EduShyster first skewers the new Chief Operating Officer of the Néw York City Department of Education, a young man of 27. After the Cathie Black debacle, nothing from this zany department surprises anymore.
Then treat yourself by watching the video created by the neglected, discounted,derided students of Newark, NJ., which is embedded in the post.
Last weekend the California Democratic Party passed a resolution that forthrightly criticized corporate education reform, including high-stakes testing and privatization. The resolution specifically singled out Michelle Rhee’s StudentsFirst and the Wall Street hedge fund managers’ Democrats for Education Reform as organizations that are fronts for corporate interests and Republicans.
But this upset the Los Angeles Times editorial board, which is known for its contempt for teachers’ unions. The Times apparently thinks that giving public funds to entrepreneurs, corporations, and hustlers with no oversight or accountability is “school reform.”
They neglected to mention that most of the candidates supported by StudentsFirst are Republicans, not Democrats.
Howard Blume has an excellent article in the Los Angeles Times describing the corporate money that poured into the recent Los Angeles school board race.
He never quite pins down why all these moguls and titans want to control the LA school board, but he provides a useful dance card of the corporate reform movement.
Among their causes: privately managed charter schools; evaluating teachers by test scores; fighting the union; supporting Superintendent John Deasey; eroding collective bargaining.
John White is pulling some fast tricks with public school funding in Louisiana. Fortunately the state has smart bloggers who protect the public interest and blow the whistle.
There is no end to White and Jindal’s efforts to transfer public dollars into private hands. He wants to eliminate a requirement that high schools have one guidance counselor for every 450 students. He says they can hire private vendors or whatever. He calls it “flexibility.”
This guy has a creative idea almost every day to strip resources and personnel fro the public schools.
Public education is at risk in several states, where extremists want to tear it up and replace it with privatization.
One of the states where the privatizers are in charge is Wiscondin, where Governor Scott Walker hopes to demolish public education.
To get a sense of what is happening in Wisconsin, read this article. Written by a teacher, it challenges syndicated columnist George Will for joining the wrecking crew and spreading false tales about the public schools, spread by unreliable sources.
This tide of hostility directed at a democratic institution is bizarre. It is not conservative to destroy one of the pillars of our free society.
The Chicago Teachers Union reports that the system leadership starved the schools it wanted to close, depriving them of the resources and personnel they needed to succeed. Those at the top should be held accountable when schools fail. It doesn’t happen accidentally. They are responsible.
New Report Cites Past Disinvestment By CPS in
Schools Targeted for Closure
A history of trauma and neglect exposed in “A Tale of Two Schools: The Human Story Behind Destructive School Actions in Chicago”
CHICAGO—The Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) issued a report examining the upheaval at two elementary schools slated for closure in recent years by Chicago Public Schools (CPS). The study, titled A Tale of Two Schools: The Human Story Behind Destructive School Actions in Chicago, uses testimony from parents, staff, administrators and community leaders to address district neglect, barriers to improvement, low student morale and other concerns at Simon Guggenheim Elementary and Jacob Beidler Elementary schools, and examine the overall causes and effects of school actions.
“This report presents an autopsy of a school community undermined and destroyed by this school district,” said CTU President Karen Lewis. “CPS starved Guggenheim for years, demonized the teachers, paraprofessionals and clinicians and demoralized the administration and students so it could place this school under arrest, read it its last rites and slate it for execution. Now they are targeting Beidler and 53 other existing school communities in the same manner.”
Located in West Englewood, Guggenheim, 7141 S. Morgan, successfully fought a closing attempt in 2010 before a new CPS-appointed administration presented a number of systemic obstacles to school improvement, epitomized by the mishandling of the school’s homeless student population and a 42-student third-grade class at the start of the 2011-2012 school year. After throwing the school into utter chaos CPS then used the poor test scores and the hostile school climate that it created through years of disinvestment and destabilization to justify the school’s closure in 2012.
“They broke the family bond,” said former Guggenheim teacher Kimberly Walls.
CPS announced its intentions to close Jacob Beidler Elementary School, 3151 W. Walnut, in 2011 and turn the school’s building over to a charter school. Appalled by CPS’s decision, the East Garfield Park community rallied, marched and organized against the closing and CPS withdrew the proposal. Two years and three CEOs later, CPS once again placed Beidler on a hit list of schools targeted for closure in 2013.
“I think that kids need a stable environment, and this is one of the few stable environments that many of these kids have, where they have familiar faces and people who care about them,” said a Beidler staff member. “It’s going to be a traumatic situation for them to lose many of the people who have been their support system, in addition to their home.”
Anger and fear returned to the Beidler community, which once again had to fight for its school’s survival. Another successful campaign spared Beidler—one of only two East Garfield Park elementary schools to avoid direct impact from 2013 proposed actions.
“What the communities at Guggenheim and Beidler experienced is an example of why there is zero trust in the mayor’s plan to see this plan through honestly and effectively,” Lewis said about CPS’s proposal to close 54 schools, the largest mass school closing in U.S. history.
A Tale of Two Schools presents first-person testimony of CPS’s policy-driven causes and harmful effects of school actions at Guggenheim and the culture of fear created by closure threats at Beidler. Through case studies, the report identifies the obstacles that schools threatened with closure face, and examines how CPS addresses these difficulties. The report also investigates the support available at schools fearing closure and lists the additional resources that could help them succeed. The case studies also address the effectiveness of CPS transition plans and the value of community input at school actions hearings. Each element of these case studies is based on testimony from multiple sources.
Many of the improvements at Beidler mirror the 5 Essential Supports (5 Essentials). Based on more than 20 years of research, the University of Chicago’s Consortium on Chicago School Research found that the 5 Essentials consistently correlate with school improvement and provide a more comprehensive approach to school evaluation than simply using scores on standardized tests or “value-added” measures. They are:
· Effective Leaders
· Collaborative Teachers
· Ambitious Instruction
· Supportive Environment
· Involved Families
While Beidler excels or is making significant progress on these 5 Essentials, Guggenheim was denied the opportunity to develop these supports. After a thorough investigation of Guggenheim, A Tale of Two Schools concludes that CPS did not provide teachers and staff with the necessary assistance to improve the school. The district, in fact, imposed policies that weakened all five of the Essential Supports. After defeating the 2010 closing attempt, CPS restricted Guggenheim even more, creating serious barriers to the school’s proposed action plan. Then, two years later, CPS came back to Guggenheim and completed the systematic destruction of the school, shuttering its doors for good.
“People feel a disinvestment in the school, the principal changes mid-year, how good is that?” said Rene Heybach of the Chicago Coalition for the Homeless. At the end of 2011, 91 Guggenheim students qualified as homeless, according to the school’s homeless liaison, paraprofessional Sherri Parker.
“All this conflict starts happening, it makes you feel like your school is disintegrating, and guess what, it is disintegrating,” Heybach said.
Research for A Tale of Two Schools was supported by a grant from Communitas Charitable Trust, a family foundation funding education and community groups that are committed to empowering people in their schools and communities to establish institutions with the capacity to execute collaborative and democratic practices.
“We fear that this massive school closings plan by CPS will destabilize and destroy communities, thus we chose to help CTU develop this project because CTU has demonstrated its ability and commitment to supporting teachers, parents and community develop strong cooperative actions within their schools and their communities,” Communitas said in a written statement.
CPS is creating a vicious cycle of disinvestment and population suppression that severely limits the ability of African-American communities on the South and West sides to reemerge as thriving neighborhoods. Eighty-eight percent of the students affected by school actions from 2001 to 2012 were African-American. Out of the 54 schools proposed for closure in 2013, 88 percent are African-American and only 125 of the 16,119 total students—0.78 percent—are white.
By closing neighborhood schools, Mayor Rahm Emanuel and CPS are declaring these communities dead zones that are unworthy of targeted investment. But at each school proposed for closing, consolidation, co-location or turnaround, there is a story, a story that involves real students, teachers, staff and administrators who are inextricably linked to their school. Schools are not just a building for students and staff; they are a second home. It is easy to lose the human element when applying complex data, but we cannot let these stories be forgotten when considering destabilizing school actions.
Instead of closing neighborhood schools, CPS must target resources to strengthen existing programs, add support, remove inequities, provide schools with stable leadership and ensure that teachers have what they need to educate and nurture their students. Schools cannot be saved by closing them, and communities cannot prosper without high-quality schools. CPS is contributing to a vicious cycle of disinvestment and population flight that severely hinders the possible revival of established African-American and integrated communities.
###
Indiana legislators have passed so much anti-public school legislation this year that they are feeling “reform fatigue.”
Of course, they expanded the state voucher program. That way, as many children as possible can escape going to a community school, even if they are in kindergarten. The good news is that 10 Republican senators voted against the bill, maybe they ere public school graduates and didn’t want to see their school destroyed.
By a narrow vote, they dropped the requirement that superintendents need to be an educator or have a master’s degree. This is called lowering standards.
The House and Senate disagree about Common Core. The Chamber of Commerce strongly supports it.
The most useful thing they did was to toss out Jeb Bush’s beloved A-F report cards, because no one understood what the ratings meant.
EduShyster writes a personal letter to Teach for America.
Please, she says, we know you are excellent.
We know you are beyond excellent.
We know that there is no one more excellent than you. Please, we get it. Enough.
But consider what all this self-praise does:
“Every time you toot the horn of triumph, alerting us to the good news that your new teachers are better than our new teachers, even though the evidence is indisputable that all new teachers struggle, or that your handful of alumni teachers are better than our experienced teachers, you hammer the nail in a little deeper. You fan the illusion that temporary teachers who jet in from elsewhere are just as good, are in fact more excellent, than real teachers who are in it for the long haul.”
And one more thing:
“The idea that we could replace our entire teaching force with TFA-style excellence is a fantasy, of course. There are more than 3 million teachers in the country and fewer than 6,000 new TFA corps members each year. And yet the steady drum beat, the constant horn tooting, hat raising and praise singing, creates the illusion that such a thing is not just possible but a worthy goal.
“So please stop, Teach for America. I get it. We get it. The question is do you get it?”
Technical issues plague the tests.
Not ready for prime time.
This is a parody but it is uncomfortably close to reality.
The humorist known as Students Last has compiled a reading list to prepare children for failure on the tests.
Just listen to all the bigwigs warning about high failure rates, ripping off the Band-aid and sink-or-swim in the deep end of the pool. That’s enough to create a sense of dread and high anxiety.
The only thing missing from the reading list is a manual for nervous parents and an advice book on how to organize a mass resistance movement.
Diane Ravitch's blog 