Archives for the month of: December, 2013
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New York Times: Staff Cuts Cause Increased Class Size

By dianeravitch
December 23, 2013 //
82

Motoko Rich reports on a district in Pennsylvania where budget cuts have led to teacher layoffs and increased class sizes. 

The story could be repeated in districts across the nation.

Class sizes are growing, and schools are eliminating guidance counselors, nurses, classroom aides, librarians, and regular classroom teachers.

In Philadelphia earlier this fall, a 12-year-old student died because there was no nurse on duty that day, due to budget cuts.

We hear so-called reformers proclaim about the importance of teacher evaluation, merit pay, and test scores, but I have yet to hear any of them complain about budget cuts and lack of staff for the arts, physical education, foreign languages, libraries, and so on.

We read the New York Times editorials offering “solutions” to the math and science education or gifted education, but the editorial writers usually forget to mention budget cuts and layoffs. How are schools supposed to enact any of their proposals when teachers are stressed out with crowded classrooms? When they are expecting to be judged by test scores on material they never taught? When they are supposed to introduce Common Core without resources or professional development? When testing companies have been given control of curriculum?

Teachers and administrators are facing a barrage of changes for which they are ill-prepared and for which there is no money for implementation. This is no reform. This is harassment.

 

Categories Education Reform

Tony Bennett and the Privatization Money Trail

By dianeravitch
December 23, 2013 //
19

You remember Tony Bennett? Not the famous singer but the guy who was State Commissioner of education in Florida. The guy who led the effort to privatize public education in Indiana and led the charge for charter schools, vouchers, for-profit charters, virtual charters, high-stakes testing, the A-F grading system, and the elimination of collective bargaining rights for teachers. Remember that he was honored by the Thomas B. Fordham Institute as the leading “reformer” (translated, privatizers) of all state chiefs. He was also chair of Jeb Bush’s “Chiefs for Change,” composed of state superintendents who share Jeb’s antipathy to public education.

Now, you may recall, that Bennett ran for re-election and was trounced by Democrat Glenda Ritz. Despite Bennett’s more than 5-1 funding advantage over Ritz, she won more votes than the new Republican governor, Mike Pence.

Here is a recap: After his stunning defeat, Bennett was promptly hired as state superintendent in Florida, where Jeb Bush created the template for the privatization movement. Meanwhile, back in Indiana, newly elected Governor Pence has done whatever he could to strip power and authority away from Glenda Ritz’s office and turn it over to a parallel agency that he created or to the Legislature, controlled by his allies.

As for Bennett, he didn’t last long in Florida. In August 2013, he resigned after a journalist for AP revealed that Bennett and his team had changed the A-F grading system to avoid giving a C grade to a charter school founded by a major contributor. Bennett contested the journalist’s interpretation, but his resignation suggested tat he wasn’t prepared to fight to refute the allegations.

The Bennett story was one of the biggest of the year.

There is only one other important detail that has not been explored, at least not on this blog: Who put up nearly $2 million to re-elect Tony Bennett in Indiana? Was it supplied by grateful parents in Indiana? No.

Mostly, it was big out-of-state donors who fund the privatization movement across the nation, in state and even local races.

His single biggest contributor was Alice Walton of the Walmart family of Arkansas. She gave $200,000, nearly 11% of Bennett’s total. Alice Walton has generously funded privatization campaigns in Georgia, Washington state, and elsewhere.

His second largest contribution of $175,000 came from Dean V. White, an Indiana corporate leader who is a major on or to Indiana Republicans.

Christel Dehaan gave Bennett $90,000. It was her charter school that was at the center of the grade–fixing scandal. Dehaan gave a total of $283,000 to the Indiana Republican Party this year.

Michelle Rhee’s StudentsFirst contributed $64,000.

There were also contributions to Tony Bennett by Eli Broad of Los Angeles, who pretends to be a liberal Democrat; the voucher-loving, far-right American Federation of Children, led by the DeVos family; Michael Bloomberg, Mayor of New York City, who prefers to project an image as a liberal independent; Roger Hertog, equity investor in New York and former chair of NYC’s conservative Manhattan Institute; Dan Loeb, hedge fund manager in New York City.

Florida blogger Bob Sikes reported: “Rhee’s contribution to Bennett’s Indiana campaign places her among his top contributors. Among his contributors from Florida were three members of Florida’s board of education, Jeb Bush, Patricia Levesque and charter school giants Charter Schools USA and Academica.” Patricia Levesque is Jeb Bush’s top policy advisor.

Categories Charter Schools, Closing schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Florida, Indiana, Vouchers

Robert Freeman: How to Destroy Education While Making a Trillion Dollars

By dianeravitch
December 23, 2013 //
49

We know the formula by now for destroying public education and handing it off to entrepreneurs who can cut costs, package it, extract a profit (or remain nonprofit while paying exorbitant executive salaries):

Cry “crisis.” Set impossible targets (100% success on tests normed on a bell curve). Demoralize teachers. Fire the most experienced teachers. Hire low-wage temporary teachers who will leave within three years, thus eliminating future pension obligations. Close schools and disrupt communities. Turn schools over to entrepreneurs, to amateurs, to non-educators, to sports stars, to charter chains. Watch as public schools are dissolved and disappear. Watch as people become consumers, not citizens.

But now others get it, even if most of our major editorial boards do not.

Robert Freeman writes here about the public theft that is underway.

Categories Budget Cuts, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, For-Profit, Privatization

Who Will Win the Lysenko Award for 2013?

By dianeravitch
December 23, 2013 //
17

From Nebraska comes a letter from a retired teacher. He thinks there should be a special award for the person who best exemplifies the failed ideas of Trofim Lysenko. Lysenko was a biologist and agonomist whose ideas about agriculture were wrong but made compulsory.

Here is the winner:

A challenge to readers of your blog:
Find an organization or a department or college of education that would develop the criteria for Lysenko Awards, that would investigate those worthy of the Lysenko Awards, and that would grant Lysenko Awards to deserving persons with proper ceremony and publicly. Recipients shall forever be known as Lysenkoites, the followers of Lysenkoism. .
The awards will remind everyone of Soviet director of genetics for agriculture Trofim Lysenko’s use of centralized political power to implement unscientific genetics using pseudoscience.
Lysenko rejected evidence about genes and plant hormones but accepted false theories of genetics which he required researchers and agriculture leaders to follow.
Lysenko put Soviet agriculture behind for a generation.
Centralized political power continues to implement No Child Left Behind , Race to the Top, Common Core, and inBloom Untested ideology with bribes and punishments requires miseducation in the name of pseudoscience.
More than one person should receive the Lysenko Awards. Arne Duncan’s actions have mirrored those of Trofim Lysenko. After an Award Ceremony, he would be called Lysenkoite Arnie Duncan.
Lysenko Awards would help stop American education from regressing further. Do not let American education, like Soviet agriculture, be put behind for a generation.
Pail Kaldahl
Retired Teacher
Bellevue, Nebraska
Categories Corporate Reformers

Buffalo: A Story of Bad Policy, Bad Mandates, and Administrative Incompetence

By dianeravitch
December 23, 2013 //
31

A teacher in Buffalo read the New York Times series about the homeless child named Dasani and shared this story of administrative mandates, bad policy, and the harm inflicted on students. Why does Race to the Top assume that a school is “failing” when its students have unaddressed needs? Why does it assume that students who have unaddressed needs will get higher test scores if their teachers and principal are removed but their needs remain unaddressed?

A Buffalo Story:

John King, New York State Commissioner of Education, threatens to close LaFayette High School in Buffalo, New York due to low test scores on the assessments. Lafayette is full of refugees. Many who have had no formal education prior to coming to the US. Others who have gone through the system in their homelands or the Refugee Camps and graduated from 6th grade. They are ELL students. They may or may not speak English. Their homeland tongues represent 56 different languages and they don’t necessarily know how to write down what they speak. They are given a year or two before they are expected to be fully functional in the Buffalo Public Schools. The results are not surprising, they are failing. The government provides support for their families for ninety days, teaching them how to cope and adapt to the American way of life. They provide a place to live, furniture, clothes, food stamps, and access to other public services, then they are cut loose. Churches and agencies such as Vive and the International Institute try to help, but the children’s anchor is their local school.

The teachers from Lafayette cried when they heard that King wanted to use the turn around model. He wanted half the teachers and the principal removed so a new crew could come into the building and start fresh. King believed that this model would result in students finally doing better on the tests. The teachers cried, not because they would lose their jobs. No, they would be transferred, probably to an easier assignment at a school where the students had the ability to pass. They cried for the kids. They cried because they had a strong bond with these young adults. They cried because they were the lifeline and the children needed some sort of constancy in their lives so they could overcome their horrific past. They cried.

The Buffalo Teachers Union fought and some sort of sanity won out. The turn around model was discarded. A partnership with John Hopkins University was developed. It took time to create a satisfactory program. Numerous attempts were rejected by the state. Finally acceptance, but no funding. The process had taken too long, the funding was pulled. A punishment? A punishment for fighting for the students and not taking the easy way out? It looks that way. Last week King visited LaFayette and said he wasn’t satisfied. Not enough progress had been made. He still threatens to have the state take over the school. I don’t know what this means, but it sounds ominous. It sounds vengeful. But ultimately, it sounds hurtful to these children who have already endured too much.

State Commissioner John King, whose only education experience was limited to three years in a “no-excuses” charter schools noted for its high rates of suspension, seems eager to fail the entire Buffalo district and take control of it. Maybe he should, so he can be held accountable for improving it.

Categories Race to the Top, Testing

Mercedes Schneider Offers Advice to Michigan Legislators and Parents About New Orleans Model: Run the Other Way!

By dianeravitch
December 23, 2013 //
7

Mercedes Schneider was invited to testify to a Michigan legislative committee about the alleged “New Orleans miracle,” which she explains is a mirage.

In addition to presenting her views in a five-minute video, she made a ten-minute video specifically directed to Michigan parents.

She explains what is happening in Louisiana, the data manipulation, the political games played with statistics to bolster privatization.

If you want to meet Mercedes Schneider, watch the videos.

Mercedes teaches high school English in Louisiana and she holds a Ph.D. in research methods.

She is also fearless, which is unusual these days.

 

Categories Michigan, New Orleans, Privatization

Last Minute Xmas Shopping: Your Race to the Top Toys Aligned with Common Core!

By dianeravitch
December 22, 2013 //
10

Please check out this shopping catalogue of toys, fully aligned with the Common Core!

It might easily be confused with the real thing, so I feel impelled to tell you it is a spoof written by two New York City teachers.

My favorite: the plane built in mid-air while it is flying. Watch out below!

By next year, there might really be a catalogue just like this one, and it won’t be a joke.

Categories Humor

Here is a Good Xmas Gift: Advice from an Experienced Teacher

By dianeravitch
December 22, 2013 //
8

David Greene has published a new book about teaching called Do the Right Thing.

David Greene taught social studies and coached in NYC, Woodlands HS, Scarsdale HS, and Ardsley HS for 38 years. He was a field supervisor for Fordham University, mentored Teach For America Corps members in the Bronx, was a staff member of WISE Services and treasurer of Save Our Schools March Committee. He has appeared twice on Bronx Talk with Gary Axelbank. He has been published in Ed Week online and has also been referenced by Valerie Strauss in her Washington Post web-based column, The Answer Sheet. Most recently he wrote the most responded-to Sunday Dialogue letter in the New York Times entitled, “A Talent For Teaching,” May 4, 2013.

His questions are answered in the book in plain talk, right from the heart and from decades of experience:

Who controls today’s conversation about what education should be in the classroom? Bill Gates? Arne Duncan? Michelle Rhee? Media? Politicians? Who has gained more and more control of what actually goes on in the classroom? Bill Gates? Arne Duncan? Michelle Rhee? Media? Politicians? Why? Where are the voices of the thousands of talented and loved teachers whose classrooms should be models of what works regardless of the socioeconomic environment they are located. I am but one of many. Each of us has gotten to be who we are as teachers through our own set of circumstances. We, like all other professionals learn our craft through our experiences as well as our academic preparation. Some of us get to pass on what we have learned about our craft by becoming supervisors, mentors, or university lecturers. I have mentored new teachers. I have taught a graduate education class. But those endeavours have reached relatively few. I have even spawned new teachers, inspired by me, but those are even fewer. Initially it is why started writing this book. Much of it started as advice to give to my mentees. Then some suggested to me to write a book. So I did!

Categories Teachers and Teaching

Larry Cuban on the Los Angeles iPad Fiasco

By dianeravitch
December 22, 2013 //
31

Larry Cuban, experienced educator and historian emeritus of education at Stanford University, reviews the iPad mess in Los Angeles and wonders:

What were they thinking?

Why so little forethought to the cost and utility of the iPads?

Why is Los Angeles paying Apple more than the retail cost of similar devices?

What does research show about the relationship between such devices and test scores?

Why so little disclosure about the ultimate cost?

Cuban might have also wondered why Superintendent Deasy goes out of his way to insist that this huge expenditure is about civil rights, even though it may mean that many poor African American and Hispanic students attend overcrowded classes in buildings that the district cannot afford to repair.

But at least they have iPads!

Categories Education Reform

Indiana: Tony Bennett’s Favorite Charter Falls from A to F

By dianeravitch
December 22, 2013 //
10

Remember that Tony Bennett, after being beaten by Glenda Ritz in an election last fall, was hired to be Commissioner of Education in Florida? Remember that he resigned his position in Florida after the Associated Press released emails showing that Bennett had changed the grading system to lift the grade of a charter school founded by a big campaign contributor (both to his campaign and to the state GOP).

Indiana grades just came out. Christel House Academy, Bennett’s favorite charter, dropped from the A that he manufactured, to an F.

Lots of excuses from the charter school.

The dog ate its homework.

Categories Charter Schools, Education Reform, Indiana, Privatization
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