Archives for the month of: January, 2014
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A Brilliant Idea for Raising and Improving Standards: Open Source Them

By dianeravitch
January 9, 2014 //
90

A comment arrived on the blog with a link to a great idea for standards: Open source them.

Right now, the Common Core standards are mired in controversy, and the controversy seems likely to grow worse as more states begin to test the standards and most parents discover that their children have failed.

The criticisms come from right and left and middle, from parents and educators of all stripes.

The blog called Uncommon California looks at the issue in the context of standards found in other walks of life and asks, why not open source the standards and the tests?

Open standards have been used successfully across many industries and technologies. They give flexibility to customize and adapt, while providing a foundation of available standards and interoperability.
Perhaps this framework could be used by states and individual schools as an alternative to Common Core?
Here is the brilliant idea:
Open standards have been used successful across many industries and technologies. They give flexibility to customize and adapt, while providing a foundation of available standards and interoperability.
Perhaps this framework could be used by states and individual schools as an alternative to Common Core?
Open Standards:
  • Seed a growing and ever updating list of standards, drawn for the best from state standards, around the country and around the world.   Encourage standards experts, to participate, evaluate, score them, encourage or discourage them.  Provide an open forum for standards to be evaluated, questioned, commented upon, rated, etc.  Include parents, teachers, education experts.
  • Provide ways to classify, group and sort them, by subject, recommended grade(s), ratings.  When standards are similar or identical, they could be combined to reduce redundancy.  Groups can work to evaluate, combine, rate them to “narrow” the list down or put forward their “recommended” set of standards.   States and schools should just not be monetarily incentivized or forced to use any particular set.
  • For each standards, test and materials publishers (see below) could “claim” alignment for their tests and study tools.  Users would be able to “rate” and/or question this alignment (or lack thereof).
  • Even the Washington D.C. lobby groups that created Common Core could “donate” their copyrights to the Common Core standards by putting them into the public domain & OSS!
  • States and local school districts would be able to pick and choose which standards they would adopt and in which grade level and even within grade levels.  Schools could have 2-3 levels of standards, based on below proficient, proficient and advanced levels. To take it further, schools might have a different set, customized to the level of the child in each subject. Want a particular math standard in 5th grade instead of 6th grade? No problem, just drag and drop it into your set.  Truly “plug and play” standards.

What a fabulous idea.

Similarly, Uncommon California says that the tests could be open source as well.

Open Tests:

  • Any company or individuals should be able to create software and/or paper tests that reference and draw from referenced open standards.  This site is a great example of how aspects of how “open source” tests could work: http://quizlet.com/
  • With software, each school and/or state would have their own, customized test based on their selected set of standards.  Again, could be customized down to grades, subjects, proficiency levels, and even each student.
  • Like the standards, groups could advocate their software or tests, allowing each state and school to choose.  Smarter Balanced and PARCC could even become options, so long as they create tests that are chosen by each state and/or school, customized to their standards and open parent and teacher feedback mechanisms were in place.
  • Reliability of the providers, especially the tests, would need to be well-monitored, especially to prevent sharing of test answers, etc.

And materials could also be open sourced.

As for privacy, any parent should be able to opt their child out of data-mining. “Like just about every other company, surveys and sampling can be used to normalize results if needed, without having to have data on EVERY SINGLE child.”

The Common Core standards as they now exist represent the best thinking of the industrial age. They might have been developed and imposed 100 years ago, in precisely the same manner as they are now.

The industrial age would have demanded that every worker in every factory operate in precisely the same way. How early 20th century!

The 21st century is characterized not by uniformity and standardization, but by processes that are flexible, dynamic, and open to continual improvement.

Categories Common Core

Rocketship Charter Chain Withdraws Proposal in Morgan Hill, California

By dianeravitch
January 8, 2014 //
13

Earlier today, the Rocketship charter chain, known for saving money by putting kids in front of computers and using Teach for America, has withdrawn its proposal to open two charter schools in Morgan Hill, a town of 40,000.

Credit goes to local activists, who organized to support their local public schools.

Meanwhile, Rocketship has targeted Memphis, Milwaukee, and other cities with their special brand of low-budget schooling for poor kids.

Categories California, Charter Schools, Supporting public schools

Tom Loveless Answers Critics about Shanghai and PISA

By dianeravitch
January 8, 2014 //
22

Tom Loveless wrote an article criticizing OECD for allowing Shanghai to exclude the children of migrants from PISA testing, thus artificially boosting their scores. His article hit a hornet’s nest.

Loveless writes:

Andreas Schleicher of OECD-PISA wrote a response to my essays, as did Dr. Zhang Minxuan, President of Shanghai Normal University.  Marc Tucker, President and CEO of the National Center on Education and the Economy, joined Mr. Schleicher in publishing a third response in Education Week.  

Here he responds to the critics. 

Please read his valuable analysis of the critiques.

Here are his conclusions:

Recommendations and Conclusion

 

These convoluted explanations place PISA’s integrity at risk.

 

I now elaborate upon my previous recommendation.  The PISA Governing Board, the governing authority responsible for PISA’s adherence to basic standards of assessment, should commission an independent panel to investigate and report on the OECD-PISA’s arrangement with China.  Evidence should include: all solicitations of participation in PISA that were made to Chinese provinces–and their responses; all correspondence and agreements regarding sampling and the reporting of PISA scores, whether the agreements were made with the central government in Beijing or provincial authorities; and a full review of the substance and quality of data that were collected throughout China in 2009 and 2012.  All data previously collected should be released so that independent scholars can conduct secondary analyses and verify conclusions publicized over the past several years. 

 

In the meantime, the ever changing story of PISA’s special arrangement with China continues to cast doubt on the trustworthiness of PISA.  

 

A December 18, 2013 CNN interview featured Andreas Schleicher and two other guests.  The discussion took place in Shanghai.   Mr. Schleicher stated, “There is no question that rural schools in China do better than similar schools almost anywhere else in the world.” 

 

The secret rural data are alive again!  And, we are told, although we will never have a chance to see them, that there is no question what the data reveal.

 

The only Chinese educator on the panel objected to Mr. Schleicher’s assertion and argued that rural schools in China are under-resourced and in terrible condition.  Mr. Schleicher would not hear of it, responding, “If you are at a disadvantaged school in China, your chance to succeed is much greater than in much of the rest of the world.” 

 

Shanghai is back to being representative of China, the secret data have been resurrected, wild assertions about overcoming disadvantage in China are being promoted, and, once again, hukou and the plight of migrant children go unnoticed.

 

China has a long way to go in reforming hukou.  And the OECD has a long way to go in reforming PISA.

 

Categories Accountability, International, Testing

Rocketship Charter Chain: Preparing the Telemarketers of the Future?

By dianeravitch
January 8, 2014 //
19

This article suggests that Rocketship charter schools is preparing a new generation that has mastered the art of learning online and interacting with computers.

Students spend two hours daily at the computer, supervised by aides, not teachers.

This saves money.

These instructors monitor up to 130 kids at a time in cubicles in the schools’ computer labs. Rocketeers, as students are called, sit looking at computer screens up to two hours per day, supposedly learning by solving puzzles.

Business leaders such as Bill Gates often stress the need to train kids for the jobs of the future—digital animators, nanotech engineers? But it looks more like the Rocketeers are being prepared for online “microtasks” at Crowdflower, which contracts out data categorization and de-duplication.

According to a recent wage and hour lawsuit, these microtaskers are often paid as little as $2 an hour.

Overall, the growth these days is not in skilled, middle-class jobs like public school teaching—which is shrinking, thanks to charter chains like Rocketship—but in low-wage jobs.

It’s no coincidence that Rocketship employs the same kind of de-professionalized, non-union workforce it seems to be training. Half its teachers have less than two years’ experience; 75 percent come from Teach for America.

Rocketship charters will open next fall in many cities.

Is this the wave of the future?

 

Categories Charter Schools, On-Line Education

Schneider Responds to Honig on California and the Common Core

By dianeravitch
January 8, 2014 //
39

Mercedes Schneider has been an outspoken critic of the Common Core standards.

After she read Bill Honig’s explanation about why California educators support the standards without the testing or market reforms, she wrote the following:

Should California Embrace Common Core? My Response to Bill Honig

deutsch29.wordpress.com

Yesterday, California Instructional Quality Chair Bill Honig published a letter on Diane Ravitch’s blog in which he carefully details his reasons for supporting the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) in California.

In his letter, Honig encourages California districts wary of CCSS to reconsider their positions. He notes, “In California, there is widespread, deep, and enthusiastic support for the common core standards among teachers, administrators, educational and teacher organizations, advocacy groups, and political leaders.”

When I read Honig’s letter, I wondered how it could be true that CCSS would be so well received in California. I have recently blogged about CCSS unrest in California; namely, that the California Republican Party formally drafted an anti-CCSS resolution and that California Governor Jerry Brown is opposed to “government controlled standards and testing.” Brown has been consistent on his criticism of standardized testing.

I would like to address the context in which Honig’s appeal rests. It is a context unique to California. I also offer some cautions in “embracing” the politically-loaded CCSS.

California: It’s the District That Matters

First, let us consider the context of Honig’s letter:

The letter is an appeal to California districts regarding CCSS. California is a local control state. As such, California school districts may reject CCSS. It is not a state-level decision, as is the case in other states.

In California, the district is the entity that decides whether or not to adopt the CCSS endorsed by the state. This means that districts have the right to opt out of CCSS.

A second point: Even though California’s State Board of Education (CSBE) formally adopted CCSS in August 2010, California as a state did not contract with USDOE for Race to the Top (RTTT) funding.

US Secretary of Education Arne Duncan apparently does not care for California’s local control. In 2011, seven California districts banded together to apply for RTTT funding. The California application was the only one rejected:

In another cockfight between California and Washington over education, the U.S. Department of Education has rejected California’s application – and only California’s application – in the third round of Race to the Top. The denial exasperated the seven California school districts that led the state’s effort and were counting on $49 million earmarked for California as critical to do the work they had committed to do.

In a recent statement, State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Torlakson and State Board of Education President Michael Kirst each criticized the federal government’s inflexibility in not accepting what they described as California’s “innovative” approach of giving control of the reforms to local school districts. Seven unified districts, including Los Angeles, Fresno, and Long Beach, formed a coalition known as CORE, the California Office to Reform Education, to compete for round three and work together on the reform.

Apparently Duncan prefers to draw entire states into his RTTT reformer web. However, in 2012, USDOE began a RTTT funding competition for districts. Three California districts won money. All three agreed to evaluate teachers using student test scores.

The freedom afforded California districts by the state must really irritate Duncan, who desires to nationalize his slate of reforms without calling his effort a federal push.

Moreover, those federal-but-don’t-call them-that reforms are meant to be inflexible. As such, the CCSS Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) requires states to not remove any CCSS content. In her discussion of CCSS “flexibility” with North Carolina Lieutenant Governor Dan Forest in December 2013, North Carolina School Superintendent Jan Brewer responded, “If any state wants to change those standards, that’s just fine. It’s just that you do not say that you are implementing the Common Core….” 19:15 -19:24, 12-17-13, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iZrMgNJqjh8 ).

In contrast, in his letter, Honig discusses implementing the Common Core, yet he also refers to Brown “readopting [the standards] with some changes, in 2012.” Further in the letter, Honig notes,

This is not to say that the standards are perfect or that they shouldn’t be continually reviewed and modified as the schools across the country implement them. Our math framework committee has already suggested several changes which were adopted by our state board. [Emphasis added.]

Logically, the right to opt out of CCSS brings with it the freedom to modify (i.e., if a district is not pleased with CCSS, it holds the trump card to dropping CCSS entirely). The ability to modify CCSS is evident in Honig’s discussion of the CCSS California consortium and “much of the policy making” being “devolved to local districts”:

…Key educational leaders and organizations in the state have banded together to implement common core in an informal network, the Consortium for the Implementation of the Common Core State Standards (CICCSS). They did so, not because of heavy state or federal mandates, since, as discussed below, much of the policy making has been recently devolved to local districts. [Emphasis added.]

California districts have power. That is why some of them are able to directly deal with Duncan, who apparently decided it a better strategy to contract with “some” of California rather than “none” of California regarding California’s request for No Child Left Behind (NCLB) waivers. In August 2013, Duncan issued such waivers to eight California districts provided they would agree to evaluate their teachers using student test scores, among other conditions:

In addition to using test scores to evaluate teachers, the eight California districts pledged to use other measures to determine school performance, including student growth, graduation rates, absenteeism, school culture and student surveys.

Therefore, for better or worse, California districts have power that school districts in other states do not have. For example, my school district in Louisiana, St. Tammany Parish, formally drafted an anti-CCSS resolution in October 2013. In it, the district reaffirms that it did not agree with the state’s decision to adopt CCSS in the first place and that St. Tammany considered its standards rigorous.

Even though my district formally resolved to reject CCSS, we are still tied to CCSS since in Louisiana it is the state, not the district, that has the power to commit to CCSS via RTTT.

California: Pushing Against Arne

I previously noted that Californiahas accepted no state-level RTTT money. This poses another advantage that California has over other most other states. The states that did accept state-level RTTT money are tied to the federal government’s will regarding the spectrum of reforms promoted by RTTT– including CCSS, its assessments, and the tying of testing results to teacher employment. California’s Governor Brown would not agree to evaluate teachers using student test scores. Thus, California was not eligible for either RTTT funds or NCLB waivers.

California is also unique from many states facing CCSS in that neither governor, nor state superintendent, nor school board president, is a die-hard privatizer. As Honig notes:

Our State Board of Education president, the governor and the state superintendent have repeatedly refused to knuckle under to Arne Duncan’s demands that the state institute teacher evaluations based in large part on test scores.

After considering what I have detailed above– that California districts have control over accepting or rejecting CCSS, and that the governor, state superintendent, and school board president all refuse to grade teachers using test scores (and thereby evidence a healthy distance from the federally-controlled puppeting Duncan so desperately desires of all states)– I understand how it is possible for California teachers to positively receive CCSS.

Indeed, there is still one more important–perhaps the most important– component to CCSS popularity in California: Dislike of the California state standards.

California: Dissatisfaction with Former Standards

According to Honig, California teachers view their previous standards as deficient. As Honig notes regarding California’s math standards:

The standards (CCSS)… shift from the current mile-wide and inch deep approach…. All in all, the standards envision a much more active and engaging classroom….

And California’s English Language Arts (ELA) standards:

Similarly, in English Language Arts the standards also encourage a much more active and engaging classroom….

Here’s an issue to reconcile: According to Honig’s letter, CCSS is a great improvement over California’s standards. However, in its oft-cited 2010 review of all state standards and CCSS, the CCSS-pushing Fordham Institute gave California’s standards higher grades than it gave CCSS– A’s for both ELA and math– as compared to the Fordham CCSS grades of B-plus for ELA and A-minus for math.

This is Fordham’s 2010 overview of California’s ELA standards from its 2010 report:

California’s well-sequenced and thorough ELA standards explicitly address all of the essential content that students must master in a rigorous, college-prep K-12 curriculum. With very few exceptions, the standards are clear and concise and exhibit an appropriate level of rigor at each grade. Minor flaws are noted below, but overall, these standards are exceptionally strong.

And here is Fordham’s overview of California’s math standards:

California’s standards could well serve as a model for internationally competitive national standards. They are explicit, clear, and cover the essential topics for rigorous mathematics instruction. The introduction for the standards is notable for providing excellent and clear guidance on mathematics education. The introduction states simply, “An important theme stressed throughout this framework is the need for a balance in emphasis on the computational and procedural skills, conceptual understanding, and problem solving. This balance is defined by the standards and is illustrated by problems that focus on these components individually and in combination. All three components are essential.” California has provided a set of standards that achieves these goals admirably.

Amazing that Fordham refers to the same standards that Honig believes require replacing.

Whereas Fordham’s review is (bafflingly) considered expert information on the issue of state standards evaluation, the real, front-line “experts” are teachers– those who must convert the standards into a meaningful learning experience for their students.

Fordham forms its opinions from the tower of its own high opinion of itself, not from the classroom.

This begs the question: What does the High and Lifted Up Fordham consider to be “ideal” in a set of standards?

It seems that Fordham places its highest value on standards that are “mile wide, inch deep”– a phrase that former California middle school teacher Anthony Cody has used recently in an email exchange to describe his experience with California’s standards.

Cody’s sentiment is echoed in an October 2013 Los Angeles Daily News article:

The Common Core has also attracted fans because it’s viewed by teachers as “more realistic and smarter” than California’s 1997 standards, which are often criticized as a mile long and an inch thick, says Dean Vogel, president of the California Teachers Association.

“It was impossible for teachers to cover everything,” he says, adding that teachers view the new national standards as “a breath of fresh air” because they require much less regimentation than the earlier standards. Districts have more freedom, this time around, to choose their own curriculum, instructional materials and teacher training programs. [Emphasis added.]

To at least some California teachers, CCSS looks like freedom. For California’s sake, I am sorry that CCSS is inescapably politically infused.

District Danger of Test Worship

In his letter, Honig acknowledges that districts determined to use student test scores in keeping with the privatization agenda will still do so and that such a practice ought not be attributed to CCSS adoption:

If a district is hell-bent to use test scores to evaluate teachers for personnel decisions based on flawed assessment assumptions or narrow the curriculum and instruction to look good on tests, the presence or absence of Common Core Standards and their associated tests will not change that district’s direction.

I agree with Honig’s determination. Nevertheless, CCSS and its tests are promoted as part of a package of Duncan-promoted reforms. I cannot emphasize this enough. CCSS is not neutral. It is not “just” a set of standards. Duncan is pushing CCSS precisely because it is part of a determined reform package.

As for the issue of districts being “hellbent” upon using scores, the “hell bending” precedes the testing. Here is an excerpt of the CCSS-test-anticipated goings-on in one California district (unnamed) (full comment can be seen here):

In my high school district, the preparation for the upcoming tests in California are having a devastating impact on both the more challenged incoming 9th graders and the higher achieving math students. The Superintendent and the Principals of the 8 high schools have decided, against the wishes of almost ALL district math teachers, to narrow the curriculum to fit both the high school standards and the NEW Smarter Balanced Assessment. Thereby, they have eliminated ALL math course offerings below Algebra 1 and therein, forcing ALL students to enroll in an Algebra 1 class even though they may have fallen two or more years behind in their math levels according to where the CCSS would expect them to be when entering high school.

This pressure to conform to CCSS and its attendant outcome (in this case, the Smarter Balanced assessment [SB]), is a national pressure brought on by a federally promoted portfolio of reform.

CCSS cannot be divorced from such federally-promoted pressure. It’s too late for that.

Advice to Honig and All of California: Watch Out for Arne

If required to choose between Fordham’s assessment of California’s standards and Honig’s report of California assessment of California’s standards, I would defer to Honig– since his career has been tied to California education for decades– which means he is certainly closer to the reality of public education in California.

And even though both Fordham and Honig appear to be on the same side of the issue– with both promoting CCSS– Fordham’s motives are suspect for its having taken millions from Gates– even for operating expenses– and Gates– a very rich man who is purchasing his view of education for an entire nation–really wants CCSS.

However, I disagree with Honig’s urging California districts to dismiss concerns about the role of CCSS in advancing a spectrum of reforms:

I know some of you believe that the Common Core Standards are a stalking horse for the detrimental policy measures which have been connected to them and, consequently are so tainted that they can’t be separated. I would plead with you to revisit that question.

California has delayed CCSS testing via the Smarter Balanced consortium (SBAC)— but the tests will come. And even though Brown is fighting Duncan on the (mis)uses of standardized testing, do not underestimate Duncan in pushing the set of reforms for which he has been fighting since 2009.

Those SBAC test scores will be his leverage.

He will insert himself into district affairs. He has done so recently regarding new New York Mayor Bill de Blasio’s choice of schools chancellor.

Duncan has repeatedly inserted himself in state and local elections since his appointment as US secretary of education in 2009.

Don’t think he will stop now.

In the case of California, where the power over education policy is at the district level, Duncan will insert himself there. He wants California to be subject to the entire privatizing spectrum of reforms. His foot is already in the door in several California districts.

In Closing

I applaud Honig for his interest in California education and for his detailed accounting of his reasons for promoting CCSS. Whereas one might try to extend Honig’s appeal beyond California’s borders, doing so does not work. As far as other states are concerned that have accepted RTTT funding, the flexibility to alter CCSS to suit a state’s own determined needs in the name of local control is nonexistent.

As to the process of comparing state standards to CCSS and making informed judgments based upon such comparison: This should have been an opportunity provided to all states absent any pre-completion, federal financial bait. The premature federal CCSS lure bespeaks an intent to ensnare– and ensnare it has.

As for the current atmosphere of CCSS unrest in at least half of the states that adopted CCSS: Any individual or group pushing for unquestioned CCSS allegiance has a hidden agenda. Honig is not pushing for unquestioning allegiance– a refreshing statement for me to write. However, his failure to view CCSS as a component of an overall design to completely privatize American public education is not wise given the overwhelming evidence to the contrary.

I wish California my best regarding its decisions about CCSS, wherever those may lead.

Just watch out for Arne.

Categories California, Common Core

Richard Rothstein: Time for the Truth About Racial Segregation

By dianeravitch
January 8, 2014 //
81

In this article, Richard Rothstein is critical of high school textbooks–and of our media in general–for failing to identify the true causes of de facto segregation.

Either they barely mention the role of government in segregating neighborhoods by race or they imply that it happened naturally (de facto), without any government intervention.

He writes:

One of the worst examples of our historical blindness is the widespread belief that our continued residential racial segregation, North and South, is “ de facto ,” not the result of explicit government policy but instead the consequence of private prejudice, economic inequality, and personal choice to self-segregate. But in truth, our major metropolitan areas were segregated by government action. The federal government purposefully placed public housing in high-poverty, racially isolated neighborhoods (pdf) to concentrate the black population, and with explicit racial intent, created a whites-only mortgage guarantee program to shift the white population from urban neighborhoods to exclusively white suburbs (pdf). The Internal Revenue Service granted tax-exemptions for charitable activity to organizations established for the purpose of enforcing neighborhood racial homogeneity. State-licensed realtors in virtually every state, and with the open support of state regulators, supported this federal policy by refusing to permit African Americans to buy or rent homes in predominantly white neighborhoods. Federal and state regulators sanctioned the refusal of the banking, thrift, and insurance industries to make loans to homeowners in other-race communities. Prosecutors and police sanctioned, often encouraged, thousands of acts of violence against African Americans who attempted to move to neighborhoods that had not been designated for their race.

Rothstein compares our present moral blindness to the Truth and Reconciliation commission of South Africa that followed the end of apartheid.

Public policy must be built on a firm foundation of facing the past honestly, not by evasion or lies or indifference.

Categories Segregation , Racial Isolation and Integration

Montclair Public Schools: Under Siege

By dianeravitch
January 8, 2014 //
34

Montclair, New Jersey, has long been proud of its fine public schools. But these days, not even good schools and good districts are exempt from the corporate reform steamroller. At present, a substantial part of the community is at war with the school board and the Broad-trained superintendent. A group of dissident parents, who happen to be among leading scholars of education —–including Ira Shor, Stan Karp, and Michelle Fine—wrote the following description of the turmoil in Montclair.

PREFACE FROM MONTCLAIR CARES ABOUT SCHOOLS:

Montclair, New Jersey is a progressive town with highly-regarded public schools noted nationally for successfully desegregating through a districtwide magnet system. Kids of all colors go to all schools; families of all colors, classes, and sexual preferences are welcome here.

But the town now has a renegade board of education issuing subpoenas to uncover names of critics posting anonymously on blogs and websites. And we have a schools superintendent, hired by the board in fall 2012, who lacks state certification but was trained by the unaccredited Broad Superintendents Academy. The superintendent, Penny MacCormack, came to Montclair from the NJ State Department of Education run by Christopher Cerf, another Broad graduate. Liberal Montclair, which voted overwhelmingly against Republican Governor Chris Christie, now has a superintendent from his administration.

Our school board, appointed by the mayor, took a destructive turn a few years ago by embracing austerity, cutting effective programs and essential classroom aides, ending services needed by students, while piling up multimillion-dollar budget surpluses year after year. The board also tried closing two successful and integrated schools, a plan it abandoned only after sustained parent protests.

Things went from bad to worse after MacCormack’s hiring following a secretive search. In true corporate-reform fashion, the board and MacCormack have restricted comments by the public and the local teachers‘ union president at meetings. Community management not public dialogue is its stock in trade. MacCormack hurriedly declared that Montclair was woefully behind on adapting the Common Core standards; she pushed a new “Strategic Plan” with a new layer of quarterly skills tests in every grade. After some of these new district assessments somehow got onto the Internet in the fall, the board launched an investigation and issued its subpoenas – including to a fellow board member – the only one to publicly question the superintendent’s policies- and to Google and a local online news site in an attempt to find out the identities of a local blogger and online commenters critical of the district leadership.

The ACLU of New Jersey sued on behalf of the blogger and following public protests, including from the Town Council, the board has withdrawn the subpoenas seeking identities of online critics. But the board’s subpoena against its own board member is still live and demands him to turn over emails and phone records, in fact, virtually all records of everyone he talks to in the community. You can see the subpoena here.

Our group, Montclair Cares About Schools, came together last spring out of concern over the destructive direction in the schools. We speak at board and Town Council meetings, hold public forums and workshops, send letters to the editor of the town paper, and have an active and popular Facebook page.

In December, Montclair Cares About Schools presented to the board and residents a timeline of how we got to this sad point in our district. An edited and abridged version is below.
_____

Timeline of a Debacle: “Just Six Months Ago…”
(issued Dec. 16, 2013)

Just six months ago, Montclair Cares About Schools asked the board to please slow down their plan to impose a new layer of quarterly, district-wide tests. Had the board listened to MCAS instead of ignoring our suggestion, the costly and divisive events since last June 23 could have been avoided.

June 2013: MCAS posted a petition online asking the board to slow down implementation of the planned quarterly assessments. Within 48 hours, 370 parents and community members signed online and another 40 signed a hard copy. Since then, online signers have grown to 560. At the board meeting that night, Montclair High School students presented their own petition signed by about 578 students also asking to slow down implementation of the new assessments.

The board refused to respond to the pleas to slow down. Instead, it rushed ahead recklessly.

It rushed ahead even though the new quarterly assessments and related curricula changes mandated by Superintendent MacCormack would come in the same year as a complex and burdensome new teacher evaluation system imposed by the State.

July and August 2013: The district recruited more than 100 teachers to develop the new quarterly assessments for every K-12 class. The superintendent maintained the new tests were necessary to get students ready for the upcoming state PARCC exams scheduled to begin in 2015.

>The public was told that the district would generate open-ended assessments, attuned to the unique characteristics and concerns of our high-performing district.

>By summer’s end, despite great cost and rush, only the first-quarter tests and lessons were ready, not the whole-year curriculum. School started in September with teachers not having the yearlong curriculum ready for them to plan their lessons.

>Teachers also learned that the assessments would have to be graded on a Scantron-ready metric. Our school curricula were being dumbed down to make them computer-friendly for the new PARCC testing en route to all classrooms.

>Although supposedly every Montclair student would be subject to the new layer of assessments, Advanced Placement students were exempt, making these new Scantron tests directed at only certain students, in a district where fairness and equity matter.

>We also have no evidence that any accommodations were planned for students in special education taking the new tests.

September 2013: At the start of school, students throughout the district were given ‘surprise’ pre-assessment tests. Many were on material not yet taught. We have a copy of a memo telling teachers to make these assessments difficult so that teachers could demonstrate students’ improvement on the next round of tests and to NOT share the pre-assessments or how students performed on them with students or parents.

Based on these unannounced, unprepared, and unnecessary pre-assessments, students were pulled out of regular classes for math and English language arts support, often without any notification or explanation to parents. This disturbed parents, frustrated those children pulled out of classes, and in many cases altered the racial makeup of classes.

October 2013: On Friday, October 25, the district learned that at least 14 of the district’s 60 first-quarter assessments suddenly appeared on an unprotected website on the Internet. Teachers were supposed to administer these tests the following week.

Three things happened in the wake of the online publication of the assessments:

1. Suspicion about how the assessments got online landed immediately on people who were publicly critical of the assessments, the board and the superintendent.

2. As copies of the published assessments began circulating among parents, the cover was blown off the Superintendent’s and board’s claims that these assessments were creative and teacher-generated. Many were canned short-answer tests, a low standard for assessment. Some had been copied verbatim from model state exams and some were clearly developmentally inappropriate for their grades. So much for the high-quality, teacher-generated assessments promised to the public.

3. The true cost of the assessments became known: $490,000. A half-million dollars of our taxes wasted by the board to get us into this mess, with a huge legal bill to follow.

October 28 or 29: According to Baristanet, a local online news outlet, the District filed a police report about the unauthorized publication of the assessments around October 28. As we understand it, the police did not pursue this case because they judged that no crime had been committed.

November 1: The board held a hastily called meeting to vote to hire its own attorney for what it claimed would be an “independent” investigation into the online publication of the assessments.

The board attorney was quoted in news reports that he would “cast a wide net” and would be issuing subpoenas to “blogs and websites.” At that same meeting however, board Pres. Robin Kulwin told reporters that she believed the “leak” was internal.

Why, if the board president believed the leak was internal – that is, caused accidentally or deliberately by someone who works for the district – did the board authorize its attorney to cast a wide net with subpoenas directed at outside parties? This key contradiction has never been explained. Why a big dragnet for a local problem with no evidence of criminal behavior presented?

December 4: The ACLU of New Jersey sued the board to quash subpoenas that the ACLU said were defective and beyond the limited investigative authority of a local school board. The ACLU had previously approached the board asking it to withdraw the subpoena to its client. But unlike other school districts in New Jersey approached by the ACLU on similar matters, our board refused to stop hounding its critics.

December 5: A state judge acknowledged the merits of the ACLU’s claims by granting a temporary restraining order against the board to prevent it from issuing any more subpoenas or taking further action on the ones issued.

December 9: The Montclair Township Council voted to refuse a school board request to investigate a computer network server shared by the town and school district. The council resolution declared that the investigation “is contributing to divisiveness and strife among the people of Montclair,[and] is resulting in the diversion and expenditure of substantial funds.”

December 16 board meeting: We ask the board, how much money has been poured into this punitive and pointless investigation for which you have provided no evidence of criminal activity? Why are you targeting your critics?

We propose that evidence points to the following scenario:

• The assessments had been placed by the district placed on an unprotected site (as confirmed by the board’s own computer network coordinator).

• The assessments were found on GoBookee, a “spider” or scavenger site that retrieves documents from the Internet and then tries to sell them online. Considering this and other Montclair school documents are on this site, we think it likely that this is how the assessments got online.
• We believe no one “leaked” the assessments but that they were poorly secured on the web portals open to teachers. Given the rush and lack of care in this entire process of creating and mandating these new assessments, this is not surprising.

No crime was committed here, and we think the board knows it. The only offenses have been by the board by engaging in a witch hunt – an investigation of parents, educators and community members critical of the board. This investigation has violated freedom of speech rights, embarrassed this respected town, and most likely, as the ACLU asserts, broken laws.

The township council has spoken, parents have spoken, educators have spoken. Enough.
The superintendent and board leadership should take responsibility for any security breach, apologize to the community and cease this destructive investigation.

______

Epilogue: As 2014 begins, Montclair Cares About Schools continues its fight to expose and stop the damage to our good schools caused by this board’s and superintendent’s top-down, test-focused management and by its failure to tolerate public dialogue about our public schools. Our group endeavors to show alternatives. We hold public forums, workshops, living-room meetings for parents. We invite everyone interested in public education to visit our Facebook page.

********************

In addition to this joint statement, Ira Shor wrote the following letter to the editor of the Montclair Times to complain about the influence of the Broad Foundation in Montclair:

Dec. 29, 2013

Is Billionaire Eli Broad Running Our Schools?​

Why is the District refusing to release items regarding the Superintendent’s relation to the Broad Foundation? On October 31, 2013, I filed a request under NJ’s Open Public Records Act(OPRA) for documents regarding Supt. MacCormack’s financial disclosure that she received “more than $2000” in 2013 from the Broad Foundation. We need to know how much “more than $2000” Broad is paying her and for what services. Contrary to OPRA law, Mr. Fleischer, her COO, provided no requested documents and did not explain why he refused. OPRA requires district officers to meet legal requests in 7 business days or explain in writing why not. Mr. Fleischer had 35 days but provided no Broad items and explained nothing.

What is the Superintendent hiding? Who does she work for–Montclair’s families or billionaire Eli Broad and his campaign to standardize public schools? She attended the unaccredited Broad Academy whose “grads” follow Broad’s playbook, imposing one-size-fits-all curricula, endless bubble-tests, and high-priced consultants and testing technology. We have a right to know if she answers to Broad or to us.

The Superintendent and our Board have recklessly disrupted our good schools and squandered taxes on ridiculous subpoenas, while refusing to spend yet another huge surplus on things our kids need: smaller classes, foreign language, aides in all classes, librarians in all schools, instrumental music, and after-school mentoring for at-risk kids. Listen to our over-tested kids reporting fear and stress; listen to our under-supported teachers at monthly Board meetings; then, you’ll agree we should roll back the Broad agenda and its assessment train wreck. The refusal of my OPRA request joins other illegal refusals from Mr. Fleischer and the Supt.’s office. Stop hiding from those you should be serving. Open your books and files.

Ira Shor
302 North Mountain Avenue
Montclair, NJ 07043
973-337-6783

Categories Broad Foundation, Cerf, Chris, Common Core, New Jersey, Testing

Joanne Barkan: How Rich Folks Will Overcome (Public Education)

By dianeravitch
January 8, 2014 //
15

Joanne Barkan has written a series of brilliant articles about the corporate reform movement and its wealthy supporters for “Dissent” magazine. She wrote this article for this blog. In it, she reflects on the venture capitalists’ belief that they are leaders of a new civil rights movement.

Joanne Barkan writes:

They Shall Overcome

 

Rooted in the gospel tradition, the song “We Shall Overcome” became an anthem of the African American Civil Rights Movement in the 1950s and 1960s and then an assertion of struggle and solidarity worldwide. Solidarity is at the heart of both the song and the phrase “we shall overcome.”

Given that history, it’s both perverse and predictable that Philanthropy magazine titled its spring 2013 cover story “They Shall Overcome.” The long article—written by then editor-in-chief Christopher Levenick—profiles five of the wealthiest backers of free-market K-12 education reform (charter schools, vouchers, test-based teacher accountability, closing large numbers of public schools, and the like).

At first I thought the title inadvertently reflected the top-down, donors-know-best approach of “big philanthropy”: we do our good works for low-income and minority children in urban public schools, and as a result they shall overcome the difficult circumstances of their lives. But as soon as I began reading, I realized that the title refers to the rich folks, to the philanthropists who—with their money and the correct political strategy—shall overcome. They shall overcome opposition to their brand of “ed reform,” especially the opposition of teachers, their unions, and parents.

The political strategy boils down to this: it’s not enough to have the right policy ideas or even to build public support for them; donors must spend their money to elect like-minded politicians who will translate ed-reform ideas into law. To implement the strategy, major philanthro-ed-reformers should set up 501(c)3, 501(c)4, and 527 tax-exempt organizations. Together these organizations allow a donor to pour unlimited amounts of money into “educating” anyone and everyone on the issues, lobbying lawmakers, and funding political campaigns.

The article breaks no new ground. People who follow the struggle over ed reform have probably seen the video of Jonah Edelman’s notorious presentation on political strategy at the Aspen Ideas Festival in June 2011. I’ve investigated the strategy from a critical perspective in Dissent magazine. But the Philanthropy article is as much a paean to mogul philanthropists who are helping to privatize public education in the United States as a lesson in strategy. This makes sense: the magazine is the house organ of the conservative Philanthropy Roundtable, an organization based on these beliefs: “philanthropic freedom is essential to a free society; a vibrant private sector generates the wealth that makes philanthropy possible; and voluntary private action offers solutions for many of society’s most pressing challenges.”

The profiles of the philanthro-ed-reformers provide upbeat success stories. The first is about John Kirtley who left Wall Street in 1989 to cofound a venture-capital firm in Florida. In his spare time, he launched a campaign to give dollar-for-dollar tax credits to corporations that fund scholarships for low-income families to send their children to private schools, including religious schools. The tax credits channel money away from public coffers to private schools, which is a step in the direction of privatization. Kirtley and his allies won enough legislators to their side to get a statewide program passed in 2001. Over the next three election cycles, they spent $4.5 million through their 527 organization to elect additional legislators who would expand the program and set up a trigger mechanism to raise its funding cap automatically. In 2010 the bill they supported passed the Florida Legislature.

After Kirtley’s profile come the stories of better-known philanthro-ed-reformers. There is John Walton, one of the heirs to the Wal-Mart fortune. He “served as a Green Beret in Vietnam. He saw vicious combat—but the fight of his life turned out to be education reform.” There is former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg who implements the ed-reform strategy by spending his personal funds lavishly on candidates and issue campaigns around the country ($330,000 in the 2012 Louisiana school board elections alone). Then there is John Arnold, one of Enron’s “most aggressive—and successful—natural gas traders.” After Enron imploded in 2001, he started a hedge fund specializing in natural gas and retired in 2012 “at 38 years of age and with an estimated net worth of $3.5 billion.” He and his wife Laura now devote themselves to philanthropy, much of it directed to K-12 reform. They aim to make their favorite policies permanent—“embedded in the system, and we can move on to other things,” says John.

There is also a lengthy retelling of uber-reformer Michelle Rhee’s story although she doesn’t qualify as a philanthropist—she spends other people’s money. Her goal is an outlay of $200 million a year on ed-reform politics, but no one knows exactly who funds her work. She runs the money through her organization Students First, a 501(c)(4) that allows her to keep the donors anonymous.

Nowhere in the article is there mention of the parents, students, and educators nationwide who oppose the philanthropists’ agenda. The author describes “some 5,600 people” who marched in Tallahassee in 2010 to support the private-school scholarship legislation. But there’s nothing about the 220 mostly African American community leaders and activists from some 20 cities across the country who traveled to Washington, D.C. last January to confront Education Secretary Arne Duncan. They condemned reform polices they consider discriminatory, especially closing neighborhood schools or turning them over to private contractors. Duncan has made the policy involvement of philanthropists a hallmark of his administration. The protesters filed several Title VI civil right complaints on the grounds that shutting down large numbers of public schools adversely and disproportionately affects minority children. Although most decisions to close schools are made locally, the federal Education Department promotes the policy through its Race to the Top and School Improvement Grant programs (see here).

Philanthro-ed-reformers have been chanting the mantra “Education is the civil rights issue of our era” for years, and they’ve appointed themselves leaders of the reform movement. The largest stakeholders in public education—students, educators, and parents—have no role to play except as recipients of donor-designed reforms. When they question the charitable largesse, they become part of the opposition that the philanthropists shall overcome. They shall overcome, not we. Solidarity doesn’t figure in.

Joanne Barkan’s articles on philanthropy, private foundations, public education reform, and other topics can be found at http://www.dissentmagazine.org/author/joannebarkan.

Categories Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry

To Be a Hero

By dianeravitch
January 7, 2014 //
17

Our dear friend and frequent commentator KrazyTA writes:

What times we live in when—

“One must think like a hero to behave like a merely decent human being.” [May Sarton]

 

Categories Education Reform

San Diego’s Cindy Marten is No Hero Superintendent

By dianeravitch
January 7, 2014 //
18

On the very day that I posted my view that San Diego is the best urban district in the nation, Mario Koran wrote in Voices of San Diego that Cindy Marten does not believe in hero superintendents.

He writes:

Spoiler alert, San Diegans: Cindy Marten isn’t a hero who has swooped in to save your children.

If that sounds a little bristly, consider this: She doesn’t think students need saving.

“The idea of saving anyone from anything is disempowering, disenfranchising and kind of arrogant, actually,” Marten said. “People need to be supported, empowered, guided, led, understood, believed in, honored, listened to – not saved.”

The post refers to the rise and fall of Michelle Rhee and to an article about Mike Miles, who arrived in Dallas as a swashbuckling superstar, then found himself fighting for his job only a year later.

What is truly wonderful about Cindy is that she is a normal person. She is real. She was a successful principal. She is a professional educator. She knows she doesn’t have all the answers. She has a straightforward belief that leadership involves listening, not dictating. She is not a hero. She is an intelligent, compassionate, experienced, wise leader.

If only every school board would look for that kind of leadership instead of seeking the ones who promise to disrupt the district, close schools, give everyone new marching orders, and blow up everything. Schools, children, families, communities need stability and wise leadership. That is what Cindy Marten offers.

Categories Accountability, California
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