Archives for the month of: January, 2013
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The Ongoing Charter School Fiasco in New Jersey

By dianeravitch
January 29, 2013 //
3

How could it happen that New Jersey officials cut the ribbon at the opening of a new charter school facility in September, but the school just lost its nonprofit status?

Jersey Jazzman here reviews the nonstop administrative incompetence of the New Jersey Department of Education in relation to its failure to provide adequate oversight.

He concludes:

“I don’t think I’ve even covered it all, but you get the point: New Jersey’s oversight of charter schools under Chris Cerf has been a disaster. He brought in people light on experience – both in education and in New Jersey – and the state’s children have paid the price for their incompetence.

“And it’s not just the turnover at the NJDOE that’s caused this train wreck; it’s the infestation of inexperienced ideologues, paid for by California billionaires who bad-mouth New Jersey’s students and schools. Their arrogance and intransigence have turned the state’s charter approval and oversight processes into a bad joke.”

Categories Broad Foundation, Cerf, Chris, Charter Schools, Education Industry, For-Profit, New Jersey

More on National School Boards’ Blast at Duncan

By dianeravitch
January 29, 2013 //
3

You earlier read the press release from the National School Boards Association here, reasserting the importance of federalism, a concept unknown to the U.S. Department of Education these days.

Here is a great summary and a link to the NSBA’s proposed legislation, which tells the federal government to abide by its federal role–not as the boss of the nation’s schools, but as a support.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Duncan, Arne, Privatization, Teacher Evaluations, Testing

Australian Educators Thank Garfield Teachers

By dianeravitch
January 29, 2013 //
8

Our compatriots in Australia are watching the growing rebellion against high-stakes testing with interest and hope.

They are impressed by the courage and unity of teachers at Garfield High School. They are also encouraged by the Republican opposition to testing in Texas.

They are watching events here closely.

They know what happens here, for good or ill, will affect their schools.

The world is watching and hoping for better ideas to come from our shores.

Categories International, Teachers and Teaching, Testing, Texas

Florida’s Nutty Accountability System

By dianeravitch
January 29, 2013 //
9

Between the two Bush brothers–George W. and Jeb–the nation’s education system is locked into a regime of endless testing, grading, evaluating, marking, measuring, etc.

It doesn’t seem to get us very far. After all, Texas has been in this business for as long as anyone can remember–was it the mid-80s?–and folks there are still complaining about failing schools.

And Texas is not # 1 anyway, Massachusetts is.

Florida is supposedly the model state, because it started giving grades to all its schools and closing the ones with low marks, and opening charters.

But it turns out that there are lots of failing charters

And again, Florida is not #1. Massachusetts is.

Coach Bob of Florida brings us up to the date on Florida’s nutty accountability system.

Think about it.

What corporation would be proud that it had created a quality-control system that made its employees demoralized and angry?

If this is a business model, it’s bad business. Or monkey business.

 

Categories Accountability, Bush, Jeb, Florida

Endless Saga of Charter School Scandals

By dianeravitch
January 29, 2013 //
14

Jersey Jazzman has stitched together an amazing story of chicanery, some of it legal, some of it not.

The “not legal” part is the easiest to explain: the chief financial officer of the Brighter Choice Foundation in Albany was arrested on charges of embezzling some $200,000. Curiously, he was hired even though he was previously charged with embezzlement when he worked for a bank. Apparently, no one noticed.

But then comes all the “legal graft,” the kind that banks and corporations have perfected over the years.

When you see the public money–appropriated to educate children, to pay teachers, to reduce class size, to buy musical instruments–allocated to financiers, it is baffling.

Tax-breaks, loans, tax-exempt bonds, profits, limited risks, return on investment. To understand school reform today, it might help to be an accountant.

Categories Charter Schools, Education Industry, For-Profit, Privatization

Common Core Is Horrible for K-3

By dianeravitch
January 29, 2013 //
57

There is growing evidence that the Common Core standards are absurd in the early grades. They require a level of academic learning that is developmentally inappropriate.

Little children need time to play. Play is their work. In play, they learn to share and to count, to communicate, to use language appropriately, and to figure things out.

A story in a NYC newspaper shows just how ridiculous the Common Core standards are when imposed on 5-year-olds: Here is a story, well worth reading, about how Common Core is being implemented in kindergartens across New York City. The headline is. “Playtime’s Over.”

Says the story:

“Way beyond the ABCs, crayons and building blocks, the city Department of Education now wants 4- and 5-year-olds to write “informative/explanatory reports” and demonstrate “algebraic thinking.”

“Children who barely know how to write the alphabet or add 2 and 2 are expected to write topic sentences and use diagrams to illustrate math equations.

“For the most part, it’s way over their heads,” a Brooklyn teacher said. “It’s too much for them. They’re babies!”

“In a kindergarten class in Red Hook, Brooklyn, three children broke down and sobbed on separate days last week, another teacher told The Post.”

How did this happen?

This article by Edward Miller and Nancy Carlsson-Paige explains that early childhood educators were not included on the committees that wrote the standards, and their feedback was never incorporated.

It is as if a large group of business leaders were asked to write standards for surgeons, or if surgeons were asked to devise standards for plumbers.

When you learn what these standards expect little children to do, you have to wonder if any of the people who wrote them have small children or if they ever taught small children.

I am reminded of a book that came out last year by Elisabeth Young-Bruehl called Childism, about prejudice against children. These days, we don’t put them to work in factories at 5 or 6, and we don’t beat them in public, we just make them do things that they cannot do and make them feel like failures before they turn 7.

Categories Childhood, Pre-K, K, Common Core, New York City, Race to the Top

Citizens or Consumers or Taxpayers?

By dianeravitch
January 29, 2013 //
2

In response to an earlier post about how we have been changed from citizens to consumers:

Reading this post, i was reminded of these remarks by the
Nobel laureate Toni Morrison at fundraiser for my congressman, Rush
Holt.

These are courtesy of Andrew Tobias’s blog: “When I was young
we used to be called citizens—American citizens. Some of us
were called ‘second class’ citizens, yet the term, the category,
the aspiration was citizenship. Some time after the end of World
War II another definition of Americans arose — ‘consumers.’
Every narrative, advertisement, political promise was to, for and
about the powerful, courted and always obeyed American
Consumer. So we did—consume. Happily,
extravagantly, mindlessly—until the credit card, the mortgaged home
or homes, the college tuition loans came due. Now the category has
changed again. We are now simply taxpayers or not-taxpayers.
Think of the difference, the cognitive and emotional difference
between thinking of oneself as a citizen and regarding oneself as
merely a taxpayer. If I am simply an American taxpayer, I am
alarmed about where my money goes; I may even resent the recipient,
wonder whether he or she or it (the institution) is worthy of my
money. On the other hand, if I am principally an American citizen,
I have to wonder about what’s best for my country, my state, my
neighbors, the young, the elderly and the unfortunate. That shift
in national identity informs so much of the discourse and the
political choices of our representatives. Obviously, I prefer
the label ‘citizen,’ which is precisely why I admire Rush
Holt. To me his works, his advocacy, his personal and
political philosophy stem from the concept of citizenship and what
it demands of us. From education to healthcare, to women’s
rights, civil rights, support for artists—his concerns and labor
are those of a citizen for citizens. And that commitment is
rare these days. If you help him, support him, with your resources
and your own enthusiastic commitment, you will be a champion for
that ancient and blessed definition: Citizen.”

Categories Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, For-Profit, Privatization

NJ Parents and Educators on School Choice Week

By dianeravitch
January 29, 2013 //
56

New Jersey Save Our Schools reminds us that “school choice” was closely associated with resistance to court-ordered school desegregation in the South. Not only vouchers but segregation academies (“schools of choice”) were havens for whites fleeing contact with blacks.

Save Our Schools NJ Statement on School Choice Week

This week, there will be a concerted national effort to use the idea of parental school choice to advance an entirely different agenda.

We want to remind our legislators and those marketing school choice that legitimate school choices:
• Ensure every child has access to a high-quality public school education;
• Do not segregate or discriminate against our children on the basis of income, English proficiency, special needs, race, gender, religion or sexual preference;
• Are transparent in the sources and uses of their funding and in their educational outcomes;
• Are democratically controlled by local communities.

Unfortunately, what is being promoted by “choice” advocates does not come even close to meeting these standards.

Vouchers arose in Southern states during the 1960s, as a method of perpetuating segregation. To prevent children of color from attending their all-white schools, some districts actually closed those public schools and issued vouchers to parents that were only good at privately segregated schools, known as segregation academies.

The more recent history of voucher use in other states confirms that they continue to increase segregation.

Unfortunately, many charter schools have the same segregating effect.

For example, the recent Center for Research on Education Outcomes (CREDO) study of New Jersey charter schools found that New Jersey’s traditional public schools served four and a half times as many students with Limited English Proficiency and one and a half times as many special-needs students as did the charter schools. Rutgers Professor Bruce Baker has documented that this segregation also includes income, with charter schools serving a wealthier population of students than comparable traditional public schools.

New Jersey Department of Education statistics confirm that a number of New Jersey charter schools are also segregated by race and ethnicity.

Until school choice advocates can ensure that greater options for some parents do not equal more segregation for all of our children, their claims of looking out for the needy do not ring true.

Joining an all-white country club is also a choice, but not one that we would ever support.

——-

Save Our Schools NJ is a nonpartisan, grassroots organization of parents and other concerned residents whose more than 10,000 members believe that all NJ children should have access to a high quality public education.

Categories Charter Schools, New Jersey, Parent Groups, Segregation , Racial Isolation and Integration, Vouchers

Local School Boards to Duncan: Back Off!

By dianeravitch
January 29, 2013 //
42

The U.S. Department of Education is not supposed to control U.S. education.

It was created to serve schools, protect the rights of the neediest children, and coordinate funding programs, not to tell schools what to do.

One prong of the corporate reform movement seeks to strip local school boards of their responsibility, because they don’t like privatization.

The National School Boards Association listened to Secretary Duncan and a leading Republican member of Congress yesterday, then released this statement:

NSBA contact: Linda Embrey, Communications Office
703-838-6737; lembrey@nsba.org

School Board Leaders Advocate for Less Intrusive Role of the U.S. Department of Education

Alexandria, Va. (Jan. 29, 2013) – More than 700 school board members and state school boards association leaders will be meeting with their members of Congress and urging them to co-sponsor legislation, developed by the National School Boards Association (NSBA), to protect local school district governance from unnecessary and counter-productive federal intrusion from the U.S. Department of Education.

School board leaders are in Washington D.C. to take part in NSBA’s 40th annual Federal Relations Network Conference, being held Jan. 27-29, 2013.

The proposed legislation would ensure that the Department of Education’s actions are consistent with the specific intent of federal law and are educationally, operationally, and financially supportable at the local level. This would also establish several procedural steps that the Department of Education would need to take prior to initiating regulations, rules, grant requirements, guidance documents, and other regulatory materials.

“In recent years, the U.S. Department of Education has engaged in a variety of activities to reshape the educational delivery system,” said Thomas J. Gentzel, NSBA’s Executive Director. “All too often these activities have impacted local school district policy and programs in ways that have been beyond the specific legislative intent. School board leaders are simply asking that local flexibility and decision-making not be eroded through regulatory actions.”

Additionally, this legislation is intended to provide the House of Representatives and Senate committees that oversee education with better information regarding the local impact of Department of Education’s activities. The legislation is also designed to more broadly underscore the role of Congress as the federal policy-maker in education and through its representative function.

“We must ensure that the decisions made at the federal level will best support the needs and goals of local school systems and the communities they serve,” said Gentzel. “Local school boards must have the ability to make on-the-ground decisions that serve the best interests of our school districts.”

###

Categories Accountability, Corporate Reformers, Duncan, Arne, Education Industry, Education Reform, Federal Waiver, U.S. Department of Education, U.S. education

Special Education Teacher on Common Core

By dianeravitch
January 29, 2013 //
31

This NYC teacher of children with autism is having trouble teaching her students the Common Core.

Readers, do you have any advice for her?

“I just started teaching full-time in NYC as a special educator for children with autism. Upon arriving my new job, I have not received any support and help from my administration. With the new common core alignment for my students, I know that many of them are just not ready for that kind of learning yet. It is ashamed that my administration is pushing me to teach my kids how to retell details from a text when some of them still need to learn how to hold a pencil, do potty training, or drawing a line. I am absolutely opposed to this common core alignment in NYC. I do see this new standard as a way to set up special educators to fail.

As an educator, I like for my students to thrive in their learning at their own pace, especially for students of special needs. However, the more I get pushed around by the hierarchy and “educratics”, I do not feel like this job is a profession that I can respect any longer. I have put too many long hours to make my students learn but only to have the administration telling me that I am not challenging my students enough.

I feel that there has to be a better solution for making our student learn and be ready for the 21st Century. For every state to get funding for RACE TO THE TOP, that is just setting every child to fail and fall in the bottom.”

Categories Common Core, New York City, Special Education
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