Have you noticed that the vast majority of public schools that are being closed enroll disproportionate numbers of black students? Even in districts that are majority black, the closing schools are even more segregated than the district. What will happen to these children?
Jersey Jazzman noticed. He calls it the Néw Apartheid
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The Chicago Tribune says that the public is ready for “reform.”
What they mean by reform is that it is time to blame teachers if kids don’t learn, and punish the teachers, like, fire them.
What they mean by reform is that the editorial board wants the public schools to be put into private hands.
They are positive about merit pay even though it has never succeeded anywhere, including Chicago. The Chicago merit pay plan was funded with $27 million from the US Department of Education’s Teacher Incentive Fund. The evaluation was funded by the Joyce Foundation, which also sponsored the Chicago Tribune’s public opinion poll.
After five years, this is what the evaluators of the Chicago merit pay plan concluded: “The final impact report found that the program did not raise student math or reading scores, but it increased teacher retention in some schools.”
The Joyce Foundation knew this. So did the Chicago Tribune. Why didn’t they so?
The public wants lots of things that have failed again and again.
Shouldn’t the editorial board of the Chicago Tribune tell the public the truth?
Matt Di Carlo is a careful social scientist. He combs through the data on teacher evaluation and tries to understand whether they make sense statistically. In his latest blog, he reports that the the results so far seem to show that most teachers are getting very good ratings. This is a huge disappointment to the corporate reformers, because they were counting on the new evaluations to discover vast numbers of “bad teachers” and those teachers would be fired.
He cites an article in Education Week which found that “in Michigan, Florida and Georgia, a high proportion of teachers (more than 90 percent) received one of the two top ratings (out of four or five). This has led to some grumbling among advocates and others, citing similarities between these results and those of the old systems, in which the vast majority of teachers were rated ‘satisfactory,’ and very few were found to be ‘unsatisfactory.'”
In other words, the advocates believe that when students get low scores, it is the fault of bad teachers, so there must be lots of bad teachers out there.
The District of Columbia, as Di Carlo shows, just redesigned its ratings so that more teachers would fall into the “ineffective” range. How disappointing for reformers if they can’t find and fire large numbers of bad teachers! Think of all the job openings for the trainees of The New Teacher Project or TFA! All those little groups of new teachers funded by the Gates Foundation can cheer as the median age of teachers drops lower and lower, and inexperience becomes the norm.
Much as I admire Di Carlo, I disagree with him about teacher evaluation by test scores. I think it is clear that it will cause teaching to the test, cheating, gaming the system, avoiding the neediest students, and narrowing the curriculum. I think it is JUNK SCIENCE.
Value added assessment was cooked up by economists and statisticians to measure productivity, and it is out of place in education.
From a teacher:
“I worked at one of the CPS schools that is going to be closed and, contrary to the administrative determination, it is not an “underutilized” school.
“The school is truly an anchor in the community. Many teachers have worked there so long that their students today are the children of their former students, The teachers have devoted their entire careers to that school, to that community, and now they are losing their livelihoods. Their hearts are broken. This is all so utterly senseless.”
The Venice High School in Los Angeles has been offered a choice by the district administration: accept a pilot school or a charter school to share your space. The community was not asked for its input nor offered the choice to say no to a pilot school and a charter school.
The first pilot school was going to be created by non-educator Steve Barr, but the LA board decided to backtrack so they approved the plan to co-locate in the VHS building but to locate Barr’s school elsewhere.
The principal of Venice High School was told that a decision about the future of the school will be made during spring break. A typical reformer trick to make sure that the people most affected are not asked to participate in the decisions that affect them.
The principal sent out the following appeal to the Venice High School community, inviting them to deliberate the future of the school. It was a bold move to assert the concept that the public schools belong to the public, not to John Deasey, not to Monica Garcia, not to Eli Broad or Bill Gates or Michael Bloomberg or Wall Street. Its about an old-fashioned but nearly forgotten idea called democracy, where the voice of the public matters.
They met yesterday, and I look forward to hearing what was decided.
She wrote:
Pilot School Information
Dear Venice High School Community,
I wanted to give you an update to the LAUSD School Board vote regarding the Incubator Pilot School.
The School Board decided yesterday, 3/19/13 to approve the Incubator Pilot School but not the location. The board specified that either Venice High School’s SBM OR SSC vote on whether the Pilot School should be placed on our campus. The alternative is that if Venice denies the Pilot, a charter school would be offered the 14 empty classrooms.
At first, we thought we had until the next time the board meets, which is in April to make a decision.
During a late afternoon, phone conference today, with several central and ESC-W staff members, I was informed that the district has a legal deadline to meet in regards to offering space to a charter school, which is next Friday, March 29, 2013 (when we are on Spring Break). Venice High School therefore has to make a decision by this Friday, March 22 on whether we are approving the Pilot School to co-locate on our campus or not. Again, if we decide not to have the Pilot School co-locate on Venice HS, the empty classrooms will be offered to a charter school.
The Incubator Pilot School Design Team and Sponsors will be here all day tomorrow, 8:00 a.m.- 4:00 p.m. to facilitate optional informational sessions for teachers and parents during the different periods. They will also speak with the Leadership Class tomorrow. Please feel free to see them and get more information if needed.
I am calling for an emergency SBM and SSC meeting for Friday, March 22, 2013 at 12:40 p.m. Under the Brown Act an emergency meeting can be called with a 24-hour notification. I think it is best that we come together as a big group to hear the same information and then we can break and vote as individual groups. The Incubator Pilot School Design Team will also be available on Friday, 12:30 p.m. to 3 :00 p.m. to provide any additional information. I apologize for the inconvenience but this is truly out of my hands. We have tough decisions to make for the future of Venice High School but I have the confidence in each and every one of you that you will vote with your heart and mind and do what is best of our students.
Please know that I will share any and all information I get regarding the Pilot School in a fast and transparent manner and that might include late night emails. I will also be sending out an automated call to the entire Venice HS community informing them of this change of plans and post information on the website. Again, I thank you for all that you do.
Elsa Mendoza, Ed. D.
Principal
Venice High School
Here is the most recent newsletter of the Network for Public Education.
It contains a clear statement of principles: what we are for and what we oppose.
Please read and forward to your friends.
If you belong to a group that is fighting for public schools, send them a copy of the newsletter and ask them to join us as an ally in the struggle to beat back corporate reform, privatization, mass school closings, and the punitive use of testing to stigmatize children, teachers, and schools.
David Greene mentors many young TFA recruits in the New York City public schools. They need his help because they are assigned to some of the city’s toughest schools. He made this comment in response to an earlier post about how Nevada hopes to replace some of its career teachers with TFA youngsters.
David Greene writes:
Another business plan – not education policy.
This has become the (hopefully unintended) consequence of TFA.
It has a become a scab organization to allow this type of political maneuvering and make teaching a “temp” job for people moving elsewhere than a classroom as a career.
What it does is lower the average teaching salary and decrease radically the need to pay out pensions because <5% of these “temps” will work long enough to vest in a pension.
Please pass these posts on to those Nevada policy makers:
THE INCONVENIENT TRUTHS ABOUT TFA
http://dcgmentor.com/?p=162
TFA TEACHERS: BETWEEN A ROCK AND A HARD PLACE
http://dcgmentor.com/?p=99
Stephen Lazar, a National Board Certified Teacher in New York City, was an early and enthusiastic supporter of the Common Core. He is worried now about the speed other which the standards are being pushed into the schools.
In this important article, civil rights attorney explains how Governor Malloy switched sides on the funding formula for Connecticut public schools.
What hypocrisy! As mayor of Stamford, he was a plaintiff in the lawsuit. As governor, he now opposes the views he once espoused.
Lecker writes:
“As Stamford’s mayor, Dannel Malloy was an original plaintiff in the pending school funding case, The Connecticut Coalition for Justice in Education Funding v. Rell, and led the charge to win just and equitable funding for Connecticut schools. Now, Governor Malloy is trying aggressively to get the case dismissed. In doing so, he has exposed his 2012 education reforms as empty promises compared to what Connecticut’s children really need.
“The plaintiffs in CCJEF v. Rell charge that the state is violating the constitutional right of Connecticut’s children to an adequate education by depriving school districts of billions of dollars. Consequently, schools, especially in Connecticut’s neediest districts, cannot afford basic educational tools such as a sufficient number of teachers, reasonable class size, adequate school facilities, services for at-risk children, electives, AP classes, even books, computers and paper.”
Now Governor Malloy claims, with no evidence whatever, that his corporate reform plan focused on testing, accountability, rewards, and punishments, will do the job instead of equitable funding.
What hypocrisy!
This article gives an excellent overview of the ALEC education agenda and shows how states–in this case, New Jersey–copy the ALEC model legislation almost verbatim.
Diane Ravitch's blog 