For the past dozen years, there has been no louder cheerleader for No Child Left Behind, Race to the Top, and their demand for test-based accountability than the Néw York Times’ editorial board.
Despite the fact that greater test score gains were recorded before the implementation of NCLB than since; despite the finding of the National Research Council that test-based accountability was ineffectual; despite numerous examples of cheating, gaming the system, narrowing the curriculum, and other negative consequences of high-stakes testing, the Times’ editorial board has stubbornly defended this regime of carrots and sticks based on standardized tests.
Even now, in an editorial saying that testing had gone too far and had turned into a “mania,” the Times can’t resist referring to the passage of George W. Bush’s NCLB (based on the non-existent “Texas miracle”), as “a sensible decision.”
It was not. NCLB was a disaster for the quality of education in the United States. Furthermore, it sent the privatization movement into high gear, since “failing” public schools could, under the law, be closed, privatized, handed over to charter operators. We now know that none of these remedies actually works unless low-performing kids are excluded or kicked out, and we know that the overwhelming majority of so-called “failing” schools are schools that enroll mostly black and Hispanic students, many of whom are poor, have disabilities, or don’t speak English. Schools are being closed and privatized because they enroll the neediest students, not because they are “failing.”
Now the Times looks forward to the Common Core and the computerized testing it requires to bring the wonderful progress promised by NCLB.
It is good to see that even the Néw York Times and its education editorial writer Brent Staples recognize that enough is enough. If only they had said so five years ago, before so many schools were unfairly closed based on test scores. If only they would acknowledge that standardized tests mirror advantage and disadvantage. If only they would ask questions about how more rigorous testing will affect the kids who are now struggling with the current tests.
But let us be grateful that after 12 years of NCLB and four years of Race to the Top, the Times’ ardor for high-stakes testing has cooled.
This poem was suggested to me by a friend who does professional development for the Common Core in New York City.
This past week, by coincidence, Jason Griffiths, the founder of the Brooklyn Latin School quit his job and went to work for a controversial charter school, because he was tired of being compelled to go to professional development for Common Core when his school already was the top ranked school in the state and used the International Baccalaureate program. He was tired of dealing with Bloomberg’s bureaucratic Department of Education.
“Over time I wasn’t able to lead the school in the way I wanted,” said Griffiths, noting that he was often stuck in full-day meetings with the Department of Education over the city’s new Common Core standards, which he said Brooklyn Latin’s curriculum already met and exceeded. “We’re working 12-hour and 16-hour days, and if you’re taking a full day out of a week [for a meeting] that’s a lot of time…It had a detrimental effect on me personally, on my ability to connect with teachers and with students.”
My friend, the professional development expert, suggested this poem as a metaphor for the work she does:
Jabberwocky
By Lewis Carroll
`Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.
“Beware the Jabberwock, my son!
The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun
The frumious Bandersnatch!”
He took his vorpal sword in hand:
Long time the manxome foe he sought —
So rested he by the Tumtum tree,
And stood awhile in thought.
And, as in uffish thought he stood,
The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame,
Came whiffling through the tulgey wood,
And burbled as it came!
One, two! One, two! And through and through
The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!
He left it dead, and with its head
He went galumphing back.
“And, has thou slain the Jabberwock?
Come to my arms, my beamish boy!
O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!’
He chortled in his joy.
`Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.
He writes: “If ever there was an organization that stands out as one that should never have been granted nonprofit status and doesn’t deserve to continue having it, it’s StudentsFirst. One look at their 2011 tax disclosures reveals a fat, political, ideological organization. StudentsFirst not only crosses the line, they stomp on it and erase it for their own benefit.”
Nonprofits are allowed to do some advocacy, but as I understand the tax law (let me be the first to say that only tax lawyers understand the tax law and even they sometimes need help figuring it out), nonprofits are not supposed to lobby directly for legislation. Or, maybe do it just a little bit. Or maybe pretend they are advocating but not lobbying.
The tax laws and tax code make no sense. if you view the universe of nonprofits actively lobbying for vouchers, charters, tax breaks, or seeking appropriations and earmarks for entrepreneurs, it makes no sense that they are classified as nonprofits. Some nonprofits lobby on behalf of for-profit corporations, which make handsome donations to the nonprofits.
In some quarters, what is called “reform” is driven by big money, not what is best for students. Yes, Virginia, there is an education industry, and it is like any other industry: it wants a return on its investments.
Jersey Jazzman notes that Governor Chris Christie is back with his favorite lines, ridiculing teachers for being overpaid and underworked.
That means, of course, that he is running for re-election and who better to kick around that the state’s teachers?
Here is Christie:
“[NJ Governor Chris] Christie said parents must stand up to organizations who he said care more about pensions, wage increases, generous benefits packages and summers off than about extending quality education to all students.”
And more: “The governor told a friendly Bergenfield crowd Tuesday that Garden State students are in need of more hours in the classroom and longer school years in order to stay competitive. Christie blamed special interests with blocking those changes for purely their own personal interests.
“They don’t want a longer school year, they like having the summer off,” said Christie, referring to the adults – not the students – who he accuses of blocking the reforms.
Christie argued longer school days and years are needed to ensure students are educated.”
JJ points out that “Of course, teachers do not get “summers off”: summer is an unpaid, mandatory furlough for teachers, who only get ten-month contracts. Teachers either have to save their money throughout the year to make it through July and August, or they have to get seasonal work, which often pays considerably less than their regular salaries.
Jersey Jazzman is waiting patiently for some industrious reporter to ask the Governor whether he has funding to pay for longer school days and longer school years. Where is the research that shows the benefits of a longer school year? Why does Governor Christie send his own children that has a shorter school year?
Is he serious or does he just want to play the old, stale teacher-as-punching-bag game?
Ellen Lubic and other education activists have formed a new organization called Joining Forces to help parents fight off corporate takeovers of their public schools. Imagine this: an earnest young man or woman comes to your neighborhood, even rents a house there, and button-holes parents to collect their grievances against the neighborhood school. What about that principal? Is there a teacher you don’t like? Do you need more of this or less of that? Sign here. Sign the petition and we can make them change. One day, if they are successful, you won’t have a neighborhood school. Instead, it will belong to a charter corporation, it will have its own board, and it may kick out your child.
Lubic writes:
“It is called divide and conquer. if parents are kept at bay and do not have a common cause of their neighborhood public school, they are easier to fool, to manage, to usurp…yes a low form of social engineering.
“Anyone who wants to work against Parent Revolution, please contact me at
Joining Forces for Education
joiningforces4ed@aol.com
“This particularly pernicious form of privatization is spreading like wild fire across the US. We must join together to educate the community about parent trigger laws and how the inner city parents are manipulated to sign phony petitions to essentially give their schools away to free market, for-profit, charters.”
A reader who goes by the name “Democracy” reminds us of the much-hyped report by a task force of the Council on Foreign Relations, whose co-chairs were Joel Klein and Condoleeza Rice. It blamed the public schools for endangering national security and for the nation’s economic problems. I reviewed it here.
This is “Democracy’s” comment:
“Aah, Joel Klein.
Klein was a recent co-author – with Condaleezza Rice – of a Council on Foreign Relations education “report” that consisted mostly of tripe. But what can one reasonably expect from the likes of Klein and Rice?
Joel Klein perpetrates and perpetuates the myth that public education is in “crisis,” and without serious “reform” “the U.S. economy will continue to suffer.”
The “reform” pushed by Klein (and the Council report) is to impose the “business model” on public schools. This is the same “model” that led to big budget deficits, a ballooned national debt and a broken economy. Rather than take responsibility for what they did, the big bankers and hedge funders and politicians who brokered it all point the finger of blame at public schools and teachers.
Klein advocates more testing, merit pay through “value-added” evaluations, more charter schools and vouchers as “innovative” reforms. There is little or no research to support any of them.
Klein blames the current economic quagmire on public education. He writes that we used to “have a successful middle class,” but “that’s changed markedly since 1980.” Klein says “we’re rapidly moving toward two America’s –– a wealthy elite and an increasingly large underclass that lacks the skills to succeed.” His answer to the problem? The market, since “markets impose accountability.” A person would have to be moronic to make – or believe – such a claim.
Klein never makes any mention whatsoever, as he blames schools and teachers, of the supply-side economic policies pushed by conservative presidents, politicians and businessmen that are directly responsible for big budget deficits, millions of job losses, the most severe income stratification in the developed world, and our unsustainable national debt. He calls for “radical reform” of public education (more tests, merit pay, vouchers, etc), but says not one word about reforming the banking, derivatives trading and skewed tax system – coupled with regulatory enforcement –– that are sorely needed.
Condaleezza Rice was George W. Bush’s national security director before 9/11 occurred and during the launching of the war in Iraq, which she favored and supported. Rice helped to sell the American public the big lie of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, warning infamously that “ we don’t want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud.” Journalists who covered her reported that she “made public claims that she knew to be false.”
There’s little doubt but that Rice (and her colleagues) ignored repeated warnings about imminent terrorist threats. After 9/11, she said (repeatedly) that no one could have predicted that planes might be used as weapons, despite the fact that there were at least a dozen documented warnings of it.
Initially, until public pressure forced the Bush administration to relent, Rice refused to testify before the 9/11 Commission. When she did, it wasn’t pretty. She wiggles and squirms, and tries to obfuscate and evade answering questions about the Presidential Daily Briefing (PDB) of August 6, 2001. That PDB was titled “Bin Ladin Determined To Strike in US” and warned that Bin Ladin was “determined…to conduct terrorist attacks in the US,” that he “prepares years in advance and is not deterred by setbacks.” The memo noted “patterns of suspicious activity in this country consistent with preparations for hijackings or other types of attacks,” and it warned that a group of “Bin Ladin’s supporters was in the US planning attacks with explosives.”
Now just imagine that the physical and human dimensions of the Twin Towers and Pentagon and planes were converted into schools and schoolchildren. Would anyone seriously think that there had not been ample warning of an impending disaster? Would anyone think that any of those involved in ignoring the threat should NOT be held accountable? What Rice said in private testimony to the 9/11 Commission has not been declassified (it should be…there are likely some real “whoppers” in there). What she said in public testimony can be seen below. It isn’t pretty.
Arthur Goldstein reviews StudentsFirst’s charge that Mayor Bloomberg and his Department of Education were assigning poorly-rated teachers to high-minority schools.
It is mildly amusing to imagine that StudentsFirst and Mayor Bloomberg are adversaries, as Goldstein points out. They have a shared interest in demonizing teachers, demanding that they be held accountable for test scores, no matter what other factors are at work.
As Goldstein writes:
“I didn’t realize these schools were dispensing more U-ratings, but it’s fairly easy to guess why. For one thing, there is a direct correlation between low-SES and school closings. Schools with high percentages of high needs kids tend not to get high test scores and are therefore considered failing. It’s the school’s fault the kids have learning disabilities, and it’s the school’s fault the kids can’t speak English. No excuses. Just because the kid arrived from the Dominican Republic four days ago, that’s no reason he can’t write that essay about American history.”
At a recent meeting of the Los Angeles school board, newly re-elected member Steve Zimmer spoke passionately about the reasons to reduce class size.
Watch here to see Zimmer’s address to the board. Zimmer was a TFA teacher who taught in the L.A. schools for 17 years before he ran for school board.
Los Angeles has some of the most crowded classrooms in the nation.
The board passed a resolution to spend new money to reduce class size. Superintendent Deasy decided to ignore the board’s wishes. He recently committed tens of millions of dollars to buy iPads for the children in the crowded classrooms.
¡Venceremos! Join the community search for a new LAUSD superintendent!
An open letter and call to action to our LAUSD community and national education experts regarding the urgent search for a new LAUSD Superintendent
If the union is sound and the teachers voted of their own free will, then the relationship between the school superintendent and the teachers is not simply bad, but dysfunctional of historic proportions. — Professor Bill Tierney
When John Deasy was proffered by Eli Broad and Mayor Villaraigosa as the sole candidate to replace the retiring Ramon C. Cortines, there was no attempt to consider the appropriate superintendent for the community. Even the typically equivocating Los Angeles School District (LAUSD) Board Member Steve Zimmer voiced serious concerns:
“We didn’t have a process — internal or external — for the most important job in public education in the United States right now,” he tells the Weekly. “It has nothing to do with John Deasy. I’m a big fan. … But I can’t be sure that I got the best person for the job if I didn’t get to even talk to anybody else.”
Democracies depend on processes. There was no process with Deasy. No vetting. No considering the pro and cons of multiple candidates. The only words that could begin to describe his installment are coronation and ordination.
Far more corporate executive than educator, Deasy’s reign as LAUSD Superintendent been an abject exercise in neoliberalism. Marked first by a rash of school closures, reconstitutions, and new school giveaways to private institutions, Deasy made it clear to Los Angeles that he would indeed put his ideology derived from his stints at at the Broad Superintendents Academy and the Gates Foundation before the needs of students and community. There’s a litany of complaints against Deasy, most of which are related to callous cuts to vital programs, wasteful and inappropriate spending priorities, adoption of discredited and unproven policies, defiance towards our publicly elected schoolboard, and open hostility towards the very educators tasked with teaching our community’s children.
However, this isn’t the space to discuss Deasy’s glaring shortcomings and myriad failures as superintendent. Given that his only supporters are billionaires, nonprofits that are funded by those selfsame billionaires, and the disgraced former Mayor, there is no longer any reason for this individual to continue his neoliberal project of dismantling our public commons. Instead we are commencing the search for a new superintendent now so that we don’t end up in the same situation as we did when Deasy was crowned.
To that end, we are soliciting a list of viable superintendent candidates we feel will best serve the students of Los Angeles. We are also soliciting a list of attributes the community wants our next superintendent to have. Some starter items are here, but it’s important that this is a community project, so we want people to email their suggestions. Both of these lists will be continually updated here. Join us. We can identify the next superintendent candidates who will serve our community. ¡Venceremos!
Candidates for LAUSD Superintendent
James Morris
Currently superintendent of The Fremont Unified School District. Several well respected community leaders, administrators, and teachers have suggested Mr. Morris, who worked in LAUSD for many years.
Qualities we want in our next superintendent
Believes in educating the whole child
Bilingual or multilingual
Willing to listen to the community
Social media campaign
We intend to launch a social media campaign in support of this historic community project to find the right superintendent for our community. Stay tuned for details.
