The Daily Howler notes that most of the mainstream media completely ignored the Atlanta events or barely mentioned them.
Only Chris Hayes had a panel on the subject, and two of the three panelists were a waste of air time.
One was a clueless parent, and the other was a paid mouthpiece for the hedge fund billionaires of New Jersey.
As readers know, the corporate reform smear machine went after activist Leonie Haimson last week.
She has been an outspoken champion for class size reduction. She has been NYC’s leading critic of the Bloomberg administration’s policy, most especially, its love of testing and closing schools. She has also been relentless in challenging charter school co-locations in public space.
Last week, Gotham Schools ran an article questioning whether she can continue to be an advocate because her son is entering a private school. The next day, a story about the flap appeared in the Wall Street Journal.
Jersey Jazzman puts an end to the speculation. He say Leonie is an American hero. Her hundreds of followers have said the same.
Game over. Reformer smear machine failed.
Parents mobilized to defeat the so-called “parent trigger” in three states.
They referred to it as the “corporate empowerment” bill.
It could also be called the Corporate Enrichment bill.
The Gates Foundation spent $100 million along with the Carnegie Corporation to create a massive database consisting of confidential information about students. The database will be created by Rupert Murdoch’s subsidiary Wireless Generation. It will go onto a “cloud” managed by amazon.com.
Several states and districts have agreed to turn over their student data. Last year, the U.S. Department of Education quietly changed the FERPA regulations so that the data could be released. According to this article, the data will be available to entrepreneurs to market stuff to children’s.
Here is one New York parent’s view:
“I have emailed and called [State Commissioner] John King’s office over 40 times the past month refusing to consent to allow the DOE to transfer my children’s personal information into InBloom to be bought and sold around the world so vendors get rich. King’s office refuses to allow parents to opt-out.
I consider InBloom Identity Theft. We need a class action law suit to protect students privacy.
Please see the extent of data that is being collected and entered to be sold without a guarantee of security. Even your billing address from credit cards can be entered along with birth weight, homework completions, medical reports for IEP’s, disabilities, discipline, and much more.
Larry Lee, an Alabama native and a member of the board of the Network for Public Education, has a great idea.
He decided that the best way to demonstrate the foolishness of the Alabama Accountability Act was to translate it into terms every Alabama reader would understand. He wrote a satire in which he urged accountability for high school football coaches. He said that the failure of high school football teams was a major scandal.
He strongly recommended that coaches be held accountable. Some 13% of teams won one game or less last season. This, he writes, is unacceptable.
“The fact that more than 10 percent of our teams are incompetent is a statewide embarrassment. Obviously, too many coaches are not working hard enough and too many student-athletes are unworthy of being called such.”
Just in case you have been wondering what is the best way to shut down your local public schools, the Broad Foundation has thoughtfully provided a guide to help you.
It has assembled all sorts of useful information about how to deal with community opposition, how to engage stakeholders, how to make your case, how to get the right leadership, and how to pack up and move out.
Some well-known school districts–perhaps yours?–contributed to the writing of the guide.
Presumably some of the many superintendents who were trained in the unaccredited Broad Superintendents Academy have this guide in their desk.
Read it and be forewarned. Your own public school may be next.
FairTest has been a watchdog for the testing industry for many years.
The latest news is that the SAT will be overhauled (again), this time to align it with the Common Core standards.
No big surprise, since the head of the College Board, David Coleman, was the lead player in developing the Common Core standards.
Fairtest reports that more than 800 colleges and universities no longer require the SAT for admission.
A test coaching industry has grown up to prep students for the SAT.
Thus, one’s SAT scores have become, more than ever, an indicator of a family’s ability to pay for test prep.
The FairTest newsletter reports:
“Responding to the College Board’s ongoing failure to address the exam’s flaws, the number of schools dropping the SAT has surged. Since 2005, nearly 90 colleges and universities have eliminated testing requirements for all or many applicants. That brings the total to more than 800. The test-optional list now includes 140 institutions ranked in the top tier of their respective categories by U.S. News & World Report.”
A reader writes:
“Yes, a lawyer is the acting interim Superintendent, Joe. His name is Dorsey Hopson. Before coming to Memphis, he was general counsel for the Atlanta Public School system (during the same time as the cheating scandal).”
Will he be called to testify about the organized cheating and the inflated s ores and the unwarranted bonuses that occurred when he was general counsel to the Atlanta Public Schools.
Accountability begins at the top, as it should.
The comment below draws attention to a debate that followed Dr. Mercedes Schneider’s methodological dissection of Patrick Wolf’s Milwaukee study. Wolf holds an endowed chair in school choice in the “department of education reform” at the University of Arkansas. The Wolf study initially reported a staggering attrition rate of 75% from the voucher schools, which was later altered to a merely astonishing rate of 56%.
Dr. Schneider then was peppered with criticisms from someone who signed only as JB, preferring anonymity (funny, on this blog I often get pro-voucher comments from jb@uarkansas.edu).
Here is the Comment, which includes the thread from Dr. Schneider’s blog:
“75 – to – 56%… ?”
Why, it was just a typo! Case closed!
Or so someone calling himself “J.B.” offers up
as a possible explanation for Wolf’s alteration
from 75% to 56% in quantifying the percentage
of students who leave Milwaukee’s voucher program.
“J.B.” is going to need muscle relaxants after an
absurd stretch like that.
This nugget is from a nice little debate between the
“J.B.” and “Deutch29” in the COMMENTS
section of Schneider’s blog article at:
Scroll down the COMMENTS section to read it.
“J.B.” and “Deutch29” get into it, with Deutsch29
repeatedly asking J.B. what possible explanation
there could be for the mysterious 75 – to – 56% alteration,
and how when you do make such an extreme alteration,
one should include the reasons behind or the the mistake(s)
that led to making that alteration; to date, there is none.
After ducking the question, J.B. finally offers up:
J.B: “I have no idea about the alteration. Seems odd,
but typos do happen.”
His farts probably make more sense than that.
Thankfully, Deutch29 will have none of this pseudonymous
mountebank’s obfuscation, and blasts back with the following
response…
– – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –
Deutsch29: “You should investigate that 75% to 56%
attrition alteration with the same veracity as you used
to defend using ITT on a voucher study, or with
the same rude vigor with which Wolf attacked Ravitch
for ‘getting it wrong.’
“Perhaps you are Wolf, JB, or someone working for him.
“And I challenge you to honor Dr. Heilg’s request for
access to the data set used in the Wolf et al. study.
It sure would be nice to know just how far from that
‘gold standard’ these two groups strayed.
“Finally, let me add that your group’s (I assume you
are of their camp) decision to not investigate students
who choose to begin with vouchers and use consistently
until graduation makes me wonder whether those funding
the venture really don’t want to know the answer. Or
perhaps it was investigated but not publicized (?)
“No one (on this side of the study) knows.”
– – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –
It’s a great and illuminating debate. Again, to read it,
scroll down the COMMENTS section of:
One of the arguments advanced to expand charter schools is that they have long waiting lists.
Or so they say.
But no one knows how many are on those lists.
This reporter in Chicago started digging and discovered that the list is not real. The Chicago charters say there are 19,000 kids waiting. It is a marketing tool to get more charters.
But Becky Vivea discovered that if a student applies to four different school, her name appears on the waiting list four times.
Since the lists are never audited, no one knows how many are on it.
