Jonathan Pelto supported Dannell Malloy in the last election,but is now running against him as a third-party candidate.
Pelto was not invited to address either the AFT or the AFL-CIO, but finally got his chance to speak to the Working Families Party.
Will WFP in Connecticut follow the example of its counterpart in New York, which toyed with a progressive candidate but then endorsed Governor Cuomo (aka Governor 1%)? Or will WFP-CT take its stand with a candidate who mirrors its values?
Gary Rubinstein wondered how the “reform” sector reacted to the two big events of the past two weeks: the Vergara decision and the Gates Foundation’s advice to suspend test-based evaluations for teachers for two years. Reformers like Arne Duncan, StudentsFirst, and The New Teacher Project were delighted by the Vergara decision, which strikes at job protections for veteran teachers (more openings for newbies). Teach for America was unusually silent.
But what about the Gates moratorium? He found some confusion among the usual cheerleaders for high-stakes testing. Again, Teach for America stayed out of the fray. Reformers split into two camps.
Gary writes:
“You’ve got Bill Gates, who is essentially the Secretary of Education in this country, saying to slow down on this. And you have StudentsFirstNY, though not yet StudentsFirst, saying that slowing down is a mistake. And maybe this is all for show, some good cops and some bad cops — as long as things continue to move in the ‘reform’ direction.
“But I do think that the fact that any ‘reformers’ support a slow down is a big deal. You see, if I were a ‘reformer’ and I had confidence in the golden calf known as value-added, I would be against the slow down. Since the concept of value-added is that if it was already accurate enough to be 35% or 50% (in Denver) for teacher evaluations, then the harder (more ‘rigorous’) Common Core exams would not make it any less accurate. This is the whole point of value-added. It shouldn’t matter, to a value-added believer, if the new tests are more difficult. Everyone is working under the same handicap so the value-added formulas should, in theory, account for that.”
Two years is about all the time left to Duncan. What happens next? Maybe by then even the politicians will realize that VAM is a failed idea.
J. Celeste Lay, a professor of political science at Tulane University, reviewed the results of the Recovery School District—which replaced all public schools with privately-managed charter schools—and concluded that the story of “the Néw Orleans miracle” is a Big Lie.
She writes:
“The Louisiana Department of Education’s recent release of the results of the LEAP and iLEAP testing is incontrovertible evidence that the “grand experiment” of the charter system in New Orleans has failed. The New Orleans Recovery School District comes in at the 17th percentile in the state in its percentage of students at the basic level and above. The RSD has no A-rated schools and few B schools. By the state’s post-Katrina definition of a failing school, nine years into the experiment, nearly all of the schools in the RSD are “failing.” Communities around the state that are grappling with their own public education challenges should look at New Orleans’ charter schools experience with skepticism.”
Read her description of how the choice system sorts students.
And she adds:
“It doesn’t matter that with all this choice, most kids in New Orleans have no greater educational opportunities than before. The focus on choice as opposed to results also obscures the fact that certain groups have profited substantially in the post-Katrina system.”
EduShyster interviewed Jose Luis Vilson, New York City teacher and blogger, about his new book, “This Is Not a Test.”
Vilson has woven together the story of his own life with narratives about his students and classroom experiences. My impression, when I read his book, is that he has a fresh voice, a style all his own, and a compelling way of bringing together issues and personal stories.
In response to a question, Vilson says he is determined to be hopeful, no matter what is thrown his way. Frankly, anyone who could survive the harsh Bloomberg years is a determined optimist. EduShyster asks about his optimism, and he replies, “The way I look at it, there’s really no choice. Educators need, NEED to have some kind of hope because otherwise we’re powerless. Once we start to feel less hopeful, that fire we start out with gets extinguished. I do have pessimism and skepticism as drivers but I always have optimism right next to me because I’m always hoping things will get better. Our kids are our driving force. If you don’t have the kids you teach in mind, then why be hopeful? If you’re teaching as a career, than optimism is the way to go.”
Simply opposing the current reform movement with all its flaws is insufficient, he says. We must have a vision for the future that is far better than “the good old days,” which weren’t good at all for many people. That new vision must be far more inclusive than in the past, especially for those at the margins of society.
In her last question, Edushyster posed this challenge:
“ES: For those who like their wisdom distilled into bite-sized 140 character portions, you’re also quite a presence on Twitter. Here’s a challenge for you. Can you boil down the central argument of your book into a single Tweet?
JV: *It’s not about the salary; it’s all about reality.*
Nashville Prep boasts some of the highest test scores in Tennessee.
Its singular goal is college preparation.
Fortunately, we can see what the school considers good instruction by looking at a video that is posted on its website.
It is called “6 Minutes with Ms. McDonalds’ 5th Grade Social Studies Class.”
Watch it and decide for yourself. Are these students being prepared to be successful in college? Will they be the thinkers, scientists, inventors, and innovators of the 21st century?
You be the judge.
Paul,Thomas writes here about what we learn from fiction–some fiction–about life. Why do we keep reading George Orwell’s “1984” or Arthur Miller’s “The Crucible”? They teach us important life lessons, which we value.
In this post, he writes about other books, books that teach us lessons about scarcity and about our willingness to accept harsh conditions as inevitable.
This is the book he explores:
“The Very Persistent Gappers of Frip, written by George Saunders and wonderfully illustrated by Lane Smith (whose It’s a Book I cannot recommend highly enough), is a fanciful and satirical tale that proves in the end to be an allegory of scarcity and slack—a perfect companion read to Ursula K. Le Guin’s allegory of privilege, “The One’s Who Walk Away from Omelas.””
It is, Thomas writes, a powerful allegory about scarcity and slack.
And it makes you wonder about the decision by the writers of the Common Core standards to downgrade fiction.
Michael Sharpe resigned as CEO of The Jumoke Academy, which runs charter schools in Connecticut and plans to expand to Baton Rouge, after revelations that he had been convicted of felonies many years ago and that he did not have a doctorate degree, as he had claimed.
One of the schools managed by Jumoke, the Milner elementary school, will be returned to the Hartford public schools.
“On Saturday, the website for Family Urban Schools of Excellence, the management organization created in 2012 to oversee Jumoke Academy and its expansion, still described Sharpe as “Dr. Michael Sharpe” and stated he was a graduate of NYU. Official documents, including the memorandum of understanding with Hartford for Milner School, have also referred to him as “Dr. Sharpe,” and in 2006, he told the state legislature’s appropriations committee, “my name is Dr. Michael Sharpe,” according to a transcript of his testimony.
“Controversy over the academic credential came days after The Courant detailed a behind-the-scenes feud between the city school system and Jumoke over its two-year management of Milner, a struggling school that has received $2.64 million in extra funding from the state’s Commissioner’s Network since 2012. The state intervention program gives millions of dollars to schools with three- to five-year “turnaround” plans to raise achievement — for Milner and Bridgeport’s Dunbar Elementary School, that strategy has featured a partnership with the charter operator to essentially run the schools.
“Among the Hartford district’s complaints were concerns over hiring practices. School officials had accused FUSE of nepotism and offering Milner jobs to people with criminal backgrounds, but that was before they learned that Sharpe was a convicted felon.
“Sharpe told The Courant that he has atoned for his mistakes and that he never kept his past a secret.”
Colorado and Denver are very friendly territory for corporate reformers. They have poured big money into state and local school board races. It has one of the nation’s most extreme teacher-evaluation laws, with 50% of teachers’ rating based on test scores. The law was written by State Senator Michael Johnston (ex-TFA). U.S. Senator Michael Bennett is a stalwart of corporate reform. In recent elections, “reformers” swept the Denver school board and the Douglas school. Board
Now the corporate reformers have decided to pick up a seat on the state school board. Their candidate taught for two years in TFA. He is getting generous support from Democrats for Education Reform (DFER), the hedge fund managers; from Stand for Children, which is funded by the Waltons and various equity investors; and others from the corporate reform crowd.
His opponent, Valentina Flores, is a veteran educator, with 43 years in the field. On her website, she says: “I oppose big money and corporatization in our public education system. I oppose high stakes testing that takes away valuable classroom learning time. I oppose a “reform” model that is slowly privatizing our public education system. We cannot allow free public education to be traded on NASDAQ and sold to the highest bidder.” You can see why the people with big money could not support a candidate like Flores.
Samuel Abrams, a researcher at Teachers College, Columbia University, was named a knight by the Finnish government.
“The honor was bestowed before family, friends, and colleagues in recognition of Abrams’s advancement of the understanding of Finnish education in the United States. Abrams has conducted a vast amount of research on Nordic as well as American education systems. Much of this research will appear in his book “The Children Must Play: Education, Business, and Conflict,” to be published by Harvard University Press in 2015.”
Sam Abrams taught for many years at Beacon High School in Néw York City.
“When asked about a specific trend or issue as a key factor in the success of Finnish education, Abrams brought up two things: the well-rounded curriculum of the Finnish educational system and the professionalization of teaching. In contrast to the American curriculum, Abrams said, the Finnish curriculum for students in grades one through nine comprises a lot of arts, crafts, music, and play while consisting of no standardized testing. Abrams said the Finnish approach thereby not only makes school more enticing for children but also cultivates significant collaborative skills and provides natural, hands-on opportunities for learning math and science. According to Abrams, this philosophy, combined with a nutritious hot school lunch, which is free for all students, makes Finnish schooling so effective.”
Abrams advised the Finns not to worry about PISA scores but to continue to do what was best for children.
In an interview in Salon, UCLA law professor Jonathan Zasloff says that Judge Rolf Treu’s decision against tenure and seniority was weakly reasoned. If it were a paper in one of his law school classes, he would give it a B-.
Among other curiosities, the decision represents an aggressive sort of judicial activism, which conservatives usually deplore. Zasloff says: “When we find a ruling we don’t like, we call it judicial activism; and conservatives banged on this drum for years and years and years, and are staying on it even in the wake of Bush v. Gore … But this is certainly a very, very aggressive decision and an example of judicial activism.”
Another curious aspect to the decision is that it embraces “disparate impact,” which conservatives typically oppose.
Zasloff says: “But as with all of these things, it really depends on whose ox is getting gored. And if this means that the California Supreme Court, [if it upholds the ruling], is now saying that as part of California’s equal protection law is that you can entertain things on a disparate impact theory, that would make California in a lot of ways quite progressive, judicially. Justice Robert Jackson famously talked about an area of law having invisible boomerangs. This could be one of them.
“One of the things, of course, if California uses a disparate impact theory for its equal protection claims, and does some very aggressive, progressive moves on that (if we’re gaming this out several years in the future), you could then see conservatives going to the federal Supreme Court and saying, “California using disparate impact in state equal protection law is itself a violation of federal equal protection law principles.” So there are a lot of moves to be made in the wake of this one.”
The decision is not only poorly reasoned but has a weak factual basis, says Zasloff:
“If [Treu’s] ruling is going to be upheld, and if he’s going to make a case for it, he needs to find a lot of facts. There was a trial here, there was testimony here; but there seemed to be very few facts that the judge explicitly relied on for his decision. So, he says, “Well, we know that there are a lot of grossly inadequate teachers in the system, and we know that at least some of these grossly inadequate teachers are going to go to low-performing schools, so that means that it’s a constitutional violation.” Wait a minute. There are six or seven different steps in there that you’ve got to make. The teachers’ unions argued, “Wait a minute — the reason the teachers might be grossly inadequate is because of the schools that they’re in, not because of the teachers themselves.” You can think that that’s right, you can think that that’s wrong, you can think that that’s true, you can think that that’s false; but it would seem to me that you’ve got to make an argument as to why you think … these teachers are grossly inadequate. What in fact is going on there? What is going on in these schools? That is the kind of thing a trial judge can and should be doing, and the judge here just didn’t do it.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 