Monica Ratliff won a historic upset in Los Angeles!
She won with 52% of the vote!
She had less than $50,000 in small contributions.
Her opponent Antonio Sanchez had the support of billionaire Eli Broad, billionaire Michael Bloomberg, and organized labor groups.
People power beat money power!!!
The Laura and John Arnold Foundation in Houston made a gift of $25 million to a group called New Schools for New Orleans to create and expand more high performing charter schools in that much touted city.
John Arnold made a fortune as a trader at Enron.
The hype surrounding New Orleans is so commonplace that many struggling urban districts are told that they should switch to an all-charter model so they could be as successful as New Orleans.
Mercedes Schneider looked at the latest publication of New Schools for New Orleans and recognized the presentation as a slick PR document, with colorful graphs and dramatic claims. But, she writes, none of it is true. New Orleans is a low-performing district in a low-performing state.
New Orleans has a higher proportion of students in privately-managed charters than any other district in the nation. Most get poor ratings. Research on Reforms says that 79% of the charters in the Recovery School District were graded D or F by the state. The Cowen Institute, a big supporter of charters, reported that 66% of the charters were rated D or F (see p. 7 of this report).
But New Orleans will get more. Major national chains want to get in or get more.
New Orleans will be our first city with fully privatized schools.
I am holding my breath. In the early returns in the Los Angeles school board race, underdog Monica Ratliff is slightly ahead of Antonio Sanchez.
With only one-quarter of the precincts reporting, Monica had about 51% of the vote to Sanchez’ 49%. This could easily go the other way.
Monica is a teacher. Sanchez is launching his political career.
Monica raised about $42,000. Sanchez collected about $3 million from the usual gang of billionaires and millionaires who want more charter schools and test-based teacher evaluations.
UTLA endorsed both candidates, which means it stayed neutral (to their shame).
If Monica’s lead holds, it would be the biggest upset of the year.
I am holding my breath.
UPDATE: with 42% of the precincts counted, midnight in LA:
| LA UNIFIED SCHOOL DISTRICT | |||||
| District 6 | 23,046 | ||||
| Monica Ratliff | 11,859 | 51.46% | |||
| Antonio Sanchez | 11,187 | 48.54% |
UPDATE:
With 30,000 votes counted, Monica retains her slim lead with 51.58% of the vote.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/common-core-clash-aft-president-fires-back-at-state-ed-officials/2013/05/21/a93321e8-c245-11e2-8c3b-0b5e9247e8ca_story.html
Common Core clash: AFT president fires back at state ed officials
By Lyndsey Layton,
The Washington Post
Tuesday, May 21, 3:45 PM
The head of a major teachers union fired back Tuesday at state education officials who had dismissed her call for a moratorium on stakes associated with new standardized state tests in public schools.
Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, said the Chiefs for Change, a small group of state education officials, was distorting her call for a moratorium on the use of new standardized tests based on Common Core standards to evaluate teachers and students.
The Common Core standards in math and reading are rolling out across the country and will be in place in 45 states and the District by next school year. Next spring, students in grades 3 through 12 will be tested on the new standards, which will significantly change the way reading and math are taught.
While a majority of teachers polled by the AFT support the new standards, most said they were not being adequately prepared by their school districts.
Weingarten said states should not use test scores based on the new standards to judge the performance of students, schools or teachers until the Common Core standards have been fully implemented. She was backed by Dennis Van Roekel, the president of the National Education Association. Together, the two unions represent most public school teachers.
Weingarten, a Common Core supporter, warned that the new approach is being poorly implemented and requires a “mid-course correction” or the effort will fall apart.
Last month, when New York administered new tests based on the Common Core standards, teachers, parents and students complained that the tests were poorly designed, covered material that had not been taught and frustrated children to the point of tears. Like many other states, New York plans to use the test results in decisions about student promotion, teacher job evaluations and school closings.
States should implement a moratorium on consequences for at least one year until teachers and students across the country are sufficiently steeped in the new standards, Weingarten said.
New York and Kentucky are the only states to have begun testing based on the new standards; the others are scheduled to follow in 2014.
The AFT said about 37,000 teachers, parents and others have written to Education Secretary Arne Duncan to support its call for a moratorium.
But Chiefs for Change, a group of state education officials organized with help from former Florida governor Jeb Bush (R), released a letter Tuesday to Duncan in which it said states should move ahead with plans to use the new tests to assess students and judge teacher performance.
“Recently, some members of the national education community have advocated for pulling back on accountability in our schools,” the group wrote to Duncan. “. . . [We] reject any calls for a moratorium on accountability. . . . We will not relax or delay our urgency for creating better teacher, principal, school and district accountability systems as we implement more rigorous standards.”
The group includes Janet Barresi, Oklahoma state superintendent of public instruction; Tony Bennett, Florida commissioner of education; Stephen Bowen, Maine commissioner of education; Chris Cerf, New Jersey commissioner of education; Deborah A. Gist, Rhode Island commissioner of elementary and secondary education; Kevin Huffman, Tennessee commissioner of education; Paul Pastorek, former Louisiana state superintendent of education; Hanna Skandera, New Mexico public education department secretary; and John White, Louisiana state superintendent of education.
Weingarten hit back at Chiefs for Change in her own letter on Tuesday, saying “contrary to your claim, we are not ‘pulling back on accountability in our schools.’ We are trying to make accountability real. By allowing teachers and districts to create and agree on implementation plans, field-test the new assessments and make necessary adjustments, we will actually be building a stronger accountability system.”
“Can you imagine doctors being expected to perform a new medical procedure without being trained in it or provided the necessary instruments—simply being told that there may be some material on a website?” Weingarten wrote. “Can you imagine a successful business rolling out a new product without the proper research and development, and without testing it? Of course not, but that’s what’s happening right now with the Common Core.”
________________________________
This e-mail and any attachments are confidential and are intended solely for the named addressee(s). If you are not a named addressee, you should not copy, alter, post, forward, distribute or disseminate the contents of the e-mail or attachments. Any views or opinions expressed are solely those of the individual and do not necessarily represent those of the American Federation of Teachers (AFT).
If you are within driving distance of New York City, please come to the Skinny Awards.
I will be there, along with many other friends of public education.
The Skinny Awards are the opposite of the Broad Awards, which are given to urban districts and charter schools that raise test scores. The Skinny Awards recognize character, courage, valor, and integrity in support of sound education ideas.
Leonie Haimson is the genius behind the Skinny Awards.
Benefits go to Class Size Matters, which advocates for reduced class size, opposes invasion of student privacy, and supports teachers and public schools. Leonie runs Class Size Matters on something less than a shoestring.
Here is the announcement:
Please attend our Fifth annual “Skinny Awards” Class Size Matters fundraiser
And enjoy a four-course dinner with wine
When: Tuesday June 18 at 6 PM
Where: FAGIOLINI ON 40TH, 120 E. 40th St. (betw. Lexington and 3rd Ave.)
Purchase your tickets here.
Each year we give an award to the individuals who provide the real “Skinny” on NYC schools. Past recipients of the award include Diane Ravitch and Juan Gonzalez. This year, our “Skinny” award will go to two brilliant teacher/bloggers:
Arthur Goldstein, who writes the NYC Educator blog and is an ESL teacher
at Francis Lewis High School in Queens
Gary Rubinstein, who blogs at Teach for Us and is a math teacher
at Stuyvesant HS in lower Manhattan
This dinner is always a highlight of the year, with delicious food, good wine, and great company.
This year, it is especially important to attend and/or contribute to our work. As always, Class Size Matters relies on your donations to keep our organization going. We have continued to advocate for smaller classes and an end to school overcrowding, as class sizes swell throughout the country. We also have become leaders in the fight against high-stakes testing, privatization, and the violation of student privacy.
Nationally, we spearheaded the battle against the sharing of confidential student data with a corporation called inBloom Inc. inBloom Inc. plans to put children’s personal information on a vulnerable data cloud, and share it with private vendors without parental notification or consent.
For the last few months, the tabloids and corporate reform blogs have featured attacks against me personally, evidence of the prominent role that Class Size Matters plays in the debate over education policy. One of the best ways to show your support for our work is to contribute whatever you can to keep our organization alive.
If you believe that class size matters, and that it is important to keep our public schools and children’s personal information out of the hands of private corporations, please make tax-deductible contribution now to Class Size Matters and/or purchase a seat at our fundraiser dinner June 18 by clicking here or here: http://www.nycharities.org/events/EventLevels.aspx?ETID=6292 .
Please forward to others who care and hope to see you there, Leonie
Leonie Haimson
Executive Director
Class Size Matters
124 Waverly Pl.
New York, NY 10011
212-674-7320
leonie@classsizematters.org
http://www.classsizematters.org
http://nycpublicschoolparents.blogspot.com
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/leonie-haimson
Follow me on twitter @leoniehaimson
Make a tax-deductible contribution to Class Size Matters now!
Subscribe to Class Size Matters news by emailing classsizematters-subscribe@yahoogroups.com
Subscribe to NYC education news by emailing nyceducationnews-subscribe@yahoogroups.com
New Mexico is the state with an acting superintendent who previously worked for Jeb Bush and Arnold Schwarzenegger. Remember, they love teachers. They just don’t respect them.
This teacher writes:
“Hey, in New Mexico we’re already being told that 50% of our evaluation will be student test scores. Then at our last staff meeting, we were told that all the gifted students were going to be place in one classroom. If our test scores don’t go up, we are out of a job after a 90 day growth plan. Forget compensation (we haven’t had a raise in 5 years, and it doesn’t look like there will be one this year either), we will just be unemployed.”
Tom Aswell, investigator journalist and blogger, is covering and uncovering evidence of fraud in the Louisiana Course Choice program.
Hundreds of students were somehow registered for online courses without the knowledge of the students or their parents. How did this happen? This would mean a massive transfer of funds from Louisiana taxpayers to online corporations based in Texas, connected to former Secretary of Education Rod Paige.
What a tangled web of connections.
Course Choice is part of Jindal’s privatization plan, along with vouchers. The Louisiana Supreme Court ruled recently 6-1 that Jindal may not use the funding dedicated to public schools to pay for vouchers and course choice. But John White is undeterred by inconveniences like court rulings.
New Yorkers will be interested to note that former NYC Deputy Chancellor Eric Nadelstern, who worked for Joel Klein and was John White’s boss, endorsed the online courses that are part of the scandal.
The most noxious element of President Obama’s Race to the Top is the requirement that teachers should be evaluated to a significant degree by the test scores of their students.
By now, there is a large body of research that shows that this is a very bad idea, that the rankings based on test scores say more about who was in the class than the quality of the teacher.
But the idea of evaluation by test scores has been taken up with delight by the farthest right-wing state legislatures, the latest being Michigan.
Michigan has one of those legislative bodies that devotes considerable time to figuring out what they can take away from public schools and public school teachers.
And so now there is a bill to tie teacher compensation directly to test scores.
We know how this will end:
Teachers will teach to the test.
Schools will narrow the curriculum only to what is tested.
Some desperate teachers and/or administrators will cheat.
Some schools and superintendents will find ways to game the system.
Teachers will avoid the students who might drag down their rankings.
Some fine teachers will be fired because they taught the most challenging students.
Teachers will be demoralized by the abasement of their profession.
The only one who will look on these events with pleasure will be the architects of Race to the Top.
This is what they wanted.
And if they didn’t want it, they should stop it now. Admit their error.
How sad.
Same old story in North Carolina as elsewhere: big money from reactionary millionaires funding the theft of public education. American Federation for Children is based in Michigan. It supports vouchers.
Wake the town and tell the people.
Large, out-of-state donors fuel North Carolina’s school “choice” movement
More than $90,000 funneled to state legislative campaigns in 2012
By Lindsay Wagner
In March of 2012, North Carolina House Speaker Thom Tillis and ten other state lawmakers flew to Florida on the dime of Parents for Educational Freedom in North Carolina (PEFNC), an organization known for endorsing conservative education reform initiatives, including school vouchers.
In the year that has followed, North Carolina has absorbed a flood of more than $90,000 in campaign contributions to lawmakers friendly to the school choice movement.
The stated intent of last year’s trip was to educate North Carolina lawmakers about Florida’s tax credit scholarship program, which encourages companies to donate scholarship money for low-income children to attend private schools by providing matching state tax dollars. Critics of the Florida program say it’s a thinly-disguised voucher scheme that diverts funds from the public school system to send kids to private institutions that are not held to the same high standards applied to public schools.
The Florida trip, which cost $8,300, was clearly billed as “educational,” rather than “influential,” by PEFNC in an effort to ensure that the trip did not violate NC lobbying laws.
Since the Florida gathering, lawmakers in the North Carolina legislature have introduced more than 20 bills related to school choice. Rep. Marcus Brandon, one of the eleven lawmakers who went to Florida, argues that “it is unconstitutional not to give students a choice” when it comes to their education. He has introduced six bills related to school choice this session, including two bills that would bring vouchers to the state.
Brandon was also one of several lawmakers who, in 2012, received campaign donations from PEFNC’s PAC as well as individual PEFNC funders.
Though not indicative of any apparent unlawful activity or purpose, the story of where this money originated and how it flowed shines a revealing light on a movement that bills itself as a grassroots effort driven by the demands of average families.
American Federation for Children
Earlier this month, a reporter for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel published a copy of the American Federation for Children’s (AFC) “2012 Election Impact Report.” The report reveals that AFC, a well-known national school choice advocacy organization, funneled more than $90,000 to the 2012 election campaigns of Republican and Democratic North Carolina lawmakers who support school choice, with the help of two local PACs in North Carolina.
Diane Ravitch's blog 