A teacher in Cheatham County, Tennessee, sent me this article about the unusual exodus of teachers from the county’s schools. Twenty-five percent of the staff have resigned in the past year, including the football coach and the basketball coach (whose teams had good seasons).
There is a local school board meeting tonight to hear all sides. Parents and citizens should show up and get involved. Learn what is happening in your local schools.
Leslie T. Fenwick, dean of education at Howard University, argues that what is called school “reform” is really about urban land development, not about improving the lives of disadvantaged minority children. She says, follow the money to understand the “reforms.”
Dean Fenwick doesn’t mince words. She writes:
“The truth can be used to tell a lie. The truth is that black parents’ frustration with the quality of public schools is at an all time righteous high. Though black and white parents’ commitment to their child’s schooling is comparable, more black parents report dissatisfaction with the school their child attends. Approximately 90 percent of black and white parents report attending parent teacher association meetings and nearly 80 percent of black and white parents report attending teacher conferences. Despite these similarities, fewer black parents (47 percent) than white parents (64 percent) report being very satisfied with the school their child attends. This dissatisfaction among black parents is so whether these parents are college-educated, high income, or poor.
“The lie is that schemes like Teach For America, charter schools backed by venture capitalists, education management organizations (EMOs), and Broad Foundation-prepared superintendents address black parents concerns about the quality of public schools for their children. These schemes are not designed to cure what ails under-performing schools. They are designed to shift tax dollars away from schools serving black and poor students; displace authentic black educational leadership; and erode national commitment to the ideal of public education.”
What is needed to change the stagnant status quo? Read the article.
Two political leaders—Arne Duncan and Dannell Malloy, governor of Connecticut–recently held a press conference where they both pretended to disdain high-stakes testing. Duncan went so far as to claim that he had decreased standardized testing when he led the Chicago public schools.
If only it were true! Jonathan Pelto and Sarah Darer Littman did some fact-checking, and the only question is why these guys don’t own up to their public record. They are both champions of standardized testing. Their unwillingness to own up to their own record shows how unpopular the testing-accountability movement has become. Now if they would only practice what they preach!
Thank you, Governor Pat Quinn!
And congratulations to the 18 suburban districts that protected their students.
Governor Pat Quinn signed legislation that enacts a one-year moratorium on virtual charters, allowing time to study their performance. Any impartial study will reveal that online charters get poor results. They have high student dropouts every year, students get low grades and have a poor graduation rate. The beneficiaries of online charters are the corporations that own them. They make huge profits.
Eighteen suburban districts had previously banned the virtual schools, which allegedly wanted to target at-risk students. Online charters have no record of success serving at-risk students. These are the students most in need of human contact with caring teachers.
Gary Rubinstein, who teaches mathematics, analyzed Commissioner John King’s plan to evaluate NYC teachers, which he imposed in the absence of an agreement between New York City and the United Federation of Teachers. Gary went a step further and read the law that King based his plan on. Gary concludes that King misread the law and that his plan is fundamentally flawed.
Step back a minute and ask yourself how many other professions are evaluated based on legislative mandates. Even in public sector jobs, like firefighters and police, nurses and social workers, do legislatures dictate how they should be evaluated on the job and by what criteria rpthey should be rated?
Arthur Camins is director of the Center for Innovation in Engineering and Science Education at the Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken, New Jersey.
In this excellent article, he notes that the advocates of the status quo are those who are in power and who impose high-stakes testing and privatization on districts and states. Oddly enough, the leaders of the status quo dismiss critics by calling them “defenders of the status quo.”
Camins suggests that real reform would be very different from the current evidence-free status quo.
He argues that: “the pillars of current education reform are more likely to preserve rather than change the status quo. Further, there are alternative policies that are more likely to mediate educational inequity, creating real rather than illusory movement. None of the pillars of reform will address either of these conditions at scale. Instead, they merely give some students a competitive advantage. Even if reforms redistribute these benefits or slightly alter the size of the advantaged group, they are still essentially maintaining the status quo, creating the illusion of movement, without fundamental change.”
One of the pillars of the “status quo reformers” is a devout belief in charters. Camins says this is not real reform: “Current policies that fund increasing numbers of charter schools is not a game-changer because there is no evidence that high-quality charters are a scalable strategy. Some argue that they should be part of a solution. However, since they only serve the few based on comparative advantage, this is in the end a cynical idea- a solution for the lucky few. Others argue that they are the solution. These folks see results-driven competition as a means to weed out ineffective schools through closings. This implies continual disruption in the lives of the disadvantaged children they are meant to serve. Rather than forward movement, it is an exacerbation of current conditions. The publicity around the limited number of effective charter schools creates the illusion of improvement for a few, while everything else stands still. Finally, since the evidence is mounting that charter schools are increasing rather than deceasing class and racial segregation, they are supporting not disrupting the status quo.”
The other pillar of the “status quo reforms” is high-stakes testing. This too is not real reform. “In reality, these reforms preserve rather than challenge the status quo because they do not address the fundamental causes of educational inequity. They preserve the core idea that competition rather than collaboration is the lever for fundamental change. Competition for rewards is only effective for short-term superficial goals while undermining the collaboration necessary for long-term improvement. Since teacher isolation is too often a feature of current school culture, a competitive reward system will only makes this situation worse. Again, we have the illusion of movement while leaving things in place. As many have argued, fostering intrinsic motivation is the only sure strategy for deep sustainable change.”
What would real reform look like? To begin with, it would address the root causes of poor academic performance. Camins says that “A focus on improving the collective culture of schools, rather than individual teachers, has far greater potential for substantive progress.” He has ten specific approaches that would lead to real reform and would liberate students and teachers from the punitive status quo. Read the article.
.
The theory behind charters was that they would produce better results or lose their charter.
Education Trust Midwest reports that this is not happening.
Low-performing charters are not closed. Instead, they are expanding.
Charter operators have learned how to work the political system to their benefit. Not so much for the kids.
Anthony Cody gets stronger and sharper with every column he writes.
In this post, he explains how the best defense is a good offense.
He shows how critics of NCLB were tricked in 2008, then tricked again by Race to the Top.
It’s time to stop collaborating with those who want to destroy public education, he says.
It’s time to recognize, he writes, that Common Core is old wine in new bottles. Instead of getting rid of the testing and accountability dragnet, we will be ensnared in it even more deeply.
He writes,
“The Common Core could be called a “High Tech Rehabilitation of High Stakes Tests.” The major goal of the project has been to overcome objections to data-driven school reform, by offering standards and tests that are so new and different that we will not mind having our schools driven by them. They are heavily supported by a coalition of corporate entities that stand to make billions from the privatization of education. If we cannot mount a coherent counterproposal, we will be stuck objecting piecemeal to the worst elements of this regime, just as we did with NCLB. This may give us some small victories, but the entire project will remain intact.”
What would a good offense look like? The first step, as he puts it, is to “discredit bogus claims and false solutions,” as we do here regularly, like the stories about the miracle schools where 100% of the students graduate and go to college (except for those that don’t), or the miracle claims for mayoral control (but forget about D.C. and Cleveland), or the phony claims about privatization and inexperienced teachers.
What else? Read his post.
A reader in Los Angeles welcomes all who care about improving public education:
Parents from all across Los Angeles are Mobilizing!!!!
Please gather tomorrow, Tuesday June 4 at 8:30 am out front of LAUSD central offices on Beaudry street downtown.
Lend your voice to a collective choir that demands to be heard.
We are Students, Parents and Angelenos for Real Classroom Support: SPARCS.
We must ignite the SPARCS of this truth in front of our elected school board:
KIDS NEED SMALLER CLASSES IN ORDER TO LEARN BETTER
What We Stand For:
Strong, Truly Public Schools. In Los Angeles, we demand truly public schools accountable to the public, administered and run by individuals dedicated to educating every child.
Democracy Fortified Through Public Education. Every child in Los Angeles has a civil right to attend a good public school dedicated primarily to their education.
Dynamic, Responsive Public Education. Appropriate, effective evaluation of our public schools, with parents welcomed, respected and contributing to decisions regarding the school system at every level.
What We Stand Against:
Privatizing Public Schools. The educational system is a sacred public trust, part of the social contract. We have a moral responsibility to the social and educational welfare of all among us.
Mechanized Schooling. All learners are individuals; standardization of classes and tests eliminates the unique contribution of a professional teacher to education and learning.
Public School Control By Non-participants. Educators should drive educational public policy; family and society its social components. Political demogoguery has no place in our social contract to provide effective Public Schooling for all.
Who We Are:
We are many. We are parents from across all of Los Angeles Unified’s seven districts. We have children in LAUSD. We are children in LAUSD. We are concerned with and about children in LAUSD.
We are Students, Parents, Angelenos for Real Classroom Support: SPARCS
If you stand with us, amplify our SPARCS by joining here:
A reader shared the following story about a student in Tennessee, where StudentsFirst named an outspoken anti-gay legislator as its “Reformer of the Year.”
“11-year old takes on Michelle Rhee and Students First over endorsing “Don’t Say Gay” lawmaker endorsement. ”
“I am Marcel Neergaard, and I am 11 years old. This year I was homeschooled for sixth grade because of severe bullying. If I had gone back to public school, there is a great possibility that I would have taken my own life. That possibility would have grown if a certain bill introduced in my home state of Tennessee had passed into law. This bill was known as the “don’t say gay” bill. Though that bill never became a law, Oak Ridge’s own representative, John Ragan, introduced a new version of the Classroom Protection Act. It is the “don’t say gay” bill, just more homophobic. While he crafted this horrifying bill, he received an award. I wrote a petition to take a stand against this.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 