Archives for the year of: 2014
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Mercedes Schneider: Could the Rights to CCSS Be Sold?

By dianeravitch
October 10, 2014 //
18

The Common Core standards are copyrighted. The copyright belongs to the National Governors Association and the Council of Chief State School Officers. Theoretically, states are not allowed to alter them. States can add standards, but they cannot alter what has already been written,  which is treated as a holy scripture or the two tablets brought down from Mount Sinai. This, in fact, is a major defect of the standards, because there is a protocol for standard-writing, which the CCSS violates. That protocol, described very clearly by the American National Standards Institute, says that any standard-writing process must include a means of revising them; CCSS does not. It also says that all stakeholders must be involved in the discussion; this was not true for CCSS. And it says that no single interest should dominate standard-writing (as the Gates Foundation did by paying for everything).

 

Mercedes Schneider brings up another worrisome, if speculative point: since the CCSS are copyrighted, could the holders of the copyright sell it? The likeliest buyer, of course, would be Pearson. Suppose Pearson offered the two D.C.-based organizations $100 million? Would they refuse it? In that case, a private, for-profit organization based in the United Kingdom would be sole owner of the United States’ standards. Why not? It makes about as much sense as having the “national standards” developed and written by a committee that included no classroom teachers, a committee led by a Yale- and Oxford-educated entrepreneur who had never taught, a committee that included no experts on cognition or early childhood education, a committee that had an ample representation from the testing industry.

 

Some supporters of CCSS think that the standards could be used all by themselves, disconnected from the testing. But that is not the plan. The plan is a system. The system begins with standards, then testing, then teacher evaluation based on the testing, the testing must all be done online, which makes possible data mining and the creation of a longitudinal data base that follows children from pre-Kindergarten through at least the end of high school. At every step along the way, some corporation has a stake in the process: the testing industry, the technology industry, the consultants who sell teacher evaluation rubrics, the data mining entrepreneurs whose numbers are multiplying, the Big Data industry. I am sorry if this sounds conspiratorial. I don’t believe in conspiracies. It is all out there in the open.

Categories Common Core, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Testing

Jitu Brown: “Reforms” Discriminate Against Our Children in Newark, New Orleans, and Chicago

By dianeravitch
October 10, 2014 //
9

Journey for Justice, led by Jitu Brown of Chicago, has filed complaints with the Office of Civil Rights in the U.S. Department of Education, on behalf of children and parents in Newark, Chicago, and New Orleans, claiming that they are victims of discrimination.

 

Their children, parents say, are the victims of reformers. Maybe they mean well, but the results for the children have been disastrous.

 

Far from being “leaders of the civil rights issue of our time,” as the reformers assert, the reformers are violating the rights of black and brown children.

 

Jitu Brown, founder of the Journey for Justice, is a spokesperson for the angry parents of these cities. He says “reform” is actually “a hustle.”

 

Brown, a lifelong Chicago resident who has been working with inner-city schools and neighborhood organizations since 1991, says that school choice has really just been an excuse for politicians to sack neighborhood schools and funnel government money to charter operators, which operate schools that on average take just 64 percent of the money that their district counterparts take.
Brown points to a number of examples in which, he says, Chicago Public Schools intentionally sabotaged successful schools in an effort to prop up charters, using tactics like offering laptops and iPads to lure high-performing students out of traditional public schools and into charters.
“These people are almost like drug dealers and the children are the narcotics, and they flip ’em until they’re able to finally make enough profit,” he says. “That’s how drug dealers work. It’s no different. It’s really no different.”
A report from the Chicago Teachers Union (pdf) released last year detailed how Simon Guggenheim Elementary School in West Englewood was set up for failure, while Jacob Beidler Elementary School, in East Garfield Park, was set up for success. The two schools have similar percentages of low-income students, and both are in communities facing high rates of violence, but Guggenheim, the report says, was denied resources in order to destabilize the environment.
Brown alleges that Chicago Public Schools has done this on several other occasions, citing examples like Beethoven Elementary on the city’s South Side. Once a high-performing school in a poor community, it was inundated over a number of years with students from closed schools in different neighborhoods around the city that ultimately dragged the school’s test scores down to a level where it is now failing.
“[The school district has] been closing schools in this neighborhood since 1998 as they’ve been trying to gentrify the area,” he says. “Those closings accelerated around 2004. We realized that it wasn’t really about school improvement; it was about freeing up that public area for the incoming gentry….”

 

“In Newark, students and their parents in the city’s South Ward boycotted the first day of school to protest One Newark, the school-choice enrollment plan that moved some children far from their neighborhood schools. Weeks later, hundreds of high school students walked out of class in protest.
“More than a month after school started, some parents say that hundreds of children still have not been assigned a school, and frustrations over transportation issues, uncertainty about where to send their children and dissatisfaction over closed neighborhood schools have led to many more not showing up for class.
“For me, as a parent, I know that my children deserve better,” says Sharon Smith, a mother with three children in Newark schools. “And not because they’re just mine, but because every child deserves the best opportunity that they can receive with education. But that’s not happening here. The parents here are stuck with whatever decision the district makes.”
Smith and other critics have chided One Newark on behalf of families without cars, who, she says, sometimes have to put children on two buses to get them to school. The plan doesn’t provide wholesale transportation, and many charter schools don’t offer it.
Zuckerberg’s $100 million matched donation has vanished, mostly into pockets of contractors and consultants and given to teachers unions as back pay. As Vivian Cox Fraser, president of the Urban League of Essex County, famously remarked in a New Yorker story about the debacle, “Everybody’s getting paid, but Raheem still can’t read.”

 

 

Categories Charter Schools, Chicago, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, New Orleans, Newark, Privatization

North Carolina: 90% of Vouchers Spent in Religious Schools

By dianeravitch
October 10, 2014 //
20

Lindsay Wagner writes in NC Policy Watch that 90% of the students using the state’s new vouchers are attending religious schools. The institution receiving the largest number of vouchers is the Greensboro Islamic Academy.

The vouchers are given the euphemism “opportunity scholarships,” in an effort to disguise the fact that they are vouchers, which voters never approved.

North Carolina legislators are proving that our Founders were far wiser than legislators today. The Founders wanted no establishment of religion, and they did not foresee the subsidy of religious schools by the state. It was Thomas Jefferson who wrote about separation of church and state in 1802, aware of centuries of religious strife in Europe. For years, the U.S. Supreme Court tried to maintain such a wall, allowing some subsidy for religious schools to perform state-required activities, subsidizing textbooks and testing, even transportation, but not tuition in religious schools.

Wagner writes:

“Religious private schools account for 90 percent of those receiving the state’s new taxpayer-funded school vouchers—a disproportionately high amount given that only 66.4 percent of the state’s 715 private schools are religious institutions.

“According to data released by the N.C. State Educational Assistance Authority, 98 out of the 109 private schools that have received vouchers (formally known as Opportunity Scholarships) from the state so far are religious institutions. Ninety-four of those schools identify as Christian, and four other schools identify as Islamic. To date, the state has disbursed just over $1 million to the religious schools.

“The largest recipient of school voucher dollars thus far is Greensboro Islamic Academy. The school has received more than $90,000 from taxpayers while information has surfaced indicating that the school is in financial trouble and has inflated its tuition rates to reap as many publicly-funded vouchers as possible to stay afloat.

“The Opportunity Scholarship Program, which lawmakers enacted last year, siphons approximately $10.8 million dollars out of the public school system to allow students to attend private and religious schools instead. Each voucher is worth a maximum of $4,200 per student, per year.

“Proponents of the program say the voucher program is a way to give low-income students better choices when it comes to their education; critics say it siphons badly needed funds away from public education and funnels them into unaccountable, religious private schools that are not obligated to hold themselves to high quality teaching standards.

“In August, a Superior Court judge found that the program violates the state’s constitutional mandate to use public funds only for public schools – but thanks to a Court of Appeals ruling last month, the state must disburse school vouchers that have already been awarded while the case winds its way through the state appellate courts.”

– See more at: http://pulse.ncpolicywatch.org/2014/10/09/ninety-percent-of-private-schools-receiving-taxpayer-funded-vouchers-are-religious-institutions/#sthash.N9RY1dr4.dpuf

Categories North Carolina, Religion, Separation of church and state, Vouchers

Please Pray for Karen Lewis

By dianeravitch
October 10, 2014 //
21

Whatever your religious views, or if you have none at all, please pray for or send powerful thoughts for the healing and speedy recovery of our friend Karen Lewis.

 

Karen is in the hospital in Chicago following serious surgery. We will wait to hear the details of the surgery from those who speak on her behalf.

 

What we do know is that the surgery was serious and that Karen is resting comfortably.

 

I first met Karen in 2010, spent four hours talking at our first meeting, and came to have great respect for her vision, her intelligence, her compassion, and her courage.

 

In fighting against the forces of corporate reform that seek to destroy public education, Karen Lewis has been a model for all of us. She is a teacher. She has taught all of us how to organize from the ground up, how to rally resistance, how to live in truth and integrity.

 

She is my friend. I love her. I love her as a kind and strong human being. I love her for her work on behalf of others.

 

She is in my thoughts and prayers, as I hope she is in yours.

Categories Education Reform

JeffCo Students are Rallying on Saturday to Demand Change

By dianeravitch
October 10, 2014 //
11

Students and parents are the most powerful voices in the battle to save public education from ideologues, one-issue zealots, misguided philanthropists, and greedy entrepreneurs. Why are they so powerful? They can’t be fired or intimidated!

 

Students in Jefferson County, Colorado, are holding a rally on Saturday. If you are anywhere nearby, please join them and show your support for them as they fight for a real education. Their school board is dominated by rightwing corporate reformers. The students have had enough of their school board’s love of privatization, testing, and censorship.

Categories Curriculum, Education Industry

Tech Companies Sign Pledge to Respect Student Privacy; Critics Skeptical

By dianeravitch
October 10, 2014 //
25

Several major technology companies signed a pledge not to sell or misuse private student data. Critics were not reassured.

 

According to a story in Education Week,

 

K-12 student-privacy pledge released Tuesday and signed by prominent ed-tech providers prompted immediate statements of concern from some advocacy groups about whether self-regulation will do the job of protecting student data.

 

The voluntary Pledge to Safeguard Student Privacy, co-authored by the Software and Information Industry Association or SIIA, and the Future of Privacy Forum, and signed initially by 13 companies and one non-profit, includes six “do’s” and six “don’ts” of handling student data. The signers—including Amplify, DreamBox Learning, Edmodo, Follett, Knewton, Knovation, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, Microsoft, and Think Through Math—agree to abide by the provisions of the pledge effective January 1, 2015.

 

Among key elements of the pledge are promises to:

 

Not sell student information
Not behaviorally target advertising (which means targeting advertising based on a student’s web-browsing behavior)
Use data for authorized education purposes only
Not change privacy policies without notice and choice
Enforce strict limits on data retention
Support parental access to, and correction of errors in, their children’s information
Provide comprehensive security standards
Be transparent about collection and use of data
The pledge was created as parents’ worries about the privacy and security of their students’ data have resonated in state legislatures, and as the state of California enacted a strict privacy law last month. It also follows the collapse of inBloom, a controversial data management company that was striving to be a single repository for up to 400 pieces of information about each student whose data were uploaded to the cloud—but that fell under the weight of protests from parents, some educators, and others.

 

Software companies selling products to K-12 schools have been concerned, too, that their mission to collect and use student data to help educators better teach their students will not be permitted by law. “Without data, we are flying blind,” said Aimee Rogstad Guidera, founder and executive director of Data Quality Campaign, a national nonprofit that advocates for the effective use of education data to improve student achievement, in a statement in support of the pledge.

 

Range of Reactions to Pledge

 

The National School Boards Association and the National PTA joined the organizations that released the pledge with their endorsements in the launch announcement. Keith Krueger, CEO of the Consortium for School Networking, said he thinks the pledge is helpful. “It states, pretty clearly and crisply—in language a non-lawyer can understand—what’s not going to happen with your data,” he said. Schools and districts are looking for that kind of assurance in an industry standard about the collection, management, and use of personal information, he said.

 

But Leonie Haimson, executive director of Class Size Matters based in New York City and co-chair of the Parent Coalition for Student Privacy, said in a statement that “we need legally enforceable provisions requiring parental notification and consent for the disclosure and redisclosure of personal student data, as well as rigorous security standards.” She predicted that the pledge would not reassure parents about data sharing, data-mining and data breaches.

 

Mark Schneiderman, the senior director of education policy at SIIA, said that, when companies make public pledges like this one, it is enforceable by the Federal Trade Commission, or FTC.

 

It is worth remembering that the CEO of Knewton, working with Pearson, boasted that education is the most data-minable sector of the economy. Data mining is big business.  Can we trust them?

Categories Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Education Reform

Pelto: Malloy Pledges to “Stay the Course” with Corporate Education Reform

By dianeravitch
October 10, 2014 //
8

Jonathan Pelto reports that Governor Dannel Malloy of Connecticut announced he will stay the course on his corporate education reform policies, despite the huge scandal associated with the Jumoke charter school. Jumoke was one of the governor’s star charters until it was revealed that its CEO had a criminal past and a fake doctorate. Malloy supports tying teacher evaluation to test scores, despite the fact that this method has worked nowhere. And as Pelto reminds us, he proposed eliminating (not reforming but eliminating) teachers’ due process rights. He also advocated a no-union policy in the state’s poorest schools. He seems to have bought hook, line, and sinker the reformer claim that unions and tenure depress student test scores, even though the highest performing schools in the state have unions and tenure.

Why would a Democratic governor advocate for the failed policies of corporate reform? One guess. Connecticut has a large concentration of hedge fund managers, whose ideology and campaign contributions are aligned. In their highly speculative business, no one has unions or tenure. When stocks or investments go bad, they dump them. They think that schools should live by their principles. They should read Jamie Vollmer’s famous blueberry story. You can’t throw away the bad blueberries. Unless you run a charter school. Then you can exclude bad blueberries and kick out other bad blueberries.

Categories Charter Schools, Connecticut, Corporate Reformers, Teacher Evaluations, Teacher Tenure, Unions

Glen Ford: For-Profit Colleges Destroy the Lives of African Americans

By dianeravitch
October 10, 2014 //
13

This is a dynamite article about the predatory for-profit higher education sector by Glen Ford of Black Agenda Report. He pulls no punches.

He writes:

“The dominos are falling in the for-profit college racket, a cauldron of corruption that has crushed the dreams of millions of African Americans in desperate search for tools to navigate their way through a racist, cut-throat capitalist society. Corinthian College’s stock fell from a peak of $33 a share, ten years ago, to 33 cents last month, when it became clear that the federal government intended to pull the plug on the $1.6 billion a year rip-off. Corinthian – known to victims by the brand names Heald College, Everest, and WyoTech – will soon file for bankruptcy protection, shielding its bankster and hedge fund profiteers from liability for wanton theft and massive life-wrecking. More than 70,000 students at 107 campuses, half of whom were statistically certain to drop out before completely their courses, will struggle to find another route to mobility and dignity.

“Corinthian is only the third or fourth-worst offender in the pantheon of for-profit colleges created for the sole purpose of diverting public money to the coffers of hedge funds and mega-banks. Although the titans of this fraudulent industry have committed crimes far larger than Bernard Madoff, none of them will join him in prison, since their victims are largely Black people whose usefulness to Wall Street is limited to availability for super-exploitation, demonization and incarceration.

“Corinthian’s collapse – and the panic that reigns in the rest of the for-profit education pack – was triggered by the Obama administration’s decision to shut off the criminal enterprise’s federal funding faucet, which accounted for at least 83 percent of the company’s revenue stream. Since Corinthian, like its sister shysters, was created as a pass-through of federal dollars, it could not withstand the slightest pause in payments from various federal agencies. So, it folded. Other corporate educational fraudsters will soon follow Corinthian into bankruptcy, causing a shakeup in the industry that will probably result in a leaner and more vertically integrated structure of dream-sploitation. Billions of educational dollars will continue flowing straight from federal programs to Wall Street, but with little improvement to the life-chances of the supposed beneficiaries: the educationally deprived.

“The Obama administration may abhor the chaos in which players like the University of Phoenix and Ashford University have become the top producers of baccalaureate degrees among Blacks. But the administration – and the Democratic Party, as an institution – also worships at the alter of privatization. Rather than eliminate the felonious educational enterprises root and branch – and spend the money on a nationalized system of free education – Obama will continue to provide tens of billions to nourish the poisoned tree.”

Every year we spend $32 billion on these for-profit institutions. Why not use that money for tuition-free colleges for students who need higher education–and bypass Wall Street?

Ford adds:

“In previous decades, African American political leaders would have been out front in demanding a public agency to respond to the phenomenal Black craving for educational services. However, much of the Congressional Black Caucus has succumbed to the bribery of for-profit sugar daddies who, according to Sen. Durbin, “own every lobbyist in town.” Among the legions of for-profit lobbyists is Black former Maryland Rep. Al Wynn (who, while in office, acted as the Black Caucus bag-man for the corporate Democratic Leadership Council). Florida Congressman Alcee Hastings collected at least $54,500 from the education rip-off industry, according to David Halperin’s April 3 article in The Nation, “The Perfect Lobby: How One Industry Captured Washington, DC.”

“Hastings featured prominently in the groundbreaking May 27 Huffington Post piece “How the Congressional Black Caucus Went to War with Itself Over Wall Street,” which described his “epic argument” with Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA) in 2011. Waters blasted Hastings “for sponsoring a measure that was seen as a gift to shady for-profit colleges. What was more embarrassing than selling out, Waters told her assembled colleagues, was selling out cheap to nickel-and-dime scammers like the for-profit college industry. If you’re going to sell your soul, she admonished, have some self-respect and sell high. (Hastings didn’t dispute the conflict, but he did dispute Waters’ point. ‘It would be a mistaken premise,’ he says, smiling. ‘There are a hell of a lot of for-profit schools.’)”
Key members of the unelected Black Misleadership Class are also beholden to Wall Street’s for-profit federal educational money conduits. The National Urban League got a $1 million check from now-doomed Corinthian Colleges after president Marc Morial wrote a favorable op-ed in the Washington Post. Morial then joined Corinthian’s board of directors, a sinecure that is worth between $60,000 and $90,000 a year in cash and deferred stock.

“Al Sharpton, the MSNBC host and presidential pit bull, reciprocated the University of Phoenix’s sponsorship of his TV special Advancing the Dream with a puff piece on the for-profit giant’s online offerings, featuring the NFL’s Larry Fitzgerald, a Phoenix student and booster. Phoenix University excels all others in funneling Black people’s educational dollars directly to Wall Street via the Apollo Group, a $5.36 billion corporation with ties to the super-predatory Carlyle Group.”

“For-profit education has diverted many billions of dollars that Black students never actually possessed for even one moment– but will owe for much of the rest of their lives – into the accounts of the fabulously wealthy.”

And Ford writes:

“One exception is historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs), now reeling from a funding crisis set in motion by Obama administration “reforms” in student aid, which led to dramatic decreases in student enrollment. HBCU’s and community colleges attempt to serve much the same demographic that is so grievously exploited and damaged by for-profit vultures. Therefore, these two step-children of American education are the logical starting points for building a publicly funded, virtually free higher educational system, sustained by a lion’s share of the $32 billion in federal moneys that annually pass through for-profits on the way to Wall Street. (Total federal spending on HBCUs is currently less than $1.5 billion a year, and California’s community college system, the nation’s largest, is in constant crisis.)

“Nobody can claim that the feds don’t have the money; Washington spends it lavishly on edu-criminal enterprises. Most importantly, history shows conclusively that most of established U.S. public and private higher education is institutionally incapable of serving anything approaching sufficient numbers of darker and poorer Americans – who are then corralled by scurrilous aid-snatchers and dream-breakers.

“The for-profits should be put out of business with all deliberate speed, but it would be a further crime to shift that portion of federal aid to schools that have never demonstrated a willingness or competence to serve the demographic so cruelly exploited by the likes of Corinthian. The federal dollars that made Phoenix and Ashford Universities the top sources of Black baccalaureate degrees (for whatever that’s worth) should not be diverted to institutions that are manifestly hostile to Black people, based on enrollment figures.”

Ford takes no prisoners. Read the article in full.

Categories Education Industry, For-Profit, Higher Education

Jon Pelto: A Glimmer of Light in the Darkness

By dianeravitch
October 9, 2014 //
17

Last night, I spoke at Quinnipiac University in Hamden, Connecticut. It was an emotional outing for me because it was the first time I had given a public lecture since my knee surgery last May. I used a cane, leaned on a few strong arms, worried about whether I would be able to stand at the podium for an hour. But I was buoyed by the warm reception, the beauty of Connecticut, the friendly staff, and the excitement of returning to the fray, not electronically, but on the ground, in a state where “reformers” control the Governor’s office and major cities.

I was very happy to meet so many teachers, principals, and scholars who had come from across the state. I was especially pleased to see my friend Jon Pelto, who is Connecticut’s premier education blogger and provides not only the inside scoop but encouragement to beleaguered teachers.

Jon wrote about the event here.

Since most of you were not there, I will tell you that I urged massive opt outs from standardized testing with the hope that the opt outs would lead to a permanent moratorium on high-stakes testing. The testing sets the stage for privatization, which has become a threat to the future of public education. Most testing is now designed to evaluate teachers, not students, and this practice, so beloved by Arne Duncan, has no evidence behind it and much evidence to show that it is inaccurate. It demoralizes dedicated, hardworking teachers. It must end.

There was much more, but that’s the takeaway.

Categories Connecticut

State Approves 17 New Charters for New York City, including More for Eva Moskowitz Chain

By dianeravitch
October 9, 2014 //
24

The State University of New York’s charter committee approved another 17 charter schools for New York City, including 14 new Success Academy charter schools. By 2016, the chain run by Eva Moskowitz will have 50 charter schools serving some 16,000 students, this in a city where 1.1 million students are enrolled in public schools.

 

The state approved 17 new charter schools for New York City on Wednesday, substantially increasing the size of one of the city’s largest and most polarizing charter networks, Success Academy, and setting up a battle over where the schools will be located.

 

The state’s charter schools committee, part of the State University of New York’s board of trustees, approved 14 new Success Academy schools, which will bring the network to a total of 50 schools serving 16,300 students by 2016, the network said. The new schools would begin with kindergarten and first grade, and then grow each year as new grades are added. Three new Achievement First charter schools were also approved….

 

The new Success charters are approved for Districts 2 and 3 in Manhattan; 9 in the Bronx; 13, 14, 15, 17, 18, 22, and 23 in Brooklyn; and 24, 27, 28 and 30 in Queens.

 

In a statement on Wednesday morning, Success Academy’s founder, Eva S. Moskowitz, winked at the negotiations — and, possibly, the court battles — that are to come.

 

“We look forward to working with the Department of Education to identify appropriate locations so that these schools can open and more children have an opportunity to receive the high-quality education they want and deserve,” Ms. Moskowitz said.

 

Charter schools receive public money but operate independently of the larger school system — and they attract vigorous, often vitriolic debate in New York City.

 

Why are her charters so polarizing? Could it be because she enrolls a smaller proportion of kids with disabilities and English language learners than neighborhood public schools and has a high attrition rate? Could it be her boasting about how much better her schools are than the public schools? Could be.

 

As we noted in an earlier post, the city is obligated by state law to pay Eva’s rent,wherever she locates, even though her coffers are overflowing and her chain is amply supported by billionaires. And according to press reports, the Moskowitz chain has rented corporate offices in Wall Street at a cost of $31 million over 15 years.

 

The lesson: Whatever Eva wants, Eva gets.

 

 

Categories Charter Schools, Education Industry, Privatization
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