Archives for the month of: March, 2014
« Older Entries
Newer Entries »

Washington State Rejects Arne’s Junk Science Mandate, Will Be Punished

By dianeravitch
March 15, 2014 //
54

Washington State legislators refused to accept Arne Duncan’s demand that teachers be evaluated by a flawed and erroneous method, and the state seems certain to lose its NCLB waiver.

“That would mean that, starting in 2014-2015, school districts throughout the state would lose control over roughly $38 million in Title I funds designed to help low-income students.

“Loss of the waiver would also mean districts throughout the state would have to redirect an additional $19 million in Title I money toward professional development and teacher training, according to OSPI.

“It’s going to result in the loss of programs for our students who are the most in need,” said Sen. Bruce Dammeier, a Puyallup Republican who supported changing the teacher-evaluation system to keep the state’s waiver.

“The U.S. Department of Education told Washington leaders in August that the state’s waiver would be at risk unless lawmakers moved to mandate the use of statewide tests in teacher evaluations.

“Schools today may use solely local tests to measure student growth when evaluating teachers and principals – a standard the federal government has deemed unacceptable.

“But several lawmakers said they didn’t want to interfere with the state’s new teacher and principal evaluation system — which is being used for the first time this year — just to meet federal demands.

“Of course I am concerned from the perspective of a local district,” said state Rep. Sharon Tomiko Santos, a Seattle Democrat who chairs the House Education Committee.

“Yet I am concerned on the other hand that we (would) establish bad policy for the entire state of Washington.”

Read more here: http://www.theolympian.com/2014/03/13/3032949/teacher-evaluation-change-to-keep.html#storylink=cpy

Categories Duncan, Arne, NCLB (No Child Left Behind), Race to the Top, Teacher Evaluations, Washington State

Big Business Fights Tea Party in Support of Common Core, with Questions

By dianeravitch
March 15, 2014 //
18

Stephanie Simon reports at politico.com that big business is launching a major campaign to counter Tea Party opposition to the Common Core standards.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the Business Roundtable have endorsed a major advertising and public relations campaign on behalf of the Common Core.

Within days, Indiana will very likely become the first state to officially scrap the standards, though it is far from clear that they will be replaced with anything too radically different. Bills to undermine the Common Core are pending in at least a half-dozen other states as well. Major conservative organizations such as FreedomWorks and Americans for Prosperity have jumped in to help guide and grow the grass-roots opposition. And teacher unions, though they still back the standards in concept, are warning that their implementation has been badly botched.

“It’s a critical time,” said Dane Linn, vice president of the Business Roundtable and one of the architects of the Common Core. “State leaders, and the general public, need to understand why employers care about the Common Core.”

The Business Roundtable, he said, is urging members to work their connections with “governors, committee chairs, House speakers, presidents of Senates” to stop any bills that could undercut the standards.

This narrative may actually be part of the marketing plan for the Common Core standards.

By pitting business against the Tea Party, the voices of teachers, researchers, liberals, moderates, and non-ideological parents are silenced.

This is the same narrative that Arne Duncan presented when he spoke to the American Society of Newspaper Editors.

But this narrative doesn’t explain widespread opposition to the Common Core among people who have nothing to do with the Tea Party.

When I think of Stephen Krashen and Susan Ohanian, I don’t think Tea Party.

When I think of Carol Burris, the principal of the year in New York state, I don’t think Tea Party. She has been one of the most outspoken critics of the Common Core, but this new game plan ignores her.

When I think of expert teacher Anthony Cody, who taught in the impoverished schools of Oakland for more than two decades, I don’t think Tea Party.

When I think of Leonie Haimson, leader of Class Size Matters in New York City, I don’t think Tea Party.

When I think of the 500 early childhood experts who criticized the Common Core standards, I don’t think Tea Party.

When I think of the thousands of parents in New York who turned out for public meetings with State Commissioner John King to complain about the Common Core and the testing, I don’t think Tea Party.

And for the record, I do not belong to the Tea Party, nor do I have any sympathy whatever with its goals.

Nor does the narrative acknowledge that Common Core’s biggest supporters, aside from Duncan, are rightwingers like Jeb Bush, Bill Haslam, and Bobby Jindal.

This new narrative–big business vs. the Tea Party–is more smoke in our eyes to put across standards that need to be reviewed and revised in every state by expert teachers and decoupled from high-stakes testing.

Full-scale adoption without these changes will harm children and widen achievement gaps among racial groups.

I have a suggestion: How about if the leaders of our major corporations agree to take the PARCC tests and publish their scores?

Read more: http://www.politico.com/story/2014/03/big-business-takes-on-tea-party-over-common-core-104662.html#ixzz2vx3NloLj

Categories Common Core

Mercedes Schneider Takes Bill Gates to the Woodshed

By dianeravitch
March 15, 2014 //
22

Mercedes Schneider was not at all pleased that Bill Gates lectured teachers about teaching at the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards annual conference. He has never taught but he thinks he knows how to teach. Messing with education is his hobby.

Why was he invited? Schneider thinks he bought the platform by donating millions to the NBPTS.

She takes him to the woodshed and gives him a talking to or a paddling, I am not sure which.

Categories Common Core, Gates Foundation, Bill Gates, Teachers and Teaching

Sara Stevenson, Fearless Librarian

By dianeravitch
March 15, 2014 //
12

At the meeting in Austin of the Network for Public Education, I singled out a large number of people and groups who are turning the tide on behalf of the public good. One of them was Austin’s own Sara Stevenson, a librarian at a middle school. Sara reads the editorials in the Wall Street Journal and responds whenever they lash out at teachers or public schools. This keeps Sara very busy, because public education, teachers, and teachers’ unions are a favorite whipping boy/girl of the WSJ, which hates unions and anything that is not yet privately managed.

Sara was previously added to the honor roll for her courage and persistence on behalf of public education.

Today, Sara came to the defense of Mayor Bill de Blasio, responding to Peggy Noonan and the WSJ’s barrage of attacks on him for denying Eva Moskowitz the eight charters she wanted (she got five) and not allowing her to take public space away to grow a middle school (194 of her “scholars” were displaced); if she had gotten what she wanted, children with special needs would have been pushed out to make room for Eva.

One thing wrong in Sara’s letter: Eva’s salary is $475,000, not $400,000. Her 22 schools have fewer than 7,000 students.

Sara writes:

LETTERS
De Blasio’s Focus on the 96% Is Right

Bill de Blasio, is more concerned about the 96% of NYC school children who attend public schools than the 4% who attend charters.

March 14, 2014 6:19 p.m. ET

Regarding Peggy Noonan’s “The Ideologue vs. the Children” (Declarations, March 8): Bill de Blasio is more concerned about the 96% of New York City school children who attend public schools than the 4% who attend charters. And it’s true that charter schools benefit from Wall Street hedge-fund managers’ huge cash infusions. Eva Moskowitz, head of the Success Academy charter-school chain, makes around $400,000 annually to run 22 schools. In contrast, my superintendent in the Austin Independent School District, Meria Carstarphen, oversees 117 schools comprising 85,000 students and makes $283,000 annually. Furthermore, my superintendent is held accountable by a publicly elected school board of nine members who must approve her decisions. How about Success Academy pulling children out of school for a field trip to Albany for a political rally? Imagine what Ms. Noonan would be saying if those “evil” union teachers took their students out of learning opportunities for a day of demonstration. There is a lot more to this issue than she and the Journal are acknowledging. Dig deeper. See the larger picture.

Sara Stevenson

Austin, Texas

Categories Charter Schools, Honor Roll, Students

Dr. Yohuru Williams: Everything I Need to Know about Corporate Reform I Learned in Kindergarten

By dianeravitch
March 15, 2014 //
11

Dr. Yohuru Williams teaches history at Fairfield University in Connecticut.

In this post, he condenses the lessons of the best-seller All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten, reducing sixteen lessons to only six. They are on point and hilarious.

These are six rules to live by and to learn by. School would be a far better place for learning if everyone took Dr. Williams’ good advice.

Here are two of his rules:

 

  • Play fair. (Of course, this is impossible when the ultimate measure of a student’s success is reduced to how well they perform on standardized tests). Recent cheating scandals, involving some of the luminaries of Corporate Education Reform, illustrate the danger of a hyper-competitive model of education that substitutes standardization for innovation instead of more organic and battle-tested measures of student achievement.

 

· Don’t hit people. Or yell at people (Chris Christie), or make up facts (Stefan Pryor), or denigrate parents (Arne Duncan), or brag about taping the mouths of children shut (Michelle Rhee), or lie about test scores. Take your pick. But seriously, the crass manner in which the apostles of corporate education reform have “engaged” parents and teachers from Connecticut to California demonstrates how little respect they have for the communities or “children” whom they claim to value. See also: Say you’re sorry when you hurt somebody.
Categories Arts Education, Childhood, Pre-K, K, Corporate Reformers, Humor, Rhee, Michelle

An Innocent/Guilty Pleasure

By dianeravitch
March 15, 2014 //
62

A couple of years ago, I read an article in The New Yorker about the federal government’s efforts to shut down health-food cooperatives that sell raw milk.

The story focused on California, where SWAT teams descended on sellers of raw milk and locked them up.

What is “raw milk,” I wondered.

It is milk as it comes from the cow, not pasteurized, not homogenized.

Sounded frightening. I remember in health class in junior high school learning about Louis Pasteur and how important it was to get all those nasty biological agents out of milk so it would be safe for human consumption.

But then something funny happened.

I spend half my time in a rural area of Long Island (yes, they still exist), and week after week I pass a farm with an unpronounceable Welsh name (Ty Llwyd) on route 48. I always saw the sign that said “eggs” and “potatoes,” but I recently saw a sign that said “Raw milk, legal.”

A few weeks ago, my curiosity piqued by the article in The New Yorker about the black helicopters in California, I stopped and bought a big glass bottle of raw milk. The farmer said to be sure to shake it, so the cream blended in.

When I got the milk home, I shook it up and had a glass. Unpasteurized, unhomogenized. It was amazing. It was delicious. It was unlike any milk I ever tasted before, although I did remember unhomogenized milk with the cream on the top, delivered to our home in the 1940s.

On my second visit, I took my grandson to visit the farmer’s cows and chickens, and they looked content. None was locked in a packed cage. Don’t get me started about the way chickens are raised on factory farms; it is inhumane. Years ago, I visited Delmarva, the area where Delaware, Maryland, and Virginia intersect, and was upset to see the tall chicken coops, where the lights are on 24/7, and the chickens never set foot on the ground.

Our local farm was nothing like that. The chickens roam freely.

Now, I order my raw milk in advance to be sure to get a bottle. It is pure white nectar. And the eggs are unlike any I ever bought in the supermarket.

The raw milk that I buy is legal. The state of New York allows consumers to buy directly from the dairy farmer. They regularly inspect his facilities.

If you live in a state where it is legal to buy from the dairy farmer, I recommend it. It turns out that those biotics are actually good for us.

Some people actually take a pill called pro-biotics. Who needs to take pro-biotics when you can drink raw milk?

Raw milk is better than chocolate.

Categories Personal

A Teacher in L.A: Who Is John Deasy?

By dianeravitch
March 15, 2014 //
30

A teacher in Los Angeles has a gripe about his superintendent, John Deasy: he says Deasy is an uninspiring technocrat, not an educator. He has no educational vision. The LAUSD board recently extended Deasy’s contract to 2016, despite the fiasco in which Deasy committed to spend $1 billion on iPads while laying off arts teachers, closing libraries, increasing class sizes, and neglecting school repairs.

The teacher, whose handle in the comments is Geronimo, writes:

“Here’s my major beef with Superintendent John Deasy (and obviously there were scores of runner ups):

“Deasy has no clue what a “meaningful” education is.

“I have rarely met as uninspiring an educator in all my years of teaching. Of course one can’t even call Deasy an “educator”. He is a CEO and it was for THOSE skills he was hired for–not his ability to actually teach a class.

“The education he prescribes is antithetical to an interesting, smart and stimulating learning that thrills kids and prepares them to become true critical thinker/citizens of this country. The pedagogy of Deasy (and what gets championed by the LA Times editorial board and the unending financial and political weight of Eli Broad and Bill Gates) is all about a notion of education as a metric that can be measured.

“To say that Pearson Testing owns our country’s corporate education values is an understatement.

“There would be no iPad controversy at all if it weren’t for Pearson’s self-interested involvement or the stated need that all kids are required to take the Common Core and standardized tests on a computer. The whole system becomes a self-fulling financial/pedagogical dynamo as the Dept. of Education begins to de facto “require” states to adapt their requirements or suffer starvation for the public education system.

“In one of last year’s closely watched school board races that pitted Monica Ratliff, a fifth grade teacher, against a staff member of then Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa with absolutely zero education experience, Deasy, along with all those champions of Education Reform, chose to back Ratliff’s challenger with a million dollars worth of support. In terms of credentials and qualifications it was obvious the best choice.. Deasy, however, couldn’t care less who the Reform candidate was (it could have been a horse) and, even more disgustingly, the needs of the Valley district. He wanted an empty shell to uncritically support whatever he wanted.

“That race clearly demonstrated how much Deasy and his political supporters care and respect the notion of true education. The contempt for the parents, students and community they serve was appalling. Ratliff BARELY eked out a victory that was widely applauded by the anti-reform crowd as a hopeful sign that Big Money can be beaten. Deasy and Company are keenly intelligent political animals and have learned from that race how to win the next time around.

As I mentioned before, Deasy is not an educator. Nor is Arne Duncan. Nor is Ted Mitchell. Nor is Bill Gates. Nor is Eli Broad. Nor is Barack Obama. Nor is Pearson Testing.

“They are businessmen who have been instrumental in creating a two-tier system of education.

“Yes, yes, you hear them say how much they LOVE and BELIEVE in public education all the time. Bill Gates will tell the National Board that this weekend at their annual conference.

“They’re like the wife beater who claims to “love his wife” but has to hit her so she knows how much he loves her. That much! That much! THAT MUCH!

“NOW SHUT UP!

“And then they wonder why the woman doesn’t love them back. Why she trembles when he comes in the room screaming what has to be done to get things right! How they demand to be respected as King of the House and prescribe all the ways that the woman has to “win” his love by “simply” doing this…and this and this and then this!

“What’s so hard about doing that?!?!? he bellows.

“There is nothing “mutual” in the relationship between these people and the public school system. There is nothing mutual in how Deasy commands LAUSD and the teachers and students whom he is supposed to work FOR.

“So back to the notion of a meaningful education.

“Parents and students of LAUSD: You will not get a meaningful education under John Deasy. He was not hired for that purpose. He was hired to raise test scores that these groups alone DEFINE as being “educated.” It is NOTHING LIKE the education that their kids receive. THEIR KIDS get the MEANINGFUL education and if you saw their schools, their classrooms, their opportunities, it would make you weep seeing what true education is possible of granting.

“Tough luck, LAUSD. That door is closed for you.

“Their job is NOT to provide that sort of education for you and your kids.

“Their job is to make public schools profitable on many levels and get you through so they can check you off their “success” box.

“The problems of society that appear in the public schools are not their purview Their testing is not going to change the grotesque hurdles my students face in their lives nor the ubiquitous inequality of a system that favors the Gates’, Broads’, Duncans’, Obamas’ and Deasys’ of the world. The children of all of them are going to be just fine without the pedagogy they think is essential for the students of LAUSD.

“Has anyone EVER heard John Deasy give an inspirational speech about education? All his utterances are all technocratic in spirit and design. His vision is the very definition of uncreative. Lackluster. Miserly. Limp.

“I would NEVER EVER want my own kids in a classroom taught by John Deasy..

“The children of LAUSD deserve a superintendent who has their interests at heart.

“Instead, they have a man who tells them vis a vis his financial and political backers to shut up and prove your worth by bubbling the right answer that your teacher has done their job by instructing you how to get their right answer

“And then you get your diploma.

“Congratulations. You’re Officially Educated.

“Now come in here and clean up this mess, woman!”

Categories Education Reform

A Reader Comments: Will Changes in the SAT Matter?

By dianeravitch
March 15, 2014 //
20

A frequent contributor to the blog’s discussions calls himself or herself “Democracy.” Here is the comment left by this reader in response to the announcement about changes that will be made to the SAT:

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

“Democracy” writes:

I’ve noted this point multiple times on this blog but it bears repeating.

College enrollment specialists say that their research finds the SAT predicts between 3 and 15 percent of freshman-year college grades, and after than that nothing. Shoe size would work as well, or better. The ACT, the SAT’s big competitor, is only marginally better. The “new, improved” SAT will be no different. (though in a perverse twist, the SAT changes suggest that it will now make an attempt to enhance citizenship…don’t believe it).

The real story is that both the ACT and the College Board (purveyor of the PSAT, SAT, and the AP program) were major players in the development of the Common Core standards – and its massive testing regimen – which are about to be unleashed on public schools across the nation.



The Common Core was funded by Bill Gates, and it was largely the work of three main groups: Achieve, ACT, and College Board. Toss in the Education Trust. All of these groups are tied tightly to corporate-style “reform.”



Achieve, Inc.’s board includes Louis Gertner, who’s bad-mouthed public education for decades. It also includes Tennessee Republican governor Bill Haslam, a pro-life, anti-gay, corporate friendly politician. The board also includes Prudential executive (and former big banker) Mark Grier (Prudential has been fined multiple times for deceptive sales practices and improper trading), and Intel CEO Craig Barrett (who keeps repeating the STEM “crisis” myth). Intel has laid off thousands of workers and is masterful and aggressive at avoiding tax payments and seeking subsidization, much like Boeing, and Microsoft, and GE, and IBM, and Chevron, and AT & T. These are some of the biggest tax cheaters in the country. There’s a reason that Achieve’s main publications never mention democratic citizenship as a mission of public education.



Achieve’s funders include – not surprisingly – Boeing, Intel, GE, IBM, Chevron, JP Morgan Chase, Microsoft, Prudential (and State Farm, MetLife and other insurance companies), and the Gates Foundation. The Education Trust is funded by MetLife, State Farm, IBM, and by the Broad, Gates and Walton Foundations, among others.



The “leaders” at the College Board include president David Coleman, who was instrumental in writing the Common Core standards, and who was a former McKinsey consultant and treasurer of disgraced former DC chancellor Michelle Rhee’s StudentsFirst. It includes policy chief Stefanie Sanford, former policy director for Texas Governor Rick Perry and “director of advocacy” for the Gates Foundation. It includes assessment chief Cyndie Schmeiser, who is now in charge of the PSAT, SAT, and AccuPlacer (worthless academic measures), and who was previously the chief operating officer at ACT. And it includes Amy Wilkins, formerly of the Education Trust.



Slide on over to charlatan Wendy Kopp’s Teach for America, and one finds that the big contributors are the right-wing Arnold Foundation (which wants to privatize public pensions), the arch-conservative Kern Foundation (which even wants to inculcate ministers into the belief that unregulated “free enterprise” is a “moral system”),
the Broad and Gates and Walton Foundations, Cisco, State Farm, and big banks –– Bank of America, Barclays, Credit Suisse, Wells Fargo –– that have paid billions and billions in penalties and fines (with a very hefty dose yet to come) for ripping off consumers and rigging “markets.”

The very same groups who seek to “reform” American public schooling so that no child is left behind, are selling snake oil that will –– and already does –– deny millions of kids a decent education. They perpetuate a corrupted system that marginalizes workers and citizens, that off-shores millions of jobs, that creates enormous inequities in income and wealth through transfers of money from public treasuries to private coffers, and they tell us that the solution lies in better teachers, more “rigorous” standards, and “accountability.”



These people and groups tout the importance of “transformative reform.” They all recite the same jargon, and they all seem to believe that teachers (especially those deemed the “best and brightest”) hold the key to restoring American “economic competitiveness,” which is the foundational rationale for the Common Core.

It’s all unmitigated foolishness. Nonsense. But you won’t read about any of that in mainstream press accounts of the SAT changes. And that’s a dire shame.

Categories Education Industry, Testing

What Bill Gates Told National Board for Professional Teaching Standards about Common Core (Oops, Link added)

By dianeravitch
March 14, 2014 //
126

Bill Gates released an advance copy of his speech to the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards, and as reported in the Huffington Post, he defended the Common Core standards as the key to creativity in the classroom.

The article says that the Gates Foundation had spent $75 million on the standards, but we know from Mercedes Schneider’s study of the Gates’ website that the foundation has spent nearly $200 million to pay for every aspect of the Common Core: the writing, the reviews, the evaluation, the implementation, the promotion and advocacy by numerous groups inside the Beltway and across the nation.

Gates told the teachers:

“Gates argued that America’s education system currently does not prepare students adequately for college, because it’s not asking enough of them. So the transition to the new standards is hard because it has to be, he said, and asked teachers to explain the standards to local families.

While the initiative was supported by most state schools chiefs and governors, a recentpoll from Achieve, a group that supports the Core, found that almost two-thirds of American voters have heard “nothing” or “not much” about the effort.

Gates went on to address critiques that the Common Core represents a national curriculum, a federal takeover or the end of innovation. He said these claims are false and distract from teaching — and that teachers can provide the most effective response to critics.”

This blogger created an infographic to show “how Bill Gates bought the Common Core,” relying on the information gathered by Schneider from the Gates Foundation website. She says the total spent by Gates was closer to $300 million.

Of course, $300 million is not much to a foundation as large as the Gates Foundation, but it is not peanuts either. Clearly, Bill Gates believes that if everyone in every school studies the same material, then there will be equity for all. That is a theory that has yet to be demonstrated.

And in any discussion of the rapid adoption of the CCSS by 45 or 46 states, it is best to be frank and acknowledge that this movement was not spontaneous; it occurred because the U.S. Department made adoption of the standards a requirement for states to be eligible for a piece of $4.3 billion in Race to the Top funding.

There seems to be a concerted effort on the part of Common Core advocates to halt the erosion of support that is occurring in states across the nation. In the past week or so, major editorials have appeared in many newspapers defending the Common Core, and the Chamber of Commerce and Business Roundtable have agreed to redouble their campaign to persuade opponents to support the CCSS.

What Gates’ presentation demonstrates is that he really doesn’t understand the reasons for the pushback in many states, some of it coming from the right (fearful of a federal takeover of local schools), some from the left (opposed to standardization), some from parents who don’t understand why it is a good thing to make standards and tests so “hard” that most students are bound to fail them. Nor does Gates understand that there is scant, if any, evidence that high standards alone are enough to produce either high achievement or equity. If we expect everyone to run a four-minute mile, that won’t make everyone run a four-minute mile. Some will, most won’t. What we know from the states that have tested the standards is that the majority of students fail the tests and that the failure rate for English language learners, students with disabilities, and children of color is staggeringly high. In New York state, for example, only 3% of English learners passed the ELA exam; only 5% of students with disabilities passed it; only 16-17% of African American and Hispanic students passed; and overall, only 31% of all students passed in grades 3-8. Will that change in years to come? Let’s hope so, or we will have a vast army of young people without high school diplomas.

Categories Common Core, Education Reform

Parent Groups Blast Cuomo and New York Legislature

By dianeravitch
March 14, 2014 //
17

The New York State Senate legislation to protect charter schools is not limited in its reach to charters in New York City. According to the press release cited below, school districts across New York State will have to provide free facilities or public school space for charter schools that wish to open and will then have no jurisdiction over their own space. This is nothing but a brazen power grab by corporate charter operators.

NYC Parents Union

PRESS RELEASE

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contacts:
Mona Davids (646) 872-7149
Noah Gotbaum (917) 658-3213
Leonie Haimson (917) 435-9329
Sam Pirozzolo (917) 533-3437

New York City Parent Leaders Statement On Governor Cuomo and The New York State Senate’s Agenda To Destroy Public Education

Our School Children Deserve Better Than Political Chicanery, Graft and Pay-to-Play Politics

The New York State Senate yesterday introduced a budget resolution filled with legislative bills seeking to destroy public education to benefit privately managed education corporations known as charter schools.  In it budget resolution, the Senate is requiring school districts to provide rent-free space to new charter schools or pay for private facilities out of the school districts budget.  It also includes increased funding for privately run charter schools, it strips the New York City Mayor and the Panel for Education Policy of their authority to approve or deny charter co-locations in public school buildings and gives charter schools decision-making authority over classroom space in buildings they are currently co-located in.  Outside of New York City, school boards will be required to pay for facilities costs for charter schools or co-locate them in their public school buildings.Governor Cuomo, Senator Dean Skelos and Senator Jeff Klein’s blatant attempt to destroy public education in exchange for contributions from the well moneyed charter lobby and hedge funders for their political careers is unconscionable.  The political chicanery and corruption in the “ed reform-political-complex” is unmatched in any democratic society throughout the world.
Shino Tanikawa, Manhattan Public School Parent and President of Community Education Council District 2* said:  “It is deeply disturbing to see such clear evidence of corruption in which charter operators with money dictate to Senators how they should be given everything they want while only serving a small proportion of students.  If this resolution passes, what little is left of our democratic process will be extinct and our schools – public and charters – will be run by charter operators and their minions in the state legislature.  And make no mistakes they do not have the interest of our children in their hearts.”Jacqueline Colson, Queens Public School Parent and Member of Community Education Council District 25* said:  “Our children are not pawns in this “Game of Charters”. The queen Eva Moskowitz has made her move and King Cuomo has fallen into checkmate by destroying public schools. We need to take a stand and change the game.”Noah E. Gotbaum, Manhattan Public School Parent, Vice President, Community Education Council District 3* said:  “Public school parents beware! This Senate Resolution steals control of our public schools from elected Mayors and school boards, and hands it to hedge fund managers and charter school lobbyists.  It would force cash-strapped school systems to hand over space and extra funding for the 3% in charters at the expense of the 97% in public schools.  And it would give charter corporations like Eva Moskowitz’s complete control over what happens in our public school buildings. This Bill has nothing to do with what’s best for New York States 2.5 million kids, and everything to do with what’s best for a few hundred high-rolling campaign contributors. It is shameful.”Leonie Haimson, Executive Director, Class Size Matters said:  “Thousands of public school students are put on waiting lists for Kindergarten each year, thousands more sit in trailers, and hundreds of thousands are sitting in overcrowded schools, yet this proposal would force NYC to give charter schools free space or pay for the construction of their schools  –over the rights of public school students.  Moreover, 5 out of the 7 provisions in the Senate proposal pertaining to charters would ONLY burden NYC with these obligations – and not the districts represented by the Republican Senators.  If Avella cannot get the Senate to give up this incredibly inequitable and damaging proposal, designed to force privatization of the NYC public school system because of the money and power of the hedge funders and billionaires that back the charter lobby, he should resign from the IDC”.

Benita Rivera, Founder of The Mother’s Agenda New York (The MANY) said:  “Once again the politicians, pro-charter power brokers and paid lobbyists have shown their blatant disgust— not only for any semblance of democracy, but as regrettably, for the best interests of the overwhelming majority of children in our traditional public schools. I would say “Shame on Governor Cuomo and the Senate Majority!,” except that this shabby cohort of political careerists in Albany know no shame.

Rivera continued:  The very idea of co-locating different schools, with different educational philosophies and vastly different resources under one roof is an absurdity ill-conceived by Michael Bloomberg.  Was it not through brute force and big money spent wrangling either naive or ethically-devoid state politicians, that he was able to impose his will upon the public to divvy-up our children’s developmental learning and social-play places without parent, teacher and especially, voter consent?  After all this time and so much energy, it is disheartening that we appear to be right back at square one in the struggle; which all seems part of the master’s plan to deconstruct and destroy public education as we know it.”

Mona Davids, Bronx Public School Parent and President of the New York City Parents Unionsaid:  “Everybody laughs when we speak about the dysfunction in Albany.  We all shake our heads and shrug our shoulders when we hear of legislators arrested and convicted of corruption and accepting bribes from special interests.  We know that Governor Cuomo, Senator Dean Skelos and Senator Klein have received almost one-million dollars in contributions from the charter lobby that seeks to destroy public education.  Why aren’t they arrested and locked up for graft?  Charter schools are not public schools, they are non-profit education corporations governed by private boards.  Charter schools according to Eva Moskowitz are not accountable to the public or may be audited by the State Comptroller because they are not state units like public schools.  Siphoning money from public schools that serve all students, unlike charter schools, is clearly quid pro-quo for campaign contributions.  We call on the Attorney General to investigate the bribes sent to Governnor Cuomo, Senator Skelos and Senator Klein through the charter lobby’s many Political Action Committees and board members.

Davids continued:  We have overcrowded schools, students in trailers, schools with no libraries, no arts, no music and no physical education.  These schools serve the majority of New York State students.  Governor Cuomo, Senator Skelos and Senator Klein should be putting public schools first, not education corporations unaccountable to the public.”

Sam Pirozzolo, Staten Island Public School Parent, President of Community Education Council 31* said:  Almost since its inception, New York City public school parents have pointed out that Mayoral Control was out of control and the laws needed to be changed.  And for all of those years we thought our complaints were falling on deaf ears.  It now seems that Governor Cuomo and the State Legislature have finally heard our pleas, or have they?  Yesterday the NYS Senate introduced a bill that would effectively eliminate Mayoral Control, destroy the teachers union and create the largestreformatory school system in the world.  But were they actually listening to parents?  Heck no!  They are listening to the dollars of the powerful charter school lobby.  New York City public school parents have been walloped by two events yesterday.  First was the introduction of the legislation mentioned above and second was the victory given to Eva Moskowitz and her lucrative string of charter schools known as Succe$$ Academy Charter School$ when Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Thomas Breslin ruled state Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli   did not have the authority to audit any New York charter because the schools are not technically “units of the state.” How is it possible that charter schools cannot be held accountable?  The NY City Council wants to see the books, they are concerned aboutcorruption.

Pirozzolo continued:  So what does this mean for hardworking tax paying New York City public school parents?  It means that we have been side stepped, overruled and ignored once again.  The path has been cleared to give choice to only a select few while the remaining neighborhood schools become filled with the outcasts of charter school children who couldn’t “make the grade” and are being returned into an already struggling public school system which has now been assured a straight and direct path to failure.  If anyone believes that the legislature would never allow for such a bill to be passed, I have two words for you, Tier 6.”

We call on parents throughout New York City and New York State to use their power and not vote for Governor Cuomo, Senator Skelos, Senator Klein and any other state legislator that seeks to deny our children of a high quality public education by putting privately run charter schools before our democratic public schools.We urge parents to:
  1. Call their New York State Senator and demand that the proposals benefiting charter schools at the expense of public education be removed.
  2. Call Assemblyman Sheldon Silver and their New York State Assembly Members to thank them for putting all New York State students first by supporting public schools.
  3. Call Governor Cuomo, demand he comply with the Campaign for Fiscal Equity ruling and properly fund our public schools.
New York State Senate phone number:  (518) 455-2800
New York State Assembly phone number:  (518) 455-4100
Governor Andrew Cuomo’s phone number:  (518) 474-8390
###
* for identification purposes only
Categories Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Cuomo, Andrew, Education Industry, Education Reform, New York
« Older Entries
Newer Entries »