Archives for the month of: August, 2013
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Louisiana Replaces Failed Charters with More Charters

By dianeravitch
August 17, 2013 //
35

Veteran educator Mike Deshotels writes here about Louisiana’s relentless drive to privatize public education. At a recent meeting of the state board of education, packed with Bobby Jindal extremists thanks to out-of-state money in the last board election, the board continued to approve more charters to replace failing charters.

Deshotels writes:

When questioned, State Superintendent John White “had his well funded astro-turf organizations primed to make the usual appeals to the Board for more choice (privatization) even when their arguments were non-sensical. For example, in the debate over the acceptance of a whole new batch of charter schools for the failed Baton Rouge Recovery District, parents who had been brought in by BAEO and Stand for Children, explained how their children had been poorly served by the previous charter schools in the BR Recovery District and gave this as a reason why BESE should continue to approve more charters!!! Some of us in the audience scratched our heads at this twisted logic and then again when a teacher from one of the defunct charters said that it was time that BESE added stability to the staffing of the schools in the RSD by approving the new batch of charters. This is how it went. Beebie and Hill just kept asking “how does this make sense?” But the votes on our rubber stamp BESE kept going down 9 to 2 for whatever the privatizers wanted.

Categories Education Reform

Most Voucher Applicants in Wisconsin Attend Private Schools

By dianeravitch
August 16, 2013 //
64

At the behest of Governor Scott Walker, the Wisconsin legislature expanded the voucher program statewide, even though it did not raise test scores in Milwaukee over the past 22 years.

As critics of the program feared, 75% of those who applied for vouchers are are not currently enrolled in public schools. Two-thirds are enrolled in private schools now.

Instead of helping needy students “escape from failing schools,” the usual claim of voucher proponents, the program transfers funds to private institutions, religious and secular.

Governor Walker is doing as he planned: strangling public education.

Categories Wisconsin

Paul Karrer: Will Technology Widen the Achievement Gaps?

By dianeravitch
August 16, 2013 //
26

Paul Karrer teaches elementary school in Southern California, where many of his students are English language learners. Karrer worries that the demand for more expensive tools will not be a panacea. Instead, he fears, it will widen achievement gaps and reduce the schools’ budget for art, music, and other essential studies.

Two years ago, Karrer wrote an open letter to President Obama that presciently warned of the damage that Race to the Top would inflict on children and schools. This letter was astonishing. Here is a snippet:

“Your Race to the Top is killing the wrong guys. You’re hitting the good guys with friendly fire. I’m teaching in a barrio in California. I had 32 kids in my class last year. I love them to tears. They’re 5th graders. That means they’re 10 years old, mostly. Six of them were 11 because they were retained. Five more were in special education, and two more should have been. I stopped using the word “parents” with my kids because so many of them don’t have them. Amanda’s mom died in October. She lives with her 30-year-old brother. (A thousand blessings on him.) Seven kids live with their “Grams,” six with their dads. A few rotate between parents. So “parents” is out as a descriptor.
Here’s the kicker: Fifty percent of my students have set foot in a jail or prison to visit a family member.

“Do you and your secretary of education, Arne Duncan, understand the significance of that? I’m afraid not. It’s not bad teaching that got things to the current state of affairs. It’s pure, raw poverty. We don’t teach in failing schools. We teach in failing communities. It’s called the ZIP Code Quandary. If the kids live in a wealthy ZIP code, they have high scores; if they live in a ZIP code that’s entombed with poverty, guess how they do?”

Categories Poverty, Technology, Computers

Is This the Future of Urban Districts?

By dianeravitch
August 16, 2013 //
14

This teacher describes a series of moves in Philadelphia to save money by hiring uncertified nurses and replacing experienced teachers with TFA. Superintendent Hite is a Broad Academy graduate.

She writes:

“It is a discouraging day for Philadelphia teachers. The school district has been scrambling/fighting to find $50 million to call back laid off employees in order to open schools.

“The mayor finally announced he would borrow the money, so we can now open schools on time. Then, the superintendent announced an “emergency” SRC (School Reform Commission- whose members are appointed by the state and mayor) meeting.

“This was a slick move on their part because it happened so fast to catch the union members off guard. Superintendent Hite asked them to temporarily suspend parts of the state school code to eliminate seniority, stop pay increases and hire uncertified nurses.

“This is a problem because they want to get rid of older, more experienced teachers to bring in cheaper Teach For America teachers, to be able to get rid of teachers easier, start paying teachers based on student test scores and bring in nurses to work in the schools who are not certified.

“I don’t buy their claim that this is “temporary.” I just don’t see them changing it back in the future, if this is the new national reform agenda.”

Categories Budget Cuts, Philadelphia, Teach for America TFA

What Chile Must Do to Improve Education

By dianeravitch
August 16, 2013 //
8

Chilean researcher Alvaro Gonzalez Torrez has read the
posts about Chile and thinks the solutions are too timid. Here are
his suggestions for what is needed to get free of free-market
ideology:

“I’ve been following the series of three blog posts about
Chile, being a Chilean ed researcher myself. I believe Waissbluth’s
contribution to the blog opens a debate of international relevance
by showcasing the Chilean example in the context of a global
advance of neoliberal policies in education (what Pasi Sahlberg
calls ‘GERM’).

I agree with the (dreadful) diagnosis offered by
Mario Waissbluth in terms of the consequences of neoliberal and
market policies in school education: high social segregation and
low attainment in schools, plus a weakened public image of public
education and the teaching profession.

Sharing the diagnosis,however, I do believe Waissbluth’s (and Educación 2020’s) proposals
to revert this situation would fall short to produce the necessary
changes. I don’t think this is the place to get in a detailed
argument, but I would say that Chile’s problems won’t be solved by
employing ‘market tools’ and ‘special funds’ as change levers.

There’s a need for more radical responses to address the radically
grim scenario of Chilean school education. The idea is to break
free from the neoliberal principles underpinning the Chilean school
system (market, choice, privatisation) that have turned education
into a commodity.

To do so, it isn’t enough to think that ‘we can
play the game better’ than the people that came before us, and use
neoliberal strategies to improve education quality (which is, in my
opinion, what people from the Concertación thought in the
90s).”

Categories Global Education Reform Movement (GERM), International

Best Quote of the Day

By dianeravitch
August 16, 2013 //
20

In a front page story in the New York Times about the budget crisis in Philadelphia, parent leader Helen Gym said this:

“The concept is just jaw-dropping,” said Helen Gym, who has three children in the city’s public schools. “Nobody is talking about what it takes to get a child educated. It’s just about what the lowest number is needed to get the bare minimum. That’s what we’re talking about here: the deliberate starvation of one of the nation’s biggest school districts.”

The story says that Philadelphia does not have an elected board but fails to explain that the city has been under state control for more than a decade. During that decade, also unmentioned in the story, Paul Vallas “saved” the schools.

Maybe Pennsylvania doesn’t want to pay for schools anymore. Maybe it just wants ill-tended buildings, large classes, no arts, nothing else. But lots of prisons.

Categories Budget Cuts, Parents, Pennsylvania, Philadelphia

Will School Accountability Crash Like Wall Street?

By dianeravitch
August 16, 2013 //
50

Jason Stanford, Texas blogger, notes the growing number of scandals associated with “accountability,” and wonders whether school accountability will blow up like Wall Street did in 2008.

He writes:

“Just like AAA ratings on mortgage-backed securities led to Wall Street’s 2008 disaster, a rash of accountability scandals might be precursors to a similar public school crash. After years of promises that test-driven accountability would yield miracles, scandals with school ratings are popping up all over the country. Unless we hold reformers as accountable as they hold students, these scandals could bring down our public school system the same way Wall Street almost innovated our economy back into the Stone Age.”

The incentives for fraud keep getting higher.

Categories Accountability

Mysterious Disappearance: Gail Robinson’s Story about Test Prep

By dianeravitch
August 16, 2013 //
11

Earlier today I posted about a fine article by veteran journalist Gail Robinson, explaining that intense test prep was not enough to help many students. She wrote specifically about the Young Women’s Leadership School in Brooklyn and included a link to a video where the girls were chanting about how test prep would make them succeed.

The story is still listed on the insideschools.org website but the story and the link are gone. Funny how these things happen.

 
2 days ago … Energy and optimism burst out of the 2011 video [view below] by students at Young Women’s Leadership School in Brooklyn. Dancing and …
insideschools.org/blog/…/1000706-test–prep-didnt-prevent-score-drop
Luckily, I included in my post the first two paragraphs of her story, which has now apparently been withdrawn, perhaps at the request of funders?
Here they are:

“Energy and optimism burst out of the 2011 video [view below] by students at Young Women’s Leadership School in Brooklyn. Dancing and singing to the tune of Taio Cruz’s “Dynamite,” they proclaim, “Test prep goes on and on and on….I am brilliant. I have confidence. Gonna ace these tests.”

“This month, many city students will see such optimism ebb when they learn how they scored on the state’s standardized reading and math tests. At Brooklyn’s Young Women’s Leadership, for example, only 24 percent scored well enough to be viewed as “passing” the English test, with less than 15 percent passing the math exam. In the first tests tied to the new Common Core standards, other schools, particularly in poorer parts of the five boroughs or with high percentages of black and Latino students, had similar results.”
Categories Education Reform

When Test Prep Isn’t Enough

By dianeravitch
August 16, 2013 //
15

Gail Robinson has written a stunning article about the impact of the test score collapse in New York City.

She begins by reminding us that students in New York City have been told for a decade that what matters most for their future and their schools is their test scores. They have done test prep, test prep, test prep, because the scores are so important. Nothing else matters so much to their future–their ability to be promoted to the next grade, to graduate, to go to college, to have a decent life–as test scores.

Test scores define the person. Test scores define the school. Test scores define life.

This is her opening:

“Energy and optimism burst out of the 2011 video [view below] by students at Young Women’s Leadership School in Brooklyn. Dancing and singing to the tune of Taio Cruz’s “Dynamite,” they proclaim, “Test prep goes on and on and on….I am brilliant. I have confidence. Gonna ace these tests.”

“This month, many city students will see such optimism ebb when they learn how they scored on the state’s standardized reading and math tests. At Brooklyn’s Young Women’s Leadership, for example, only 24 percent scored well enough to be viewed as “passing” the English test, with less than 15 percent passing the math exam. In the first tests tied to the new Common Core standards, other schools, particularly in poorer parts of the five boroughs or with high percentages of black and Latino students, had similar results.”

What do you tell the students? You are not brilliant after all? All your efforts were in vain? You failed. No matter how hard you tried, no matter how often you did test prep, you failed. You failed.

Now city and state officials say, tell them the scores don’t matter all that much. All that stuff that said last spring, last year, and for the years before; forget about it. But we know–the kids know, the teachers know, the principal knows–that this isn’t true.

Why lie to them?

Categories Accountability, Students, Testing

The Tortoise and the Hare in School Reform

By dianeravitch
August 16, 2013 //
5

Rachel Levy, education blogger and essayist, reflects on the reformy love of urgent change and disruption.

When you read the reformy tracts, there is always appeals to act without delay or even pausing to think.

We must act now, they say, the situation is desperate.

Well, the situation may indeed be desperate but none of the reformy solutions actually work, and they usually make matters worse.

If a man is drowning, you act quickly to throw him a lifeline; you do not act quickly by measuring the depth of the water and agreeing to measure it more frequently.

Categories Accountability, Corporate Reformers
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