attention. The public schools should provide a superb program in the arts for all children in every grade. They should have a rich curriculum–history, literature, foreign languages, the sciences, mathematics, and civics–for all children. Every student should have daily physical education. The schools should have the nurses, guidance counselors, social workers and librarians they need. Children should have after-school programs where they can learn new skills, strengthen their bodies, and get extra tutoring.
It is impossible to achieve these goals in a city with three competing school systems. It is entirely possible to achieve when there is one school system that becomes the focus of the energies of parents, civic leaders, and the business community.
Many children, one Milwaukee.
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