Archives for the year of: 2013
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How CTU Confronted Antagonists in the Democratic Party

By dianeravitch
March 18, 2013 //
16

This is a stunning analysis of the relationship between labor unions and the Democratic Party.

It is a must-read.

Many in education have been baffled by the bipartisan consensus around Republican ideology. Micah Uetricht is not baffled. He says without hedging that “Democrats have swallowed the Right’s free market orthodoxy whole. Much of the party appears to have given up on education as a public project.”

Teachers unions, he writes, have been unable to articulate a coherent response to their abandonment.

That is, until last September, when the Chicago Teachers Union went on strike. He writes:

“The union has been unafraid to identify the education reform agenda pushed by Mayor Rahm Emanuel and his party nationally as an attempt to exacerbate inequalities within the education system, strip teachers of power and erode their standards of living, and chip away at public education as an institution, and to call such Democrats enemies. Rather than continuing an insider strategy that has netted so little for the rest of labor over the years, the CTU has entered into open opposition with the neoliberal wing of the party.”

This is an important development. And this is an essay you must read.

Categories Chicago, Democrats, Emanuel, Rahm, Privatization, Supporting public schools, Teacher Evaluations, Teacher Tenure, Unions

Jersey Jazzman Wonders About Rahm’s Brain

By dianeravitch
March 17, 2013 //
16

As Jersey Jazzman reports, on some days Rahm Emanuel blames poor test scores on children’s home environment. On other days, he blames it on teachers.

What is he thinking?

Here is what Chicago is thinking: Rahm’s approval rating is down to 33%.

He is polling about the same as Bobby Jindal and Rick Scott.

Could it be that making war on teachers and privatizing public education is not only bad public policy but bad politics? Maybe these politicians, birds of a feather, underestimated the voters.

Categories Chicago, Education Industry, Florida, Jindal, Bobby, Louisiana

Jindal and Scott in Trouble with Voters

By dianeravitch
March 17, 2013 //
9

Bobby Jindal’s poll numbers have dropped sharply. In 2010, he had favorability ratings of 58%.

His positive rating is now down to 34%, making him one of the most unpopular governors in the U.S.

In Florida, Governor Rick Scott’s approval ratings are down to 33%.

This is good news.

Voters are paying attention.

The people of Louisiana and Florida are not pleased by governors determined to eviscerate the public sector. Instead of improving basic public services, they are outsourcing and privatizing them.

They are not conservatives. They are arch-reactionaries. Our country needs a vigorous private sector and a robust public sector. Neither should be weakened.

The American public doesn’t want corporate America to take, rent, buy or grab what belongs to them.

Categories Florida, For-Profit, Jindal, Bobby, Louisiana

This Is What School Reform Does Not Look Like

By dianeravitch
March 17, 2013 //
16

Once again, New York City’s Panel on Educational Policy (formerly known as the Board of Education) rubber-stamped the closing of 22 schools.

After nearly a dozen years of mayoral control, the authorities showed how hollow “reform” is. The closings never end. Success is nowhere in sight.

The representatives from Manhattan, the Bronx, and Queens propped a moratorium on school closings and “co-locations” of charters into public school space, but their pleas were ignored. Michael Mendel of the UFT eloquently opposed the closings.

The farce continues. Chancellor Dennis Walcott, who is said to have taught nursery school for a year or so, decades ago, but has never been a principal or school leader, had the last word. As reported here:

“Chancellor Dennis Walcott even boasted of his power and the uselessness of the PEP when he said this regarding closing schools, ‘At the end of the day, the decision is mine.'”

In short, it doesn’t matter what parents or teachers or communities say.

This is not what democracy looks like.

It appears that the NYC DOE doesn’t even pretend to know how to help schools.

Categories Closing schools, New York City

Providence: When Adults Take the Test

By dianeravitch
March 17, 2013 //
16

The Providence Student Union thought it was wrong that a single high-stakes exam should determine whether they graduate.

To prove their point, they invited legislators, educators, and community leaders to take the test. The test was made up of released items. The results will be released later this week.

Hats off to the brave adults who took the risk.

Here is the students’ press release:

March 16, 2013

CONTACT: Aaron Regunberg | Aaron@ProvidenceStudentUnion.org | 847-809-6039 (cell)

STUDENTS INVITE LEADERS, POLICY MAKERS TO “TAKE THE TEST” –

WOULD THEY GRADUATE UNDER NEW NECAP POLICY?

Providence, Rhode Island – March 16, 2013 – Youth in Providence turned the testing tables today with an event designed to lend a deeper perspective to the debate over Rhode Island’s new high-stakes NECAP diploma system. Members of the Providence Student Union (PSU), a high school student advocacy group, administered a shortened version of the test that is currently being used as a make-or-break graduation requirement for the Class of 2014 to over forty elected officials, nonprofit directors, attorneys, and other community leaders.

“We expect this event to prove that people are more than test scores,” said Leexammarie Nieves, a sophomore at Central High School and a member of PSU. “We also want these community leaders to get a sense of what students are going through with this new policy.”

The adults sat at tables in the basement of the Knight Memorial Library in Providence, no. 2 pencils in hand, as students passed out the test, read the official directions, and proctored the exam. “This is a shortened version of the Math NECAP,” explained Tamargejae Paris, a junior at Hope High School at the beginning of the event.

“We are focusing on the math portion because that is the test that is putting the overwhelming majority of students at risk of not graduating. The test we are using was put together from the items RIDE releases, and we did our best to estimate the same ratios of each kind of question as is used on the real NECAP. So, though it is not a statistically valid test, we believe it is a good general representation of the test Rhode Island juniors are required to take.”

The participating adults were there for numerous reasons. Teresa Tanzi, a State Representative from Wakefield, said before beginning her test, “I’m here because I think this is an important exploration. I’ve heard people say that adults taking the test isn’t a fair representation, because we have all been out of school for a long time.

But if this is a test that accomplished adults cannot perform well on, then exactly what is NECAP testing? The truth is, this is a test that was designed as a diagnostic tool to measure large populations – where many are expected to fail – not to make these high-stakes decisions for individual students.
Having said that, however, I am here to do as well as I can and really see what it is we’re asking of students.”

Ken Fish, a former Director of Middle School and High School Reform at RIDE, shook his head when asked how he think he did. “I doubt that I passed the Math test, but those skills have never been relevant in my life or in a successful career managing multimillion dollar budgets. I have other compensating abilities, just as kids do. But students are trapped in an unfair and rigid system that negates their strengths, ignores their accomplishments, and brands them a failure…because of one test! This is outrageous. I think it’s time for the members of the Board of Education to take this test themselves, and then to change the NECAP graduation policy.”

State Senator Adam Satchell agreed. “We’re trying to teach students twenty-first century skills—how to speak, how to use technology. That’s not what this test measures,” he said. “It’s not an accurate measurement of our students.”

Cauldierre McKay, a junior at Classical High School, summed up the spirit of the event when he told the crowd, “We will release your scores in the following week. However you may have scored, we are willing to hypothesize that your score will not be a meaningful representation of all of your academic and real world value and success. This room is filled with accomplished individuals –there are elected officials who are charged with representing thousands of their fellow citizens; nonprofit directors who have created organizations that help countless people every day; brilliant lawyers; even some people that create education policy for Rhode island students. How can you measure all of that success by a single, arbitrary test? You can’t.”

###

Categories Education Reform

Rupert Murdoch Wins Contract to Develop Common Core Tests

By dianeravitch
March 17, 2013 //
67

Amplify, the company owned by Rupert Murdoch, won a $12.5 million contract to develop formative assessments for Common Core tests. The award was made by the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium, one of two groups funded by the Obama administration to create national tests, administered online. Joel Klein runs Murdoch’s Amplify division.

When Murdoch purchased Wireless Generation in the fall of 2010, he said:

“When it comes to K through 12 education, we see a $500 billion sector in the U.S. alone that is waiting desperately to be transformed by big breakthroughs that extend the reach of great teaching,” said News Corporation Chairman and CEO, Rupert Murdoch. “Wireless Generation is at the forefront of individualized, technology-based learning that is poised to revolutionize public education for a new generation of students.”

Categories Common Core

Mike Deshotels: Another Account of Showdown in Baton Rouge

By dianeravitch
March 17, 2013 //
4

Mike Deshotels writes a terrific blog about education in Louisiana. He attended my debate with Chas Roemer, and here is his account. He also writes about the teacher town hall, where I urged teachers to become politically active.

He urged teachers to join the Network for Public Education. They should also join the “Defenders of Public Education.”

It is not teachers alone who are at risk in Louisiana. It is the very principle of public education as a founding pillar of our democracy.

Categories Louisiana

Infected by GERM, Britain Looks to Bain for Education Ideas

By dianeravitch
March 17, 2013 //
4

We are not alone.

We are not the only great nation doing truly absurd things to our education system to advance the interests of private enterprise, under the guise of “reform.”

Great Britain’s Minister of Education Michael Gove has invited Bain & Company of the U.S. to advise him on how to make cuts to the national education budget and encouraged them to apply for contracts in the newly reconstituted Department for Education.

Bain is the company created by our own Mitt Romney.

Now if Minister Gove brings in Boston Consulting (the company that birthed Bain & Company), Stand for Children, and Andy Smarick of Bellwether Partners, he can get a report recommending full privatization of the British education system and finish the job.

Categories Budget Cuts, Education Industry, Global Education Reform Movement (GERM), International, Privatization

Yong Zhao Offers Advice on How to Beat China

By dianeravitch
March 17, 2013 //
5

Yong Zhao knows that American policymakers are obsessed with getting higher test scores.

Not their own test scores, of course, because they don’t take the tests, but the scores of America’s children.

They want higher scores than those of China.

Actually, we don’t know what China’s scores are, because the national scores have never been released.

We have only the scores of students in Shanghai, which are not representative of the nation.

Yong Zhao offers advice here on how to do it.

Categories Education Reform, International

Is This the ALEC Group for Testing Common Core?

By dianeravitch
March 17, 2013 //
11

The PARCC assessment group includes all or almost every member of Jeb Bush’s Chiefs for Change.

What is strange is to see the commissioners of Massachusetts and New York aligned with the state commissioners of the states most closely aligned with the ALEC agenda of high-stakes testing and privatization.

Categories ALEC, Chiefs for Change
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