Archives for the month of: April, 2014

The following post was written by Mario Waissbluth, President of Educación 2020 Foundation, a Chilean citizen’s movement founded in 2008. Its latest reform proposals (in Spanish) are called “La Reforma Educativa que Chile Necesita”, and were published in April 2013. A book on this subject (in Spanish) is also available. These proposals were mostly adopted by and included in the educational program of the recently elected government of Michelle Bachelet, and are starting to be implemented now.

Valentina Quiroga (32) was one of the student founders of this organization and is now Undersecretary of Education.

Although Educación 2020 remains as a fully independent movement, the positions stated thereon are in many ways similar to those of the current government.

Chile: Dismantling the most pro-market education system in the world

Mario Waissbluth

In August 2013 I wrote in this blog a three piece series, called “Chile: The most pro-market system in the world.” The first described the origins and structure of the system. The second explained its educational and social results, good and bad. The third pointed the way Chile should choose to get out of this mess. If the reader wants to fully understand this situation (the most “Milton Friedmanish” in the world), incomparable with any other country, it is advisable to read those beforehand.
Although some might disagree, from both extremes of the political spectrum, we are happy to inform that the proposals we made are very similar to those being implemented now. However, the political, financial and cultural obstacles will be formidable.

Bachelet was elected by a large margin of voters and has a majority in both the House and the Senate. Nonetheless, positions within the government’s coalition are not fully homogeneous. In addition, there is an impending tax reform that is vital for funding these reforms, costing no less than 2% of gross national product in gradual increments.

Of course, many powerful companies, with strong lobbying capability, are not happy about that. The educational reforms will include dozens of new laws and budgets, covering from preschool to tertiary education.

A warning for American readers. I am fully aware that many of you are criticizing charter schools, profit, teaching to the test, skimming, and the destruction of the teaching profession. I myself have cited Diane Ravitch’s books many times. But you have to be aware that, after 30 years of neoliberal schemes in Chile, charter schools subsidized by government are a majority (55%). One third of them are religious. Two thirds of them are for-profit, and one half of them charge anywhere from US$ 10 to US$ 180 a month on top of the subsidy, therefore skimming quite efficiently.

Teaching to the test, with consequences, has been taken to the greatest extreme imaginable. Policies to destruct public education are too numerous to mention here, and the result is that this system is in acute crisis financially, managerially and emotionally. The teaching profession is in far worse condition than in the US, by any statistical criteria.

In this situation, it is simply not possible to pretend now that charter schools could vanish. Less so if millions of parents have chosen to send their children to highly segregated charters, in a country whose social inequalities are far worse than those in the US, which I know are ugly by themselves.

In short, if the US is navigating towards hell, we are already there and are trying to get out without sinking the ship. It is a very different situation.

The most difficult hurdle in front of us is not legal, political or financial, but cultural. Parents have been led to believe, for decades, that the “best” school is that which is segregated, both academically and socioeconomically. We have a true cultural and educational apartheid. Therefore, the changes will have to be gradual and careful. At the same time, the government is sending strong signals: this is not going to be a minor adjustment but a major change in the overall orientation of the school system; not to make it fully state owned, but simply to resemble the vast majority of OECD countries, probably in a way similar to that of Belgium or The Netherlands. The whole strategy is described in more detail in the above mentioned entries of this blog,

Recently, the Education Minister, Mr. Nicolás Eyzaguirre (with a powerful political and financial experience and profile) has announced the first wave of legislation, to be sent to Congress in May, whose details are now being drafted. They include, amongst other things, the radical ending of academic selection and skimming, the gradual elimination of cost-sharing (to reduce social skimming), the phasing out of 3,500 for-profit schools (to be converted into non-profits), the radical pruning of the standardized testing system, the strengthening and expansion of the public network of schools (so that they can compete in a better way with the charters) and a major reform to the teaching profession, from its training (completely unregulated so far), to improving salaries and working conditions.

This is an evolving situation. I will be most happy (if I can) to answer questions through this blog, and also to inform you about new developments in the future.

Categories International, Privatization, Segregation , Racial Isolation and Integration, Standardized Testing, Students, Teachers and Teaching, Vouchers

Swedish Experiment in Privatizing Schools Floundering

By dianeravitch

April 20, 2014 //

Scholars such as Henry Levin have earlier warned that the Swedish experiment in privatization is promoting greater social segregation and not improving education.

Reader Chiara Duggan adds this recent Reuters article, with her comment on the failure of market-based reform. Will anyone tell Arne Duncan or will he continue to follow the guidance of (Sir) Michael Barber of Pearson?

Duggan writes:

“http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/12/10/us-sweden-schools-insight-idUSBRE9B905620131210

“Good piece on Sweden’s experiment with privatizing education:

“In a country with the fastest growing economic inequality of any OECD nation, basic aspects of the deregulated school market are now being re-considered, raising questions over private sector involvement in other areas like health.

Two-decades into its free-market experiment, about a quarter of once staunchly Socialist Sweden’s secondary school students now attend publically-funded but privately run schools, almost twice the global average.

Nearly half of those study at schools fully or partly owned by private equity firms.

Ahead of elections next year, politicians of all stripes are questioning the role of such firms, accused of putting profits first with practices like letting students decide when they have learned enough and keeping no record of their grades.

The opposition Green Party – like the Moderates long-time supporters of privately run schools but now backing the clamp-down – issued a public apology in a Swedish daily last month headlined “Forgive us, our policy led our schools astray”.

“I give the Greens huge credit for that.

“Can you IMAGINE a US political party writing “forgive us, our policy led our schools astray”? 🙂

“Never, ever happen.

“In 20 years when there are no public schools left we’ll get “mistakes were made”- by some unidentified person or group of people. :)”

Categories International, Privatization, Vouchers

A Remarkable Teaching Experience

By dianeravitch

April 20, 2014 //

Read this teacher’s account of her experience in the D.C. public schools
before they descended into test-prep obsessive policies.

She raised the money to take her class to her native state of Montana. And
what a trip they had!

After you read it, ask yourself this question: Would they have learned more by prepping for the
standardized tests or by their extended and amazing field trip?

Categories Testing

More on Chile’s Education Reforms

By dianeravitch

April 20, 2014 //

I wrote to Professor Mario Waissbluth, who has previously written for the blog, about the new turn of events in Chile.

In his previous posts on the blog, Professor Waissbluth explained that Chile’s free-market system had been an educational disaster.

In his last post, before the recent elections, he wrote:

Previously,
I wrote in this blog a 3-part sequence describing the Chilean
educational system, its consequences, proposing some ways to run
away from this malignant design. Recently, Universidad de Chile
published the results of a survey on adult literacy and numeracy
skills, following the exact methodology of SIALS, the Second
International Adult Literacy Survey published in
1998. Within
the survey data, it is shown that 15 years ago, 45% of young people
in the segment between 15 and 24 years, i.e., the generation that
was graduating or recently graduated from high school, had no
comprehension of language and arithmetic… whatsoever, not even
the ability to read and understand a very simple text or balance a
checkbook. Today, this same age segment shows, tragically and
exactly, the same results. With one of the highest high school
attendances in the world, we now find that these young people spent
12 years sitting passively at a desk, not achieving improvement
even in their most basic skills.
Even worse, in the segment of higher
education graduates, only 10% show adequate or complete
understanding of prose and numeracy, similar to what happened 15
years ago. This is the result of market system debauchery and
completely unregulated exploitation of students who pay and/or get
indebted to obtain these spurious titles. So far, only 20% of
higher education programs, most of them for-profit, have some sort
of voluntary accreditation.
This does not happen by chance, it
is the result of a market-based educational model, with extreme
segregation based on academic and socioeconomic skimming,
curricular overload, with students spending most of their time
training as parrots to answer standardized tests, with public
education and the teaching career virtually demolished.The basic
organizational and financial rules of our model do not exist
anywhere in the world and are full of perverse incentives.

Happily, the anti-privatization reformers won the election, and changes are in store.

Professor Waissbluth has promised to write a longer description of what is happening in Chile.

The leadership of the new government, he says, comes from the student protest movement.

The rollback of privatization is beginning, but there will not be a sharp break. The privatized charters continue to receive government subsidies, but other forms of privatization will be ended.

All of this is very good news indeed.

Chile’s love affair with privatization has ended, and the reform movement to restore a healthy and equitable education system in Chile has begun.

Professor Waissbluth sent this response in the middle of last night:

Hi Diane:
We are happy that the educational reform program is, almost to the letter, the one we, Educacion 2020, proposed a year ago 🙂
The new Undersecretary, 32 years old, is one of the student founders of our movement, she is the lady that drafted the program, and the Minister’s staff includes several former presidents of student federations… plus some key members of our own organization, and I run some risk of it being somewhat dismembered 😦
The program does not end government subsidies to private schools (charter, which constitute almost 55% of the system) but it does end (gradually) the fact that a) most schools charge a copayment to parents, of differing amounts, thus effectively segregating and skimming socioeconomically b) that some of them are for profit c) that they do all types of academic skimming, this last practice including many public high schools. There are yet no specific details,( and they will be complex pieces of legislation) and we shall know them in a month, and these are only a few samples of future reforms. The fights in Congress wil be awesome, but the gov has a slight majority in both House and Senate. I can write a column for you, probably linking it with my three former columns to make it more understandable, or as you wish. Or maybe it should be again a series, since the reforms will be coming gradually, from preschool to tertiary level, and they will be most complex. It is not easy to “change course” radically in the most market oriented system in the world without sinking the ship.
I am happy to say that my 2013 book “Cambio de Rumbo” (Change of Course) is now on its 2nd edition, and the previous one, from 2010 “Se acabo el recreo” (School Break is Over) just entered its 5th edition 🙂

Mario Waissbluth

And he added this comment this morning on the blog, in response to a reader:

We are fully aware that non-profit charters have many spurious practices as well. But you have to be aware that a) 55% of students are enrolled in for profit and non profit charters (far far more than in the US), b) after 30 years of systematic demolition policies, our public education system has virtually gone down the drain, seriously mismanaged (far far worse than in the US). A whole program for the rebirth of public schooling is being designed, it will take a few years to materialize, and for the time being this is the only practical solution. You do not revert 30 years of the most commercialized school system in the world by the stroke of one law, without breaking havoc on the system (beggining with the 55% of parents which have their kids in charters). Today, our key policy is to combat skimming, teaching to the test, and segregation, which are the worst in the world. If you wish, we are trying to go “the dutch way” and we honestly do not see any other solution. If you have a better one, we will be happy to hear about it.

As you read his comments, you can see the goal of the privatizers here: to create a critical mass of privately managed charters that will destroy public education, turning our public schools into dumping grounds, and making it difficult if not impossible to reverse the damage.

Categories International

Peter Greene: TNTP’s Brilliant Néw Idea

By dianeravitch

April 20, 2014 //

If you have an eye for quackery, as Peter Greene does, you will never run out of material in the world of reform tomfoolery.

In this post, Greene has fun with TNTP’s brilliant new way to identify better teachers: multiple-choice test. I kid you not.

TNTP used to be called The Néw Teacher Project. According to legend, it was founded by Michelle Rhee, although partisans of Wendy Kopp say it was her idea and she asked Michelle to do it. I really don’t know. Maybe someone who was there can let us in on the true story.

So Greene discovers that TNTP has this idea that a multiple-choice test can do what nano human can do. Identify a future talented teacher. He runs with it.

Categories Humor, Teachers and Teaching, Testing

Why Doesn’t the New York Times Understand the Controversy Over Common Core?

By dianeravitch

April 20, 2014 //

165

In story after story, the New York Times consistently misses the essence of the controversy surrounding Common Core.

Today’s New York Times gives its lead article on page 1, column right, top of the fold, to the battle raging within the Republican party, about the Common Core. On one side is Jeb Bush, standing up for the Common Core standards (presumably a moderate, let’s not talk about his fight for vouchers and for the destruction of public education in Florida), while on the other are figures like Ted Cruz and other extremists of the party. Common Core, we are told, is now the “wedge issue” in the Republican party, with sensible people like Jeb Bush fending off the extremists.

A few weeks ago, the newspaper wrote an editorial enthusiastically endorsing the Common Core standards, while giving no evidence for its enthusiasm other than the promises offered by the advocates of Common Core.

Story after story has repeated the narrative invented by Arne Duncan, that the only opponents of the Common Core are members of the Tea Party and other extremists.

Occasionally a story will refer to extremists of the right and the left, as though no reasonable person could possibly doubt the claims made on behalf of the Common Core.

Of course, David Brooks’ column on Friday echoed the now familiar trope of the Times, that only extremists could oppose this worthy and entirely laudable endeavor.

Missing is any acknowledgement of the many researchers who have challenged the wacky assumption that standards alone will cause everyone’s achievement to rise higher and higher, despite no evidence for this assertion.

Missing is any recognition that there are reputable educators and scholars and parents who are disturbed either by the substance of the standards or by the development process (Anthony Cody, for example, just won the Education Writers Association’s first prize award for his series of blogs challenging the claims of the Common Core).

Missing is the pushback from teachers that caused the leaders of the NEA and the AFT to call for a slowdown in implementation of the standards (the media sees this only as teachers’ fear of being evaluated by tests).

Missing is the concern of early childhood educators about the developmental inappropriateness of the standards for the early grades, which reflects the fact that no early childhood educator participated in drafting the standards. Also missing from the writing group was any educator knowledgeable about children with disabilities or English language learners.

Missing is any acknowledgement that not a single classroom teacher was included in the small group that wrote the standards, and that the largest contingent on the “working groups” was from the testing industry.

Missing is any suggestion that the writing of the standards was not “state-led,” but was the product of a small group of insider organizations inside the Beltway, heavily funded by one organization, the Gates Foundation.

Missing is any recognition that there is no appeals process, no means to revise standards that make no sense when applied in real classrooms with real students.

Missing is any awareness that the Obama administration made eligibility for $4.35 billion in Race to the Top funding contingent on state adoption of “college and career ready” standards, which turned out to be the Common Core standards. How else to explain their rapid adoption by 45 states?

Missing is any acknowledgement that there is very little connection between the quality of any state’s standards and its performances on the NAEP, or that some states with standards higher than the Common Core dropped their proven standards so as to be eligible for the new federal funding.

Missing is any recognition that the Common Core standards are an essential ingredient in a Big Data plan that involves a multibillion dollar investment in new hardware, new software, and new bandwidth for Common Core testing, all of which will be done (for no good reason) online.

Missing is the issue of value-added measurement of teachers and school-closings based on test scores, or the fact that major scholarly organizations (the American Educational Research Association, the National Academy of Education, and the American Statistical Association) have pointed out the inaccuracy and instability of VAM. Nor has it ever been reported by the “Times” that these same organizations have said that teachers’ influence on variation in test scores ranges from 1-15%, with the influence of the family, especially family income and education, looming far larger.

Question: How can the nation’s “newspaper of record” be so seriously indifferent to or ignorant of the major education issue of our day?

Categories Education Reform

Vivian Connell’s Journey: On Her Way

By dianeravitch

April 20, 2014 //

You have read here about the courageous journey of Vivian Connell. She lives in North Carolina, where she was a teacher for many years. In 2010, discouraged by the state legislature’s hostility to teachers and low salaries, she left the classroom to enter law school. She graduated last May with honors. Vivian recently learned she has ALS, Lou Gehrig’s Disease, and she returned to teaching for whatever time remains to her. Her goal right now is to raise $20,000 to take her class to the U. S. Holocaust Museum in D. C.

Read her story here.

You can find the link here to make a donation. Send $5, $10, $25, whatever you can afford.

Let’s help Vivian fulfill her dream.

Do it in the spirit of Easter. Or Passover. Or humanity.

Categories North Carolina, Teachers and Teaching

Advice from a Charter Teacher in Ohio: Regulate Us!

By dianeravitch

April 20, 2014 //

This teacher read the post about Gulen charter schools and wrote the following comment:

This is so eerily similar to my job-it is a shame that there is poor oversight in these types of schools. I work in a Ohio-based charter school. I’m under great stress due to this under performing school. Misleading marketing leads unsuspecting parents to the school with inaccurate curriculum/academic expectations. Unfortunately, student turn-over is high, attendance/enrollment records are altered and no one ever questions-if you do, you just may lose your job. The principal is a bully and the superintendent is a pushover. Taxpayers don’t deserve for their hard-earned monies to be utilized in such a irresponsible fashion. There is no HR or outlet for employee grievances, no unions, the Department of Education really needs to stop winking at these degrading practices and shut underperforming schools down ASAP.

Categories Charter Schools, Education Industry, Education Reform, Privatization

Matt Farmer: Graze to the Top, or How a $4.35 Billion Federal Program Became a Laughing Stock

By dianeravitch

April 20, 2014 //

Matt Farmer, a lawyer and public school activist in Chicago, wrote a brilliant satire of the Obama administration’s Race to the Top. You may recognize Matt Farmer as the brilliant litigator who cross-examined and tried billionaire Penny Pritzker in absentia. At the time, Pritzker was a member of the Chicago Board of Education, merrily cutting services for the children in public schools while raising money for a glorious library at her children’s private school. Last year, President Obama appointed Pritzker as Secretary of Commerce. She was a major Obama fund-raiser.

In this new post, Farmer tells us that Arne Duncan has discovered that American kids spend too much time eating lunch.

Other countries spend less time in the lunchroom, he says gravely. We must beat the international competition!

Farmer writes:

“Secretary Arne Duncan’s April 15, 2014, remarks to employees and diners at the National Place food court in Washington.

Today we cross an important threshold in school cafeteria reform by releasing draft guidelines for states to apply for the $3.6 billion dollar Graze to the Top fund. We gather here today at Washington D.C.’s National Place food court to announce – and celebrate — a new Graze to the Top in schoolhouses across America.

For too many years, our nation’s public school students have been trapped for nearly 20 minutes a day in under-performing school cafeterias. Simply put, kids are spending too much time in lunchrooms and not enough time in classrooms. In today’s global economy, a country that eats lunch in less time than America will out-compete us.

And what we now know from international assessments is that students in countries such as Poland, Slovenia, and the Czech Republic spend far less time eating school lunches than do their U.S. peers.”

Surely, spoiled suburban moms will complain. But don’t listen to them. We can’t afford to waste another minute!

“Save, save the minutes!” You have to be a historian of American education to recognize that this phrase was associated with the early 19th century Lancastrian movement, the first effort to standardize education for the children of the poor so that it would be cost-effective. Arne Duncan, the Joseph Lancaster of the 21st century.

Categories Duncan, Arne, Humor, Race to the Top