This news item appeared in Politico.com:
ED REFORMERS MEET IN BOSTON — More than 800 state legislators, school chiefs and policy wonks of every description will convene today in Boston for former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush’s annual National Summit on Education Reform. The two-day conference will feature several big-name speakers, including former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and a mystery guest that summit organizers have kept secret to build suspense… though (spoiler alert!) your Morning Education team hereby unveils him as Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel. The summit features panels on everything from vocational education to pre-K to a strategy session on how to sell ed reform to the public. Added at the last minute: A panel at which top execs from four big companies, including Microsoft and Exxon Mobil, make the case for Common Core. Watch for updates from the conference from Pro Education’s Stephanie Simon.
I have often speculated that there were not enough ed reformers to fill a large ballroom.
Well, here they are, and they say there will be 800 of them! 800 people determined to privatize public education in America and get rid of the education profession.
A bipartisan group too! No surprise there. Arne Duncan, Joel Klein, Condoleeza Rice, and Jeb Bush have been on the same page for years. And of course Rahm Emanuel has gone to the head of the pack because he succeeded in closing a history-breaking record number of 50 public elementary schools, to be replaced by 52 non-union charter schools.
Yes, they definitely need a “strategy session” to figure out how to sell privatization, teacher-bashing, and school closings to the public. It is not working anywhere.
And no surprise that the nation’s biggest corporations will give a panel on why we need Common Core, instead of a panel in which they explain why they have outsourced millions of jobs to low-wage countries. In this country, they can’t seem to find anyone willing to work for $10 a day. That is their problem.
Hope is on the way, Boston. I will be speaking at Memorial Church in Harvard Yard on October 24, sponsored by Citizens for Public Schools. I have no corporate sponsorship, but I will arrive with plenty of pins to burst the reformy bubbles.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Here is a link to a live-stream
http://wpc.230d.edgecastcdn.net/00230D/august2/fee2013/?__hstc=76856138.fcc55676c7e2ad650f44792a54465d20.1378214689064.1382020631416.1382027708927.123&__hssc=76856138.1.1382027708927&__hsfp=2713893409
You can interact with attendees on Twitter by using the hashtag #EIE13
Twitter is a great way to raise issues and concerns about the reformer’s jargon in a pleasantly disruptive way
Holly, thanks for the links.
This part of today’s agenda disturbs me in particular …
8:15 – 9:15 am BREAKFAST KEYNOTE
Dr. Clayton Christensen, Professor of Business Administration at the Harvard Business School and Co-founder of the Clayton Christensen Institute for Disruptive Innovation
“Institute for Disruptive Education” ? Perhaps Dr. Christensen needs an office referral.
Thanks so much or your tireless efforts. Best of luck here. We will be rooting for you.
So glad you’ll be in Boston to weigh in against these reformy types.
All that’s needed is a few kids with stinkbombs….
Who’s dime is being spent for this spectacle?
A delegation of 10 elected Idaho officials are attending free of charge, courtesy of Bush’s Foundation for Excellence in Education: Lt. Governor Little, Sens. Cherie Buckner-Webb, D-Boise, and Dean Cameron, R-Rupert; and Reps. Grant Burgoyne, D-Boise, Reed DeMourdant, R-Eagle, Wendy Horman, R-Idaho Falls, Donna Pence, D-Gooding, Jeff Thompson, R-Idaho Falls, Julie VanOrden, R-Pingree, and Janie Ward-Engelking, D-Boise.
All were selected to attend by Idaho Business for Education. Curiously, State Superintendent Tom Luna is not among those chosen, though he is attending, of course.
Read more here: http://blogs.idahostatesman.com/luna-little-nine-idaho-lawmakers-at-jeb-bushs-ed-conference-in-boston/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=luna-little-nine-idaho-lawmakers-at-jeb-bushs-ed-conference-in-boston#storylink=cpy
Should be: Whose, not who’s…sorry
…and this just in: Associated Press today reports: http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/study-finds-dc-teachers-are-improving-performance-under-rhees-evaluation-system/2013/10/17/d54827c2-3709-11e3-89db-8002ba99b894_story.html This will surely be reported as one of their successes. An evaluation system that degrades and induces fear; one still heavily based on test scores and 4 half hour glimpses of a year of teaching. When one studies the flow-chart of this evaluation system carefully, it is obviously created to freeze most teacher salaries, while giving them the illusion that if they quit having any life of their own and ignore their own families to address expected work load, that in this crap shoot they might some day get another step up in pay or they may well be fired, if the dice roll the wrong way. Thanks Holly, no bandwidth here, but I hope there are many who tune in.
We need Mercedes to dissect this study.
I took your suggestion and suggested it to Mercedes, and like the champ she is: http://deutsch29.wordpress.com/2013/10/20/the-dc-impact-study-results-already-obsolete/ Thanks TooTo
This is an investment for them as the profits are so high. Wait until you see what Apple can make by charging outrageous prices for iPads and what that does to world sales and especially profits when they sell for over retail. Their business is wholesale as is most. When you charge over wholesale and at high retail all the difference between the wholesale with your normal profit makes all the money charged over wholesale pure profit. What do you think that does for the bottom line. I have districts paying $2,568/device and another leasing for $384 for 3 years for the same thing. Nice. Now Microsoft doesn’t know who their head of Community Relations they sent to LAUSD is. Now does that happen when there are billions on the line. True, I called and they do not know who she is either in L.A. or Seattle at the main offices. I hate Bill Gates for what he is doing and I hate Windows 7 as being the stupidest thing I have used. However, this is business and they are a part of the $200 with a 5 year guarantee and I called to help them beat Apple and save districts tons of money. Not now, they are as bad as Apple. In England they have a $50 computer just for students. How about a variation on that or just laptops. If I can buy a laptop for $250 retail what do you think the deal would be going direct to the manufacturer with 700,000 at one time in one contract would get you in massive discounts? So let’s not pay $150 for 5 years @ $30/year and use the extra for other educational purposes and be able to fund it forever with extra money, no, let’s spend $2,538 or $1,598.57 as the so called Citizens Oversight Committee just did at LAUSD. I call them the corrupt Citizens Blow the Money Away Committee. Someone has to have offshore accounts for this to happen consistently there with 2-3 times the construction costs from 1998. And this is with $27 billion. Real Money and they want another Billion from it for iPads with no way to replace them in the future. Stupid is as Stupid does.
They are investing in massive profits in the future. That is all this is about. Look at how rich the Clinton’s got by porking the corporations and billionaires. Obviously, they told Barack and Michelle “Want to be richer than them, just do what we tell you to and all will be good for you.” No way this did not happen. And now we see the results and they are ugly.
Time for us to stop them. 3 times in the last 6 months we have beaten the billionaires. Who says it cannot continue to happen? Imagine. Create. Win.
One more thing “Diane, take your 10,000 round/minute pin gatling shooter to take out all their balloons. Nothing like watching their fantasy’s blow up in their faces with facts and reason.
There goes Jeb again, arranging a gathering or meeting. It seems to be what he does best.
If Jeb Bush is behind this it cannot be good for public education. — Edd Doerr (arlinc.org)
This is great news. My son teaches special education and gets absolutely no support. He is doing his best, but the system is broken and especially so, for low income second language families.
His futile attempts to assure that students are provided the assistance they are entitled to, just isn’t happening.
My hope is that these 800 educators take heed to your message and that change will happen in the near future.
Sorry to disappoint Marian but…that isn’t the goal of these clowns.
Sorry Marian, these guys want to put all the special ed kids in one school with nothing to help them with….special ed kids cost too much to educate and there’s not enough return on investment if they are educated….their ideas, not mine.
Mark is only too correct. After Judy Elliott, former Sup. of Inst. at LAUSD and helped to write and promote the special ed RTI laws, helped to write and promote RTI which I can use to steal up to 60% of the special education catagorical funding and inter-fund transfer it into the general fund and not use on special ed but for any other purpose. Nice, isn’t it. At LAUSD they are considering taking the 2,800 highly disabled in special schools and put them into regular schools. The last time they tried that with their highest functioning physically challenged students who are highly gifted they lasted one week from the lack of support and the trash treatment by all. This is sociopathic. I have been to one of the schools and seen how they react with each other there and it is beautiful. If a downs student is put in with regular students what do you think happens. they take the brunt of jokes. Real good for their self image as if they do not have enough trouble already. The Federal Court Chanda Smith Monitor does not even know that special ed catagorical funding is 24% of the total district funding and that the CFO constantly lies in the budget at the amount of special ed students. She states 4.7% and it is 11.47% according to the Federal Monitor. How does this happen and the monitor does nothing. Total corruption everywhere with the big bucks.
Buzzetti,
I assume you know that Dr. Judy Elliott is now a “Distinguished Educator” working for John King in New York. She was forced upon the City of Buffalo at an outrageous salary by John King and the Buffalo School District has to pay her huge salary. (Buffalo being the third poorest city in the nation). She flies in every so often from her home in Florida and comments on our urban school situation.
She is emblematic of the the useless moneymakers that sit atop the urban ed heap getting wealthier by the minute. ughhh.
800 ed-reformers in one location! hmmmm!……..can we call in a drone strike! 🙂
I was thinking the same thing, but wasn’t brave enough to say it.
Dr. Ravitch, how do you feel about these types of comments? Is this something you agree with? Why don’t you or any commenters on your blog ever speak out about comments like this?
Concerned citizen, I am not sure which comment you want to me to respond to. I try to read them all. I have had over 100,000 comments. I speak up when I feel moved to do so. Otherwise, I let people agree, disagree, discuss.
dianerav: perhaps a little perspective is in order.
It was slightly more than three years ago that a fine human being took his life to satisfy the unreasonable demands of the education reformers. I include the first four lines from the HuffPostEd article, with a link to the whole piece:
“SOUTH GATE, Calif. — Rigoberto Ruelas Jr. was considered much more than a fifth-grade teacher at Miramonte Elementary School – he was a mentor to youth tempted to join gangs and a tireless booster that kids could make it to college.
But after a newspaper published a school district report that ranked Ruelas as a “less effective teacher” based on his students’ test scores, colleagues saw him grow despondent.
On Sunday, his body was found at the foot of a remote forest bridge in what appears to be a suicide. Authorities are still investigating, but friends and colleagues suggest he was distraught over the teacher rating.
Parents, colleagues and former students gathered on the school lawn Monday around a memorial shrine of flowers and candles, shocked that the 39-year-old teacher had taken his own life and angered that he would be judged solely by test scores.”
Link: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/09/27/rigoberto-ruelas-lausd-te_n_740544.html
IMHO, this is what is worth getting upset over.
The edubullies have no compunctions about destroying the lives of millions of teachers and school children (KrazyTA cites but one example). I suppose all life – even that of the edubullies is sacred and all, but I have a hard time getting worked up about anyone entertaining fantasies about eliminating them – in fact, as I indicated, I have those fantasies too. It would be nice if we could get rid of them through peaceful, democratic means, but frankly they have declared war, so they shouldn’t be surprised by defensive attacks on them.
Communist Teacher I agree only we don’t want any collateral damage.So, maybe, we can do what the Russians did with that major school terrorist thing a few years ago and pour in sleeping gas and put them to sleep and transport them to Rikers Island where they will wake up in General Custody. Would that be fun. Just an alternate to collateral damage as I could not care a bit about them only innocents.
Yes, Pineapple Hare, I have tracked her out there and many other places. Here is how it worked. Deasy made up a story that he and Elliott did not get along. Really, the puppet masters decided that they wanted Aquino in LAUSD for the iPads and put on a Kabuki Dance for the publics benefit while they proceded with the plan. Elliott was to receive the buy out of her contract, bonus, of about $280,000 and move into a much higher paying job with her real skills of convincing people to buy garbage. She proved she was capable of this by helping to write RTI and promote it nationwide before they brought her in to implant RTI in LAUSD. One day at the board when she just arrived she was watching the board meeting on her T.V. and they saw me there on the special education issue. She and two of her staff come down and sit on both sides of me. Doing what I like to do and that is mess with their minds I hand them my analysis of RTI, which LDA L.A. asked me to do and is on You Tube also and watched, where I lay out how I can steal up to 60 % of the special ed catagorical revenue and inter-fund transfer it into the general fund and not keep good records also within the Federal RTI law. Even Doug Fuchs agrees with this. I hand them the analysis I am going to present for fun, just to see their faces. Boy, did it work, I love doing this, give them the information and watch them freak out when they see you got their secret plan. You have never seen people read so intensely. I stopped them for three years and then they did it as no one but me showed up for this and I have no children in school. I do have a cousin born without arms though so I know the subject. So, they pay the bonus and send her off to do the next scam for double money. Now, she is caught and it is coming down. I am using her and Aquino in the Sup. of Inst. catagory and every superintendent since Cowboy Roy Romer to Deasy as the bad decision making against the public best interests as the reason for the public process as they have proven they are incapable of good decisions. On the iPad on the 29th we will see who everyone really is in one clean stroke. Ratliff had better wake up and stop lying on the radio I can tell you. She says she is an attorney and the stupid part to this is she got elected because I came to you on this blog and asked for it over and over and it happened, now this. We will see on the 29th.
Thanks for the comment. If I ever miss a stroke please let me know. No one knows everything.
I fondly remember Harvard students protesting living wages several years ago and they truly fought and fought and fought until the Harvard University administration finally conceded and created a living wage for the lower wage university workers. I so hope that you catch the ear of “social justice” oriented Harvard students who have proven over the years to be quite effective at getting attention on social causes when they put their mind to it (also thinking of their vocal stance many years back in regards to U.S. universities still doing business with South Africa under apartheid). Let us hope that the “new shot heard round the world” won’t be in Lexington but instead will hail fromCambridge 02138 in front of Mem Hall in the Yard!
Come on now although there are plenty of reasons to be mad at the “reform” crowd”, we don’t want to invoke violence even in jest. It’s a distraction and not our style.
@Hertzberg whose suggesting violence??? My intention was metaphoric… “The shot heard round the world” comment was a hope that Harvard students join this all-important social justice issue and that their voices be loud and clear!
I think that Scott Hertzberg may have been referring to Communist Teacher’s post at 4:24 p.m.
That’s why to give them the sleeping gas and let them wake up in Rikers Island in the jail under arrest for fraud and theft. That would be an interesting video to have when they woke up. Wouldn’t that be fun and non violent also. This is a sneak drone attack. We could use the miniature ones to spread it around the room.
New Mexico’s Secretary of Education, Designate Hanna Skandera is there. After all, she is the Chair of Jeb’s Chiefs of Change and was his education policy person before being imported by a Koch supported governor. She is not an educator and no, her experience as a volunteer in an after-school teen abstinence program in a Catholic school DOES NOT count.
Hanna, Jeb, and the Foundation for Excellence in Education (FEE) are under investigation by the IRS as of yesterday.
Last night, while in Boston, Hanna hung up on a local reporter about an e-mail scandal. My local union (Albuquerque Teachers Federation) invited her a few weeks ago to debate teachers who are struggling with her new punitive and damaging teacher evaluation but she refused. Did I mention that she RSVP’d through her public relations manager, The Albuquerque Journal. She does not have time to meet with teachers because she is busy hanging out with the “reform” crowd and taking part in photo ops by reading picture books to children. Their arrogance and disrespect is shameful and harms the foundation of our democracy.
Not good….
Off topic, but I really enjoyed listening to Dr. Ravitch and EduShyster on last night’s , informative, interesting and inspirational tele-town hall last night! Thanks Dr. Ravitch! ,
Why be so politically correct about a drone attack? He was speaking metaphorically and with the proper disgust for them. After all, haven’t we killed enough innocents with them already? It does explain the situation well though. If we do not have some gallows humor on these serious issues your mind will explode with the seriousness of it all. These people are planning to rip us off for everything. That is the real bottom line here.
Perhaps they could be sent to Guantanamo for “re-education”. I’ve read there is a great program there for changing people’s minds.
Attract the “Best and the Brightest” – please !!! I have 2 masters and have taught for 18years – in Miami – I make less than $44,000 … . Thanks Jeb – teachers are now starving and losing their homes in Miami
* was told last week we may get a big $2000 – $4,000 dollar raise … Please, after FL teachers have taken past cuts that combined equal 1 year pay – thanks
I lost my house because for 4 years I did not get a Salary step increase
So true but have you seen any of the so called “investigative journalists” in this country profile what has happened to teachers? Why wasn’t this a subject on Education Nation? Have you noticed how insignificant the lives of teachers have become and how important it is to show puff pieces about billionaires?
Oklahoma punchline: >”State Superintendent Janet Barresi, McBee, Chief of Staff Joel Robison, Department of Education legal counsel Kim Richey and state Board of Education member Amy Ford are in Boston for a national education reform conference held by Jeb Bush’s Foundation for Excellence in Education.”<
A-F school grades statewide released with errors
http://www.tulsaworld.com
http://www.tulsaworld.com/news/education/a-f-school-grades-statewide-released-with-errors/article_3117c668-9b08-59c5-bbbc-ad18e55cc414.html
Diane, defensive is a loser position. In that position you do not control the agenda they still do. Only one way to play with them and we have a lot of experience with pulling off the impossible as politics is the “Art of the Possible.” Offense is the only way if you know what you are doing and have your facts and documents under control. I think you all should watch what I do to the board and Deasy et al at LAUSD to see how it works. Nice guy loses every time. You cannot reason with them when they are too far gone. With the new board here which the Ravich crew helped to get in we have a narrow window to go rational again instead of totally attack. We are trying that for now. If they vote for the iPads after what I have laid down with their own documents and what is going on world wide with this scam I guarantee you it will be my mission in life to take them all out of office so embarrassed that they will never run for office again. Would you pay $2,538 for an iPad which lasted a year and was a mess and pay with bonds that take 25-30 years to pay off? Want your district bankrupt? Just do it. Let them wine and dine you. Because then your district will be financially wiped out as people will not continue to pass 25-30 year bonds for this. The public is stupid as dirt but they are not that stupid when it comes to their minimal revenue now. Want to see squirming? Wait until this “Bomb” drops on their heads.