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Archives for the year of: 2013
Valerie Strauss of the Washington Post has published an overview of the munificent support provided by the Gates Foundation to promote the Common Core standards.
The foundation expended $150 million to a wide variety of state education departments, think tanks, universities, unions, associations.
Gates really really really wants the Common Core standards.
In a rare break from its established stance of applauding whatever Mayor Bloomberg’s Department of Education does, the New York Daily News published an editorial ridiculing both Pearson and the schools’ chancellor Dennis Walcott.
Only
Sat week the News had an editorial defending the Pearson Common Core tests, even though the vocabulary and content of the fifth grade exam that was available to the editors was age-inappropriate.
What seems to have moved the editors to high dudgeon was that Pearson made so many errors in scoring the high-stakes exams for preschoolers hoping to enter a kindergarten for gifted and talented.
A deeper question might have been to ask why there are G&T programs for 5-year-olds.
The Federal Reserve Bank of New York released a study of Florida’s accountability system–the one that Jeb Bush brags about–and concludes that the system promotes behavior to game the system. Schools are assigning children to categories where they will not lower the school’s letter grade.
Here is a succinct summary of the paper:, from the Wall Street Journal blog:
“The way some schools are being held to account for student performance can corrupt how these institutions seek to achieve the standards, a new paper from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York warns.
“The bank’s researchers took at look at what happened among some schools in Florida around the turn of the millennium. What they found was alarming.
“Analysts Rajashri Chakrabarti and Noah Schwartz found evidence some Sunshine State schools deliberately moved underperforming students into exempt categories in order to have those students not drag down the performance of the school as a whole.”
This, of course, has nothing to do with improving education or addressing the needs of the children. It is all about meeting a target.
In response to the earlier post about Geofrey Canada boasting about the “100% graduation rate” of his charter, which was not true, while knocking the public schools, Bruce Baker reminded me that he had looked at NYC charters and compared them to NYC public schools in relation to a number of variables.
Geoffrey Canada’s charter is part of his analysis, along with other highly touted charters, like KIPP and Eva Moskowitz’s Success Academy.
Charters typically enroll fewer students who are ELL, special education, and free lunch (the very poor). Their teachers are younger and less experienced. They have smaller class sizes. They spend more (in the case of KIPP, a lot more). With some exceptions, they do not get better results. The public schools outperform Canada’s HCZ charter school.
In this new world of high technology, will there be any private space for anyone?
Bloomberg made his billions by leasing high-tech terminals that contain up-to-the-minute financial news from all over the world.
Now the story emerges that Bloomberg reporters were spying on Bloomberg’s clients.
The Chicago Sun-Times reports that Wall Street investors are very upset by the financial and ethical issues at the UNO charter chain in Chicago.
UNO is a politically connected charter chain. Its founder, Juan Rangel, was co-chair of Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s campaign.
UNO obtained $98 million from the state legislature to build new charters. It turns out that $8.5 million of that money went to companies owned by two brothers of UNO’s number 2 official, Miguel d’Escoto. When the scandal broke, he stepped down from his $200,000 job, then Governor Pat Quinn halted payment on the balance still owed to UNO.
In a conference call with Wall Street investors who had loaned UNO $37.5 million through state bonds, Rangel sought to reassure them. Rangel told the investors:
“We’re talking about a construction grant that has no guidelines…In our minds, there was no conflict.”
Of course, the governor did see a conflict of interest, which is why he suspended state funding.
Investors were also concerned about the recent decision by UNO teachers to unionize, because they are paid $20,000 less than teachers in the public schools.
“Imagine that you are possessed of the surname “Walton” and happen to be sitting on mad coin—say a cool $90 billion. How do you celebrate the occasion that is Teacher Appreciation Day? Do you chip in to give the nation’s teachers a raise, knowing they’ve been hard hit by the recession? Do you send them gift cards to Walmart, the store that hath so enrichethed you? If you are a teacher in Massachusetts, the Waltons have an extra special treat in store for you: a fully-funded gala at the Statehouse urging the replacement of the state’s many non-excellent teachers with fresh new innovators who will share their excellence one renewable year at a time. Happy Teacher Appreciation Day, xoxo Walmart!”
EduShyster describes here the Walton family campaign to create new charter schools in Massachusetts.
The billionaire family is funding almost every part of the campaign in the state where Horace Mann created the nation’s first public schools.
I know this is supposed to be funny. It’s not. It makes me very sad.
There must be something that money can’t buy.
A new blogger enters the national scene!
This blog is devoted to fairy tales and other simple legends that show the fallacies of the corporate reform movement.
This post is about Chicken Little. Remember Chicken Little? He was hit on the head and went to tell the world that the sky was falling.
There are many other great fairy tales, Dr. Seuss tales, myths, etc. to explain the current madness of “reform.”
The one that comes to mind immediately is “the emperor’s new clothes.” Just guess who the emperor is? Who will tell him the truth.
What is your favorite tale that strips bare the pretensions of those who think that testing will close the achievement gap, that privatization is the way to advance equity, and that constant battering of teachers will attract better people into teaching?
Geoffrey Canada gave a TED talk recently in which he did two reprehensible things:
1. He boasted that his charter school has a 100% graduation rate.
2. He used his talk to knock the public schools.
Gary Rubinstein, the extraordinary detective of miracle-school boasting, checked the New York state website. Canada did not tell the truth.
After reviewing the data, Gary writes: “So the 62 graduates in 2012 had been the 97 6th graders in 2006. This does not represent a 0% dropout rate, as Canada implied to John Legend, but a 36% dropout rate.” The graduation rate is not 100%, as Canada claimed, but 64%.
But there is an even dirtier secret that Gary discovered. Canada has TWICE kicked out an entire class. A few years ago, Paul Tough wrote a book about Canada and the Harlem Children’s Zone called “Whatever It Takes.” Tough tells the story of Canada firing the entire entering class–three years after they started sixth grade–because their persistently low test scores embarrassed the bankers and lawyers on his board.
When I debated Geoffrey Canada at Education Nation in 2011, I asked him why he kicked out the class, and he denied it. He said that he had closed the school because its performance was not good enough. That won him a round of applause from the sympathetic audience, but I knew he had not closed the school. Paul Tough’s description of the mass ouster of the entire class was detailed and clear. He fired the eighth graders in May, when it was difficult for them to find high schools that had room for them in New York City’s choice system.
Let me be clear. I admire the work of the Harlem Children’s Zone. The zone offers children and families a broad array of social and medical services. It is a well-funded cradle-to-college-or-career pipeline. HCZ does what all schools should do, if they had the money to do it. I personally like Geoffrey Canada. He is a very likable guy, but he feels compelled to make these outrageous boasts because (I think) it is what the corporate reformers on his board want to believe.
HCZ has the resources to offer amazing facilities and services to those who enroll in its charter schools. Three years go, according to an article in the New York Times, HCZ had $200 million in the bank, and some billionaires on the board, so the school can afford to help children in ways that public schools cannot afford.
“In the tiny high school of the zone’s Promise Academy I, which teaches 66 sophomores and 65 juniors (it grows by one grade per year), the average class size is under 15, generally with two licensed teachers in every room. There are three student advocates to provide guidance and advice, as well as a social worker, a guidance counselor and a college counselor, and one-on-one tutoring after school.” Students also get free health care and dental checkups.
Wouldn’t it be wonderful if all the schools in Harlem offered the same services and small classes? The HCZ high school has classes under 15, with two teachers, but the typical high school class in the NYC public schools is 32-35, with one teacher.
Canada is blessed with the resources that public schools in NYC can only dream about.
Nonetheless, Canada used his time on TED to lambaste the public schools for failing to match his success.
I just wish that Canada would use his celebrity and media access to advocate that all public schools should have the resources he has, instead of castigating them for not being as good as the school he runs, with such munificent provisions.
