Archives for the year of: 2013
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Petrilli: Schools Are Best Way to End Poverty

By dianeravitch
October 10, 2013 //
28

Before I had my own blog, I shared a blog called “Bridging Differences” with Deborah Meier, hosted by Education Week. We had a great run of five years, and then I started this blog. Since then, Deborah has had exchanges with various conservative thinkers.

Currently, she is trying to “bridge differences” with Michael Petrilli of the conservative Thomas B. Fordham Institute. In this post, Mike argues that the best way to end poverty is to persuade young people to get married and wait to have children until they are able to take care of them financially. Since no one knows how to do that, he maintains that the best cure for poverty is “great” schools.

He suggests that those “on the left” have given up on social mobility. I am not sure whether he believes that schools–rightly organized–will facilitate social mobility or will end poverty, as he seems to use the terms interchangeably, at one point referring to the schools as “the great equalizer,” at other times suggesting that it is upward mobility (for some) that he expects schools to promote. Mike makes clear that he opposes raising the minimum wage or increasing income transfers. So that leaves schools with the burden of either ending poverty or increasing social mobility, whatever, since nothing else can do it, in his view.

Of course, the schools have always provided a path to upward social mobility for some, but the problem is that many millions of children and families are stuck in poverty. It seems unlikely that the schools alone can push that large number down. No matter how many “No Excuses” charter schools open, there will still be many millions trapped at the bottom, while a huge share of the national income flows to the top 1% and the top 5%.

Mike’s answer: Fix the schools!

My answer: Improve every school, open health clinics attached to schools, provide free pre-natal care to all women who cannot afford it, make pre-K universal, make sure that schools serving the poorest kids have the resources for small classes, social workers, psychologists, librarians, the arts, and a full curriculum, just like the kids in affluent suburbs. And change the tax structure so that income inequality is reduced.

I might also note that many young people who have graduated college now find themselves unable to get a good job because so many middle-class jobs were outsourced by our corporate leaders. So you will find college graduates working at minimum wage–or slightly above it–in Starbucks or selling iPads or working in jobs that don’t require a college diploma.

I look forward to Deborah’s answer.

In the meanwhile, here are some interesting comments:

Leo Casey of the American Federation of Teachers wrote as follows:

If you are serious about reducing, let alone eliminating, poverty, there is a historical record that needs to be addressed. From the New Deal to through the 1970s income inequality and poverty in America were reduced, with two very significant periods of change – the New Deal, especially Social Security, reduced immensely the numbers of elderly people living in poverty, and the Great Society reduced the numbers of mothers and children living in poverty. The rate of poverty was cut almost in half between 1960 (from about 22% to 11%) and the beginning off the Reagan years. With the Reagan years, poverty climbs once again (now hovers around 15%). Of course, these are aggregate numbers – there are many more children living in poverty (1 in 4) than adults. This is also related to general income equality: there is a period of the reduction of income equality, beginning with the New Deal and extending through the 1970s, followed by a great increase in income inequality beginning in the 1970s and extending to the current period. Timothy Noah’s The Great Divide has a pretty comprehensive analysis of these trends. Two factors are particularly important: the effects of ‘the race to the bottom’ initiated by economic globalization, in which unionized jobs in industry were exported abroad to low wage, authoritarian nations such as China where workers could not form independent unions to improve their pay and working conditions, and the related decimation of industrial unions that supported middle class jobs in the United States.

My old mentor and colleague, Michael Harrington, who had a few things to say about poverty {-; never tired of saying that the best anti-poverty program was a job.

Debbie’s pessimism, if I read her correctly, is whether there is a political will to reduce poverty and income inequality in the United States. There is no great secret on how to do it; the question is whether there is a political will to address a problem that falls so heavily on the backs of women and children, particularly of color.

Leo

 

Categories Poverty

Charter Schools Insist: We Are Private, Not Public

By dianeravitch
October 9, 2013 //
56

Last spring, the founders of a high-scoring charter school in California were convicted of misappropriating over $200,000 in public monies. According to the charges filed, the couple spent, for example, “more than $34,000 on meals, entertainment and gifts that they classified as business expenses or gestures of appreciation for teachers.” Also, “Some charges centered on the lease for the main campus on De Soto Avenue in Woodland Hills. In 2004, the couple negotiated a 10-year lease for $18,390 a month. But three years later, they began charging the school $43,870 a month for a sublease. At the same time, Selivanov and Berkovich took on responsibility for a $520,000 bank loan to the school.”

The couple was sentenced this week. The husband will spend nearly five years in state prison, while his wife will be incarcerated for 45 days in the county jail plus probation and community service.

The California Charter Schools Association entered an amicus brief on their behalf maintaining that the couple are not guilty of any criminal offense because charter schools are not subject to the laws governing public schools. CCSA says that charter schools are exempt from criminal laws governing public schools because they are operated by a private corporation.

They say the money received for their nonprofit corporation is not public money, even though it comes from the state and from taxpayers.

CCSA maintains: “Moreover, the prosecution completely ignores the fact that the Legislature has expressly allowed charter schools to be operated by private nonprofit corporations, and that many, if not all, of the complained of actions of the defendants are lawful actions of employees and officers of nonprofit corporations (e.g., ordinary and necessary expenditures on meals, gift cards, flowers, leases with employees and officers of the nonprofit etc.) And, most importantly, the court cases and administrative agency decisions make clear that these private officers and employees of the nonprofit corporation are not subject to Penal Code section 424 – because these nonprofit corporations are private entities, with private employees, expending private moneys (i.e., not “public moneys”).”

This criminal prosecution, says CCSA, has sent “shock waves throughout the charter school community,” which heretofore thought that the laws applied to public schools did not apply to them.

In a case in the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, an Arizona charter successfully argued that it was a private corporation, not a public school. In Chicago, the teachers at a charter school wanted to form a union, but the charter founder argued before the National Labor Relations Board that the charter was operated by a private corporation and not subject to state labor laws.

Anthony Cody reviewed this case and concluded that we should accept the claims of the California Charter Schools Association that charter schools are private entities, managed by private corporations that are outside the purview of the law.

Is this really a good development for American public education? One set of schools (charter schools) receiving public funds but exempt from the law, and another set of schools (public schools) closely regulated by the state? One set of schools (charter schools) free to set their own discipline policy, free to enroll few students with disabilities and English learners, while another set of schools (public schools) must accept everyone, including the students excluded or tossed out of the charter schools.

Does it make sense to give public money to schools that are neither transparent nor accountable for their use of that money and unwilling to comply with state laws?

Categories Charter Schools, Privatization

Jesse Hagopian Rocks Education Nation!

By dianeravitch
October 9, 2013 //
57

Jesse Hagopian was one of the leaders of the teacher boycott of MAP testing at Garfield High School in Seattle last spring.

Watch him knock the socks off a question about testing at Education Nation.

Well done, Jesse!

Categories Testing

A Parent Writes New York Commissioner John King

By dianeravitch
October 9, 2013 //
20

This just arrived as a comment on the blog:

 

Not only have I opted out my child, but I sent back her scores with the following letter to John King:
October 1, 2013

Dr. John King
Commissioner of Education
89 Washington Ave.
Albany, NY 12234

Dear Dr. King,

Enclosed please find my daughter’s recent ELA and Math NYS scores. I am returning them to you because they are invalid. The scores on these tests are invalid for a multitude of reasons, including poor test construction, cut scores that were not developed until after the tests were administered, lack of oversight and transparency in the construction of the tests and the scoring process, and most importantly, they are not reflective of my daughter’s aptitude or knowledge.

In my opinion, you should be ashamed of yourself for submitting New York State’s students and dedicated teachers to this farce. These tests are a sham.

I refuse to accept that my daughter, who was on the honor roll for the entire year last year and received awards at her school for outstanding effort and academic achievement, is suddenly in need of AIS and considered as performing below proficiency as a result of a faulty test. I also refuse to believe that her teachers did not properly educate her last year or prepare her to progress to the next grade level.

Your education policies are abysmal. Common Core is nothing more than a way to channel much needed money away from Public Education into the pockets of Big Business. Your tests are an affront to hard-working and dedicated teachers and a blatant attempt to privatize education.

You may keep your scores. They mean nothing to my daughter or myself.

(Western NY Parent)

Categories Accountability, New York, Parents, Testing

de Blasio Frightens NYC Charters

By dianeravitch
October 9, 2013 //
9

For the past dozen years, charter schools have been the golden children of Mayor Michael Bloomberg. He gives them free space in public schools; he trumpets their superiority; he attends their functions; he constantly reminds the public that charters are far, far better than the public schools that he is directly in charge of.

A paradox, is it not? In one night, the Robin Hood Foundation raises $80 million for…what else? charter schools.

Charter schools get more money than public schools. Many have billionaires on their board of directors. Some charter leaders are paid close to half a million a year to oversee a small number of students. Charters take far fewer English learners and students with disabilities compared to their neighborhood schools. NYC charters have high turnover of teachers because the hours are long, and endless test prep can be a drag. Some have very high scores, some get low scores. When the Common Core test results came in not long ago, the charter scores fell harder than the public schools.

The charters enroll only about 5% of the city’s 1.1 million children, but they certainly have had a privileged role in the eyes of the mayor, the business community, and the media.

But the charters are terrified of Bill de Blasio, the Democratic candidate for Mayor, and the likely next mayor. Yesterday some closed their schools to lead a political march across the Brooklyn Bridge, an act that would have been illegal if they were public schools.

This is why de Blasio frightens them. He has said that he will charge them rent if he is elected mayor, for use of public space. He has said he will put his emphasis on building the traditional public schools, where 95% of the children are enrolled.

Imagine that! What an innovative idea! Trying to improve the schools that enroll 95% of the children instead of pampering the ones that enroll 5%.

Categories Education Reform

Last Night, at CBE in Brooklyn….

By dianeravitch
October 9, 2013 //
9

CBE is Congregation Beth Elohim in Brooklyn. I spoke to about 700 people who turned out for a book talk. The moderator was David Denby. David inspired me to write “Reign of Error” because he told me–while interviewing people for an article about me for The New Yorker–that my critics said I had no solutions. I said, “but you just heard me speak. You heard my solutions.” And he said, “write a book,” and I did.

I was introduced last night by my son Michael, who is an active member of CBE. I started my talk by inviting the audience to join me in singing happy birthday to Michael, because I will be in Marquette, Michigan, tomorrow and will miss his birthday. So 700 people wished him a happy birthday! My littlest grandsons–ages 7 and 4 months–were also there, so it was a joyous occasion.

I asked how many people in the room were teachers or principals, and hands went up everywhere. At least 2/3 of the audience were educators.

At the end of my talk, and after the free-flowing Q&A, there was a long line of people for the book-signing. To my surprise, several were charter school teachers. Each told me horror stories about the schools they were working in now or used to work in. One was a refugee from Steve Perry’s school in Hartford, who told me how abusive he was to teachers there. Two came from a charter in Brooklyn, where they said that children were subjected to corporal punishment. Three others came from a celebrated NYC charter chain, where they said that children with special needs were humiliated. A school psychologist who worked in that chain said that a child with Tourette’s Syndrome was repeatedly humiliated because the school insisted he was “faking it.” She said he was not.

I can’t do anything to help these children. I can’t help the teachers. But I can continue to tell their stories and to get the truth out. We must make our public schools far better than they are today, and we must stop this idea that charters are an escape hatch for the best kids. This way lies a dual school system, in which public funds go to unaccountable charters that pick and choose their students, while the real public schools are turned into dumping grounds.

We must not let that happen.

Categories Charter Schools

Another Scary (and Wrong) Report about the Skills Gap

By dianeravitch
October 9, 2013 //
43

President Obama has often said that American workers are the most productive in the world. In his 2011 State of the Union address, he said: “Remember -– for all the hits we’ve taken these last few years, for all the naysayers predicting our decline, America still has the largest, most prosperous economy in the world.  (Applause.)  No workers — no workers are more productive than ours.  No country has more successful companies, or grants more patents to inventors and entrepreneurs.

Others agree: This came from a UN organization in 2009:

American workers stay longer in the office, at the factory or on the farm than their counterparts in Europe and most other rich nations, and they produce more per person over the year.

They also get more done per hour than everyone but the Norwegians, according to a U.N. report released Monday, which said the United States “leads the world in labor productivity.” Norway’s productivity is based on its vast oil wealth extracted from the sea.

Each U.S. worker produces $63,885 of wealth per year, more than their counterparts in all other countries, the International Labor Organization said in its report. Ireland comes in second at $55,986, ahead of Luxembourg, $55,641; Belgium, $55,235; and France, $54,609.

Yet the OECD put out a report saying that our population is actually quite dumb and is losing ground to other nations. The OECD report garnered headlines across the nation, because it reinforced the common but erroneous narrative that we as a nation are entering into a steep economic decline, all of which can be blamed on our faltering public schools.

Let me point out that this is the same refrain we have heard since the days of the Puritans. The younger generation is no good, we are going to hell and damnation, and soon comes the apocalypse, all the result of our sins (or in modern terms, our public schools). Since neither voucher schools nor charter schools outperform our public schools, this refrain is getting tiresome yet it persists.

It is also false.

As I explain in “Reign of Error,” these scare reports are wrong. First, they say that our college graduation rates are falling behind those of other nations, and we should be very, very upset. They never point out that our college graduation rate is almost double the college graduation rate of Germany, which is the most dynamic economy in Europe.

Then, they say that the jobs of the future will demand a huge increase in college graduates, but that is not what our own Bureau of Labor Statistics projects. The BLS projected that two-thirds of the jobs available between 2008 and 2018 would not need any post-secondary training. Most would require on-the-job training. Jobs for computer engineers and nurses require college degrees. But the larger number of jobs for home health aides, customer service agents, fast-food workers, retail salesclerks, construction workers, and truck drivers do not require college diplomas. (See pp. 88-89 of “Reign of Error” for citations.)

If we really want more college graduates, we should make all community colleges free to students. Our society, if it truly cares, should shoulder the burden of college costs so that more students can get the education they want but can’t afford. Colleges won’t get cheaper for students by producing data about cost and outcomes. They will get cheaper if more of the cost of attending college is assumed by government, not students.

For many years, there were free community colleges. Now there are few. Why?

Don’t complain about the college graduation rate unless you are willing to make the cost far, far lower to students.

And don’t believe for a minute that standardized tests are accurate measures of productivity. In 1964, our students scored last on the world’s first international test of mathematics, and we went on to outperform the other 11 nations that took the same test.

What we need more of is independent thinking, divergent thinking, innovation, ingenuity, responsibility, dedication, creativity–none of which is measured by the ability to check the right box on a standardized test.

Categories Economy, International, Testing

When Testing Becomes “Cruel and Unusual Punishment”

By dianeravitch
October 9, 2013 //
52

A principal in New York told me the following story. He is
reliable. This is a true story.

He wrote to tell me that the state is requiring a student with Down syndrome to take the state’s new
Common Core test. It is an “alternative” test but just as “hard” as the regular test. She is almost certain to fail. Only 5% of students with disabilities passed the Common Core tests.

Then he told me an even more horrifying story. A child in his school has a rare
genetic disease that is fatal. His parents learned about it last
year, when he was in third grade. He has gone blind and deaf. He
has only months to live. The state demands documentation to excuse
him from state testing. The other children in the school are kind
to him. They hold his hand to help him maneuver the hallways.

The state is not kind. The state is cruel. The state loves testing, not
children. Is there even a touch of human kindness at he State
Education Department in Albany? Or are they blind, deaf, and
heartless as well? .

Categories New York, Special Education, Testing

iPads in Lewisville, Texas, and LAUSD: How Did LAUSD Go Wrong?

By dianeravitch
October 9, 2013 //
20

This Los Angeles blogger contrasts the successful implementation

of the 1:1 iPad policy in Lewisville, Texas, and the mess in Los Angeles.

It seems that the educators in Lewisville thought through what they planned to do, how they planned to use the iPads, what might go wrong.

And the educators in Los Angeles just bought them.

Consider the differences when you look at the graph.

Categories Education Reform

Mark Naison Reviews “Reign of Error” LINK added

By dianeravitch
October 9, 2013 //
6

Mark Naison is the tireless advocate who co-founded the BATs (otherwise known as the Bad Ass Teachers). Wherever I go, I find BATs. He has created a genuine force, an outlet for teachers who want to act and feel helpless. As BATs, they are ready to act and they do.

Here he reviews Reign of Error.

He says that if reformers were serious about choice, they would open more “portfolio” schools, that is, schools were students are assessed by presenting their work to a panel of judges, including their teachers, not by taking standardized tests. He does NOT mean “portfolio districts,” where schools open and close like shoe stores.

Naison also says that reformers should “Create, or recreate the vocational and technical high schools that were once a fixture in every American city, and give them full or partial exemptions from state tests. Let these schools to be targeted to growth areas in the American economy as well as sectors where high wage jobs have existed for a long time- construction, automobile and elevator repair, computers and the like. These schools would give parents a most welcome alternative to schools which feature little more than test prep and no direct job preparation. And would create positions for a new generation of teachers who would love their jobs.”

Categories Reign of Error
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