Archives for the month of: January, 2013
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Tennessee Governor and Legislature: Reformers All

By dianeravitch
January 6, 2013 //
7

Tennessee was one of the first two states to win a Race to the Top grant, so of course the governor and legislature are busy thinking of how to privatize their public schools. They heard glowing (if erroneous) reports about the parent trigger in California, so they want one too. They are thinking of vouchers and charters. The only awkward thing is the abject failure of the Tennessee Virtual Academy, a K12 school that is in the bottom 11% of he state’s schools.

Reading about their deliberations reminds me of one of Tennessee Senator Lamar Alexander’s slogans from many years ago. He used to say of Congress: “Cut their pay and send them home.”

Categories Charter Schools, Parent trigger, Privatization, Race to the Top, Tennessee, Vouchers

Is This the School-to-Prison Train?

By dianeravitch
January 6, 2013 //
21

A reader offers this comment, responding to the Washington Post article about the incredibly high expulsion rate from DC charter schools:

Bad kids need education too. The Good kids still in Public Non-Charter schools need education too. I am going to go out on a limb and suggest that it seems highly unlikely that you have a dog in either fight. I don’t either as I am here in Detroit area where they are doing the opposite, setting up a shadow state wide system to warehouse the “Worst and the Dumbest” as a separate but unequal system entirety in the name of reform but in reality to speed up privatization of for profit schools, to make big bucks for the future owners who are polishing up their computerized learning systems so they can eliminate educated teachers and replace them with Armed Security guards as part of the fast track “School to Prison” train. I bet you think this is some wild conspiracy theory. Sadly, it is not and if you search “EAA” and “Michigan Schools” you will see that it is true.

Categories Charter Schools, Education Industry, Education Reform, Privatization

Mother Crusader Takes on the Center for Education Reform

By dianeravitch
January 6, 2013 //
15

Mother Crusader noticed that the New Jersey office of charter schools has a list of important partners.

One of them is the Center for Education Reform.

Mother Crusader does her customary research and finds that Jeanne Allen, who founded CER, claimed credit for writing the ALEC proposal for the parent trigger.

She should not have been surprised. CER is one of the leading voices on the right that supports charters and vouchers and online schools, anything but public schools.

Mother Crusader notes that the schools that get a high rating from CER are those that have the most choice, not the ones that perform best on NAEP.

CER works closely with any other organization that opposes public education and supports privatization.

Jeanne Allen has been very successful in promoting the idea that “reform=school choice,” which has been a staple on the right for decades.

Categories Education Reform

AIR: VAM Not Ready for Prime Time

By dianeravitch
January 6, 2013 //
23

We have been saying it for months, no, since 2009, when Race to the Top started.

Value-added assessment or value-added-modeling is not ready for prime time.

Now we have a technical paper by American Institutes for Research that says it:

VAM is not ready for prime time.

Here is the takeaway:

“We cannot at this time encourage anyone to

use VAM in a high stakes endeavor. If one

has to use VAM, then we suggest a two-step

process to initially use statistical models to

identify outliers (e.g., low-performing

teachers) and then to verify these results

with additional data. Using independent

information that can confirm or disconfirm

is helpful in many contexts. The value of

this use of evaluative change results could be

explored in further research efforts….”

Is anyone at the U.S. Department of Education listening?

Hello?

Categories Race to the Top, Teacher Evaluations, Teachers and Teaching

Schools for Other People’s Children: UPDATE: LINK ADDED!

By dianeravitch
January 6, 2013 //
7

One of our most perceptive essayists Rachel Levy watched John Merrow’s program about Rocketship charters and recoiled with alarm.

She said if she put her children in front of a screen two hours a day, she would be called a bad parent, but the charter does it and it is called innovative.

She was distressed that the school treats test scores as the only goal of school, so stuff like art and music don’t get time. That’s what kids do on their own time, if they choose, after school.

And what is it that parents do, other than chant with their children?

What’s clear to Levy is that Rocketship is a school for “them,” for other people’s children, not for “ours.” It is all about test scores, for the glory of the founder, not about education.

Rocketship may be a Model T, an apt means of mass-producing test scores, but that’s a horrifying metaphor for stamping out standardized children who never ask questions, never day dream, always find the answer demanded by the program.

Rocketship is a school designed by Alphas and staffed by Betas for the children who are Delta, Gamma, and Epsilon. Read your Huxley.

Rachel also notes possible conflicts of interest. See her P.S.

Categories Blended Learning, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, On-Line Education, Teachers and Teaching, Technology, Computers

Students Are Not Gadgets. Teachers Are Not Robots.

By dianeravitch
January 6, 2013 //
5

Pasi Sahlberg of Finland (author of Finnish Lessons) refers to the obsession with testing, accountability and choice as the Global Educational Reform Movement or GERM. Finland has thus far managed to avoid catching the GERM and places its bets on teacher professionalism, a strong safety net for children, and child-centered education.

Eduardo Andere of Mexico has studied world systems of education. He here describes how Mexico has fallen for GERM:

Here in Mexico we are going frantic into this frenetic world testing. A new National Constitutional amendment is on its way to create a National testing and assessment agency with unlimited power for assessment and education policy. All federal and state governmental agencies will have to follow the guidelines issued by this new-to-be-agency. And a new teaching professional civil service, will be set up to assess teachers under standardized tests for entering into teaching or rewarding their performance, based mainly on their pupils’ tests results. And the problem here, with a very centralized education and very powerful oriented political system, what one person thinks is what all people do.

If you are bad, we are worse. This is why we have consistently performed at the bottom among all OECD’s PISA contesters; compared to Finland that has consistently played at the top. Finland and Mexico are the two opposites. The study of both make extraordinary lessons for all in a shocking contrasting way! But our policy makers are so influenced by the US federal policy makers and the OECD’s policy transmitters, that there is no way that we from the academia, or the more scientific means of looking at things, can teach them otherwise. They of course are joined by influential and “successful” businesspeople, who think that schools can be run the same way as car or gadget factories.

Students are not gadgets. And teachers are not robots. 

Categories Global Education Reform Movement (GERM), International

Will Spain Go the GERM route?

By dianeravitch
January 6, 2013 //
7

This request was posted. Please feel welcome to post your comments and help our friends in Spain.

Dear Mrs. Ravitch,

My name is Amadeu Sanz and I am the publishing coordinator of STEPV, a union of teachers in Valencia (Spain).

In Spain, just as in the US, there’s a heated debate on the results of public schools in international assessment tests such as PISA, and our Minister of Education (José Ignacio Wert) wants to impose a reform of the educational system that advocates the de-regulation of the system to favor complete freedom of school choice and the introduction of the principles of accountability and competition among all kinds of schools (public, private and charter ones). this reform hasn’t been passed in our parliament yet, but we fear that the absolute majority that the party in government has will approve of it, even though there is a wide refusal towards it in all spheres of education (teachers and students unions, parents’ associations, prominent scholars…).

In addition to this, the economic and debt crisis in this country is a perfect excuse to significantly cut education budgets, fire teachers, reduce their salaries and increase the ratio of students per classroom.

The situation is becoming really awful, to the extent that we consider this reform and these cuts the biggest attack against the public school system that has been developed after the death of Franco and the transition to democracy in Spain.
As a response to this situation, STEPV, along with two other unions –STEi, from the Balearic Islands, and USTEC, from Catalonia, with whom we share the same language, Catalan- are developing an opposition campaign to the reform designed by our minister.

In order to enrich our arguments and proposals, we are planning to publish a critical analysis of the reform and we want to illustrate how similar proposals to these from minister Wert have worked out in other countries, being yours a very valuable example.

Because many ideas come from the U.S. and because we’re absolute fans of some of your books and videos, we would be really pleased if you would like to contribute to our critical analysis issue by writing an article about the effects of school choice and accountability on education.

Best regards,

Amadeu Sanz

Categories International, Testing, Vouchers

Washington Post: DC Charters Expel Students at High Rate

By dianeravitch
January 6, 2013 //
28

The Washington Post reports what many people suspected: the charters in the District expel many more students than the public schools. The higher expulsion rate allows the charters to get rid of behavior problems and students with low test scores. This makes charters appear more successful than they are. The expelled students, of course, return to the public schools.

“D.C. charter schools expelled 676 students in the past three years, while the city’s traditional public schools expelled 24, according to a Washington Post review of school data. During the 2011-12 school year, when charters enrolled 41 percent of the city’s students, they removed 227 children for discipline violations and had an expulsion rate of 72 per 10,000 students; the District school system removed three and had an expulsion rate of less than 1 per 10,000 students.”

Folks, this is not education reform. This is a dual school system. It’s also a mighty hoax. Public dollars are going to schools that skim the able and kick out the less able. Where is this heading?

Categories Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Privatization

Can Rhee Still Pretend to Be Bipartisan?

By dianeravitch
January 5, 2013 //
30

Jersey Jazzman read Hari Sevugan’s comment on the blog last night and wondered if anyone still believes that StudentsFirst is bipartisan. JJ doesn’t think that any Democrat could sign on to Rhee’s anti-teacher, anti-union agenda.

Would a bipartisan group pump money into Republican campaigns? Would a bipartisan group pump $500,000 into the anti-union campaign in Michigan?

Not likely.

Categories Rhee, Michelle, StudentsFirst

Happy Friday, Muskegon Heights For-Profit Charter School!

By dianeravitch
January 5, 2013 //
7

In response to an earlier post about the rocky beginning of the experiment in privatization in Muskegon Heights, Michigan, a reader sent this interesting observation:

Well, I hope they had a happy Friday afternoon, and the Michigan Department of Education, as well. For yesterday, I filed a written complaint against the Muskegon Public School Academy and Mosaica Education pursuant to the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) of 2004 and Michigan Mandatory Special Education Act. I caught wind that the district has not been providing related services (speech, OT, PT, Social Work) to students with IEPs as dictated by their plans. So I filed a systemic complaint alleging a failure to deliver “all” related services, teacher consultant services, consider each student for Extended School Year; and meet “initial” and 3-year reevaluation timelines. What a lovely way to end the week of MDE and for-profit charter administrators who care nothing about the kids. Here’s hoping the allegations are found valid and the students receive compensatory. Although no one can give any of the children in this for-profit-saken, emergency-dictator-manager-run charter that has now stolen an entire semester from children in desperate need of a public education.

Categories Charter Schools, For-Profit, Michigan, Privatization, Special Education
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