Archives for the month of: November, 2013
« Older Entries
Newer Entries »

Bob Braun: Should You Work in Newark Schools if You Think the Students Are Potential Criminals?

By dianeravitch
November 23, 2013 //
20

Bob Braun reported on politics and education in New Jersey for 50 years. Now he has his own blog. Watch for the wisdom of a seasoned journalist.

In this post, he notes that Cami Anderson, superintendent of schools in Newark, sent out a letter to families announcing that she was closing the schools for two days on November 7 and 8 because many teachers were attending the NJEA state convention. Anderson warned that the city would be “less safe” because the schools were closed.

Braun writes:

” What?

“Forget for a moment that national statistics do not support her contention that juvenile crimes increase when children are home from school. In fact, the opposite is true. Juvenile crime peaks on school days in the hours after children are released from school. It is less on non-school days. There is evidence, of course, that after school programs deter that problem—but Newark is located in Christieland where “you people” don’t deserve money for after-school programs.

“But the real question is this: How can someone who believes the children of Newark will go on a crime spree on non-school days serve as the superintendent of Newark’s public schools? Can anyone imagine the superintendent of the Westfield or Millburn or Mountain Lakes schools saying such a thing?”

Categories New Jersey

NYC Art Teacher: How Reform Destroyed My School and My Career

By dianeravitch
November 23, 2013 //
15

As philanthropists and civic leaders hail Mayor Bloomberg’s role in “reforming” the New York City public schools, here is the story of a teacher who describes the past dozen years from a different perspective. When the mayor closed schools, experienced teachers lost their jobs and joined the ATR [absent teacher reserve] pool, a large number of floating substitutes without permanent assignments. Their relatively high salaries made them undesirable as permanent hires.

The teacher writes:

“I have seen my 20 year career as a High School Art teacher (yes I consider myself extremely lucky to still have a teaching job and not be an ATR) go from teaching a wide range of classes in a High School with a thriving Art Major program that allowed my students to take the NYC Comprehensive Visual Arts Exam and use it to help obtain an Advanced Regents Diploma (my school was intentionally and methodically destroyed by Mayor Bloomberg’s selective policies of allowing only special education and ELL students to attend so that he could phase it out, pour millions of dollars into a complete interior and exterior make-over, and fill it with small High Schools that are all failing) to teaching only Required Art at another school. My students are smart enough to know that our futures as teachers and the future of our school depend on their progress and often tell me and my colleagues that “we cant fail them because we will lose our jobs”.

“To further my humiliation, my current school has been identified as failing because again only special education and ESL students are admitted and held to the same standards as general ed students, and my evaluation will be based on how students who I do not even teach score on the NYC ELA Regents, a subject I don’t even teach. This past week was probably my worst as a teacher in my entire career, consisting of incredible amounts of stress and disrespect from students, who I refer to Dean’s and Guidance for intervention, to no avail. They are returned to my class the following day after cursing me out and leave my hands tied as to how to teach the students in my class who want to learn and succeed.

“The reform movement has taken a job I loved and enjoyed and turned it into a complete horror, to the point where I wake up in the morning and dread going to work. My thanks to Mayor Bloomberg, and State Ed Commissioner John King for abusing (yes, abusing) both my students and myself. Thanks also to the author of the Common Core and Ms. Charlette Danielson, who are both rolling in money meant to improve students lives. Their work has done untold damage to students and teachers across the city, state and country. Ms. Danielson’s “Framework”, which consists of a rehash of all the things good teachers have been doing from the beginning, and which was intended to help teachers hone their craft, is being used as a weapon against teachers as part of the evaluation process (I have heard rumors that she is suing the DOE. I hope they are true).

“I am confident that at some point soon my school’s budget will no longer be able to support me and I will be excessed and replaced with a teacher fresh out of college with none of the experience that I bring to the classroom on a daily basis, but with half the salary (or less).

“I will end my career as an ATR, my life made intentionally so difficult that they assume I will retire. I have news for them. I WILL NOT be bullied and have been paying into the 25/55 plan so I can get away as soon as possible from a job and career that I loved and that never failed to be fulfilling on a daily basis. Teachers are strong and we will survive (except for the one that replaces me, who will quickly become disillusioned and leave the profession completely for a job where she will earn more money and be respected for the work she does).”

Categories Bloomberg, Michael, New York City, Teachers and Teaching

Most Surprising Conclusion of the Week

By dianeravitch
November 23, 2013 //
12

During his three terms as mayor –12 years–Mayor Bloomberg developed a data-driven strategy for school reform that relied heavily on high-stakes testing to close schools and replace them with small schools or charter schools. He eliminated neighborhood high schools and even neighborhood middle schools. “Choice” and test-based accountability were the central themes of his reforms.

The school closings were an annual ritual. Thousands of parents and teachers protested the closings but were routinely ignored by the mayor’s Board of Education, whose majority served at his pleasure, knowing the mayor would fire them if they bucked his wishes.

He closed scores of schools and opened hundreds of new schools. Some of the schools he closed were “new” schools that he had opened.

By the end of his tenure, polls showed that no more than 22-26% of voters approved of his education policies.

Many, it seemed, wanted a good neighborhood school, not a cornucopia of choices.

Yet at a recent discussion of the Bloomberg reforms, a report was released hailing this era of “reform” that the voters rejected. What was strange was that the report praised the Bloomberg era for what it did not demonstrate.

“Perhaps the mayor’s greatest education legacy is the belief that good public schools for all are possible,” the researchers, from the Center for New York City Affairs at The New School, write in an introduction. ”Yet the challenges, including resource challenges, remain huge.”

Not many teachers or public school parents are likely to endorse that statement.

Sadly, Bloomberg did not create a system of good public schools for all, nor did he encourage the belief “that good public schools for all are possible.” Instead, he promoted the idea that those who wanted a good school should leave the public school system for a privately managed charter school.

That heroic task is now on Bill de Blasio’s to-do list.

Categories Bloomberg, Michael, Corporate Reformers, New York City

High School Students in New Orleans Walk Out in Protest

By dianeravitch
November 23, 2013 //
22

I received this letter from a teacher who taught in Louisiana until recently. I am posting anonymously for her sake:

Dear friends,

I am not writing you from New Orleans, and I do not know these students, but I taught in this area for 9 years, and after 3 schools that I worked in were taken over by charters with no relationship to the community, I left my state and moved to Atlanta to go to graduate school. Thus, it is so encouraging that students from two high schools have protested fake school reform and the “No Excuses Model.” Both schools have staged walk-outs over the past week. If you have not watched the below videos, please take a minute to do so.

Firstline schools is the Charter Management Organization (CMO) that took over Joseph S. Clark High School three years ago. The principal is a TFA graduate and his name is Alex Hochran. The students were protesting the discipline policies and the lack of diversity in the teaching staff (the school is located in one of the oldest black neighborhoods in the United States, Treme).

http://www.wdsu.com/page/search/htv-no/news/local-news/new-orleans/high-school-students-protest-teachers-firing/-/9853400/22980804/-/wdkotsz/-/index.html

Collegiate Academies is another No Excuses CMO, and they are in the process of taking over Carver High School (the school is located in the 9th ward of New Orleans). The students walked out yesterday.

http://www.wwltv.com/news/Carver-Collegiate-Academy-protest-school-conditions-stern-discipline–232692271.html

Please share these videos with others, so that people can be inspired by the courageous work of these young people.

Categories New Orleans

Firedoglake: Arne Doubles Down on “White Suburban Moms” Gaffe

By dianeravitch
November 23, 2013 //
33

Blogger Firedoglake deconstructs Arne Duncan’s flawed effort to explain why he castigated “white suburban moms.”

Duncan, he says, does not understand basic economics. Nor does he know that grading teachers has nothing whatever to do with improving schools. How many nations in the world are grading teachers by the test scores of their students? None that I know of. Instead, they have built a strong teaching profession that is judged by their peers and their expert supervisors, not by student test scores.

Firedoglake writes of the putdown:

It is the kind of condescending attitude one expects from education privatizers. But when confronted with such an amazingly arrogant statement Secretary Duncan only apologized for the “clumsy” phrasing, not the sentiment. Then he went on a long diatribe about economics and education that made it clear Duncan had not been properly educated on the subject.

[American children] are competing for jobs in India, China, Singapore, South Korea – that’s the competition we all need to come together and help our students be successful there. And the best way to do that is to grade teachers.

 

 

 

Categories Education Reform

President John F. Kennedy, R.I.P.

By dianeravitch
November 22, 2013 //
51

I remember the day President Kennedy died. I was 25 years old. I was living on East 86th Street in Manhattan. I was walking home to my apartment. A shopkeeper ran out on the street and shouted, “They killed the President.” More people started coming out of shops, looking stunned, weeping and in shock. I ran home. My husband was at work, my one-year-old was napping. I told the babysitter to go home. I turned on the television and remained glued to it, crying as the facts emerged from the early confusion.

I met John Kennedy twice. When I was in college in Massachusetts, he was Senator. He came to meet with the political science majors in 1958, and we spent an hour or so talking about the issues facing the nation. He was charming, handsome, funny, well-informed. We had no idea that the Senator would be President in two years.

In 1960, I graduated from college and was married a few weeks later. That summer, I volunteered to work in the Kennedy campaign. I worked at the headquarters at 277 Park Avenue (an old and beautiful building that has since been torn down and replaced by a skyscraper). I still have cards inviting wealthy matrons to a tea party at the home of Mrs. Elinor Gimbel, signed by Rose Kennedy, the candidate’s mother. During the fall, he came to thank the volunteers individually. I was struck by how freckled he was. Funny what you remember.

I was part of the generation that was moved by his eloquence, his humor, his charm, his intellect. He encouraged us to dream of a new world.

I felt shattered by his assassination. It was one of the darkest days the nation had known. Five years later came the terrible deaths, the murders, of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., then Robert F. Kennedy. It seemed we would never dare to dream again.

Categories Education Reform

@thechalkface: Here is Where You Learn about Education Today

By dianeravitch
November 22, 2013 //
3

Tim Slekar and his colleague Shaun Johnson have been recording interviews and frank talk about school reform for three years.

Here is a roundup of some of their top conversations:

Karen Lewis, Nancy Carlsson-Paige, Peter DeWitt, and me.

If you want to hear something different from the mainstream media, listen in.

Categories Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Education Reform, Teachers and Teaching

Why Do We Rank and Rate Students, Teachers, and Schools?

By dianeravitch
November 22, 2013 //
183

I have been wondering lately why we are so obsessed with giving every student, every teacher, and every school a ranking, rating, and/or grade.

It seems to me that we are thinking about children, teachers, and schools the same way we think about sports teams. In every league, there are winners and losers.

But if we think about education as a culture that is very different from that of a competitive sports league, then the picture and the questions change.

What if we thought of schools as if they were akin to families?

Then we would work to develop school cultures that are collaborative and supportive. We would make sure that those with the greatest needs got the resources they need. We would stop thinking of winners and losers (and “racing to the top”) and think instead about the full development of each human’s potential.

It is a paradigm shift, to be sure. But the present paradigm and ranking, rating, and grading ends up demoralizing children, teachers, and schools.

We must think and act differently. If we do, we will not only have better schools, but a better society, where people help one another instead of finding a way to beat out their competitors.

Save the competition for the sports field; save it for the arenas where it is appropriate.

Think of each child as a precious human being, one of a kind. Think of teachers as professionals, who should be well prepared, supported, and given the autonomy to decide what works best in their classrooms. And treasure each community’s school as an invaluable and irreplaceable institution, one that is central to the community and essential to our democracy.

Categories Accountability, Education Reform

Financial Report: Charter Schools Strangling Public Schools in Michigan

By dianeravitch
November 22, 2013 //
25

Moody’s Investors Service downgraded the bond ratings of 53 school districts in Michigan.

Public schools are losing enrollment to charter schools, and losing the ability to balance their budgets.

More than 80% of the charter schools in Michigan are operated for-profit.

According to the linked article,

Justin Marlowe, a professor at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee who has written about local government finance, said increased charter school competition and tight state budgets are squeezing the districts.

The “proliferation of charter schools and ongoing state budget problems have put more pressure on local school districts,” Marlowe said, adding there “don’t seem to be any immediate solutions unless we rethink how we finance school districts.”

According to the Moody’s report, 425 of the state’s 549 public school districts lost students between 2004 and 2012, with total enrollment slipping 13.2 percent.

But as overall enrollment was falling, charter schools were growing: They had 120,000 students in Michigan at the end of the last school year and the number of schools rose by 8 percent for this school year, to 298.

Michigan’s Electablog reports: “This is no accident. It’s a plan that’s been in place by those who wish to diminish the ability of teachers to bargain collectively for wages, benefits, and working conditions and to redirect tax dollars earmarked for educating our children into the coffers of for-profit charter school companies.”

In short, this is the culmination of efforts to privatize public education, remove any rights of teachers, and replace public education with profit-making businesses.

Is this the work of conservatives? No, conservatives don’t destroy traditional institutions. They don’t blow up the neighborhood public school so that someone can make a profit.

As Garrison Keillor said, “When you wage war on the public schools, you’re attacking the mortar that holds the community together. You’re not a conservative, you’re a vandal.”

The vandals are inside the gates in Michigan, ransacking public education across the state.

One of our regular readers wrote as follows:

Eli Broad is from Michigan, and he writes editorials in that state insisting he is NOT destroying public education. Would someone in media ask him to defend what’s happening in Michigan? 80% of the charters are for-profit and they are destroying the public school system. The governor and the state legislature are captured by for-profit education lobbyists.

Michigan could LOSE their public school system. Will Broad have to answer for what he’s done here? How far does this have to go before someone in state or federal government intervenes? Will Michigan be the first state to go to a fully privatized system?

Thanks, ed reformers. Good job! Every public school kid in Michigan will now suffer as a result of your cavalier, reckless, “cage busting” approach. Every single kid in a public school will pay.

Categories Charter Schools, Education Industry, Michigan, Privatization

EduShyster: Exploitation of Cheap Tutors by Charters

By dianeravitch
November 22, 2013 //
7

EduShyster has a guest post written by a young college graduate who took a job as a teacher at a “no excuses” charter school in Boston. When you read it, you understand what it means to have no protections, no one to fight for you. The young people banded together, and the best they could get from their employer was minimum wage, barely covering their living expenses. The post exemplifies why many charters have high teacher turnover and still eke out enough to pay high executive salaries.

Categories Charter Schools, Teachers and Teaching
« Older Entries
Newer Entries »