Archives for the month of: March, 2013
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Has the Train Left the Station?

By dianeravitch
March 18, 2013 //
68

Supporters of corporate reform have several phrases they favor to persuade skeptics that resistance is futile.

One is to say that “the train has left the station.”

In other words, you have no choice. (Even though they prattle on about why kids need choice and how choice is the civil rights issue of the decade, they don’t think any educator or citizen should be able to choose to say no to their bad ideas.)

You must surrender or be fired.

Or they say, in states that were dumb enough to win Race to the Top funding, “the law is the law.” Even if the law is wrong, you must obey.

Even if value-added assessment has been rejected by dozens of research studies, you cannot refuse to obey.

Even if value-added assessment is inaccurate, you must not fight it.

You are allowed to argue about whether you want it to count for 20% or 30% or 50%, but not to insist that it is an absurd way to measure teacher quality.

Here is my take: Don’t comply with what you know is wrong.

Don’t agree with what you know to be unethical and demeaning, to you as a professional and to your students.

Don’t quibble around the edges.

Mobilize, organize, fight back. Get teachers and parents to understand that what the federal government has mandated has no research to support it. It is wrong. Do not compromise with what is wrong.

Categories Corporate Reformers, Education Reform, Privatization, Teacher Evaluations, Testing

What You Have Been Waiting For: The Cla$$room of the Future

By dianeravitch
March 18, 2013 //
11

EduShyster has captured in one small post the essence of the classroom of the future.

Here it is.

We will go where no nation in the world has ever dared to go:

Schools where happy teachers (all of them Excellent) have classes of 100 or more students, each one enjoying a customized, personalized education on their own tablet.

Think of the savings! Think of the market! Think of the profits!

Watch the video embedded in the link and you may notice the delightful homogeneity of the children in the cafeteria-style classroom, each learning at his or her own pace, all well-scrubbed, well-clothed and very happy to have their very own tablet.

Categories Accountability, Education Industry, For-Profit, Technology, Computers, Testing

How Rhee and Allies Failed in DC

By dianeravitch
March 18, 2013 //
7

A blogger took a close look at the latest report from DC on proficiency rates. As Matt Di Carlo and others have repeatedly shown, proficiency rates are notoriously easy to manipulate by moving the cut scores and other tricks.
But in DC, one fact is undeniable
: the rates went up in Affluentt districts and down in poor ones.

Categories Education Reform

Model Legislation to Protect Student Privacy

By dianeravitch
March 18, 2013 //
2

If you live in NewYork, contact your elected state officials. If you don’t, find a state legislator to introduce similar legislation. Our children’s personal data must not be released to inBloom (Gates and Murdoch) to give or sell to marketing corporations.

Leonie Haimson of Class Size Matters reports:

Great news! on Wednesday, Assemblymember Daniel O’Donnell introduced a bill, A6059, to protect student privacy that would block the NY State Education Department and DOE from sharing our children’s confidential personally identifiable data with corporations without parental consent.

Please call your Assemblymember today and ask him or her to co-sponsor this bill, A6059, to Protect Student Privacy. Contact information for your Assemblymember can be found here; just plug in your address here: http://assembly.state.ny.us/mem/?sh=search Tell him or her that children’s personal data should not be shared with third party corporations without parental consent.

Our press conference on the steps of Tweed yesterday morning was terrific. Among those who spoke out against this reckless and outrageous plan to distribute our children’s highly sensitive information without parental consent included civil rights attorney Norman Siegel, Council Members Steve Levin, Tish James, and Daniel Dromm, and Tom Allon. Here is an article in the Daily News about this outrageous plan; here is my accompanying oped.

Other newsclips from our press conference are from Schoolbook/WNYC, CBS News, AP , Politics 365, and a follow-up from the Daily News about the O’Donnell bill.

Parents Tory Frye, Karen Sprowal, Molly Sackler, and Lisa Shaw were among the fifty or so parents who attended, and they expressed their personal outrage that their children’s names, grades, emails, phone numbers, test scores, health, special education and disciplinary records could be so recklessly shared, without even consulting them about it. We also showed how all this data is being provided to for-profit vendors, with no thought of how this could leak out, stigmatize and endanger our children’s privacy and their success for years to come.

Our press release, with quotes from many other elected and public officials, including Comptroller John Liu and Public Advocate Bill DeBlasio, is posted on our blog here: http://shar.es/ecV4P

But please contact your Assemblymember today! And share this message with others who care.

Categories New York, Privacy and Privacy Rights

Why Obama Does Not Understand VAM

By dianeravitch
March 18, 2013 //
16

Obama’s former budget director Peter Orszag recently wrote an article claiming that teachers should be judged by the test scores of their students. He read about the Raj Chetty study and the Gates MET study, and that was good enough for him.

From what he writes, it is clear that he knows nothing of the research critiquing those two studies. Hundreds of millions of scarce dollars are being wasted to make VAM work. It is not working anywhere. The tests are not designed to measure teacher quality.

VAM is junk science.

Not to worry, Orszag is a banker so he knows how to evaluate teachers.

Here, Mercedes Schneider examines Peter Orszag’s assertions.

Categories Obama, Teacher Evaluations

Jeb Bush Will Bring Tale of “Florida Miracle” to Maine

By dianeravitch
March 18, 2013 //
4

On March 22, Governor Paul LePage will host an event for Jeb Bush and his merry team of market-model crusaders in Augusta, Maine.

Bush will present the full range of ALEC-inspired “reforms” guaranteed to bring privatization and for-profit entrepreneurs to Maine, while demoralizing Maine’s teachers and principals.

How clever to present the rightwing agenda as “reform,” and at the same time advertising Jeb’s Presidential run in 2016.

Categories ALEC, Bush, Jeb, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Florida, For-Profit, Testing, Vouchers

Broad Foundation Bails Out State’s Emergency District

By dianeravitch
March 18, 2013 //
11

Michigan created an “Educational Achievement Authority” in which it clustered the state’s lowest performing schools. Of course, it is corporate reform-speak to identify the schools with the lowest test scores and say they are part of an “achievement” district. But, hey, it is only words.

Seems the EAA needed an infusion of cash, so the Broad Foundation plunked down $10 million to keep it going. This makes sense because all of the schools in the EAA are controlled by John Covington, who “graduated” from Broad’s unaccredited superintendent’s academy in 2008. Covington previously was superintendent of the Kansas City schools, where he closed half the city’s schools before resigning abruptly for a bigger salary and unchecked power in Michigan.

There are certainly advantages to being part of Eli Broad’s network.

We will see what it does for the kids. They are waiting to hear something more than grandiose promises and test prep.

Categories Broad Foundation, Michigan

How CTU Confronted Antagonists in the Democratic Party

By dianeravitch
March 18, 2013 //
16

This is a stunning analysis of the relationship between labor unions and the Democratic Party.

It is a must-read.

Many in education have been baffled by the bipartisan consensus around Republican ideology. Micah Uetricht is not baffled. He says without hedging that “Democrats have swallowed the Right’s free market orthodoxy whole. Much of the party appears to have given up on education as a public project.”

Teachers unions, he writes, have been unable to articulate a coherent response to their abandonment.

That is, until last September, when the Chicago Teachers Union went on strike. He writes:

“The union has been unafraid to identify the education reform agenda pushed by Mayor Rahm Emanuel and his party nationally as an attempt to exacerbate inequalities within the education system, strip teachers of power and erode their standards of living, and chip away at public education as an institution, and to call such Democrats enemies. Rather than continuing an insider strategy that has netted so little for the rest of labor over the years, the CTU has entered into open opposition with the neoliberal wing of the party.”

This is an important development. And this is an essay you must read.

Categories Chicago, Democrats, Emanuel, Rahm, Privatization, Supporting public schools, Teacher Evaluations, Teacher Tenure, Unions

Jersey Jazzman Wonders About Rahm’s Brain

By dianeravitch
March 17, 2013 //
16

As Jersey Jazzman reports, on some days Rahm Emanuel blames poor test scores on children’s home environment. On other days, he blames it on teachers.

What is he thinking?

Here is what Chicago is thinking: Rahm’s approval rating is down to 33%.

He is polling about the same as Bobby Jindal and Rick Scott.

Could it be that making war on teachers and privatizing public education is not only bad public policy but bad politics? Maybe these politicians, birds of a feather, underestimated the voters.

Categories Chicago, Education Industry, Florida, Jindal, Bobby, Louisiana

Jindal and Scott in Trouble with Voters

By dianeravitch
March 17, 2013 //
9

Bobby Jindal’s poll numbers have dropped sharply. In 2010, he had favorability ratings of 58%.

His positive rating is now down to 34%, making him one of the most unpopular governors in the U.S.

In Florida, Governor Rick Scott’s approval ratings are down to 33%.

This is good news.

Voters are paying attention.

The people of Louisiana and Florida are not pleased by governors determined to eviscerate the public sector. Instead of improving basic public services, they are outsourcing and privatizing them.

They are not conservatives. They are arch-reactionaries. Our country needs a vigorous private sector and a robust public sector. Neither should be weakened.

The American public doesn’t want corporate America to take, rent, buy or grab what belongs to them.

Categories Florida, For-Profit, Jindal, Bobby, Louisiana
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