There is a sacrosanct principle that has informed the actions of the U.S. Department of Education throughout its 33-year history: federalism. That is, a recognition that the federal government has limited authority, and that states and localities have the primary responsibility for education. George W. Bush’s No Child Left Behind was a direct assault on federalism because it asserted the power of Congress and the Department of Education to tell states and localities how to measure “progress” and how to reform schools. Since no one in either Congress or the Department of Education knows how to reform schools, this was a bad but costly joke. And not funny.
Arne Duncan made the assault on federalism more intense by promulgating Race to the Top. RTTT offered a huge financial lure to states willing to abandon their authority and accept Duncan’s untried “remedies.” Most were hungry enough to do so, because in a time of financial crisis, money talks.
Duncan’s worst idea was evaluating teachers by test scores. Researchers have repeatedly demonstrated that the teachers in affluent districts get big gains and look effective while those who teach needy students do not get big gains and look like ineffective teachers. Duncan doesn’t care. He has his idee fixe and he is sticking to it, regardless of how many teachers-of-the-year get fired.
Now he has found a new way to undermine federalism. Frustrated by California’s stubborn refusal to join Duncan’s Race to Oblivion, he was able to find a group of superintendents (mostly trained by the unaccredited Broad Academy) who want federal money. So Duncan has bypassed the state, the entity that has legal jurisdiction over these districts, and has formed a direct relationship between the federal government and the coalition called CORE (California Office to Reform Education).
Read this post to learn more about this special “partnership” that cut the state out of the transaction. You will see familiar names, well known in corporate reform circles. They are eager to do what Duncan wants them to do, while ignoring the state of which they are part, which has wisely steered clear of Duncan’s mandates.
The saddest part of all this is that Duncan was a failure in Chicago, yet now he has brought his failed ideas to become national policy. After eight years of his “leadership,” what will be left of American public education? Who will want to teach?
Impeach and incarcerate Arne. On the face of it, it appears some serious law-breaking is taking place. Wonder what it will take to rein in this rogue?
The Chicago deformers (Duncan, Vallas, Emanuel) are repulsive and evil.
I can’t get this quote from Finnish Lessons our of my mind:
Even in business, these larger than life strategies of turnaround and improvement do not produce sustainable improvement. Companies may be broken up, assets sold off, and employees fired with impunity, and all this might increase short term shareholder returns, but few strategies of these sorts survive in the long term and many turn around companies eventually become casualties of their leaders’ reckless behaviors. Indeed, management expert Manfred Ket de Vries explains how many so-called turnaround specialists are little more than psychiatrically disturbed narcissists, sociopaths, and control freaks (Ket de Vries, 2006).
http://www.finnishlessons.com/
Thanks for this quote and link.
The deformers remind me of the 19th century “miracle cure” traveling salesman who would visit towns to sell a “miracle elixir” that would cure all your ills.
Before you knew it, you had spent your hard earned money and were sicker than before. The salesman was long gone, on to their next dupe.
Interestingly, John D. Rockefeller’s father was just such a snake oil salesman. He traveled the country selling cancer cures. He would set up and do a show and sell his elixirs and then get the hell out of town as quickly as possible.
Federalism means that the States enter the Union in a manner analogous to brothers, as equal partners united in a common cause.
The biggest enemy of Federalism and Jeffersonian Democracy on the scene today is of course ALEC, which naturally enough, once you grasp the nature of the beast, flies the very banners it would burn for all time.
What ALEC really promotes is Feudalism and Hamiltonian Oligarchy, a nation ruled by a central shadow government that is a wholly owned subsidiary of a global mega-corporation.
What a joke our latter day pseudo-Conservatives and pseudo-Libertarians have become — they actually think that ALEC is their friend.
Diane, thanks for this excellent post. Now send it as an op-ed to the minimalist LA Times please.
Again today they have a front page article lauding the 24th Street school takeover by Parent Revolution, and Deasy is featured as a joyous partner in this devious venture for profit by the Waltons et al, to do away with teachers unions, fair working conditions, fair salaries, and good higher ed training.
The article says only 5 teachers remain and all others have been dismissed, but the new teachers are not defined. They are probably all TFA kids (the Waltons recently gave Parent Revolution another $20 M to fund TFA in LA) who are paid a pittance with no perks such as health insurance and retirement benefits. And it does not mention the salary of the new CEO of the school. This school is in an area of LA where many ELL students live and their parents are mainly only Spanish speakers.
Instead of everyone here griping about it, please sit down and write the LA Times a letter to the editor, and send them facts about privatization, the CREDO evaluations of failing charters, the huge salaries paid to their CEOs on our tax money, the truth about parent trigger….etc.
I am glad we have an opportunity to vent, and I totally agree, yet again, with Diane’s essay on federalism, but it is only action in unity that can make any difference.
I was invited to be interviewed by a local education professor who specializes in media bias and yesterday we met for over 2 hours. She too has seen this Times media bias and is equally disturbed as many of us in LA who support our LAUSD teachers. It is a sad and disturbing fact that the only major news source in LA only portrays charters as effective, but avoids all the public schools with highly successful programs and stats. This is the paper that Rupert Murdoch and the Koch brothers are vying to buy.
Money talks!
Yep…and did any of you see the ALEC protests (In Chicago last week) on the national news? How about cable? No?
Media: bought & paid for in full.
Yep. Returning control to the states. Uh . . . is this conspiracy theory: “global mega-corporation”? I ask out of naivete. Do you have the same style of tin-foil hat I have?
Anyone he isn’t deeply troubled by this precipitous rush to top-down control over education has no love for individualism and liberty.
I’m going to write to my congressional reps and the department’s IG. I just hope they don’t send their police force after me. (Seriously, ED has their own police force and SWAT team. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_law_enforcement_in_the_United_States see 3.1.5) Conservative websites are having a field day with this revelation.
The Broad Toads are the equivalent of a biblical plague appearing in one state school takeover scenario after another, with full participation of Duncan and his cohorts. They use their data to make heroic oversimplifications of complex phenomena because it is the easy, expedient and profitable/popular thing to do. But what if the unmeasured and the unmeasurable aspects are where the real solutions reside?
You are 100% right. Only in the unmeasurable aspects do you find the motivational element. As we like to say in my circles, “With God, anything is possible.” And piety seems to be unmeasurable on any test.
Reformers are killing schools and the communities they once anchored. They are ignoring constitutional mandates to provide public education. Shame on us if we continue to let this happen.
Since reform efforts have disproportionately affected minorities and the poor, where is the ACLU in all of this?
I read someone’s comment about posting on Secretary Arne Duncan’s facebook page and I went to it and was able to read and comment myself without having to “like”. There are over 360 comments on his comment that we should treasure education and most seem to be from teachers and parents who are displeased with his policies. He probably doesn’t actually read anything on it but the forum is there to communicate to someone who may in turn pass along the information. I personally think that the Dept of Education is a total farce and Mr. Duncan is proof that it causes dysfunction rather than enhances education. Its well past time that states return to their own processes and the federal government back out of mandating and managing. We will probably end up in another Civil War with various states leaving the union over these issues if the politicians don’t back off. I think public education is doomed unless this RTTT and NCLB nonsense is shut down. The generation having children are opting for homeschooling and just not participating in the chaotic scenario that the last 10 years of legislation has brought down.
Utterly true. But with the states and districts have the backbone to refuse federal money? Arne is the Devil and he has led us into temptation.
One hopes that some will begin to grow spines, Harlan!
A bad joke. That, indeed, it is. A joke on students, parents, teachers, administrators, on small, independent curriculum developers. An ugly joke.
Why isn’t there a movement to impeach Arne Duncan? That should be one goal right there for BAT to take on.
Duncan cannot be impeached, he was not elected but rather he was appointed by Obama and we are stuck with him.
Yes, he can. Cabinet members as well as judges can be impeached.
At least one cabinet member in US history has been impeached. More is here:
An example of a federal judge being impeached by Congress was the late Harry Claiborne of Nevada for tax evasion.
http://www.politico.com/story/2013/07/this-day-in-politics-july-22-1986-94523.html
Duncan is a disaster. A know-nothing without qualifications, of any kind, for the job that he holds except, of course, the low cunning of the sycophant and toady.
Context?
The word “education” does not appear in the Constitution.
High expectations and a little research money went well from the old HEW to Goals 2000 (“all kids ready for kindergarten”).
And, Dept of Ed did / does protect civil rights and special education.
Then – the Texas Miracle Goes to Washington, Kennedy and Bush both found their WMDs, and we got NCLB. 9/11 took all attention off the legislation and the guidelines were written with blind obedience and a blank check. Just like the WMDs, NCLB attacked the wrong problems in the wrong places.
Enter Arne Duncan. Replace the stick (AYP) with the carrot ($) but keep the stick to rank, rate, and berate teachers.
Enter corporations and get out the Monopoly board; just replace the houses with testing contracts and hotels with data warehouses.
With Dr. Darling-Hammond in the office, periodic but not annual testing, and giving the national professional organizations (NCTE, NSTA, etc.) seats at the table, this could work with balance.
And, perhaps necessarily because let’s face it, do you really want states that pass race restrictive voter registration laws having complete local control over their state’s education?
YES
Arne Duncan has taken things too far. Californians need to revolt. We all need to revolt and get rid of Duncan! This could happen in our states, too, if we don’t do something to STOP IT!
ABOLISH THE U.S. DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION
Thanks, Diane, for highlighting this West coast disaster in the making. All eight CORE waiver districts excluded teacher unions from the development of the application to DOE. And as usual, post-facto, the district superintendents will talk a good line about inclusion and collaboration, but it’s all spin and outright lying. For example, SF’s superintendent, Caranza, is on YouTube with a manipulative start-of-the-year pep talk for the his administrators. His invoking terms like equity, access, and transparency doesn’t take the place of practicing equity, access and transparency for and with teachers and staff.
On that score, Mr. C. and his CORE cronies have failed. Leaving all eight unions’ representatives outside the door, the CORE confederates apparently think that teachers and school staff don’t deserve equitable access to shaping education in California. They see lock out as the best way to ‘foster intrinsic motivation of teachers.’ (See their most recently embraced ‘systemic change’ guide, Michael Fullan.) And for Carranza in his cheer leading to say that ”no one has yet articulated a reason why [the districts] should not be seeking a waiver” is the kind of Big Lie that overworked and overly busy principals and teachers won’t know to question or challenge. It’s obvious he and his collaborators consider the opinions of state superintendents of education (including California’s own) to be lacking in ‘backbone.’ Other reasonable (like Alice’s) arguments against the waiver are easily found. And you don’t have to be adamantly opposed to wonder about the slapdash result that we’re stuck with now. No amount of magic acronym juggling (PBIS! RIT! MTSS!) will provide the teacher buy-in that’s required. Only honest collaboration will do that.
These CORE folks aren’t interested in collaboration. Their focus is data manipulation and their own career advancement. In the YouTube clip, Carranza straight-out bragged about ‘starting to participate on the national stage’ during his recent two and a half month road trip, and about becoming ‘the first urban school district in America’ to close the achievement gap.
Shiver. Do not walk under a superintendent on a ladder.
Ouch…this is what the tea party says.
Bypassing states and local school boards is the unspoken intent of all these policies. Both republicans and democrats want a centrally controlled education system. When federal Title 1 money follows the child, it will be on a federal leash.
Who will want to teach? Not me. I took early retirement this year–can’t take these clowns anymore. At least now I will have time and energy to write to my elected officials.
I posted this on your “about” page earlier:
Sonja Luchini
August 12, 2013 at 8:28 pm
I have a comment awaiting moderation for this article about the ESEA Waiver granted to seven California school districts. While teachers were not involved as this article states, there was no meaningful participation by parents/families.
http://laschoolreport.com/teachers-unions-chagrin-waiver-process-left-them-out/#comment-430
In case they find my comment too incendiary, I’ll post here:
Sonja Luchini on August 12, 2013 at 5:03 pm said:
Your comment is awaiting moderation.
“Stakeholders were left in the cold as well. I feel that the ESEA waiver has not represented properly the involvement of stakeholders. In looking over the documentation provided from the link here: http://coredistricts.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/CORE-Waiver-Application-8.5.13-full-doc-2.pdf
it appears claims were made that ESEA was discussed with all stakeholders, but in fact it was not. The ESEA waiver paperwork is 400+ pages and access to the public was difficult for me to find until last Wednesday, August 7, 2013 so I haven’t digested all. But on the contents page 3 there is a section labeled: “Appendix E, List of Attachments”. Number 3 on that attachment list is “Notice and information provided to the public regarding the request” followed by the notation “N/A” (Not Attached? or Not Applicable?). There is no attachment of public involvement proof because I believe there was no meaningful public involvement.
This statement from page 16:
“CORE believes that a decentralized approach is necessary to gather the input required to meaningfully represent each participating district. The input process must be facilitated in a manner that is respectful of the unique culture and character of each respective community. To support the development of this Waiver application, each participating LEA has initiated efforts to engage its local community. As documented in Appendix F, audiences, forums, and participants in this local engagement work have varied from district to district. They have included local school boards; community forums attended by parents, students, and other community members; School Site Council meetings; parent liaisons from Title I schools; PTA Executive Council; district English Language Advisory Committees; Parent Advisory Committees; Student Advisory Councils; Community Advisory Councils; emails to district/school staff; postings about the evolving Waiver application on district web sites; news releases to local communities; and convenings of local business and educational leaders. Below we provide examples of how District administrators have engaged and sought input for the Waiver application from diverse stakeholder groups to date:”
Only four of the seven districts actually highlighted what they claimed was public input: Fresno, Sacramento and Sanger on pages 14 & 15 with Sacramento, again, and San Francisco as examples of how they performed outreach on pages 16 & 17. There is no documented proof from any of them and no specific mention of LAUSD, Long Beach or Oakland participating in this at all. Where is the documented proof? Who signed off and claimed we were involved when in fact we were not? While Attachment F, regarding LAUSD shows one meeting agenda for a “CORE Board Meeting” for Jan 24, 2013, it does not show a sign-in sheet or state all in attendance. The only other LAUSD “documentation” is a power point about the CORE plans which include in one slide, “turnaround principals applied to CORE strategies” showing “Replace Principals” as number 1. The plan is to punish ‘low performing’ schools by removing principals and teachers as the knee-jerk, first option while later in the list is the suggestion to provide “job-embedded professional development designed to build capacity and support staff”….shouldn’t that be first on the list?
The Waiver “committee” did, however have discussions with these folks (from pg 15 & 16):
“We also want to highlight that this Waiver application incorporates input from numerous national and/or statewide educator, research, advocacy, and non-profit organizations. Those groups include, but are not limited to: Education Trust West, Association of School Administrators Superintendents’ Council representatives and staff, County Office of Education Superintendents, WestEd, the Parthenon Group, and Teachers on Special Assignment in Participating LEAs. We have also been advised directly by Michael Fullan, Professor Emeritus at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education at the University of Toronto, and Special Adviser on Education to Dalton McGuinty, the Premier of Ontario. The input from these groups and experts has informed the application on issues including: professional development to support implementation of the Common Core State Standards; designing and weighting components of a strong, effective alternative accountability model; setting aggressive but achievable goals for student achievement and eliminating subgroup gaps; the rationale for and evidence supporting the inclusion of measures such as non-cognitive factors and results of stakeholder surveys as viable indicators of school performance; effective interventions for schools that do not meet growth targets; and effective processes for evaluating, recognizing, and supporting teachers, principals and superintendents. Moreover, on an ongoing basis during the development of this Waiver application, CORE staff have maintained communication with and sought input from key constituencies such as the State Board of Education, California Department of Education, and the Association of California School Administrators.”
And who, exactly are “Teachers on Special Assignment in Participating LEAs”? Teach for America? I’m amazed that they reach out to the University of Toronto, but not the stakeholders in their backyard.
This information was not shared with our LAUSD CAC in any form…and I’m the chair so should’ve been notified. We did have two “information” meetings about CCSS and special education, but not one word was mentioned of the waiver and the need for us to be involved. This mirrors an earlier claim by the State Department of Education’s Special Education Director in a letter to a statewide advocacy group for students with disabilities claiming that all stakeholders were notified in a timely manner to comment on proposed changes to special education law. Link here: http://www.cde.ca.gov/re/lr/rr/specialeducation.asp
We were not notified as a CAC. The notice was posted on the CDE website May 24, 2013. LAUSD’s CAC had their last meeting of the school year May 15, 2013. I did not hear about this information until June 1, 2013 through one of the members of the advocacy group. We had no opportunity to generate a meeting (LAUSD changes in the school year calendar, furlough days and other factors made it impossible to call a meeting with time to translate, share and discuss this info with families.
A request to grant an extension regarding the hearing was denied based on this false assumption that all CACs were notified and were able to provide input. The hearing was held in early July, information was not provided in a timely manner and it was impossible for any CAC to have a meeting that fulfilled Brown Act requirements to share, discuss and provide input on these proposed special education law changes.
I heard about the Local Control Funding Formula (LCFF) public input hearings through parent advocacy sites, not school district personnel. Special Education information regarding the LCFF was difficult to access and wasn’t immediately available. I did receive an email two days before the August 8, 2013 meeting held in Downey, CA through one of LAUSD’s Parent Collaborative Services Branch representatives(PCSB – helps facilitate Title I, ELAC, School Site Councils – not special education specific). The email called the meeting a “training” in error. The information sent to stakeholders was confusing and unclear as to the purpose. I sent an email back with info links that included this message:
“I’ve known about this for a couple of weeks through an advocacy site. We’ve barely had time to gather information and think through what it means in order to give input. When did you first receive the info? The CAC has had similar difficulties in getting these notices regarding special ed issues from CDE in a timely manner as well. There seems to be a huge time gap between when the info is posted, when it is disseminated to district personnel and when it is finally passed on to stakeholders.
I’ve attached a word doc I put together with links to pertinent info regarding LCFF and some other docs of interest. If you wouldn’t mind sharing with those you just sent this notice to, it would be helpful in giving them more than just a time and date.
I’m concerned that it will be another “warm body/compliance” meeting to fulfill some legal requirements that will just spoon-fed some CDE line without having a real discussion about the content and what it means to our children. I hope I’m wrong.
Thanks for the notice.
Sonja Luchini”
To date, I have had no response as to when PCSB was notified of the meeting and whether they had the information just that day or if they sat on it until two days before the meeting.
Educational decisions are being made without us, not just in LAUSD but at all levels. How can we figure out a better statewide notification system that could make contact, in a timely manner AND with proper informational materials, with those who wish to participate in order to address these questions that are not being answered? Accountability appears to be lip-service at this point. I feel that our education process has been hijacked by outside interests. Community Advisory Committees have been snubbed at state and federal levels while those making proposals and bringing forward changes have not included stakeholders in a meaningful way (if at all). Families of students with disabilities don’t have lobbyists and big-business money to help fund decisions made in Sacramento and DC. It seems that our democratic process is only effective for those who can pay for it these days and our students are the ones who suffer.”
In regards to that LCFF meeting in Downey; We were also promised that a copy of the power point visuals would be available to us by today, actually. It’s not in my mailbox yet. I will say that more time was provided for input than in giving information – even if a majority of those commenting were administrators. One legal aid agency that helps foster youth brought a young teenage girl who gave an impassioned suggestion to do a better job of having her cum file follow her. One semester in her senior year she had been re-located in four different foster homes and four different schools – none of which received her documentation to allow her proper credits for classes and she repeated many in order to graduate. She did, in spite of the system, bless her heart. There were not enough of these speakers. The last people they wanted to hear from were those who would be directly affected by all this upheaval.
I was able to get in a question and asked how LCFF mattered for LAUSD and six other districts (Fresno, Long Beach, Oakland, Sacramento, San Francisco & Sanger) that were granted the ESEA waiver as a package deal only the day before. What compliance and oversight will be lost with the Waiver package? How will it be interwoven with the LCFF? And what about special ed? Obviously no one had thought about it as I could see eyes widen in surprise at the question.
I have no idea where we’re headed with education “reform” in California, but it’s being done without any meaningful public input. Foxes in the hen-house, indeed….
Reply (Update)
Sonja Luchini
August 13, 2013 at 10:39 am
Apparently my post was not allowed. This particular enews report tends to sway “pro-charter” and “pro-business”