Archives for the month of: January, 2014
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Los Angeles: Deasy Refuses to Restore Arts Funding

By dianeravitch
January 17, 2014 //
33

Despite a board resolution in 2012 calling for a restoration of arts funding in Los Angeles, Superintendent John Deasy has refused to prepare a budget complying with the resolution.

“In 2012, the Los Angeles Unified School District board voted to make arts education a core subject in its curriculum.

“Four months ago, the board gave district officials a Dec. 3 deadline to produce a budget for the school district’s Arts Education and Creative Cultural Network Plan, which aims to prepare students for work in creative and technology-based fields by increasing arts-related course offerings and increased faculty support.

“That deadline, however, came and went without so much as a “the check’s in the mail”— leaving public school officials and parents to wonder whether music and arts funding is coming at all.

“I see this as an absolute conflict between two opposing views on what public education should look like: Those who want to see arts as a core subject, and those who are only concerned about test scores and offering students a limited education,” said Karen Wolfe, a Venice Neighborhood Council Education Committee member whose daughter attends Marina Del Rey Middle School.

“Last year the school hired a ballet teacher and began requiring all of its students to take dance classes, said Marina Del Rey Middle School Performing Arts Coordinator Nancy Pierandozzi.

“Venice High School, Mark Twain Middle School and Grand View Boulevard and Broadway elementary schools have also begun integrating performing arts content into English/language arts classes.

“That combination has for some students resulted in a drastic turnaround in attendance and academic achievement, said LAUSD board member Steve Zimmer, whose district includes schools in Mar Vista, Westchester, Del Rey and Venice.

“Author of the September resolution calling for an arts budget, Zimmer has pledged to push Supt. John Deasy for answers when school is back in session later this month.

“Deasy could not be reached.”

The district has committed to spend $1 billion to give an iPad to every student and staff member, to prepare for Common Core testing.

Categories Arts Education, Common Core, Los Angeles

TFA’s Mighty Ambitions

By dianeravitch
January 17, 2014 //
14

Teach for America has created a spin-off called Leaders for Educational Excellence that quietly trains and supports the ambitions of former TFA and their ascent to positions of power.

Teach for America, through LEE, hopes to take charge of the reins of power in many districts, states, and the halls of Congress.

TFA, of course, is a mainstay of the corporate reform movement, supplying the ill-trained recruits to the charter chains like Rocketship and gaining elective positions by espousing the slogans of “reform.”

Electoral work amounts to less than a third of LEE’s budget, its officials say, but it has nevertheless fueled popular accounts of the organization, mostly critical. Such accounts accuse the group of supporting candidates who espouse a particular “corporate” brand of education policy focused on expanding charter schools and test-based accountability.

Critics point to prominent TFA alumni and LEE members, such as Bill Ferguson, a state senator in Maryland, who sponsored legislation that included an iteration of the “parent trigger.” That policy permits parents to turn over the management of schools to outside operators.

LEE officials contest such depictions.

“We do not exist to propagate policy,” said Mr. Buman.

And Stephen Sawchuck’s article in Education Week adds:

The connection to TFA also appears to have given LEE-backed candidates access to an informal network that can fuel spending. Campaign-finance records from the Nevada state board races, for instance, turn up some of the same donors who have contributed to other endeavors affiliated with so-called “reform” priorities, including charter school expansion and teacher evaluations linked to student test scores.

Those contributors include Alan Fournier, who helps finance the New Jersey chapter of StudentsFirst, the advocacy group founded by former District of Columbia Schools Chancellor Michelle A. Rhee, and Charles Ledley, a donor to Democrats for Education Reform, a political action committee.

“There’s a strong network of people who are supportive of TFA alums, regardless of what their policy or visions are for the respective school systems,” Mr. Esteves said.

In essence, the issue boils down to one of self-selection: Even if LEE itself is politically neutral, it supports candidates who by definition must take policy stands. And those who reach out for its help may well favor a certain approach after being immersed in TFA’s philosophy, Mr. McGuinn of Drew University said.

It is doubtless sheer accident that TFA/LEE-supported candidates support charter schools, test-based evaluation, and the same policy prescriptions as Michelle Rhee’s StudentsFirst.

Hey, I live in Brooklyn. Anyone want to buy a world-famous bridge?

Categories Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Privatization, Teach for America

EduShyster: Broken Windows, No Excuses!

By dianeravitch
January 17, 2014 //
12

EduShyster commends President Obama and Secretary Duncan for their new initiative to lower the practice of suspending students, especially minority students, from school. But she wonders whether the new policy will apply to the “no excuses” charter schools that have sky-high suspension rates and win commendations from the Obama administration for having high expectations.

In New Orleans, two celebrated charter schools have high suspension rates:

“According to Louisiana state data a full 69 percent of Carver Collegiate’s student body was sent home at least once during the 2012-2013 school year. Carver Prep suspended 61 percent of its student body, while Sci Academy sent home 58 percent, a 9-point increase from the year before. That’s a lot of college readiness.”

Massachusetts also has charters that teach self-discipline by suspending students:

“It isn’t just New Orleans where there seems to be something of an, ahem, double standard when it comes to suspending minority students. In Massachusetts, for example, charter schools out-suspend their public counterparts at staggering rates. Tops on the list: Roxbury Preparatory Charter, a college prep academy for 5th-8th graders that is part of the Uncommon Schools network and sent home an Uncommonly high 56% of its students in 2012. In Boston, by contrast, which has overhauled its discipline policies to allow *restorative justice* in place of out-of-school suspensions, the suspension rate has dropped to just 4%.”

Why do charters get away with it?

“You see, there’s something else unique about urban charter schools in addition to their unique view that suspending students prepares them for college. They are also incredibly segregated. In other words, they can’t be said to be disproportionately punishing minority students because only minority students attend them. Segregation, like out-of-school suspensions, is just fine when its done in the name of college prep.”

Categories Charter Schools, Massachusetts, New Orleans, Segregation , Racial Isolation and Integration

Texas Charter Chain Teaches Creationism

By dianeravitch
January 17, 2014 //
29

Zack Koppelin is a college student in Texas who grew up in Louisiana. He is determined to expose the publicly-funded schools that teach creationism. As a high school student, he drew attention to voucher schools teaching religious dogma as science. Now in Texas, he finds creationism taught in the state’s biggest charter chain:

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

January 16, 2014
Contact: Zack Kopplin
(225)-715-5946
Zsk1@Rice.edu

Texas’ Largest Charter District is Teaching Creationism

Houston, Texas — Is the Fossil Record “sketchy?” Is evolution “dogma?” Do leading scientists doubt the age of the Earth?

At Responsive Education Solutions’ charter schools, a public Texas Charter “Super-Network” with 17,000 students and over 65 schools, students are learning creationism and false history.

Responsive Ed is the largest charter network in the State of Texas and it receives $82 million in public money, annually.

Science activist Zack Kopplin, who investigated the program, said, “This creationist charter program represents an attack on science, an attack on the First Amendment, and is an insidious threat to the charter movement itself.”

Kopplin also said, “Responsive Ed’s creationist curriculum presents a moment of truth for the Charter movement; will charter proponents demand the closure of schools that teach this creationist rot? Responsive Ed has crossed a line and charter authorizers should immediately revoke Responsive Ed’s charters for academic malpractice.”

Read more about Responsive Ed’s creationist curriculum at Slate.com:

http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/2014/01/creationism_in_texas_public_schools_undermining_the_charter_movement.html

###

Categories Charter Schools, Religion, Texas

Why Outsourcing to For-Profit Enterprises is Bad Public Policy

By dianeravitch
January 17, 2014 //
6

An organization called “In the Public Interest” keeps tabs on the scams that private entrepreneurs foist on the public sector, often in collusion with public officials who contract out important public services.

This report documents the coast-to-coast failure of handing public sector activities over to for-profit enterprises.

Outsourcing promises savings that never materialize. Instead, “too often it undermines transparency, accountability, shared prosperity and competition – the underpinnings of democracy itself…Outsourcing means taxpayers have very little say over how tax dollars are spent and no say on actions taken by private companies that tcontrol our public services. Outsourcing means taxpayers cannot vote out executives who make decisions that hurt public health and safety. Outsourcing means taxpayers are contractually stuck with a monopoly run by a single corporation – and those contracts often last decades. And outsourcing too often means a race to the bottom for the local economy, as wages and benefits fall while corporate profits rise.”

Meetings are held in secret. Decisions are made in secret. Costs spiral out of control without accountability. Weak and vulnerable patients are turned away, denied access to vital services because it costs too much to care for them.

In Arkansas, a journalist “asked the CEO of Tiger Correctional Services, a company that contracts for jail commissary services with the Craighead County Sheriff’s Department, about information regarding the company’s monthly sales and profits related to the contract. The chief executive officer of the company told the reporter, “That’s none of your damn business.”

That pretty much sums up the report. It is the public’s money, but the public does not have a right to know how it is spent.

Categories Privatization

Peter Greene: Why I Agree with Arne Duncan

By dianeravitch
January 17, 2014 //
36

Peter Greene, who teaches in Pennsylvania, read an interview in “US News” in which Arne Duncan claimed that our students fall behind those in other nations because we are “not serious” about education.

Greene agrees with Arne that our country is not serious about education.

If we took education seriously, he writes, teachers would be highly respected and well paid.

“If we were serious about education, we would not allow our public school system to be hijacked and dismantled by rich and powerful amateurs.”

“If we were serious about education, our media would direct its questions about education to teachers…

“If we were serious about education, we would never entrust our nation’s educational leadership to men who have no training or experience in education at all and who only listened to other men with no training or experience in education at all. If we were serious about education, we would demand leadership by people who were also serious about education, and we would demand leadership based on proven principles and techniques developed by people who truly cared about the education of America’s students.

“In short, Arne, if we were serious about education, we would not have you and your cronies running the Department of Education and popping up as “leaders” in the national discussion of education and more than we would be asking Robin Williams and Justin Bieber to straighten out the war in Afghanistan. If we were serious about education, we would send the whole wave of privateers masquerading as reformers scuttling back to their hedge funds and corporate tax havens….”

Categories Corporate Reformers, Duncan, Arne

Steve Nelson Predicts What 2014 Holds for Education Reformers

By dianeravitch
January 17, 2014 //
4

EduShyster, move over! Here comes someone writing in the same vein, though to be accurate, nobody tops EduShyster.

Here is Steve Nelson with a hilarious account of the events that are in store for corporate reform.

No one is spared!

It is a month-by-month account.

Here is his prediction for July:

“In an otherwise slow month for school-related news, Pearson Education announces the acquisition of the United States Department of Education. John Fallon, Pearson’s Chief Executive, appoints Arne Duncan as Chief Operating Officer for the new division. “Arne richly deserves this new appointment, as he has been working on our behalf for many years.” Doug Peterson, CEO of the McGraw-Hill Companies, asks the SEC to investigate, claiming, “I was pretty sure we had Duncan in our pocket. This is ridiculous.”

Categories Corporate Reformers, Duncan, Arne, Humor, Pearson

NC: Here Come the Corporate Charter Carpetbaggers!

By dianeravitch
January 17, 2014 //
16

Jessica B. Swencki of the Brunswick County schools in North Carolina knows a scam when she sees one. With the near total deregulation of charter schools in that state, the corporate charter chains are moving in to where it’s easy to run a school and skim huge profits.

Here’s the deal. A big for-profit operation finds a local board to act as its front during the application process.

One doesn’t have to look any further than the Eastern part of the state for a case study in how savvy companies use this loosely regulated system to pocket millions of taxpayer dollars.

Here’s how it works: A for-profit educational management organization “helps” the nonprofit board write the charter application. Once the charter is granted, the nonprofit board hires the same EMO to operate the charter school. The charter school pays the EMO sizable fees to “manage” the schools – those fees added up to over $15.7 million taxpayer dollars for one EMO in Eastern North Carolina over the past five years.

Coincidentally (or not), in at least one case, the founder of the EMO also happens to be the organizer of a second company that leases facilities and equipment to the charter school (i.e., landlord).

Now, remember, the nonprofit board hired the EMO to track and report all the financial data; and it is the EMO that advises the nonprofit board as to whether the landlord’s fees are reasonable. But don’t forget, the landlord also runs the EMO.

This deal got even sweeter for the landlord this summer when the General Assembly amended a statute. Now the landlord is no longer required to pay any state tax on the land the landlord rents to the charter school. I suppose from a business perspective nothing could be finer. Why isn’t this making headlines? Isn’t this illegal? Surprisingly, no. There is little to no public accountability for the financial decisions made by charter schools, and there is no transparency mandate from the General Assembly.

In a time of shrinking financial markets, charter schools remain an excellent marketplace for savvy corporations looking for consumers.

 

Read more here: http://www.newsobserver.com/2014/01/06/3511351/how-savvy-companies-can-use-nc.html#storylink=cpy

 

 

Categories Charter Schools, Education Industry, North Carolina, Privatization

You Have 24 Hours to Read This Post, Then…

By dianeravitch
January 16, 2014 //
98

Then it goes behind a paywall.

It was written by Caroline Chamberlin Hellman, who teaches remedial writing at City University of New York.

I think you will find it interesting.

Professor Hellman cares about her students.

Here is the conclusion:

All too often we hear the reductive narrative that these students are simply incapable of college-level work. Allow me to be clear: These students have potential. Some didn’t take their placement tests seriously enough, not realizing the repercussions. Some graduated from high schools that emphasized preparation for other types of standardized tests, and so those students had little writing instruction. Some are non-native speakers. Some would probably have passed the initial placement exam had they familiarized themselves with the test format and prepared in advance. And some, it must be acknowledged, will not make it through the class or through college.

Despite the pressures, frustrations, and sometimes feelings of failure, I opt to teach these courses because I believe that if we fail to offer these students a chance, we will have failed at public education. President Obama has spoken about the need to improve access to education, to halt the increasing stagnation of social mobility in the United States. Serving students who are most in need is a crucial component of public education.

The difficult yet uplifting narrative of the remedial-writing course I taught last spring repeats itself, with minor variations, every semester. But those who overcome the myriad challenges of remediation have the opportunity to pursue their degrees. I am thrilled when I glimpse former students in the hallway—a space that has different connotations for them now that they have navigated remediation. Recently I crossed paths with the older veteran who had inspired his classmates to applaud him. “It’s good to see you,” I exclaimed. I meant much more. He nodded, grasping the unspoken import. We shook hands and exchanged news, the hallway bearing witness. Then we parted, off to our respective classes.

Categories Higher Education

Paul Thomas: Time for AFT to Take Another Look at Common Core

By dianeravitch
January 16, 2014 //
9

Paul Thomas believes that the Common Core standards do not answer any of the most pressing problems in American education, most of which are economic and social, not pedagogical.

In this post, he commends Randi Weingarten for turning against VAM but worries that states will push ahead with it anyway. He expresses the hope that AFT will take the next logical step and recognize that the Common Core standards are not a great new idea but rather a continuation of the standards-based, test-based reform that characterizes NCLB and Race to the Top. These strategies always leave those with the least far behind. They never close the achievement gap. They reflect it.

He writes:

It is now time for leaders in education—including political leaders, union leaders, professional organization leaders—to acknowledge the historical record on standards-based accountability, the research base on standards-based accountability, and the real-world consequences related to standards-based accountability; and then, CC should be rejected, the real problems facing schools should be identified, and a new reform paradigm embraced.

AFT and Weingarten could offer a brave and powerful voice in that fight, and it would be welcomed.

 

Categories Common Core, Testing, Unions
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