Archives for the month of: February, 2015
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New York: Charter Lobby Spent More than Unions

By dianeravitch
February 22, 2015 //
8

The Wall Street-backed charter lobby spent more last year than unions and won’t he support of Governor Cuomo and the Legislature to expand and get Néw York City to offer free space or pay the rent for charters.

“Charter school groups and their supporters spent $16 million on lobbying, campaign contributions to state-level candidates and parties and independent expenditure campaigns last year. Charter schools spent nearly $700,000 on lobbying. Education unions and labor-funded advocates spent $11.77 million, according to the analysis.

“Additionally, large school districts and stakeholder groups representing school boards spent $922,193. An advocacy group pushing a generous tax credit that would incentivize donations to schools spent $659,404.

“In defending their spending and high-profile backers, education reform leaders have often portrayed teachers’ unions as deep-pocketed behemoths representing special interests. But the spending reality is that in 2014, the pro-charter and reform groups outspent unions by a considerable margin….

“What’s striking in these numbers is that a few dozen Wall Street financiers and billionaire hedge fund managers are able to far outspend more than 600,000 educators who believe in the promise of public education and voluntarily give a few bucks out of each paycheck to ensure they have a voice,” said Carl Korn, NYSUT’s spokesman.”

Categories Charter Schools, Unions

Indiana: Who Should Lead: Educators or Politicians?

By dianeravitch
February 22, 2015 //
10

In a smart editorial, Karen Francisco of the Fort Wayne Journal-Gazette remembers an earlier election when voters chose between an educator and a political figure.

 

The voters in the early 1990s chose the educator, just as they did in 2012, when they overwhelmingly elected Glenda Ritz.

 

Now the politicians are gathering like a wolf pack to take away the office and its powers, perhaps because she is an educator.

 

Who should lead our schools as state superintendent? The people of Indiana have spoken, but the powers-that-be in Indianapolis are not listening.

 

Categories Indiana

Ohio: Who Testifies About Charter Reform?

By dianeravitch
February 21, 2015 //
12

It is no secret that charter owners are major campaign contributors to Governor John Kasich and the Republican legislature. After newspaper revelations, the legislature recognized the public demand for charter accountability. At hearings, 18 people testified. 17 are charter advocates.

Here is an account from Bill Phillis of the Ohio Coalition for Equity and Adequacy:

House Bill 2 (HB 2)-a nominal start toward charter school reform

Ohio is known nationwide for its Wild, Wild West charter school policies. After nearly fifteen years of a failed experiment in the charter school industry, at long last, a bill (HB 2) has been introduced to curb some of the abuses. HB 2 needs to be greatly expanded to deal with a multitude of disquieting problems.

So far in the HB 2 hearings before the House Education Committee, it is obvious that the charter school advocates are driving the testimony train. At the first hearing of HB 2, the head of the Ohio Alliance for Public Charter Schools, instead of the Legislative Service Commission or some other neutral party, provided legislators with background information on charter policy. During the most recent hearing, 18 individuals testified, orally or by written testimony. 17 of the 18 represented pro-charter organizations.

Testimony from public school advocates is sorely needed.

William Phillis
Ohio E & A

Ohio E & A | 100 S. 3rd Street | Columbus | OH | 43215

Categories Charter Schools, Ohio

Memphis Teacher: The “Stench of Reform” is in the Air

By dianeravitch
February 21, 2015 //
15

Toni Jackson, a teacher in Memphis, wrote a powerful article about what “reform” is doing to her city, and especially what it is doing to black and brown children.

 

She writes:

 

There is a stench in the air in Memphis and it’s a smell that is permeating throughout black school districts. One can get a whiff of it in Newark, N.J., Philadelphia, New Orleans and most urban areas that received Race To The Top federal dollars for education. This awful stench derived from education reform and it’s been perpetrated on minorities with lower incomes and those who live under a lower socio economic status.

 

This stench has led corporations and politicians to the belief that they can control the education of African American and minority children (black and brown students) simply because they were granted millions of dollars by the government. They want to buy our children and they believe the federal government has given them the power to do so with the money allotted to improve student achievement.

 

So these Nashville politicians have neatly packaged the Shelby County School District, which is 85 percent African American, in a box where students are behind, teachers are ineffective, teaching jobs are tied to test scores, and student scores are tied to whether a school is slated for takeover or is closed altogether.

 

These politicians have aligned themselves with rich corporate types and they have passed laws that will give themselves total and complete power over urban schools, urban teachers, urban children, and young black and brown minds from K-12 grades in Memphis, which will lead to generational control. We have seen this before, Memphis. We have fought this fight before and now 50 years later, we are facing the same thing our grandparents faced when they went against a power structure designed to have access and control over the minds of our children. It was called the civil rights era and the legal case was Brown vs. Board of Education. That is where the state would like to take us, but we’re not going back there.

Categories Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Education Reform, Privatization, Tennessee

Write Congress Now to Say No! To “Student Success Act”!

By dianeravitch
February 21, 2015 //
24

The Network for Public Education urges you to write your Congressman or Congresswoman now.

The Network For Public Education | We are many. There is power in our numbers. Together, we will save our schools.

Tell Congress: Vote NO on H.R. 5 – The Student Success Act

It has been reported that the US House of Representatives will vote on H.R. 5, the “Student Success Act,” on Friday, February 27th. The bill, which is the House’s version of the long overdue reauthorization of No Child Left Behind, was rushed through the House Education and the Workforce Committee with no public hearings. The bill is deeply flawed, and raises many concerns for public education allies.

There are four crucial issues:

Requires that states test all children in grades 3-8 and once in high school, even though no high performing nation tests all children every year

Makes Title I funds portable, which will decrease funding to the schools in greatest need, and opens the door for vouchers

Limits Title II funding to 10% for class size reduction

Increases funding for charter schools and encourages the growth and expansion of Charter Management Organizations (CMOs), which will advance the privatization movement

The time is now to send a clear message that we demand better for our children and our schools. Please join NPE and write your Representative today to let him/her know you oppose the passage of this bill.

Sponsored by

Network for Public Education
Tucson, AZ

Categories NCLB (No Child Left Behind), Network for Public Education

Anaheim: Parent Trigger Push Fails

By dianeravitch
February 21, 2015 //
11

An effort to use California’s controversial “parent trigger” law to convert a public school into a privately managed charter school failed in Anaheim.

The law was passed five years ago when Arnold Schwarzenegger was governor and the state school board was dominated by charter interests. Although heavily financed by the Waltons and other corporate interests, the “parent trigger” drive has succeeded in seizing control of public schools only twice in five years.

“Parents at the school, located in an overwhelmingly low-income immigrant community, failed to collect valid signatures representing 50% of pupils enrolled, as the law requires, said Supt. Linda Wagner. She said the district found that 133 of 488 petitions were not valid because the students had moved away, could not be found in the district records or were not signed by a parent or legal guardian, among other reasons. The district verified 48.4% of enrolled students.

“But former state Sen. Gloria Romero, who wrote the law and now helps parents improve their schools through her new Center for Parent Empowerment, accused the district of manipulating the numbers. The district rejected 12 petitions because those signed could not be reached “after multiple attempts,” according to documents, but Romero said officials never asked petition organizers to help locate them, as she said state regulations require.”

Romero was previously California director of pro-charter hedge fund managers’ “Democrats for Education Reform.” DFER was denounced by the state as a front for corporate interests.

There is something fundamentally undemocratic about letting this year’s (or last year’s) parents to privatize a community institution, built and paid for by the entire community.

Categories California, Charter Schools, Democrats for Education Reform, Parent trigger

Hess V. Cunningham: Should the Feds Tell Schools How to Turn Around Performance?

By dianeravitch
February 21, 2015 //
10

I am enjoying the online debate between Rick Hess and Peter Cunningham. Rick is located at the conservative American Enterprise Institute in D.C., Peter runs a blog funded by Walton and Broad and served as Arne Duncan’s Assistant Secretary for Communications in Obama’s first term.

 

In this post, they debate whether Uncle Sam should tell schools how to improve.

 

Peter, of course, echoes the Obama administration’s position that this is a proper federal role.

 

He writes:

 

With thousands of schools defying every effort to improve after decades of reform, can we really just throw up our hands and quit? Even with the flexibility and financial incentives associated with SIG—multiple models and up to $6M over three years—most states and districts choose the least aggressive and least impactful interventions, presumably to avoid a messy fight over staffing.

 

Children have only one chance for an education. When states and districts allow chronically struggling schools to continue indefinitely, the federal government has a moral obligation and an economic incentive to step in. When it comes to protecting kids at risk, the buck still stops in Washington.

 

Rick argues cogently that the feds should not tell schools how to improve because Uncle Sam (Congress and the U.S. Department of Education) doesn’t know how to improve any school.

 

Rick writes:

 

Here’s the problem: there’s no recipe for identifying which schools need to be “turned around” or for helping those schools improve. This means that identifying those schools, figuring out how to help them, and then actually doing so are complicated tasks that require a lot of judgment, discretion, and good sense.

 

Unfortunately, these are not the strengths of the federal government. This is simply because federal officials a] don’t run schools or systems, b] have to write policies that apply to 100,000 schools across 50 states, and c] aren’t accountable for what happens in schools and systems. These three factors mean that federal “school improvement” efforts amount to efforts to write rules and directions that can apply everywhere, including many places where the formulas may not make sense. The result is a whole lot of grudging compliance, a fair bit of aimless activity, and not a whole lot of smart problem-solving.

 

The results are evident in efforts like the Obama administration’s School Improvement Grant program. There, we’ve spent $6 billion and a third of the schools receiving SIG funds have seen their test results get worse. Of course, it’s hard to find really reliable numbers on all this because the Department of Education hasn’t been forthcoming with the data (and has had to retract flawed data). One can make a case for Andy Smarick’s claim that SIG is “the greatest failure in the U.S. Department of Education’s 30-plus year history.”

Categories Accountability, U.S. Department of Education

Jeffrey Weiss: How Much Has Texas Spent on Standardized Testing?

By dianeravitch
February 21, 2015 //
8

Jeffrey Weiss, education writer for the Dallas Morning News, wondered how much Texas has spent on standardized testing since 1980, when the state began its statewide testing program.

 

He made inquiries at the Texas Education Agency, but no one could help him. He was told that they keep records only for four years. He knew that the current Pearson contract came to $438 million for five years, about $85 million a year.

 

Weiss writes:

 

Apparently this refusal to maintain even the totals, at least officially, is a longstanding policy. I found a piece about the economics of testing from 2002 that had this note: “And on and on. Texas state spending on testing has risen from $19.5 million in fiscal year 1995 to $68.6 million in fiscal year 2001. (Surprisingly, Texas Education Agency officials were unable to provide figures prior to 1995.)”

 

Very interesting. The cost of statewide testing has gone up from $19.5 million a year to $85 million a year.

 

Someone should do a cost-benefit analysis. And a study of the lobbying that has produced that enormous increase in costs.

Categories Testing, Texas

Indiana Superintendent to Parents: Home-School Your Children During Testing Week

By dianeravitch
February 21, 2015 //
37

Rocky Killion is an amazing superintendent in West Lafayette, Indiana. To begin with, he produced a wonderful documentary about the assault on public education, called “Rise Above the Mark.” You can go to the website to find out how to order a copy to show in your community (it is also for sale on amazon.com). He is very critical of the testing-gone-wild culture that has been foisted on public schools in Indiana and across the nation. He is very sensitive to the damage done to education, to children, and to teachers. His colleagues named him Indiana’s Superintendent of the Year for 2015.

 

Now he is furious because the computers that give the state test–the ISTEP–froze during a practice run. That was just too much.

 

“It’s inhumane what we are doing to the kids, what we are doing to the educational environment, we lost so much instructional time today, it’s ridiculous,” Killion told WTHR-TV in Indianapolis on Feb. 12, after computers froze during a dry run for ISTEP last week.

 

The Superintendent of the Year for 2015, as named by the Indiana Association of Public School Superintendents, followed it with this: “I would prefer all of my students’ parents withdraw and become home-schooled during ISTEP, and then we can re-enroll them…..

 

Killion wasn’t backing away this week.

He repeated the same advice Monday during a visit to West Side schools from Glenda Ritz, Indiana’s superintendent of public instruction. (Ritz didn’t jump on board, instead calling on parents get their kids ready for ISTEP days.)

And on Tuesday, Killion clarified the statement, saying he wasn’t necessarily advocating the withdraw/home-school/re-enroll plan.

“Since there’s no legislative mechanism, that’s the only opt-out workaround that I know to tell parents,” Killion said. “Typically, when I’m asked a question, I try to come up with the correct answer, and that’s what’s happened in this case.”

 

The journalist writing the column is critical of Killion and so is this legislator:

 

State Sen. Brandt Hershman, R-Buck Creek, wasn’t pleased to hear a superintendent “encouraging people to willfully thwart (the) system.”

 

“It’s just the latest episode in his series of irresponsible and provocative comments that bear little to no relevance to the school system he’s supposed to be leading,” Hershman said Tuesday, a day when the Senate was dealing with a bill that would strip some of Ritz’s authority and a resolution to shorten ISTEP that had doubled in length since last year.

 

“I think we test too much, and the ISTEP is not perfect, but testing is required under federal and state law,” Hershman said. “His comments represent a flawed example of leadership in education policy.”

 

Killion’s answer: “The only thing I’ve said is what I said in the interview when a reporter asked me how can parents opt out of ISTEP. That’s the only thing I’ve done.”

 

Martin Luther King, Jr., said: “One has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws.” 

 

Welcome to the honor roll, Rocky Killion!

 

 

 

 

 

 

Categories Honor Roll, Indiana, Opt Out, Parents, Testing

Newark Students Ending Sit-In

By dianeravitch
February 21, 2015 //
6

After a four-day sit-in and a meetung with State-appointed Superintendent Cami Anderson, Newark Student Union members agreed to end their occupation of her office. They apparently won no concessions from her, but achieved widespread attention for their grievances.

Categories Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, New Jersey, Newark, Students
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