Archives for the month of: January, 2014
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Some of America’s Richest Financiers Fund Campaign for Tax Credits in New York

By dianeravitch
January 26, 2014 //
34

Some of the nation’s wealthiest men are building a campaign chest to promote tax credits for private and religious schools. If the legislature acts on their request, it would transfer $250 million in education funds to nonpublic schools.

5,000 students packed the Westchester County Convention Center in White Plains, New York,last November to cheer the proposal.

“The rally in White Plains, and another one in Buffalo in April that drew 10,000, are the public face of a multifaceted strategy financed, in part, by some of the richest people in America. A Tax Watch investigation into the advocacy effort, which has close links to the New York Archdiocese, found that it is fueled by:

• A political action committee bankrolled by $347,000 from seven people, including two of America’s 100 richest individuals.

• A foundation with $4 million in donations, with 60 percent from just five individual donors.

• Five lobbying firms on retainer, at a cost of $360,000 in 2013.”

Categories New York, Vouchers

Defending the Early Years Against Adult Demands

By dianeravitch
January 26, 2014 //
22
Are you concerned about current efforts to force academic standards onto little children? Are you concerned about the movement to stamp out play? Do you think that little children should experience childhood before they are subjected to the academic treadmill? Do you think that school can and should be more than a boring progression of test prep and testing?
If so, you will enjoy learning about the Toolkit prepared by a prestigious group of early childhood educators called “Defending the Early Years.”
DEY is encouraging activism on behalf of little children, who cannot advocate for themselves:
DEY’s Action Mini Grant InitiativeWe are excited to offer a mini grant initiative to help foster your good work in your community as related to DEY’s three principle goals:

  • To mobilize the early childhood community to speak out with well-reasoned arguments against inappropriate standards, assessments, and classroom practices.
  • To track the effects of new standards, especially those linked to the Common Core State Standards, on early childhood education policy and practice.
  • To promote appropriate practices in early childhood classrooms and support educators in counteracting current reforms which undermine these appropriate practices.

We are offering grants from $200.00 to $500.00. We will begin accepting applications on a rolling basis beginning February 1, 2013. Applications will be reviewed on an ongoing basis and up to 20 awards will be granted (depending on grant sizes). Possible actions include, but are not limited to:

  • Hosting a parent information meeting
  • Organizing a Call Your Legislator Day
  • Spearheading a letter writing campaign to politicians
  • Organizing a “Play-In” at the local school board
  • Publicizing an “Opt Out” campaign
  • See our website for more ideas…
Defending is the right word these days when the nation’s highest policymakers seem determined to turn little children into global competitors.
Categories Common Core, Education Reform, Pre-K

Teacher Blasts Los Angeles’ “Sneak Attack” on Music Program

By dianeravitch
January 26, 2014 //
20

This comment came from Barbara Aran, a retired music teacher in Los Angeles:

She wrote:

This what I planned to say to the LAUSD Board on Tuesday December 17th, but couldn’t get in–this is what I would have said on that day:

My name is Barbara Aran. I am a retired LAUSD elementary teacher. Today I speak for the school communities of Wilshire Crest Elementary and Laurel Elementary schools.

Ladies and gentlemen:

Let’s describe an act of cowardice. An action taken as a clever sneak attack on the instrumental music program with no time to respond. The time line was as short as possible so that people would not know in advance.

Music instruments are being collected and removed from the students AT THIS VERY MOMENT AS I SPEAK TO YOU at these two schools with no prior notice to anyone in the school communities, or communication from the district or the arts branch. I found out about this situation on Friday because the two teachers at the schools are my friends and colleagues, and fellow chamber music performers, Ginny Atherton and Diane Lang.

Winter break starts next Monday, so it will be four weeks before anyone can respond to this outrage, a travesty against children, parents, teachers and the school communities. But particularly the injustice against children.

So I am asking for four actions from this board today:
An apology letter from the District to all stakeholders, including children, for how this has been handled—prior to the vacation.
Rescind this “very bad idea”
Expose WHO, WHY, WHEN, and HOW this decision was made (no one seems to know any of this—
Board resolution “no mid year changes for instrumental music, commitment for two semesters (full year) for instrumental music”. If only 3 semesters of arts per school, then schools should know that they can count on having it for the full year.

This devastating attack could not have been planned to be more emotionally devastating to the children and the school communities, to produce the maximum emotional distress.

Your actions or inactions today speak much louder than any meaningless words when you say that you support the arts and the music program.

These students are being deprived of an opportunity which they may not ever have again. They have done nothing wrong to deserve this treatment by adults. They will be devastated. Many are excited and buy into making music, an opportunity now lost, a broken contract with the parents, the students, the teachers and staff. Parents’ expectations for the education of their children are diminished. They expected the full education for their children, instrumental music not just vocal music. Note that the website for Wilshire Crest features a photograph of students playing music. Now this will be a lie.

This is an act of pure arrogance and shows a complete disrespect For the entire school communities of Wilshire Crest and Laurel elementary schools. It sets what kind of a model for the students? Educators are told to model behavior for the students. This is a shining example of how not to treat people. Furthermore, it erodes the ability of students, parents, teachers, and the rest of the school community to trust the authority of the district. Why should the students trust the adults if they are not trustworthy?

Lausd loans 54 instruments to each school and many parents rent or buy instruments in the expectation that their student will receive instruction at school. They make an investment in their children’s education. Parents who invested in this way expected that they would receive a full years instruction. Should they feel betrayed or just deceived? Established programs mean a lot to a school community. Additionally, schools buy instruments to supplement what the district provides, so the school also has an investment. At Wilshire Crest, this consists of percussion instruments and a complete set of Orff instruments, not a small investment. Who has control of the budget for each school? Isn’t the principal supposed to have authority over the budget? Why is this not transparent?

It is a pure act of cowardice to lack the common decency, at the very least, to send the parents, staff, principals and students notice and explanation for this action, leaving instead the blame to land on the shoulders of the music teacher who has done nothing wrong. Steve Zimmer is the board member for Laurel, and Marguerite LaMotte was for Wilshire Crest. Surely Ms. LaMotte, an advocate for the arts, would have been very upset for the students. In her memory, this should be corrected as much as possible before the winter break. (This situation is exactly why her seat on the board needs to be filled ASAP by appointment.)

On Monday December 9th, Diane Lang was informed of this action. Her assigned day at Laurel Street is Friday. On Friday (December 13) she went to the school but could not inform the principal who was in an all day meeting off campus. She did inform the students that they will need to bring instruments this coming Friday to be returned.

On Wednesday, December 11th Ginny was informed. Ginny’s assigned day is Tuesday; therefore the students and parents have been unaware of the situation until today, it was six days… The principal at Wilshire Crest, Ms. Taylor, was only informed of this via an email and a phone call on Monday December 9th, and she let Ginny know in an email that she had been blindsided by this. This morning, I received a phone call from Jocelyn Duarte, president of the Wilshire Crest Elementary PTA, she is also furious, and told me that I do indeed speak for the school community.

I also have an email forwarded from Eloise Porter (LACESMA) after Ginny and I spoke to her last night: I will read some parts of that:

“The elementary instrumental music program has never been an ‘introduction to instruments’ program, but rather a sequential learning experience building to elementary orchestra and on to middle and high school bands and orchestras. The School Board passed a resolution the establish the arts as a core subject. In addition, they asked Deasy to provide a budget to support restoration of the arts program to 2008-9 levels. This recent action is definitely NOT the way to do it. To destroy established instrumental programs in Title I schools in the middle of the school year seems especially egregious, unnecessary, and totally ineffective in delivering music education.”

So the school communities should know that they are playing roulette with the population count due to Norm Day, if that actually is the trigger—which is unknown due to complete lack of communication. Wouldn’t this be part of Title One? If this is part of a school’s budget, isn’t there a process which must be approved by school committees? and changes also?

There is no time to respond. The speed in this time line implies a sneak attack. Just prior to winter break, so cannot communicate directly to anyone in authority. Scrooge couldn’t have planned it better.

(Cockroaches run when the light shines)

Categories Arts Education, Los Angeles

Breaking News: Indiana’s Governor Pence Will Try Again to Strip Glenda Ritz of Authority

By dianeravitch
January 25, 2014 //
15

Republicans in Indiana still can’t get over the fact that the voters elected Glenda Ritz as state commissioner of education in 2012 and tossed out their idol, Tony Bennett, who outspent Ritz 10-1.

Ritz won more votes than Governor Mike Pence.

Ever since the election, Pence has tried to take away the powers of the office of state commissioner of education and transfer them to the state board of education, which he controls.

Here is the latest maneuver.

If you live in Indiana, please take action to stop this blatant power grab!

Tell your representatives to respect the democratic process.

Here is an immediate call to action for this weekend:
 

The House Education Committee will hear HB1320 at their 8:30 meeting on Monday morning. It creates a statewide student record repository which puts student records and data in the hands of the state board of education. The State Board is staffed by the Center for Education & Career Innovation (CECI), Gov. Pence’s new layer of bureaucracy designed to bypass Glenda Ritz and the Department of Education. According to the fiscal note, security issues and the sensitivity of the data could potentially require the State Board to establish a new stand alone computer system to implement the requirements of this bill. Initial estimates of such a computer system are approximately $3.7 million. Funds for the record repository would have to be appropriated by the legislature in the next budget. Student data is currently in held in the Department of Education and is the key to where federal grants and other funds flow. If this bill passes, it could change that flow to CECI instead of Glenda Ritz’s department.

Let the members of the committee know you see HB1320 as a power grab to bypass the elected Superintendent of Public Instruction Glenda Ritz and ask them to oppose it.

The members are:
Rep. Robert Behning, Chairman  (email:   h91@iga.in.gov)
Rep. Rhonda Rhoads, Vice Chr. (email: h70@iga.in.gov )
Rep, Vernon Smith, Ranking Minority Member (email: h14@iga.in.gov )
Rep. Lloyd Arnold (email: larnold@iga.in.gov )

Rep. Kreg Battles (h45@iga.in.gov)
Rep. Woody Burton,(h58@iga.in.gov )
Rep. Ed Clere (h72@iga.in.gov)
Rep Dale DeVon ( ddevon@iga.in.gov )
Rep. Sue Errington (serringt@iga.in.gov )
Rep. Todd Huston ( thuston@iga.in.gov )
Rep. Jim Lucas (jlucas@iga.in.gov )
Rep. Jeffrey Thompson ( h28@iga.in.gov )
Rep  Shelli VanDenburgh ( h19@iga.in.gov)

The House Switchboard # is 1-800-382-9842 but is not staffed over the weekend and doesn’t take messages. You may be able to call first thing on Monday morning and leave messages for all of these folks.
 
Please write to all of your friends and let them know about this bill.  We need to network. 
 
Categories Administrators, superintendents, Indiana

Breaking News: New York Teachers’ Union Votes No-Confidence in State Commissioner John King

By dianeravitch
January 25, 2014 //
78

On Saturday morning, the Board of Directors of NYSUT–the New York State United Teachers–voted unanimously for a resolution of “no confidence” in State Commissioner John King.

This is tantamount to calling for his removal.

The implementation of Common Core testing in New York state was widely recognized as a fiasco. Many legislators, including the leader of the State Assembly, have called for a delay.

King’s high-handed tactics, his refusal to listen to the public, and his lack of experience as an educator have set off widespread protests among teachers, principals, and parents.

This is the press release from NYSUT:

ALBANY, N.Y. Jan. 25, 2014 – New York State United Teachers’ Board of Directors approved a resolution Saturday that declared “no confidence” in the policies of State Education Commissioner John King Jr., therefore calling for his removal by the Board of Regents.  NYSUT’s board also withdrew its support for the Common Core standards as implemented and interpreted in New York state until SED makes major course corrections to its failed implementation plan and supports a three-year moratorium on high-stakes consequences from standardized testing.

The union’s board acted unanimously Saturday morning at a meeting in Albany.

“Educators understand that introducing new standards, appropriate curriculum and meaningful assessments are ongoing aspects of a robust educational system. These are complex tasks made even more complex when attempted during a time of devastating budget cuts. SED’s implementation plan in New York state has failed. The commissioner has pursued policies that repeatedly ignore the voices of parents and educators who have identified problems and called on him to move more thoughtfully,” said NYSUT President Richard C. Iannuzzi. “Instead of listening to and trusting parents and teachers to know and do what’s right for students, the commissioner has offered meaningless rhetoric and token change. Instead of making the major course corrections that are clearly needed, including backing a three-year moratorium on high-stakes consequences for students and teachers from state testing, he has labeled everyone and every meaningful recommendation as distractions.”

The resolution states that the board declares “no confidence in the policies of the Commissioner of Education and calls for the New York State Commissioner of Education’s removal by the New York State Board of Regents.”

NYSUT Vice President Maria Neira said the union has been sounding warning bells since 2011 about the over-emphasis on standardized testing and the state’s rushed and unrealistic timeline for introducing curriculum and assessments tied to the Common Core state standards.  She said NYSUT is seeking:

  •  completion of all modules, or lessons, aligned with the Common Core and time for educators to review them to ensure they are grade-level appropriate and aligned with classroom practice;
  •  better engagement with parents, including listening to their concerns about their children’s needs;
  •  additional tools, professional development and resources for teachers to address the needs of diverse learners, including students with disabilities and English language learners;
  •  full transparency in state testing, including the release of all test questions, so teachers can use them in improving instruction;
  •  postponement of Common Core Regents exams as a graduation requirement;
  •  the funding necessary to ensure all students have an equal opportunity to achieve the Common Core standards.  The proposed Executive Budget would leave nearly 70 percent of the state’s school districts with less state aid in 2014-15 than they had in 2009-10; and
  •  a moratorium, or delay, in the high-stakes consequences for students and teachers from standardized testing to give the State Education Department – and school districts – more time to correctly implement the Common Core.

“The clock is ticking and time is running out,” Neira said. Students sit for a new battery of state assessments in just a few months. It’s time to hit the ‘pause button’ on high stakes while, at the same time, increasing support for students, parents and educators. A moratorium on high-stakes consequences would give SED and school districts time to make the necessary adjustments.”

The resolution will go to the more than 2,000 delegates to the 600,000-member union’s Representative Assembly, to be held April 4-6 in New York City.  The resolution underscores NYSUT’s longstanding, strong opposition to corporate influence and privatization in public education and calls for an end to New York’s participation in InBloom, a “cloud-based” system that would collect and store sensitive data on New York’s schoolchildren.

New York State United Teachers is a statewide union with more than 600,000 members. Members are pre-K-12 teachers; school-related professionals; higher education faculty; other professionals in education, human services and health care; and retirees.  NYSUT is affiliated with the American Federation of Teachers, the National Education Association and the AFL-CIO.

Categories Administrators, superintendents, Common Core, New York, Teacher Evaluations, Teachers and Teaching, Testing

Faust/Marsalis: Why the Arts Matter

By dianeravitch
January 25, 2014 //
48

Drew Faust, president of Harvard University, and Wynton Marsalis, master musician, wrote a joint article for USA Today about the importance of arts education.

They wrote:

“We hear widespread calls for “outcomes” we can measure and for education geared to specific employment needs, but many of today’s students will hold jobs that have not yet been invented, deploying skills not yet defined. We not only need to equip them with the ability to answer the questions relevant to the world we now inhabit; we must also enable them to ask the right questions to shape the world to come.

“We need education that nurtures judgment as well as mastery, ethics and values as well as analysis. We need learning that will enable students to interpret complexity, to adapt, and to make sense of lives they never anticipated. We need a way of teaching that encourages them to develop understanding of those different from themselves, enabling constructive collaborations across national and cultural origins and identities.

“In other words, we need learning that incorporates what the arts teach us.”

Their article beautifully expresses why the arts change our lives, in ways that cannot be measured by value-added assessment or any other metric that the data-driven technocrats devise.

Categories Arts Education

Schneider Offers Advice to NYC’s Teachers’ Union: Operation Boomerang!

By dianeravitch
January 25, 2014 //
6

Mercedes Schneider has closely analyzed the union-busting techniques of the so-called Center for Union Facts and its leader Richard Berman. Here she digs out the details of Berman’s long-planned strategy to damage unions with negative advertising. Now Berman is plastering New York City with billboards and radio ads to lower the public’s opinion of the United Federation of Teachers. A poll a year ago showed that New Yorkers trusted the union and the teachers more than they trusted Mayor Bloomberg to protect the interests of children.

She suggests a counter-attack, which she calls Operation Berman Boomerang.

Categories Charter Schools, New York City, Unions

Learning More About How Environment Affects Intelligence

By dianeravitch
January 25, 2014 //
39

Back in the years before World War I, the I.Q. test was invented in Europe, first by Francis Galton in England, then by Alfred Binet in France. The idea of I.Q. testing was adapted in the United States for use in sorting millions of recruits for the Army, deciding which ones were officer material and which were the troops headed for the front lines.

After the war, American psychologists enthusiastically endorsed I.Q. testing. They were widely adapted and used in public schools to classify students. For many decades, psychologists believed that I.Q. was inherited and unchanging. Those who had high I.Q. were born that way, and those who had lower scores were born that way. But right after World War I, as some psychologists insisted that certain races and ethnic groups were superior to others, a few dissident psychologists (William Bagley comes to mind) discovered an inconvenient fact: Black students in the North had higher I.Q. scores than white students in the Appalachian South. Bagley and others made the case that environment was powerful in shaping intelligence and that education was key to changing the odds for poor kids. I wrote about this in chapter four of my 2000 book Left Back in a chapter called “I.Q. Testing: “That Brutal Pessimism.” It was Binet, the father of I.Q. testing who wrote in 1909, that we must reject those who “assert that an individual’s intelligence is a fixed quantity, a quantity which cannot be increased. We must protest and react against this brutal pessimism.” (p. 133).

In response to a reader who quoted I.Q. figures by race, I wrote:

You need not bring IQ into the discussion. It is impossible to make accurate generalizations, as impossible as it is to know what part of intelligence can be attributed to nature or nurture.

And in response to me,  Robert Shepherd wrote that scientists are learning more and more now about the effects of environment on intelligence.

He writes:

We are currently experiencing a revolution in our understanding of environmental effects on gene expression, and this emerging field of epigenetics completely invalidates those studies with identical twins on which the notion of IQ being highly heritable is based. It turns out that the environmental conditions experienced by the mother affect the conditions within her eggs which in turn dramatically affect gene expression which in turn dramatically affects the resulting phenotype. And, of course, that makes complete sense evolutionarily. For complex traits involving multiple genes, one should think of the genotype not as immutable inheritance but, rather, as a set of switches set in response to environmental conditions experienced by the mother. And that explains why one can get dramatic evolutionary change in very short time frames; in other words, epigenetics is an explanation for punctuated equilibria. All this science is relatively new, and it is revolutionary–paradigm shifting–and popular notions about genetics (including the vast literature of pop and pseudo-scientific evolutionary psychology to which The Bell Curve belongs) haven’t caught up with it. See the following report on a recent epigenetics conference for more information:

http://groups.anthropology.northwestern.edu/lhbr/kuzawa_web_files/pdfs/Lester%20et%20al%20Annals%20NYAS%202011.pdf

Folks who talk the Bell Curve line about immutable genetic inheritances and high heritability and folks who spout those IQ by race figures are talking antiquated, now-discredited nonsense. But it’s understandable that they still believe this crap because the relevant disconfirming science, here, is very, very recent. Another good current account:

http://www.amazon.com/Evolution-Four-Dimensions-Epigenetic-Philosophical/dp/0262600692

Categories Education Reform

NOLA Columnist: Farewell to the Students at John McDonogh

By dianeravitch
January 25, 2014 //
26

Jarvis DeBerry, a columnist for the New Orleans Time-Picayune, has written a letter to the students at the John McDonogh School, a charter school that is closing after Steve Barr took it over and pledged to turn it around.

Barr’s company is called “The Future Is Now.” He invited Oprah to send in a television crew to document his success in taking over what he called New Orleans’ “most dangerous school.”

But he is gone, Oprah lost interest, and the school is closing.

Here is DeBerry’s letter.

Dear students of John McDonogh High School:  It is with heavy hearts that we, the residents of New Orleans, write you this letter informing you that we find it impossible to educate you. We’re giving up on our stated goal of preparing you for a future that requires your literacy, your facility with numbers and critical thinking skills. You have our regrets.

We don’t know if your English teachers have taught you about irony – a situation that’s considered strange or funny because it’s the opposite of what’s expected – but it certainly is ironic that the organization that has been running your school is called “Future Is Now.” You kids are so far behind.

When we say you’re behind, of course we mean that you’re behind your peers across the country. That goes without saying. But you Trojans are even behind your peers in New Orleans. In fact, as you probably already know, when you don’t include alternative schools, John McDonogh High School, its proud history notwithstanding, has the lowest school performance score in the state.

And so, you poor students, we’re just going to quit while we’re behind. We’re going to shut down your school in June and try to get a head start on helping the kids behind you.

What’s that? Sure, we’ll send you to another campus. There are other schools in the city you can attend. But you should know that we aren’t really convinced that it’s the campus that’s the problem. John Mac isn’t the first bad school you’ve been to, now is it? So maybe the problem is you. That’s why so many of us are washing our hands of you. We don’t think there’s any hope for y’all to actually become scholars or even hardworking, engaged and informed members of your community. In fact, most of us have got our bets on your seeing the inside of a prison. If you really are “one of the most dangerous schools in America,” as that reality show “Blackboard Wars” put it, why wouldn’t we think y’all were just biding your time before you’re shipped to the penitentiary?

So why should we persist in this charade? Why should we keep pretending that anything is going to get better? Why not just leave you to our own devices so we can better focus on your little brothers and sisters behind you?

Steve Barr, the CEO of Future Is Now, said his approach worked in Los Angeles where so many children had that first-generation-American eagerness and ambition. But he diagnosed y’all as having been on the tail end of “seven generations of crap.” We think, by that, he means that the six generations ahead of you weren’t especially well educated either, that even your grandparents’ grandparents were stepped on, disrespected and denied basic services in ways they shouldn’t have been. So maybe you aren’t expecting to be treated all that different. Or maybe you have no sense of history at all and are just looking at the way you’ve always been treated and figure that nobody really cares whether you succeed or not.

James Baldwin – have you read him in English class? – said in an essay about his old Harlem neighborhood that “children do not like ghettos. It takes them nearly no time to discover exactly why they’re there.” Haven’t y’all discovered why y’all are at John McDonogh, just about the worst school in a state that trails most of the country education-wise? And if you have discovered it, why do you think things would be better for you at another New Orleans campus? Wherever you enroll, those of us with options are going to make sure our children go somewhere else. Shoot, we’re not going to have our children corrupted by children like you.

It’s in dispute whether your school building is as bad as some say it is. Patrick Dobard, the leader of the Recovery School District, says opponents of the school’s management are wrong when they say the building is infested with rats, termites and mold. Still, there’s no argument that the building needs to be made better. So, after y’all are out of the building, local officials plan to reshape it into something nice and lovely. We’re talking a new cafeteria, a new science lab and a performance space. It’s also supposed to have the tip-top in energy efficiency.

That new John McDonogh is going to be some special! Students are going to love it. No, not you current students. You’re a lost cause. You can’t be helped. But trust us when we say we’re going to go all out for the students coming behind you.

Jarvis DeBerry can be reached at jdeberry@nola.com. Follow him attwitter.com/jarvisdeberry.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, New Orleans

My Response to a Teacher in North Carolina: Please Don’t Give Up

By dianeravitch
January 25, 2014 //
68

I hope teachers will find the inner strength to stand up to the bullying by governors and legislators. If you can’t teach, find another job. But if you are a good teacher and you are devoted to making a difference in the lives of children, don’t give up. Stay and fight. Join grassroots groups. Join the Network for Public Education. In every state there are groups of parents and educators standing shoulder–to-shoulder against the cultural vandals now in charge in places like North Carolina, Louisiana, Tennessee, Ohio, Michigan, Indiana, and Wisconsin. We will prevail, because their goal of destroying public education and turning teaching into a job for temps is so wrong that it will eventually be repudiated by the voters. We must work to make that day come sooner.

Here is a note from a teacher in North Carolina about the poisoned atmosphere for teachers in a state determined to crush public education and professional teachers:

“What do I, a NC public school teacher, think? I think it’s time to relocate. I chose to settle in NC b/c of its strong support for public education, but that’s now a thing of the past. The state govt is hell-bent on destroying both the teaching profession and the public schools.

“As soon as I am able, I will join the exodus of good, experienced teachers to anywhere but here…”

I wonder if Teach for America can produce enough temps to replace the experienced teachers who are leaving North Carolina? Perhaps the legislature will use this opportunity to increase class size, flip classrooms, and encourage home schooling and virtual charters?

Don’t leave. Stay and fight.

Categories Corporate Reformers, North Carolina, Teachers and Teaching
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