Archives for the month of: February, 2015
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Minnesota: Star-Tribune Reports that Most Charter Schools Are Struggling Academically

By dianeravitch
February 17, 2015 //
32

The Minneapolis Star-Tribune reviewed the performance of the state’s charter schools and concluded that most were not meeting their academic targets and not closing achievement gaps.

 

Minnesota was the home of the charter movement, which began with high expectations as a progressive experiment but has turned into a favorite mechanism in many states to promote privatization of public education and to generate profits for charter corporations like Imagine, Charter Schools USA, and K12. Today, charter advocates claim that their privately managed charters will “save low-income students from failing public schools,” but the Minnesota experience suggests that charters face the same challenges as public schools, which is magnified by high teacher turnover in charter schools.

 

 

The Star-Tribune article by reporter Kim McGuire begins:

 

 

Students in most Minnesota charter schools are failing to hit learning targets and are not achieving adequate academic growth, according to a Star Tribune analysis of school performance data.
The analysis of 128 of the state’s 157 charter schools show that the gulf between the academic success of its white and minority students widened at nearly two-thirds of those schools last year. Slightly more than half of charter schools students were proficient in reading, dramatically worse than traditional public schools, where 72 percent were proficient.

 
Between 2011 and 2014, 20 charter schools failed every year to meet the state’s expectations for academic growth each year, signaling that some of Minnesota’s most vulnerable students had stagnated academically.
A top official with the Minnesota Department of Education says she is troubled by the data, which runs counter to “the public narrative” that charter schools are generally superior to public schools.

 
“We hear, as we should, about the highfliers and the schools that are beating the odds, but I think we need to pay even more attention to the schools that are persistently failing to meet expectations,” said Charlene Briner, the Minnesota Department of Education’s chief of staff. Charter school advocates strongly defend their performance. They say the vast majority of schools that aren’t showing enough improvement serve at-risk populations, students who are poor, homeless, with limited English proficiency, or are in danger of dropping out.
“Our students, they’re coming from different environments, both home and school, where they’ve never had the chance to be successful,” said April Harrison, executive director of LoveWorks Academy, a Minneapolis charter school that has the state’s lowest rating. “No one has ever taken the time to say, ‘What’s going on with you? How can I help you?’ That’s what we do.”

 
Minnesota is the birthplace of the charter school movement and a handful of schools have received national acclaim for their accomplishments, particularly when it comes to making strong academic gains with low-income students of color. But the new information is fueling critics who say the charter school experiment has failed to deliver on teaching innovation.
“Schools promised they were going to help turn around things for these very challenging student populations,” said Kyle Serrette, director of education for the New York City-based Center for Popular Democracy. “Now, here we are 20 years later and they’re realizing that they have the same troubles of public schools systems.”
More than half of schools analyzed from 2011 to 2014 were also failing to meet the department’s expectations for academic growth, the gains made from year to year in reading and math.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Minnesota, Privatization, Testing

The Economist: America’s Hereditary Aristocracy

By dianeravitch
February 17, 2015 //
31

The Economist published a fascinating and disturbing article about the hardening of class lines in the U.S. most of us grew up believing that anyone could grow up to be President. Maybe it was never true, although the examples of Abraham Lincoln and Harry S Truman encouraged us to believe it was true. But now?

“WHEN the candidates for the Republican presidential nomination line up on stage for their first debate in August, there may be three contenders whose fathers also ran for president. Whoever wins may face the wife of a former president next year. It is odd that a country founded on the principle of hostility to inherited status should be so tolerant of dynasties. Because America never had kings or lords, it sometimes seems less inclined to worry about signs that its elite is calcifying.

“Thomas Jefferson drew a distinction between a natural aristocracy of the virtuous and talented, which was a blessing to a nation, and an artificial aristocracy founded on wealth and birth, which would slowly strangle it. Jefferson himself was a hybrid of these two types—a brilliant lawyer who inherited 11,000 acres and 135 slaves from his father-in-law—but the distinction proved durable. When the robber barons accumulated fortunes that made European princes envious, the combination of their own philanthropy, their children’s extravagance and federal trust-busting meant that Americans never discovered what it would be like to live in a country where the elite could reliably reproduce themselves.

“Now they are beginning to find out, (see article), because today’s rich increasingly pass on to their children an asset that cannot be frittered away in a few nights at a casino. It is far more useful than wealth, and invulnerable to inheritance tax. It is brains.
Matches made in New Haven
Intellectual capital drives the knowledge economy, so those who have lots of it get a fat slice of the pie. And it is increasingly heritable. Far more than in previous generations, clever, successful men marry clever, successful women. Such “assortative mating” increases inequality by 25%, by one estimate, since two-degree households typically enjoy two large incomes. Power couples conceive bright children and bring them up in stable homes—only 9% of college-educated mothers who give birth each year are unmarried, compared with 61% of high-school dropouts. They stimulate them relentlessly: children of professionals hear 32m more words by the age of four than those of parents on welfare. They move to pricey neighbourhoods with good schools, spend a packet on flute lessons and pull strings to get junior into a top-notch college….

“None of this is peculiar to America, but the trend is most visible there. This is partly because the gap between rich and poor is bigger than anywhere else in the rich world—a problem Barack Obama alluded to repeatedly in his state-of-the-union address on January 20th (see article). It is also because its education system favours the well-off more than anywhere else in the rich world. Thanks to hyperlocal funding, America is one of only three advanced countries where the government spends more on schools in rich areas than in poor ones.”

Categories Economy

Jonathan Pelto: Beware the Charter Money Grab in Connecticut

By dianeravitch
February 17, 2015 //
8

Jonathan Pelto, a former legislator and now Connecticut’s premier blogger, warns that a money grab for charters is on the horizon, while the state’s neediest schools are ignored.

 

This Wednesday, February 18, 2015, Governor Malloy will play his hand as to whether he will insert taxpayer funds into next year’s state budget in order to fund Steve Perry’s dream of opening a privately-owned, but publicly-funded charter school in Bridgeport. An out-of-state company is also counting on Malloy to come through with the cash needed to expand their charter school chain into Stamford, Connecticut.

 

Both charter school applications were vehemently opposed by the Bridgeport and Stamford Boards of Education.

 

However, despite that opposition from the local officials responsible for education policy and despite the fact that Connecticut doesn’t even fund its existing public schools adequately and the fact that the State of Connecticut is facing a massive $1.4 billion projected budget deficit next year, Governor Malloy’s former Commissioner of Education, Stefan Pryor, and Malloy’s political appointees on the State Board of Education approved four new charter school proposals last spring.

 

Initial funding for two of the four applications was included in this year’s state budget, New Haven’s Booker T. Washington charter school and yet another charter school for Bridgeport.

 

Now the charter school industry is counting on Malloy to divert even more scarce public funds away from the state’s public schools so that Steve Perry can start pulling in a $2.5 million management fee from a charter school in Bridgeport and the out-of-state company can open up a revenue stream from a new charter school in Stamford.

 

While most public education advocates are focused on the Malloy administration’s ongoing attempt to privatize public education via policies at the state level, the politically connected Achievement First Inc. Charter School chain is using a completely different approach as it seeks to pull off a deal in New Haven that would shift existing funds away from New Haven’s public schools and into the coffers of the Achievement First operation.

 

Of course, Achievement First Inc. is the charter school chain founded by Stefan Pryor, Malloy’s former commissioner of education.

 

Achievement First Inc. is also the charter school chain that gets the lion’s share of the $100 million in public funds that are already diverted to charter schools in Connecticut.

 

New Haven is the only district in the state with a mayoral controlled board.

 

The New Haven Board of Education is not democratically elected by the citizens of New Haven. It is one of the only boards of education in Connecticut to be appointed by the mayor of the community.

 

In this case, the New Haven Board of Education is appointed by Mayor Toni Harp – who, thanks to an earlier sweetheart deal – happens to sit on the Achievement First Inc. Board of Directors for the Amistad Academy schools.

 

Wonder what will happen there? Read on.

 

 

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Connecticut, Corporate Reformers, Funding

Samuel Abrams: U.S. Teachers Have Longer School Day, More Difficult Working Conditions Than OECD Counterparts

By dianeravitch
February 17, 2015 //
20

Samuel Abrams, who directs the National Center for the Study of Privatization in Education at Teachers College, recently published a study comparing the conditions of teaching in the United States and other OECD nations. Abrams here summarizes the study and corrects an article that appeared in Slate about it.

 

He writes:

 

 

All studies are necessarily open to interpretation. What I concluded in a recently published study of teaching time, entitled The Mismeasure of Teaching Time and posted on the Web site of the Center for Benefit-Cost Studies of Education at Teachers College, Columbia University, should have been straightforward but clearly was not. Slate came away with a surprising take, from its provocative headline claiming “American Teachers Might Not Work Such Long Hours After All” to its conclusion regarding the effectiveness of U.S. teachers.

The study may be summarized as follows:

  • Because of an error in data collection, the U.S. Department of Education has significantly overstated teaching time in its annual reports to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), which has, in turn, published this erroneous information every year since 2000 in its frequently cited digest of educational statistics and analysis, Education at a Glance (EAG).
  • According to the latest data in EAG, U.S. teachers spend 49 to 73 percent more time leading classes than their OECD counterparts. In reality, the difference is about 15 percent, which is still substantial but far less significant than the differences in teacher pay and the structure of the school day.
  • A central problem with this overstatement of U.S. teaching time is that it has distracted scholars and journalists from the more pressing differences in teacher pay and the structure of the school day.
  • The differences in teacher pay are indeed dramatic and telling. U.S. upper-secondary teachers, for example, earn 70 percent as much as their college classmates while their OECD counterparts make 92 percent. In absolute terms, U.S. teachers earn about the same as their OECD counterparts, but it is relative pay that truly matters. Because of less income polarization in other OECD nations, teachers abroad typically have far more purchasing power than here. And inadequate purchasing power makes any profession more stressful.
  • The differences in the structure of the school day are likewise dramatic and telling. In the United States, in contrast to many other OECD nations, the school day has been driven by the demands of high-stakes testing. These demands have boxed out time for music, art, drama, and recess, exacerbated the assembly-line pace of the school day in the United States long ago documented by Raymond Callahan in Education and the Cult of Efficiency (1962), and moreover placed tremendous and unnecessary pressure on students, teachers, and administrators alike.

 

In today’s contentious climate of education policy, where teachers are readily blamed for everything from subpar student achievement to disappointing national economic productivity, it is imperative that technical distinctions in academic studies are properly understood.

U.S. teachers indeed work long hours. I know this too well as someone who was a high school teacher for 18 years. Prepping for class and grading papers can be consuming activities, taking up time in the evening and over the weekend. This is true for teachers in other OECD countries, as well, even in the pedagogical heaven that is Finland. What is not true, however, is that U.S. teachers spend as much time leading classes as reported by the OECD and repeated by scholars and journalists.

Categories International, Teachers and Teaching

Peter Greene: A Fantasy View of Milwaukee Reforms

By dianeravitch
February 17, 2015 //
7

Peter Greene discovered a bold new policy plan in Milwaukee. It turns the war on poverty into a war on the poor.

He writes;

“On Wednesday, Senator Alberta Darling and Representative Dale Kooyenga released “New Opportunities for Milwaukee.” It’stunning. It’s a blueprint, a plan, a carefully-crafted rhetorical stance that turns the war on poverty into a war on the poor. Does it present new opportunities? It surely does– but they are opportunities for more privateers to use the language of civil rights to mask the same old profiteering game.

“Make sure your seat belts and safety harnesses are locked in place, because we are about to travel to a place where up is down and forward is backward. The first chunk is directly related to education; the rest is not, but I’m going to go the distance anyway because it helps lay out a particular point of view that is driving some reformsters. The full report is twenty-five pages; I’ve read them so that you don’t have to, but you may still want to. Forewarned is forearmed.”

The report begins with this claim;

“2014 marked the 50-year anniversary of the war on poverty. Since 1964, taxpayers spent over $22 trillion to combat poverty. Little, if any, progress has been achieved.”

“”Two-thirds of the incarcerated African-American men come from six zip codes in Milwaukee and it is no coincidence that those zip codes are also home to the greatest density of failing schools and the highest unemployment in the state.” Boy, and that’s true. It’s also no coincidence that every time I see a building on fire, there’s a fire truck right nearby, or that every time find water dripping off my car, there’s rain. Say it with me, boys and girls– correlation is not causation.”

The plan not only declares the war on poverty a failure (no point throwing money at poverty, even though lack of money defines poverty) but declares the civil rights movement a success, therefore matters like segregation are unworthy of our attention.

Peter, in his inimitable style, dissects the recommendations for ending poverty without spending money. It starts with charter schools…

Categories Charter Schools, Education Reform, For-Profit, Milwaukee, Poverty

A First-Hand Report from the Ritz Rally Today

By dianeravitch
February 16, 2015 //
8

This afternoon many educators and friends of public education gathered to show their support for Glenda Ritz in Indianapolis. Ritz, as you know, is trying to do her job as state superintendent while Governor Mike Pence is undercutting her at every turn and trying to nullify her election in 2012. She won more votes than Pence. This has to bother him.

Here is a first-hand account of the rally:

“I heard on the 6 pm news that it was “hundreds” but I am pretty sure it was near a thousand. I shared an elevator in parking garage with a group of teachers and one of them had spoken to a security person (we had to be metal detected one at a time as we entered the state house with our coats off and belongings scanned like airport…I had to be wanded and lift my pants legs to show my shoes) who told her it was just over 1000. I think that was what I would have guessed…maybe 900. Some of those could have been there for other business but the atrium was packed, as many standing as seated and up the stairs and around the balconies during the 2 hours of speaking.

“Glenda opened her office after she spoke and greeted all who entered and posed for pictures. I was touched by the college students who were there and obviously they were impressed to be there and so excited to pose with Glenda.

“The cheering and chanting were quite loud at times and the speakers well received. I lost count but 10-12 speeches were given. My favorite was Cathy Fuentes Rawher, an Indiana parent whose “rant” was posted last week in this blog. I saw children as young as two and elders who looked near 80. I saw school buses as well as motor coaches delivering folks.

“We had a couple of inches of snow early this morning and the southern part of the state got 6-7 inches and wind chills were an issue. I think it was an impressive turnout considering the bad weather and that many schools were making up days missed due to snow. The legislators were meeting and we were LOUD!”

Categories Administrators, superintendents, Indiana

Retired Florida Principal on the Barricades Against Phony Florida “Reforms”

By dianeravitch
February 16, 2015 //
23

Earlier today I posted a commentary by Roseanne Woods, a retired principal in Florida, about the harm done to students and schools by high-stakes testing. Roseanne has just begun to fight. If every retired educator stepped up and defended children, like her, we could protect our children and our future.

She wrote:

“Thank you Diane Ravitch. Being on your “blog’s honor roll” means a lot to me. There is much more to say about what’s going on in Florida, and I will do my best to speak truth to power. I can only do this because after 36 years as a teacher and principal in the Florida public schools, I am retired; others are afraid to speak out.

“In Florida, all education policy streams from Jeb Bush. His mouthpiece is his “Foundation for Excellence”, and all education policy for the last 15 years has flowed from this source. Because I live in Tallahassee, I often give my input to the Republican controlled Legislature. Every time I speak, people in the audience whisper their agreement to me, but they dare not speak it aloud.

“Unfortunately, many states have followed his model of school grades, which I refer to as the “Shame and Blame Grade Game”. Never before have so many good schools, teachers and children had to wear the scarlet letter of FAILURE. Kindergartners now get A-F grades. (How cruel is that?) Teachers are told that they must adhere to pacing guides with everyone on the same page every day. ((How stupid is that?) Across our state, schools are suspending their curriculum to get students ready for the upcoming high-stakes test. Third graders who don’t pass will be retained. I’ll be writing more about this soon.

“It is criminal what has happened to our schools. As someone said, it used to be considered unethical to teach-to-the test; now it’s the norm.

“Again, thank you Diane for making Florida part of this conversation.”

Categories Education Reform

Indiana: Chalkbeat Says “Droves” of Glenda Ritz Supporters Turn Out at Statehouse Rally

By dianeravitch
February 16, 2015 //
28

This afternoon, hundreds of supporters of Glenda Ritz turned out at a rally in Indianapolis to show their support for the embattled superintendent of Indiana public schools. Governor Mike Pence and his allies in the legislature have been trying to strip away the powers of her office, even though she was elected by more voters in 2012 than Governor Mike Pence.

 

1.3 million voters chose her over the Republican reform idol Tony Bennett, then superintendent of the state. Since then, the governor and legislature have waged constant war on Ritz, either because she is a Democrat or because she is a woman or because they fear her ability to win votes, or all three.

Categories Administrators, superintendents, Indiana, Indianapolis

Edward Johnson: Has Atlanta’s Leadership Admitted Failure?

By dianeravitch
February 16, 2015 //
6

Edward Johnson is a deeply thoughtful man who is devotedto the systems thinking of W. Edwards Deming. Like Deming, Johnson believes that the path to improvement requires changing the system, not blaming teachers or dissolving the system. Thus, he says Governor Deal’s plan to turn Atlanta into a charter district and/or to create a statewide district akin to Louisiana’s Recovery School District or Tennessee’s Achievement School District.

Johnson says such plans are an acknowledgement of local failure, an admission of defeat.

He wrote this today to every local and state official:

February 16, 2014

To date, I am unaware of any communications from the Office of Superintendent, Atlanta Public Schools, informing the Atlanta taxpaying and public school communities of the superintendent’s position on Governor Nathan Deal’s designs to create, in Georgia, a New Orleans-styled recovery school district.

Surely, the communities need and deserve to know, given the extreme nature of Deal’s RSD designs that target 25 percent or so of APS schools for state takeover.

By his RSD designs, Deal obviously implies he believes APS Superintendent Meria Carstarphen lacks the mettle to lead improving APS as a system.

But then, also by his RSD designs, Deal implies he, himself, lacks the mettle to provide for Carstarphen and other Georgia public school superintendents to learn to lead improving their district as a system.

On the other hand, just as Deal implicates himself, Atlanta school board members and superintendent implicated themselves as lacking the mettle to improve APS as a system of the common good when recently they decided to turn APS into a Charter System. Both they and Deal demonstrate the Systems Thinking concept “Shifting the Burden,” if not “Addiction,” in the sense of being overly dependent on trafficked symptomatic solutions and averse to engaging the usually hard work of drawing out local fundamental solutions.

Deal’s RSD designs should come as no surprise, for they are but the state’s “Charter System” and “IE2” on a wider and more depraved scale. Just as the depravity of Deal’s RSD designs encompass APS as a Charter System, the depravity of President Obama’s Race to the Top Competition encompasses Deal’s RSD designs.

Deal has targeted schools for state takeover based on nothing more than district-level College and Career Readiness Performance Index scores below 60 on a 100-point scale, it has been reported. But, arguably, CCRPI scores offer no learning value or usefulness beyond merely ranking schools and districts for today’s political purposes.

And, of course, a systemic disruption of APS by Deal’s RSD designs will rob Carstarphen of ever being able to claim, in a rational way, that any manner of increased APS performance resulted from her leadership.

Consequently, one might think an essential question Carstarphen has already asked and can readily respond to, with respect to CCRPI scores, is: Will eventual state takeover of 27 or so APS schools fundamentally relieve needing to improve APS as a system?

Since one might reasonably surmise no, it will not, it is incumbent upon Carstarphen to state, and stake, her position on Deal’s RSD designs with supporting data, and inform the public, accordingly.

After all, data-driven decision making is what APS does these days, isn’t it?

Ed Johnson
Advocate for Quality in Public Education
Atlanta GA
(404) 505-8176 | edwjohnson@aol.com

“There is no difference in culture between the things that actually count.”
–W. Edwards Deming

Cc: Atlanta Superintendent and School Board Members
Cc: Nathan Deal, Governor, State of Georgia (via Domestic Contact Form)
Cc: Senate Education Committee Members, State of Georgia
Cc: House Education Committee Members, State of Georgia
Cc: City Council Members and Mayor, City of Atlanta, Georgia
Cc: Atlanta community organizations
Cc: Atlanta Journal Constitution and other media

Categories Accountability, Atlanta, Charter Schools, Georgia

Rex Smith, Editor of Albany Times-Union, Calls Foul on Cuomo for Demonizing Teachers

By dianeravitch
February 16, 2015 //
21

Rex Smith, the editor of the Albany Times-Union, wrote an excellent column, chastising Governor Andrew Cuomo for picking on teachers. Let’s hope that the mounting criticism of Cuomo’s cynical effort to place the blame on teachers for low test scores persuades him to reverse course. The surest predictor of low test scores is poverty, not “bad” teachers. Rex Smith knows this. Why doesn’t Governor Cuomo?

 

Here is an excerpt from Smith’s column:

 

 

Students come to school with all sorts of problems, starting with poverty. Most low-performing schools are in high-needs communities. Plenty of research underscores the link between learning capacity and poverty, with its attendant problems – including poor housing, inadequate health care and neighborhood violence.

 

 

The governor knows this to be true. He has on occasion been eloquent on this very point. It makes his current campaign of demonizing teachers all the more mystifying.

 

 

Yet we hear him repeatedly attacking “the public school monopoly,” ignoring all the non-public (and taxpayer-aided) schools that make the educational system a lot more competitive already than other government services. You know, police and fire departments are monopolies, too. Should we subsidize competing privately-owned agencies, and blame cops for crime and firefighters for fires?

 

 

And there was the governor during his State of the State presentation last month, juxtaposing two statistics as though one directly related to the other: 96 percent of teachers were rated “effective” or better by the state’s teacher evaluation system last year, but less than 40 percent of students in grades three through eight were at least “proficient” in standardized language arts and math tests.

 

 

The inference he wants us to draw, it seems, is that more teachers should be rated lower so they can be fired, making way for teachers who can raise test scores.

 

 

The problem with this analysis begins with a logical fallacy of seeing a causal relationship where there’s really a coincidental one. Call it the Pirate Paradigm, explained thus: The number of pirates plying the high seas has shrunk over three centuries, even as roughly 40 percent of marine species have vanished. Thus, you may conclude that pirates are good for fish.

 

Good work, Mr. Smith!

Categories Cuomo, Andrew, Funding, New York, Poverty, Teacher Evaluations
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