The Carnegie Corporation doesn’t have as much money to throw into the corporate reform movement as the Walton Foundation, the Broad Foundation, and the Gates Foundation but it is definitely on the same page as the big guys. Here is its report on 2011 spending. The education grants begin on p. 24. And there they are: charter schools, Jeb Bush’s favorite “digital learning,” Common Core, Race to the Top policies, and the usual reformy organizations.
Archives for the year of: 2013
Spring is coming.
People are standing up and speaking up.
Teachers at Garfield High in Seattle say “no more.”
Teachers at Ballard High School support their colleagues at Garfield.
The Seattle Education Association supports the Garfield and Ballard teachers.
Randi Weingarten tweeted her support.
Superintendents, one after another, are saying the testing obsession is out of control.
The principals of New York State stand together to demand professional evaluation, not trial by testing.
Parents are defending their children by supporting their teachers and their community schools.
The PTA of Niagara County in New York say hands off our public schools.
Communities are opposing school closings and corporate takeovers.
Students are speaking out because they know what is happening to them is not right.
Journalists are starting to recognize that the “reformers” are not real reformers but privatizers.
It is starting to happen.
We will put education back into the hands of educators and parents and communities.
We will work to make our schools better than ever, not by competition, but by collaboration.
Last year, someone emailed and asked me to create and lead the movement to stop the corporate reformers, and I said I couldn’t do it, that all I can do is write and speak.
That truly is all I can do, but when I started this blog in late April, it turned into a platform for the movement, and leaders are emerging all over the country, and learning about each other. They are communicating.
I am not the leader, I am the facilitator. You are the leaders.
Mayor Bloomberg wants to close as many public schools as possible in this, his last year in office.
So his Department of Education has announced that another 26 schools will close as soon as they can go through the formalities.
All of these schools have low test scores and get poor marks on the DOE’s report cards.
But they have something else in common.
Every single one of them is highly segregated.
Only one school on the list has more than 2% white students.
Wouldn’t you think that after more than a decade of nonstop reform that the Mayor might have figured out some improvement strategies for schools serving students of color other than closing them?
When teachers stand together and refuse to be bullied by the powerful, they deserve our commendation.
The teachers in the Hamburg Central School District in New York voted overwhelmingly to reject a bad deal on teacher evaluation. In the plan at issue, the school superintendent would have been the sole arbiter on any appeals of a teacher’s rating. The teachers held out for an independent arbiter. They voted 217-82 not to accept the deal.
They will be hammered and told that they are costing the district $450,000 in Race to the Top funds, but they know not a penny of that money may be spent to reduce class size or hire social workers or guidance counselors or librarians or anything else that would meet the needs of students.
They also know that New York State has an untried evaluation system designed by AIR, whose researchers warned that value-added methods are not ready for high-stakes uses, such as determining the fate of teachers.
Someday in the future, people will look back on this era of teacher-bashing, this insatiable thirst for metrics, and wonder if our society succumbed to collective madness.
Thank you for your courage, teachers of Central Hamburg.
Stay strong.
Your colleagues support you.
Mayor Rahm Emanuel memorably said on video that the Noble Street charters in Chicago have a “secret sauce” that makes them successful. They have high test scores and high graduation rates. They are each named for rich and powerful sponsors.
Count on EduShyster to discover the secret in the secret sauce..
She gets many tips, which enables her to scoop many reporters. The secret of her success is two-fold: one, she has a wicked sense of wit, and two, she protects her anonymity, so she doesn’t have to worry about reprisals. And I should add a third very important part of her success: she documents what she writes, as in this post.
Maureen Reedy sends congratulations, praise, hugs, and high-fives to the teachers at Garfield and Ballard High Schools in Seattle. May their message resonate in schools across America.
Dear Ballard and Garfield High School Teachers in Seattle,
Your proclamations ring true as patriots of public education!
Your proclamations proclaim our right as educational experts to independently stand up, and let our voices ring loud and clear for integrity, authenticity and educational expertise in our teaching practice.
Your proclamations are just what our country needs to build the precursor to a new Declaration of Independence for Public Education!
Most importantly, your proclamations show our students that we will stand up for them and be strong role models in fighting for what we know is best in creating quality educational experiences and lessons for our kids.
Quite simply, when something is wrong, we do everything in our power to “make it right.”
That’s what we teach our students, that’s how we practice our profession and that is how we live our lives.
Thank you for standing up for our children, thank you for standing up for our profession, thank you for standing up for public education.
Thank you all for your courage and conviction.
Teachers across America stand with all of you!
Maureen Reedy
Parent & 29-year public school teacher
Columbus, Ohio
A teacher sent me this post, which has generated lots of discussion on Facebook.
She said that the discussion on this blog shows a widespread bullying of teachers by administrators, who are in turn being bullied to produce “results.” Everyone is under pressure to meet demands created by politicians, economists, and statisticians who never spent a day in a school classroom after their high school graduation.
Here goes:
“Paul’s Story”
Yesterday I received an emergency phone call from an experienced teacher in a Bronx school who received his first ever “U” on an observation report.
Emotionally overwrought with fear and anger, it took all I could do to calm him down and get him to figure out how he could resolve this issue and continue to teach and at the same time maintain his principles while having to deal with his principal.
She, as authoritarian personality as they come, simply follows NYC DOE/Teachers College orders in FORCING her underlings to follow the lockstep TC workshop model lesson plan. Because he veered and used different materials and interacted differently with his kids than the plan permits he was given a “U”.
It was quite evident after seeing her 20-page write-up that there was something more here. Her discussions of the 2 pre-observation were filled with evidence of her obviously one-track mind. Do it this way. I will not accept any of your alternatives.
Her most consistent and often repeated criticism is that he did not use everything the Model presenter from TC demonstrated in the 3 short demonstrations he attended.
It as if everything that came before NYCDOE/TC’s workshop version of teaching was anathema in this new pious world of top down education. By the way…it is a terrible way to teach if used as the one and only lesson plan every single day.
But that is probably why he received this “U” in the first place. You see, he is not passive. He is not one to just follow orders. He speaks up and out. He argues. He was being punished for that more than his not following the lesson plan.
He expressed to me that he was ready to give up, to get out, to simply go to the rubber room, or be made into an ATR (absent teacher reserve).
That is the new leadership’s plan. Veterans: If you don’t follow the rules you have two choices. Retire or be exiled. This way “The Big Talking Heads” of education can take in their fresh young faces and train them to be, as my friend said, Star Wars “Clones” obeying the orders of the dark side.
The teachers of Seattle ask that you sign this petition to support them.
Please be careful when you go to change.org and do NOT sign any other petition as you may be duped into becoming a member of StudentsFirst.
The revolt against the inappropriate use of standardized testing is spreading in Seattle.
Teachers at Ballard High School in Seattle voted not to administer the MAP test and to support their colleagues at Garfield High School.
“Whereas
The MAP test is a resource expensive and cash expensive program in a district with very finite financial resources,
The MAP test is not used in practice to inform student instruction,
The MAP test is not connected to our curricula,
The MAP test has been re-purposed by district administration to form part of a teacher’s evaluation, which is contrary to the purposes it was designed for, as stated by its purveyor, making it part of junk science,
The MAP test has also been re-purposed for student placement in courses and programs, for which it was not designed,
The MAP test was purchased under corrupt crony-ist circumstances (Our former superintendent, while employed by Seattle Public Schools (SPS) sat on the corporation board of NWEA, the purveyor of the MAP test. This was undisclosed to her employer. The initial MAP test was purchased in a no-bid, non-competitive process.)
The MAP test was and remains unwanted and unneeded and unsolicited by SPS professional classroom educators, those who work directly with students,
The MAP test is not taken seriously by students, (They don’t need the results for graduation, for applications, for course credit, or any other purpose, so they routinely blow it off.)
The MAP test’s reported testing errors are greater than students’ expected growth,
The technology administration of the MAP test has serious flaws district wide which waste students’ time,
Therefore
We, the undersigned educators from Ballard High School do hereby support statements and actions of our colleagues at Garfield High School surrounding the MAP test. Specifically, the MAP test program throughout Seattle Public Schools ought to be shut down immediately. It has been and continues to be an embarrassing mistake. Continuing it even another day, let alone another month or year or decade, will not turn this sow’s ear into a silk purse.
Ballard High School teachers
Tonight, I watched a lovely tribute to Joan Baez on PBS. Joan is a pacifist, a wonderful human being, and a great singer. She is also very courageous. She put herself in mortal danger as a fighter for human right.
Minutes after turning off the television, I received this email. It upset me. I thought I would share it with you. My reply is at the end of he letter.
On Jan 11, 2013, at 10:03 PM, “Dick Brauer, Colonel, USAF (Ret.)” wrote:
We’re calling for Gun Appreciation Day
on the eve of Obama’s Inauguration
Go to GunAppreciationDay.com and sign the petition
to defend gun rights
Go to our Facebook page and like us
Join the Facebook “event” page January 19 – Gun Appreciation Day
Then invite your friends to join!
President Barack Obama and his sycophants aren’t pulling any punches while they attack our Second Amendment rights.
It’s about time we started fighting back and playing for keeps.
Liberals have cowed down too many of our supposedly conservative leaders. Instead of standing strong for our right to bear arms, they’re giving into the emotional whirlwind of the leftist PR storm for gun control.
It’s abundantly clear by now that it’s up to We the People to stand up and make our elected officials do their duty, and protect the Constitution.
That’s why we’ve brought together a broad coalition of grassroots conservative groups who are ready and willing to take on the Obama Machine, go toe-to-toe with establishment “moderates,” and repudiate the lies and misinformation spread by the liberal media.
FOUR EASY STEPS TO DEFEND GUN RIGHTS:
1- Go to GunAppreciationDay.com and sign the petition
to defend gun rights
2- Go to our Facebook page and like us
3- Join the Facebook “event” page January 19 – Gun Appreciation Day
4- Then invite your friends to join!
We at Political Media, along with coalition members the Second Amendment Foundation, Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms, Special Operations Speaks, Revolution SuperPAC, Citizens and Country, Social Security Institute, Committee to Draft Judge Andrew Napolitano, Conservative Action Alerts, Women Warriors PAC, and Conservative Action Fund are joining together to make a clear statement against the gun grabbing schemes of the left.
We’ve declared January 19th – two days before Obama’s Inauguration – to be Gun Appreciation Day. And we’re urging Americans nationwide to show their support for gun ownership.
We need every patriotic American to turn out en masse at gun stores, gun ranges, and gun shows from coast to coast.
The Obama Administration has shown that it is more than willing to trample the Constitution to impose its dictates upon the American people. If the American people don’t fight back now, Obama will gut our Second Amendment rights – just as he deviously gutted the First with Obamacare.
Make sure that the crooks in this Administration know that we won’t take this laying down. If you are at all able, block off some time on the 19th and take part in Gun Appreciation Day. Invite your family, friends, and neighbors, too – anyone who believes in our Founders’ views on the Second Amendment needs to be there. I hope you’ll join the movement as people form lines “around the block” at gun stores, gun counters, gun shows, and gun ranges to protest the Obama administration’s assault on gun rights.
FOUR EASY STEPS TO DEFEND GUN RIGHTS:
1- Go to GunAppreciationDay.com and sign the petition
to defend gun rights
2- Go to our Facebook page and like us
3- Join the Facebook “event” page January 19 – Gun Appreciation Day
4- Then invite your friends to join!
We have never had a president who so callously disregards the Constitution, Congress, the courts, and the will of the American people.
And that’s why this outpouring of public support is so important for our constitutional safeguards to keep and bear arms. If, as this president claims, the American people are at risk from murderous rampagers, the logical solution is to extend our rights to protect ourselves with guns, not present a docile target.
Will you commit to standing up for the founding principles of our nation?
Are you willing to take action for the sake of our God-given rights enshrined in the Constitution?
Now more than ever, America needs dedicated patriots like you. For the sake of our Republic, please don’t leave the call unanswered.
Sincerely,
Dick Brauer, Colonel, USAF (Ret.)
Co-founder, Special Operations Speaks
HERE WAS MY REPLY:
What about the murdered babies of Newtown?
Don’t you feel bad about what happened?
Diane Ravitch
