Watch Superintendent William Cala, as he eviscerates the so-called reform movement, including charter schools, the private money that shapes the politics of education, the reformers’ indifference to poverty, their refusal to acknowledge the root causes of low test scores, and the mandate that we all have to raise our voices and take action to stop the takeover of our schools. Education “reform,” he says, is not about educating children, it is about money and power.

“We can no longer remain silent.”
Because the shit is finally hitting the fan in our privileged district* and my personal position is threatened. We didn’t speak out before because we thought we could game the system and not have to worry about any of those pesky Albany educrats but they have finally caught up with us.
Typical ass covering by GAGA adminimals.
*from Wiki: The racial makeup of the village was 96.99% White, 0.73% African American, 0.12% Native American, 1.03% Asian, 0.00% Pacific Islander, 0.21% from other races, and 0.92% from two or more races. 1.38% of the population were Hispanic or Latino of any race. . . The median income for a household in the village was $53,375 and the median income for a family was $65,980. Males had a median income of $50,094 v. $30,431 for females. The per capita income for the village was $29,390. 3.3% of the population and 1.7% of families were below the poverty line. 2.2% of those under the age of 18 and 5.1% of those 65 and older were living below the poverty line.
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Duane, that’s not fair. Anyone with the means to buy a home in Fairport is certainly welcome to live there.
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And to be fair, this guy is a very rare bird, a superintendent who recognizes the frighteningly segregated state of New York’s district schools and has proposed doing something about it–something that would affect his district, not other people’s kids.
http://www.democratandchronicle.com/story/news/2014/03/26/report-ny-schools-racially-segregated/6930731/
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Perhaps he is a “rare bird”. He would be rare indeed (kind of like the mineral Painite is the most rare. There are only 18 existing samples in the world, and the largest of them is only 2.54 carat). . . . If so, I applaud him.
However to get to the supe’s position, even if only interim, almost all play the education game as it is dictated to them and do not critically analyze what negative effect those dictated policies can have.
I call ’em how I see ’em and I’d bet my analysis is fairly close to how it has been.
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The Fairport district encompasses more than just the village, Duane, and even taking into account the housing and retail development in that area in the past few decades, it is not an upscale Rochester suburb (as your own Wiki numbers indicate). Fairport and all the area districts have been hit hard with GEA and Foundation Aid losses, but manage to hang on because of good community support.
Cala, fyi, is actually the outgoing interim superintendent, but he has been speaking out boldly for a lot longer than the current crisis. I don’t view him as a GAGAer at all.
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I’m glad he is speaking out (perhaps precisely because he is ‘outgoing’, which is fine) but I believe my analysis still stands about supes and adminimals not speaking out prior to their own positions and districts are being effected. These types seem more self serving than anything with the Johnny come lately crocodile tears, but I’ll still welcome them to the right side-the more the merrier, eventually even for the students when we can defeat the edudeformers.
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They may seem “Johnny-Come-Latelys” to you Duane, but it’s not quite fair, and Cala has not been afraid to speak his mind before this. Other superintendents in the area have also spoken out, and I should ad, with negative consequences for their districts’ aid.
The suburban and rural districts in NYS, especially Upstate, have been hit hard with cuts in state aid, the tax levy cap, and unfunded mandates, but have not faced the full brunt of reformsterism in its many forms: charters, TFA, vouchers, etc.. Because these schools are not failing, it’s taken only until very recently for many in these communities to realize that the cuts in aid, etc. are part of a larger attack on public schools, not just a passing problem because of the Great Recession. I guess we owe some thanks to Andrew Cuomo for that at least.
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Nail on the head. No hand wringing over tests until APPR made them real for teachers. Now it’s “all about the students”.
And Tim, the issue here is families who can’t afford to buy a home in Fairport. We have a very unfair education system based on where you can afford to live. Getting rid of accountability is a way to shove that under the rug.
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John, that comment was entirely sarcastic. It’s what I imagine people in starkly non-integrated areas tell themselves to be able to sleep at night. Fairport isn’t what it is by accident or due to “market forces.” Nor are the hypersegregated parts of Rochester.
My second comment was made in earnest. Even if this superintendent wants to stop charters and plays fast and loose with the facts, he deserves credit simply for being honest about segregation issues and especially for attempting a district-based solution.
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It’s been real for the teachers for a long time. It’s the supes and adminimals who have been shielded up to this point.
Your assessment of the teachers is unfounded for the most part.
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I agree, Duane. I’ve said before how I’ve been sounding the alarm bells for years and years only to be met with indifference or contempt from my former colleagues in NYC. “That could NEVER happen here.”
Well, now that it IS happening there it is suddenly a crisis several magnitudes more important than it was when it was ‘just’ us southerners suffering the worst of the reformist sadism.
I welcome all to the side of justice also but I can’t forget how contemptuous my welcome was in the past. Susan O’hanian and Gerry Bracey began sounding this alarm over 20 years ago. They were met with yawns and snickers and whispers about tinfoil hat conspiracies.
Now that the worst of NCLB, Bush, Broad, the Waltons, and Gates is reaching the mostly white, more affluent middle and upper middle class districts we finally have reason to fight that simply didn’t register on the radar when it was mostly Title I schools of poverty with populations of children of color.
Onward and upward, though. Together we can defeat the reformist monster, or at least give it a good fight!
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And give me a break John. Your boilerplate can’t is so tiresome!
Teacher accountability as it is currently conceived has exactly zero influence on poverty, property values, school funding formulae, and pretty much anything else that is meaningful in regards to public education.
New Orleans fired all the teachers and replaced them with inexperienced, untrained scabs. Why has poverty failed to disappear there? Same goes for Newark. Chile. And all the other places crackpot Friedman economic theory has been given free reign to instantiate racism, segregation, and maintained the economic status quo or worsened it.
Your theories are empty, worthless, wrong, and evil. But keep hanging onto them because you can’t bear to admit that reality doesn’t support them!
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Oh, my. I took what he said in a whole different light. I thought he made some great points. Perhaps disruptive change is creating systemic change? And, whiles he might be a little late to the debate and might be speaking up only because his position is threatened, I wish Ohio’s superintendent would be saying those things. Bottom line, we have lost faith in our leaders, haven’t we?
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I’ve never had that kind of faith, unless they prove to me that they deserve it.
Just as I don’t expect respect from students until I have shown them the respect they should receive from a teacher/adult.
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@Duane, Bill Cala is a hero and stood up to Albany before.
Fairport schools are the reason school budget votes in New York are held in May.
New York school districts used to have to vote on school budgets in April, often before the state’s budget was passed. Fairport told Albany they would not be holding a school budget when scheduled in April, and Albany caved.
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Sorry, adm, but I’m not interested in “heroes” in regards to public education unless you’re talking about those teachers and administrators who have given their lives and health to protect students in emergency situations. Let’s not cheapen the meaning of “hero/heroine”.
Standing up to Albany for the budget seems to be a good thing (I don’t know anything at all about that situation) but to call it heroic, well that is more than a little hyperbole.
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“Bill Cala’s reply to Union Leaders”
We need our place at the table
To consummate a deal
We’ve always been at the table
Because we’ve been the meal
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Your heroes lie to you.
Mr. Calla says a “little discussed” law allows “hedge funders” to “invest in charter schools…and this only applies to charter schools” to get a 39% tax credit. He also refers to this as a “secure” investment.
The New Market Tax Credit doesn’t apply only to charter schools, and also is not an “investment in charter schools”, it is a 7-year investment in some of their buildings.
He refers to charter schools as a “cash cow” for Broad, Walton and Gates. This is the height of absurdity and misdirection. They donate money. They don’t get revenue from them.
This is all about discounting the parents who choose charter schools for their children and pretending that charters exist because they make money for the 1%. Utter junk and lies, but I guess it makes everybody feel better because they don’t have to think about the real reasons that charters exist.
Mr. Calla, tell us how charters are a cash cow for philanthropists.
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Gates’ Microsoft announced a deal with Pearson, last summer, to develop curriculum for the copyrighted Common Core.
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John:
The richest and most powerful advocates for charter schools and against teacher unions stand to gain from lower teacher pay. Their logic is simple. They know that the vast bulk of school funds goes to teacher salaries. The fewer the well-compensated teachers, the lower the taxes, especially on people who hold land for development (Broad). It also means that more school funds will be available to spend on technology. Gates and other tech billionaires want to own the edtech market, and they’re using venture philanthropy to make that market grow. Meanwhile, charter school funders want to tip the balance against public schools partly because charter schools pay teachers less and enforce working conditions that ensure high turnover, reducing the number of experienced teachers.
The research cited by Gates, when he does cite research, all tends to support the fallacy that small class size, teacher experience, and advanced degrees don’t help students “achieve” and therefore shouldn’t be paid for by the public. None of this squares with the actual reality of teachers, but he doesn’t care. Broad, the Waltons, Reed Hastings–none of the other so-called philanthropists care to know what actual public school teachers have experienced.
In sum, charters will be a cash cow for philanthropists over the long term if they get their wish and public schools are supplanted by privately managed charters. Charters mean lower costs because of fewer teachers (replaced by technology the “philanthropists” will sell them) and lower teacher pay, which will reduce the relative cost of holding and trading all kinds of property. Once American schools are managed by what Hastings calls “large non-profits,” those schools will not be accountable to the public, and will be vulnerable to further exploitation by the wealthy.
These people aren’t giving away their money. They’re investing it. And they get a hefty tax deduction for doing so. Meanwhile, the teacher unions they detest are in reality complicit with the “reforms” they’re paying for. Just look at AFT’s continued promotion of the bankrupt Common Core Standards.
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Randal,
I understand your points, but do you think donating millions to specific charters right now is a cost-effective investment strategy for these specific individuals? Is it the best use of their money in order to lower their taxes?
The answer is no. Your argument could work for any taxpayer supporting charters, but it is overly simplistic.l I’m sure there are some that do support them for that reason, but since traditional public schools are always saying that charter take money away from them and cost taxpayers money, I doubt that’s it.
The taxpayer activists in my city want all charters closed because they think they cost more money.
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“Is it the best use of their money in order to lower their taxes?”
Sorry, the answer is not “no”–and yes, the machinations of billionaires are more complicated than the bottom-line version I offered. But giving money to particular charter schools and charter chains today is actually a very good investment for their long term goals. At least they seem to think so. Wealthy charter backers want to help create charter success stories (no matter how bogus) that supposedly make regular public schools look bad.
Think Harlem Children’s Zone, Success Academy, Kipp, and so on. Private donations buy infrastructure, equipment, supplies, and influence not available to regular public schools. The influence ensures such things as free rent in co-location sites and free media coverage.
Watch Morning Joe on MSNBC for a month and you will see the influence of wealth in action. Elite members of the media who claim to be liberals–Jonathan Alter, Mika Brzezinski, John Heilemann–fall for the hype. (In the case of the Morning Joe crew, they rub shoulders with wealth on a daily basis.) They just can’t see what the fuss is about when it comes to the stupidity of “ed reform.” Meanwhile, their loved ones won’t be attending no-excuses charters that use vile tactics to push out noncompliant students to boost scores and manufacture phony success.
Without the billionaire charter backers, we wouldn’t even be talking about this. They have more money than they could ever spend, but they don’t have a proportionate level of control. Yet. They don’t seem to believe in the idea of the public good. Hence the big move to privatize. Nowadays, their self-interested agenda isn’t hidden at all. Even when they’re ostensibly making donations for the benefit of average people, there are always strings attached. Suffice it to say, those strings don’t involve self-sacrifice.
If you still believe that people like Gates and Broad are involved in education for the good of the public, go back and read some of Gates’s early statements about how we’re spending too much money on education with “little to show for it.” Find out what Broad was up to when he established his Academy for school superintendents. It doesn’t take much to sift through the propaganda and wonder about their motives.
Everybody wears blinders to one degree or another. It doesn’t look like yours are going to be thrown off by any of the comments here.
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Randal,
My charter hasn’t gotten any money from these folks, but I have spent a bunch of time with them. I don’t expect you to believe what I think about their motives, but don’t expect me to change my opinion based on the wild conjectures that I read here as opposed to what I see and hear directly.
I understand that everyone here thinks that these folks are misguided. As I’ve mentioned before, assuming they are also in it for money absolves anyone of answering the question of what they really see in charter schools.
There are certainly some who support charters because of privatization and anti-union sentiment. There are plenty who don’t, myself included.
Is Gates making money on malaria and aids research too?
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Ah, you’ve got a charter school. Enough said.
As for my viewpoint, it’s informed by listening to and reading about what Gates and Broad say and do. From what I can see, Gates is a master of willful ignorance. But that’s not an excuse for repeatedly saying and writing things about education that just aren’t true. Every interview and every education op-ed of his that I’ve run across is replete with misconceptions and outright falsehoods.
Gates may not be making money directly from his public health initiatives, but somebody is. His solutions often involve some kind of narrowly construed technological fix (e. g., genetically engineered “golden rice”–a horrible idea) or some kind of “free market” approach.
According to critiques I’ve read, Gates funding does crowd out alternative voices in the fields he has targeted. He latches onto an idea and floods it with money. It’s good for him, in that he can point to his magnanimous efforts, but not necessarily good for those fields of study. In education, it can be said that Gates funding crowds out legitimate voices, because his initiatives are founded on his own biases and not on the actual experience of educators or credible research, or any personal familiarity with public education. What’s more, he has left almost no education non-profit unfunded. Money talks. He can, and does, pay people to agree with him.
As I said earlier, he has expressed an intense desire to reduce the amount of money the public spends on education. (See his interview with CNBC at the 2014 Davos conference.) To try to separate this stated desire from his actual funding of initiatives aimed at reducing teacher pay and reducing the overall number of teachers–well, it just doesn’t make sense.
If you have the time to write all these comments, you should have time to read a long article from Harper’s titled Let Them Eat Cash: Can Bill Gates turn hunger into profit?
http://harpers.org/archive/2009/06/let-them-eat-cash/
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Yes, I recognize that my choice of volunteer service doesn’t ingratiate me with this crowd, but I’m quite comfortable with what we’re providing for deserving parents and students, and don’t require validation from people whose children don’t attend the schools that our parents opted out of.
I’ll read the article you sent and will also look for Gates’ remarks on lowering the price of education. I haven’t heard that from him, and he has in fact supported increased salaries. Gates’ biggest failure (according to him) was the small schools initiative that many here supported, but which did not get the results he expected, so he ended it. I think the research he supports on teaching and learning is valuable and isn’t being done in many places.
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“Yes, I recognize that my choice of volunteer service doesn’t ingratiate me with this crowd, but I’m quite comfortable with what we’re providing for deserving parents and students, and don’t require validation from people whose children don’t attend the schools that our parents opted out of.”
Please forgive me, but I think you’ve succeeded in congratulating yourself, flattering yourself, and deluding yourself all in the same sentence.
Not sure who or what you think “this crowd” is. My understanding of these issues is my own. Everyone is entitled to an opinion, and I wouldn’t presume to try to change yours. I’m speaking up because I think I have something to add to the conversation.
The belief that other commenters are intent on withholding their validation of you is a little unusual. I’d say you sound like a certain poor, victimized charter advocate whose comments I try not to read, but your grammar is better than his.
And if you’ve never heard Gates complain about the increased cost of public education, you don’t know Gates’s views on education, period. That’s the bedrock his onslaught against public school teachers rests on.
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Randall,
You started your response to me with “Ah, you’ve got a charter school. Enough said.”, which I thought was quite dismissive.
You obviously think my volunteer service of choice somehow makes my opinions not worth as much as yours.
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John, you haven’t refuted a thing, you reinforced the man’s point. If there were no tax credits involved I doubt there would be such “demand.” I think you need to do a little more homework.
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Old Teacher, your comment makes no sense to me. Do you think low income parents send their children to charters in order to support a tax credit for wealthy investors?
And if I haven’t refuted anything, please tell me how those foundations make money on charters.
Here’s another lie from his speech. The Woodland Hills Montessori school that John King’s kids go to does in fact give NYS Exams. From http://blog.timesunion.com/capitol/archives/201300/kings-kids-private-school-and-the-common-core/, “Woodland Hill does participate in annual state standardized exams in English, math and science”
I guess rhetoric beats truth in this debate these days. This reminds me of nothing more than Fox News, where surveys of viewers show they are so misinformed on topics due to Fox’s presentation of the “news”. Now, teachers and the public are being regularly lied to regarding reform efforts and teachers are beginning to believe the BS that’s coming from their leaders despite any evidence, and even evidence to the contrary.
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“Here’s another lie from his speech. The Woodland Hills Montessori school that John King’s kids go to does in fact give NYS Exams.”
Actually, Cala did not claim that Woodland Hills does not give NYS Exams.
And giving a state exam does not make it “high stakes”. The “high stakes” aspect is completely determined by what is done with the results.
Here is what Cala actually said (@44:49): “the Woodland Hills Montessori schools where there is no Common Core and there are no high stakes tests”.
You really need to work on your listening (Cala video) and reading (linked article) skills before accusing someone of lying.
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I think the owner of this blog owes a Word Salad & Cognitive Dissonance Award For Excellence in Straw Men Arguments to the person that penned the following:
“Do you think low income parents send their children to charters in order to support a tax credit for wealthy investors?”
I have followed this blog since its inception. I do not think anyone—including some folks that I no longer see on threads—has written anything that was as, well, deserving of the above [presently non-existent] award.
But I leave the labeling, sorting and ranking—with subsequent gifting of awards—to others. For the moment, I offer my thanks for having my prescription filled:
“A day without laughter is a day wasted.” [Charlie Chaplin, Dr. of Laughology with a speciality in Smile-esthenics]
😎
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KrazyTA,
The perhaps you can explain Old Teacher’s comment that ” If there were no tax credits involved I doubt there would be such “demand.””
You talk yourselves in circles because you don’t want to acknowledge parental demand for charters nor philanthropic support for them. Since you can’t see any value in them, you figure there has to be an angle to everything. All I’m asking is to explain how there would be less demand if there were no tax credits.
SomeDAMPoet,
I’ve never heard anyone in this crowd refer to NYS tests as other than “high stakes” despite the fact that there are currently no stakes for teachers and minimal for students. I think it’s pretty clear he was implying that Woodland Hills didn’t take NYS tests.
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John,
Did you stick your tongue in your cheek when you said, “Parental demand for Charters”?
How many parents are you talking about?
There are more than 49 million children in the public schools—how many of their paents are demanding corporate Charters?
When the Gallup pdk poll asked: Do you believe students receive a better eduction at a public charter school than at a public schools? 54% said yes, but what would they say if they were to read the two CREDO studies funded by Bill Gates and conducted by honest pro charter professors at Stanford who found that corporate Charters are mostly worse or the same as the public schools they compete with?
Figure 26: Academic Growth of Charter Schools Compared to Their Local Markets
READING
56% No significant Difference
19% Significantly Worse
25%Significantly Better
MATH
40% No Significant Difference
31% Significantly Worse
29% Significantly Better
Click to access NCSS%202013%20Final%20Draft.pdf
Did you know that the 2014 Gallup pdk poll reported 63% of Americans oppose vouchers versus 37% who favor vouchers? Is the U.S. run by a minority—the answer to that is probably yes if we admit, for instance, that our unelected leaders are Bill Gates, the Koch brothers and the Walton family, because they own a majority of our elected representatives?
In addition, when asked by Gallup pdk what grade would you give the public schools in your own community, only 6% gave the local public schools a FAILING grade while 50% graded their local schools with an A or B and 31% gave them a C.
But Stanford clearly reports that in reading 75% of Charters are no different or worse than the public schools and in math 71% are no different or worse. This is evidence that if the public thinks charters are better, then they have been fooled—proof that the lies from the corporate reformers have been spreading through 90% of the traditional media that they own are working.
There is another question about grading the schools nationally—I think the previous question already answered that because all of those local schools add up to the nation’s schools and it’s more accurate to judge the schools you know than those you don’t know.
Asking Americans to grade schools nationally is a ridiculous question, because how can anyone grade schools their children have never attended and the parent never attended—did they base the grade on what they heard or read in the media, in other words, the propaganda of the corporate reform movement that the public schools are failing? How is this different from asking someone to judge brands of cars they have never driven or restaurants they have never eaten in?
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I don’t much care for polling data since, as you point out, most people don’t have experience with what they’re voting for or against.
I do care about data, but since I really only think charters should be in urban areas, I think the newer CREDO data on that is more important than the national data. See http://urbancharters.stanford.edu/download/Urban%20Charter%20School%20Study%20Report%20on%2041%20Regions.pdf.
Yes, charter students are a small percentage nationally, but that doesn’t stop critics from trying to close them.
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This critic says don’t close them—just stop giving them public funds. Let Bill Gates, the Koch brothers, the Walton family and those hedge fund billionaires support them financially.
Take the profit out of corporate Charters and put everyone who works for those so-called superior Charters on the same pay scale that the public schools have in addition to make sure that the cost of administration is the same average as the public schools and that’s 10% of the funds that go to support education.
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They are public school kids and deserve public funds just like any others.
I agree that there shouldn’t be for-profit charters, but the best in the country are not.
My school pays teachers more than traditional public schools. Would we have to lower that under your plan? Also, our administrative cost is about the same as the local district, which is amazing considering we run a single school vs. their district. Apparently there are no economies of scale.
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I’m not sorry, John, to call your thinking CRAP. You have ignored every point I made and the evidence I provided to support those points.
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“I think it’s pretty clear he was implying that Woodland Hills didn’t take NYS tests.”
..and I think it’s pretty clear that facts — what Cala actually said (as opposed to what you thought he said) don’t mean anything to you.
…which makes your above statement about “evidence” rather hilarious.
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John,
Pritzker-Goldman Sachs-social impact bonds, worth a read.
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Old Teacher, SomeDAM Poet, Lloyd Lofthouse and Linda: I think you will agree that I need to take a firm stand.
We have a winner for a non-existent award.
The proof? Taking straw man arguments from, not the 13th to the 90th percentile [rheeally!], but literally all the way to the extreme right of that [in]famous Bell Curve. Credit [?] where credit is due.
“Man is the only kind of varmint sets his own trap, baits it, then steps in it.” [John Steinbeck]
And they say miracles don’t happen nowadays.
😎
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Lloyd,
You expressed your opinion and I expressed mine. You offered some older studies that I am quite familiar with. I offered a newer one from the same source that you chose not to comment on.
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What newer study?
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The CREDO urban charters study that I linked to above. http://urbancharters.stanford.edu/
BTW, despite you calling my comments CRAP, I actually liked your book ;-).
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Are those real gains over the 2013 study or are they becasue of “Suspensions at city charter schools far outpace those at district schools, data show”.
Overall, charter schools suspended at least 11 percent of their students that year, while district schools suspended 4.2 percent of their students. The charter-school suspension rate is likely an underestimate because charter schools don’t have to report suspensions that students serve in school.
http://ny.chalkbeat.org/2015/02/23/suspensions-at-city-charter-schools-far-outpace-those-at-district-schools-data-show/#.VRyjoPnF-no
In other words, the Charters are getting rid of as many children as possible—this trend has been reported before a number of times—who are challenging to teach and keeping those who are easy to teach and that might explain why I read that Charters have more girls than boys compared to public school—cause and effect. Get rid of the children who drag the scores down and they will rise. All they have to do is keep plucking out the most challenging students and send them back to the public schools.
Thanks for reading my books.
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Lloyd,
If you dismiss every study you disagree with, there’s no sense in reading them.
Yes, suspensions are generally higher at charter schools. You equate this with “charter schools getting rid of as many children as possible”. I acknowledge that suspensions can cause some kids to withdraw, but suspensions are not the same as expulsions.
Also, suspensions may well be part of why the charters in this study do better, as lack of consequences for bad behavior lead to more of it, plus disrupted classrooms for everyone else.
I don’t think the significant growth in these studies can be dismissed as an anomaly. I might add that suspensions and attrition at charters have been going down year over year while performance has been going up.
I’m not sure at which point traditional educators will take charter results seriously enough to recognize that there is value in students getting 60% more instructional time and giving school leaders more flexibility on how to run their schools. I think we’re getting harder to rationalize away each year.
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What did I dismiss?
The improved numbers you appear to be gloating over in the 2015 Stanford Credo study are no different in their significance than the corporate reformers condemning the public schools because of the total U.S. (misleading) PISA Average—that Stanford also exposed.
http://news.stanford.edu/news/2013/january/test-scores-ranking-011513.html
The 2015 Credo study you refer to is very difficult to read. The previous studies were easier.
For instance, I spent quite a bit of time looking to see if the 2015 Credo would point out the same thing they did in 2013—that the improvements between 2009 – 2013 were mostly caused by worse corporate Charters going out of business, and that the charters that remained didn’t really improve all that much but when the numbers from the worse losers were removed, the rest of the charters looked better than they were.
Did more Charters go out of business continuing the increased performance for those that remained? No mention that I could find that what was significant in 2013 was not a factor in 2015. In fact, why was the 2015 Credo report so difficult to actually read and find specific information in without investing too much time in the effort.
In addition, I couldn’t find anything about suspensions and expulsions that have been reported repeatedly that most Charters handpick their students and get rid of those who don’t fall into line and perform—this cherry picking students through lotteries, suspensions and explosions might help explain the perceived improvements.
The Chicago Tribune revealed this method to improve scores in its, CPS: Expulsion rate higher at charter schools.
http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2014-02-26/news/ct-chicago-schools-discipline-met-20140226_1_charter-schools-andrew-broy-district-run-schools
I also couldn’t find any information on teacher turnover that is very high in corporate Charters.
If you read my memoir s you said, “Crazy is Normal”, then you know that a small number of students (about 5%) are responsible for most classroom disruptions. Get rid of those kids and make an example with them probably means the rest fall into line and start doing what they are told—-again this is something public schools can’t do without approval from the courts. Every child who faces expulsion must have a hearing in the juvenile courts and a judge must agree to the expulsion, and that is something the corporate Charters don’t have to deal with.
Most charters use lotteries to get their students, and the parents of the students that are selected must sign an agreement to provide specific support that the public schools are not allowed to ask for. Public schools can ask for volunteers but can’t force them to sign a binding contract with specific language that spells out how the children will be kicked out of the parents don’t comply.
Again if you read “Crazy is Normal” as you said you did, then you would be aware the female students are usually easier to work with than males and this explains why the 2015 Credo study reported that the Corporate Charters had a larger ratio of female students over males compared to the public schools causing them to end up with a more compliant and cooperative student population.
In addition, if you did read that book, you might also be aware that ESL students are usually easier to work with. It’s the home grown at risk kids who are the most difficult to work with. If given a choice, I’d rather work with ESL students who immigrant ed to the US from poverty than some kid who was born in the U.S. and grew up in poverty in a dysfunctional home and ended up joining a street gang. It was my experience, that the children who were the most difficult to work with usually belonged to street gangs and so did their fathers and uncles and cousins—children the corporate Charters can easily exclude.
You also may have conveniently forgotten what the Stanford CREDO Director said recently:
Free Market Doesn’t Work in Education
in response to a question from the audience nearly at the end of the event, Dr. Raymond dropped this on the crowd: She said she’s a “free market kinda girl”, but after decades of looking at the nation’s charter school sector, she has come to the conclusion that the “market mechanism just doesn’t work” in education. Here;s the podcast from the City Club. Her market comments start at 50:18. Here is the remarkable commentary:
http://www.jointhefuture.org/charter-news/1482-stanford-credo-director-free-market-doesn-t-work-in-education
“Considering that the pro-market reform Thomas B. Fordham Foundation paid for this study and Raymond works at the Hoover Institution at Stanford — a free market bastion, I was frankly floored, as were most of the folks at my table.”
If the 2015 CREDO study was so supportive of corporate Charters, as you seem to think, why would Stanford’s Dr. Margaret Raymond say that in a public forum?
The Washington Post also reported what Dr. Margaret Raymond said:
“This is one of the big insights for me. I actually am kind of a pro-market kinda girl. But it doesn’t seem to work in a choice environment for education. I’ve studied competitive markets for much of my career. That’s my academic focus for my work. And it’s [education] the only industry/sector where the market mechanism just doesn’t work. I think it’s not helpful to expect parents to be the agents of quality assurance throughout the state. I think there are other supports that are needed. Frankly parents have not been really well educated in the mechanisms of choice.… I think the policy environment really needs to focus on creating much more information and transparency about performance than we’ve had for the 20 years of the charter school movement. I think we need to have a greater degree of oversight of charter schools, but I also think we have to have some oversight of the overseers.”
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/wp/2014/12/12/major-charter-researcher-causes-stir-with-comments-about-market-based-school-reform/
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Hey “John” The Troll: How much are they paying you anyway? Tell your benefactors that they’re not getting much for their money…
But, it’s not “the foundations” who are “making money” off of charters; it’s little functionaries and shills and sellouts like yourself, doing it for some combination of ideological obsession and/or “extra income”.
But, for “The Investor Community” you can get your initial investment to double in approximately seven years, “guaranteed by taxpayers” who don’t realize how much of their hard-earned money is being stolen by these “investors” and “executives” affiliated with the scam called charter “schools”.
Want proof? Oh, there’s about ten thousand links out there. Deny it all you want…meanwhile put this in your Paid Troll Pipe and smoke it:
http://video.cnbc.com/gallery/?video=3000109398
http://video.cnbc.com/gallery/?video=3000109398
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Puget Sound Parent,
Your attacks are laughable. I don’t get paid anything by anybody remotely related to school, and in fact have donated a lot of time and hard earned money to my school solely because the kids there deserve better than the district schools in my city, every single one of which is on the failing schools list, some for a decade.
I have no “benefactors”. I could make the same accusation about you, but I won’t because I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt that you won’t give me.
Your understanding of the finances is also laughable. The NMTC you refer to is not guaranteed in any way, and is used to build hospitals, YMCAs, and other buildings besides charter schools in designated low income areas.
It’s amazing to me that you think someone who has a different opinion than you about how to resolve education issues must be paid.
Now, I’ll go out on a limb since you’ve assumed so much about me:
Keep your white privilege and the excellent suburban school that your kids attend, and keep thinking that kids in low performing schools are there because their parents aren’t working hard enough to move to your little community. Your attacks are pathetic and you are *not* a political progressive as you clearly don’t give a damn about students, or least none that aren’t your own or don’t look like you.
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UWlSEDENTQ0
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Reblogged this on Crazy Normal – the Classroom Exposé and commented:
Education “reform,” he says, is not about educating children, it is about money and power.
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As a teacher, I really appreciate baby steps and I think other professional educators should as well. Maybe some people here need to be thrown off your high horses so you can reflect on when you risked your careers, homes, incomes and ability to put food on the table, without tenure or union protections, in order to take a moral stand against corporate education “reform.” Please stop condemning others who have done so, maybe not the way you might like or according to your preferred timeline, but in their own ways and time.
And yes, I would most definitely put my money where my mouth is, if I had any money. I don’t though, since I turned down a job to score PARCC tests last week because I think it is immoral, and I did that even though the federal government has been garnishing my paychecks and taking all of my Social Security, so I teeter on the verge of homelessness. I lost my primary but low paying non-union teaching job last week, too. So in all likelihood, I will become homeless very soon, but at least I will be able to sleep at night on the streets knowing that I had the moral integrity to not sell out children and my colleagues in exchange for personal gain (i.e., basic survival).
No, I don’t think that any single person should have to risk life and limb to save public education in America. Ideally, I’d like to see us collaborating and supporting each other more through this rebellion against the corporate overlords who are ruling our nation, instead of implementing the same kinds of divide and conquer strategies they use on us.
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Re teach 4 America – Thanks!
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I’ve just discovered this blog… I’m totally lost… Can I get a summary of the purpose of the blog?? It seems to be anti common core, anti testing??? If I’m wrong, please correct me.. I would like to make an informed opinion
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As it says up top, this is “A site to discuss better education for all.” If you think Common Core and high-stakes testing were established with the intention of promoting better education for all, you are sorely misguided and should watch the video in the original post, as well as read Diane’s book:
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