Archives for the month of: April, 2013
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A Parent Writes the New York State Education Department

By dianeravitch
April 4, 2013 //
13

Just received this:

“Dear Department of Education,

You should be proud of your Administrators and your principals. They are acting in full support of your harmful programs. They are choking out the words “these tests are very useful to your children”, and they “will not be able to determine the academic needs of your child” without them, while giving up countless hours of sleep for acting against their conscience. They sign their names to memos that state little white lies, perversions of the truth, and sometimes flat out falsities, while their stomachs turn and their palms sweat. They are even changing entire school policies that have worked well for years, just so that you can believe they are in full compliance. You should be proud of them. They are acting like good little soldiers and going against their own best interests and the best interests of the students. They are willing to turn on the very parents that are trying to save them and their schools. You should be very,very proud.”

“Jeanette Brunelle Deutermann”

Categories New York, Teacher Evaluations, Testing

Did Bill Gates Just Reverse Course?

By dianeravitch
April 4, 2013 //
90

I read this article “by Bill Gates” with a growing sense of incredulity.

I kept hearing echoes of many things I and others have written since Gates decided to make teacher evaluation the biggest crisis in American education. In 2008, he dropped the small schools movement and determined that teachers are our biggest problem. If we had a better way to evaluate them, schools could fire the bad ones and have only good ones.

No one did more to push the idea that teachers should be judged by the test scores of their students. No one had more influence on Race to the Top.

Now he says that test scores are not the only way to identify great teachers. They might not even be the best way.

Now he is worried that there is a growing backlash against standardized testing and he says he gets it.

He even concedes that tying pay to test scores is offensive.

Let us take him at his word. Let us take yes for an answer.

Please, Fairtest, invite him to speak at your next event.

Now if the day comes that he admits that the search for the right metric to measure teacher quality was a waste of time; and if the day comes that he realizes that many great teachers work selflessly in schools with low test scores; if he can begin to focus on the conditions that affect both teaching and learning rather than the fruitless search for the perfect evaluation system; when that day comes, we will all celebrate the painful metamorphosis of Bill Gates.

Categories Gates Foundation, Bill Gates, Merit pay, Teacher Evaluations

Critics Question Ethics of Jeb Bush Foundation

By dianeravitch
April 4, 2013 //
19

Recently, the Foundation for Educational Excellence (FEE), created by Jeb Bush, has come under fire for mixing its programming with the financial interests of its backers while serving as a vehicle for Bush’s 2016 presidential ambitions.

The Tampa Tribune ran a scathing article that pointed out problematic practices:

“Lobbyists are not allowed to finance perks like trips for state officials, but those at the Foundation for Excellence in Education get around that ban by being registered to another foundation run by Jeb Bush.

Former Gov. Jeb Bush’s nonprofit, education reform foundation is taking heat for using donations from for-profit companies to lobby for state education laws that could benefit those companies.
Among the activities of Bush’s Foundation for Excellence in Education that have come in for criticism: It pays for state officials and legislators to go to conferences where they meet with the company’s donors, including officials of corporations who stand to gain from the policymakers’ decisions.”
The article points out that:
“Normally, it’s illegal for lobbyists or lobbying organizations to provide benefits such as free trips to Florida legislators or top executive branch officials. But the Foundation for Excellence in Education escapes that prohibition because lobbyists on its staff are registered to another, closely related Bush foundation – even though the two share key staff members and even their Tallahassee address.”
Among the corporate sponsors of the FEE, the article says:
  • Pearson, a $9 billion-a-year media conglomerate which has a $250 million, four-year contract to administer the Florida Comprehensive Achievement Test. In the last few years, the company has been fined $14 million by the state for delayed test score results and criticized for its grading of writing tests.
  • Amplify, the education division of Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp., which sells classroom and curriculum software.
  • Charter Schools USA, a Fort Lauderdale-based for-profit company that manages charter schools under contract.
  • IQity, which sells online learning materials.

The foundation sponsors conferences where the top stars of the corporate reform movement appear to praise the virtues of vouchers, charters, and online learning. For example, last years’ summit in Washington, D.C.”

“….included “strategy sessions” on such topics as “Reaching more students with vouchers and tax-credit scholarships” and banquets with speeches by Bush, Condoleeza Rice and U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan.

“The 2011 conference at the historic Palace Hotel in San Francisco – one of the city’s most luxurious, with rooms starting at $350 per night –featured a speech by Murdoch.
It also included a fundraiser hosted by Bush for Tony Bennett, then running for re-election as Indiana education superintendent and a champion of the kind of conservative education reform advocated by the foundation – more charter schools, tax-paid tuition vouchers, more emphasis on testing, mandatory on-line courses and “virtual schools.”
Please read the article. It raises so many important questions about the push for privatization, the blend of philanthropy and profit-making, and one other important question: Why was Arne Duncan addressing a summit of rightwing cheerleaders for privatization and profit?
Categories Bush, Jeb, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Duncan, Arne, Education Industry, Florida, For-Profit, Pearson, Privatization

Drucker Vs. Deming: Who Is Right?

By dianeravitch
April 4, 2013 //
7

Ed Johnson writes:

“Noted business consultant Peter Drucker famously said, ‘That which can be measured, can be managed.’”

And W. Edwards Deming, Drucker’s contemporary, said: “The most important figures needed for management of any organization are unknown and unknowable.”

Categories Accountability, Corporate Reformers

A Subtle Smear on a Public School Advocate

By dianeravitch
April 4, 2013 //
100

Gotham Schools ran a story that questioned why the city’s leading advocate for public schools had enrolled her son in a private high school after many years as a public school parent. The story subtly implied that she may have lost her right to advocate for public schools because she was no longer a parent of a public school student.

Leonie Haimson founded Class Size Matters and is a co-founder of Parents Across America. She is a fearless critic of high-stakes testing and of the Bloomberg administration. She has been the most articulate and persistent supporter of class size reduction. She currently is waging war against the titans who are invading student privacy. She works out of her home with no pay and a shoestring budget.

You can see why powerful people would want to discredit her. She is a force, she has a large following, and she threatens them.

Consider the premise of the article: only public school parents may advocate for public schools.

This is classic corporate reform ideology. Corporate reformers use this specious ideology to argue for the parent trigger, claiming that the school belongs to the parents and they should be “empowered” to seize control and give it to a charter corporation.

This is as wrong as the attack on Haimson.

The public schools belong to the public. They are a public responsibility. Everyone has the right to advocate for them as well as to criticize them.

You don’t have to be a public school parent to care about our public schools. You don’t even have to be a parent. You just need to care about children and the future of our society.

Full disclosure: I am on the board of Class Size Matters. I know Leonie as a woman of intellect, principle, and integrity. Her courage inspires me and many others in the struggle for better schools.

Also, FYI, I am a product of the Houston public schools, K-12. My two grown sons went to private schools in NYC. I have three grandsons. The older two attended religious schools. The youngest is a public school student in Brooklyn. I support public education. That is my right as a citizen, regardless of where my offspring went to school.

Categories Bloomberg, Michael, Class Size Matters Org, Corporate Reformers, Parent trigger, Parents, Support for public schools

John White and the Rise of the TFA Elite

By dianeravitch
April 4, 2013 //
7

Mercedes Schneider here recounts how Teach for America alumni manage to rise to six-figure salaries at a tender age, and her paradigmatic TFA graduate is John White.

White, now the Commissioner of Education in Louisiana, arrived to do Bobby Jindal’s handiwork, that is, demolishing public education and dismantling the teaching profession.

Quite a task for a young man, but he is up to it.

Categories Louisiana, Teach for America TFA

“Why I Fight, Why You Should Too”

By dianeravitch
April 3, 2013 //
10

Crazy Crawfish is one of those amazing Louisiana bloggers who refuses to be bought, intimidated, or silenced.

He used to work in the data division of the Louisiana Department of Education. He reached a point where his conscience told him he had to work somewhere else.

Now he has a blog where he repeatedly shines his spotlight on the spin coming from his old department.

He keeps fighting for kids, fighting for public education, fighting for honest data.

Why does he keep fighting?

He explains it here.

Categories Education Reform

How Finns View What Matters in Education

By dianeravitch
April 3, 2013 //
23

This is a very interesting read about how Finns think about education.

They think about education, not just schooling. They think about how different institutions interact to shape young people. As Lawrence Cremin (my mentor and the author’s) taught, education is a network of institutions.

Finns care about equality, not as an abstraction but a reality. They make sure that everyone has health care and education. Teachers are highly respected. And they don’t understand our obsession with choice.

This is a good read.

Categories Indiana

Broad Foundation Molding the Syracuse School Board

By dianeravitch
April 3, 2013 //
10

This article shows how the Broad Foundation has shifted gears. It used to train school boards to its way of thinking (it trained the Atlanta school board, for example, to believe that metrics and data matter more than anything les).

Now it send school boards on tours to selected sites.

The Syracuse superintendent, a product of the unaccredited Broad Superintendents Academy, leads her school board to meetings around the nation to learn about the Broad style. In this case, they are in New Orleans, the Mecca of privatization. You can be sure that no one will tell them that at least two-thirds of the New Orleans charters are academically unacceptable, even in the reports of their supporters at the Cowen Institute at Tulane.

Categories Broad Foundation, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, New Orleans, New York

Where Does a School Chef Make More Than Teachers?

By dianeravitch
April 3, 2013 //
13

This is not a trick question.

It is a real question.

Jersey Jazzman has the answer right here.

Categories Charter Schools, Education Industry, New Jersey
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