Mark Naison reflects on the cheating scandal in Atlanta and the shaming tactics at Success Academy charters and sees them as two sides of the same coin. When test scores become the measure of education, adults will go to extremes to reach the goal, even when it means cheating or child abuse. What it is not is good education.
Archives for the month of: April, 2015
This article is a brilliant essay by Bard College President Leon Botstein about the democratic and civic purposes of education.
It begins thus:
The initial motivations for the movement challenging the monopoly of public schools were ultimately ones of prejudice: White parents did not want their children to attend schools that were attended by blacks. This logic was then sanitized by appeals to religious liberty, insofar as parents fleeing integration attached themselves to religious movements. Evangelicals and observant Jews did not want their children to go to schools that idealized acculturation and assimilation into a secular society whose character promoted “godlessness.” The constituencies that wanted to circumvent integration allied themselves with those who resisted the separation of church and state. And no doubt, since school quality is dependent on local property taxes, the poorer the neighborhood, the worse the schools, making a mockery of the idea that public education was an instrument of social mobility for the disadvantaged. As the quality and extent of a person’s education increasingly determined his or her employment and income, the failures of public education became increasingly glaring, making the defense of public schools implausible.
The end result of these forces has been the elevation of privatization and the abandonment of the ideal of the common public school. Privatization and diversification have become the dominant objectives of school reform.
This is a bizarre turn of events. The nice way of looking at this development is to concede, “Well, privatization is a way we can actually confront the failings of the public schools.” I agree that American schools are not what they might be. But they never were. The reconciliation of excellence and equity was never achieved in the United States, and certainly not after the Second World War, when the rate of high school attendance climbed to 75 percent. But high academic standards had not been their primary purpose. Their purpose was basic literacy (essential for a now-extinct manufacturing economy) and the creation of a common national identity out of diverse groups. Following the glass-half-empty, half-full image, one could argue that the achievements of post-World War II public education were remarkable.
The standards of American schools haven’t fallen if one considers that only after the end of the Second World War did the rate of high school completion surpass 50 percent. Before that, only a minority earned a high school diploma. So the project of attempting to educate 70 percent, 80 percent, perhaps 100 percent of Americans in a single system was never really tried until the 1960s. And even then, when it was about to be actually tried, the public system came under attack, thereby proving that if one wished to make public schools really democratic and excellent, it was going to be very hard indeed.
No other large, heterogeneous industrial nation has ever attempted the American ideal of a unitary democratic school system for all. And now, as the demand for unskilled labor decreases, the minimum standards of education have become higher and more rigorous. But privatization is now popular because many are saying that we ought not attempt to create such a universal democratic system, and that it is a poorly conceived and implausible ideal. Not only that, but the argument goes that since government is widely believed to be notoriously terrible when it comes to providing public goods, it may be better to deliver education through the private sector in a context similar to market competition in commerce.
I happen to think that the privatization of American education and the abandonment of public education is a strike against the very idea of democracy. It favors the rich even more than the recalcitrant inequities created by neighborhoods. And the fact that there is so little opposition to it, particularly among the privileged, is frightening to me. Not surprisingly, if one surveys the philanthropy of hedge-fund owners and Internet millionaires, the favorite charity of the fabled 1 percent is the funding of alternatives to ordinary public schools. That’s the idea every newly minted possessor of great wealth loves: the reduction of taxes—particularly taxes for public education—and the privatization of the American school. It has therefore become fashionable to attack teachers in the public system. Union-bashing is popular. And the unions, in turn, have not distinguished themselves as advocates of educational excellence. But have we ever addressed the question, as a matter of public policy, of who in fact our teachers are? Who now goes into teaching? Who has actually tried to do something to improve the quality of those who take on teaching in public schools as a career? Have we as a nation ever sought to recruit, train, and retain gifted teachers properly?”
Please read it all.
Bloomberg News reports that Rupert Murdoch’s effort to cash in on education is “riddled with failures.”
The education division at Murdoch’s News Corporation is called Amplify; its CEO is Joel Klein. Its biggest contract is in Greensboro, North Carolina. Amplify recalled its first batch of 15,000 tablets in 2013 when chargers melted and screens cracked.
“By the end of June, Murdoch’s News Corp. will have invested more than $1 billion in Amplify, its division that makes the tablets, sells an online curriculum and offers testing services. Amplify, which never set a timetable for turning a profit, has yet to do so. It reported a $193 million loss last year, and its annual revenue represented only about 1 percent of News Corp.’s sales of $8.6 billion.”
“The education effort has been riddled with technology failures, fragile equipment, a disconnect between tablet marketers and content developers, and an underestimation of how difficult it would be to win market share from entrenched rivals such as Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Co. in the kindergarten to high school education market.
“After all of these years of investment, it would really behoove them to show some wins,” said Tim Nollen, an analyst at Macquarie Capital USA in New York who has a “neutral” rating on News Corp. shares. “So far, I haven’t seen any……..”
“Amplify’s experience shows how even the most deep-pocketed new players find it challenging to change the way children are taught. Billionaires such as Microsoft Corp. founder Bill Gates and real estate and insurance investor Eli Broad have expressed frustration their philanthropy hasn’t done more to improve student achievement. Murdoch is discovering his own challenges as he seeks to make a profit from overhauling education — as have other education entrepreneurs before him.”
The school board of the Katy, Texas, Independent School District voted unanimously to eliminate high-stakes testing.
This is a bold and dramatic step in a state that inflicted the “miracle” of high-stakes testing on the nation. Up until now, Pearson and its stable of lobbyists have called the shots.
The Katy school board has bravely demanded a return to common sense and real education, where tests are diagnostic and used to help students, not to label them. I place the Katy, Texas, school board on this blog’s honor roll.
“The Board resolution also calls for state-funded local assessments in lieu of the high-stakes tests. Such local assessments would provide detailed diagnostics that could assist students in their learning. However, these assessments would not be considered high-stakes, nor have any bearing on accountability ratings.”
One of the central narratives of the faux “reform” movement is that poverty is just an excuse for bad teachers. In my book “Reign of Error,” I documented many reformers claiming that poverty can be overcome by high expectations and great teachers. The fact that test scores reflect family income, they say, demonstrates that poor kids are not getting great teachers.
But social science research has demonstrated for decades that poverty hurts children and families. It means less access to medical care, good nutrition, and good housing. It means that families lack economic security, a decent home, and the many advantages that middle-income and upper-income families take for granted.
Now, new studies of brain development are showing that poverty has even deeper effects on children’s health and well-being than previously suspected. The effects of living without the basic necessities of life can damage children’s life prospects. In this age of affluence and austerity, it seems wildly radical to say it, but I will: education will improve if we reduce poverty. Poverty will decrease if the federal government creates real jobs. Real jobs will be created if the federal government invests in rebuilding our nation’s crumbling infrastructure.
The problems of our society should be addressed by action. Demonizing teachers does not help children or improve education.
To learn more, read Bob Herbert’s powerful book, Losing Our Way.
I have sometimes wished it were possible to have a completely candid conversation with a teacher at a Success Academy charter school. Last week, with no advance planning, it happened.*
A young man who is related to me asked if he could introduce me to his friend, Ms. Smith (a pseudonym). He told me she teaches at Success and wanted to meet me. I said, “Of course.”
I had no idea what the evening had in store. I have talked to SA teachers before, always in public, not in the privacy of home, and they were always pleasant, neither boastful nor defensive.
When they arrived, I opened a bottle of white wine and broke open a box of macaroons. “Betty” (that’s not her name either) told me that she had worked at SA for five years. She teaches fifth grade.
What is it like, I asked.
She said she loves the children, but the atmosphere is stifling for both teachers and children. She is looking for another job. Everything is about test scores, and the competitive pressure never lets up. Right now, they are getting ready for the state exams, and signs posted everywhere say “Slam the Exams!”
I asked how long the test prep went on, and she said they have been doing test prep for months. She said the kids would not take spring vacation until the exams were finished.
What’s so bad about test prep, I asked her. She said some of the kids explode or break down. They are very young, and the pressure gets to be too much for them. They might start screaming or crying, and they have to be removed from the classroom until they calm down. The children are assigned a color depending on their test scores, and every classroom posts the names of the children and their color–red, green, blue, or yellow. I forget which is best and which is worst, but the goal is to shame the lowest performing students so they try harder to move up into the next level.
The test prep plus the ” no-excuses” climate of tough and strictly enforced rules unnerves some children, she said. And she felt badly for the children who were humiliated. The harshly competitive environment, she said, was dispiriting and joyless.
What happens with the children who can’t adjust to the highly disciplined demands of the school, I asked. She replied that these children might be suspended repeatedly or their parents or guardian might be called to the school every day. Day after day. Eventually, the child’s parent or guardian will withdraw the child because they can’t afford to miss work every day.
She realized she had had enough. The money was good, she said, but the stress was exhausting. She was also troubled by the non-stop political propaganda campaign. This year, she didn’t get on the bus with thousands of others to go to Albany and demand more money so the chain could expand. She didn’t like the way the children, parents, and teachers were being used as political pawns.
When I told her that none of the eighth grade students who had attended Success Academy had passed the competitive exams to enter the elite high schools of NYC, either last year or this year, she was momentarily surprised. Then, she said, that explains why Success Academy is opening its own high school.
Our conversation continued for more than a hour. It was clear that the scales had fallen from her eyes. She felt certain that the hedge fund managers bankrolling SA charters know nothing about the children, nor do they care about them. They want to win. They want high scores, period. Just like Wall Street. They want to be able to say at cocktail parties and dinner parties that “my school” got higher test scores than “your school.”
Why have you stayed this long, I asked her. I love the kids, she replied. She said someday she hopes to work for a nonprofit that won’t require her to sacrifice her ethics and principles.
*I thought this story was a real scoop, but then Kate Taylor of the New York Times beat me to it with this story.
The final figures for opt outs were released in Montclair, New Jersey. 42.6% of students did not take the PARCC test.
That is quite a protest against Common Core and high-stakes testing, against the Bush-Obama agenda.
The opt-out totals were most pronounced at Montclair High School, where 68 percent of students refused to take the test. In contrast, at the low end of the scale, only 7.5 percent of students at Watchung Elementary School chose to opt-out of the PARCC.
The mayoral election in Chicago is tomorrow. What’s at stake: the future of public education in that city.
The Chicago Teachers Union predicts more school closings if Tahm is re-elected. A major campaign contributor said he should have closed 125 schools, not just 50. This donor, Ken Griffin, is a Republican who also has given to Scott Walker in Wisconsin.
PRESS RELEASE
IMMEDIATE RELEASE
CONTACT: Ronnie Reese
April 6, 2015 312-329-6235
School closings inevitable if Emanuel wins second term
If Rahm Emanuel is re-elected, more school closures could come before moratorium ends in 2018
CHICAGO—Rahm Emanuel’s refusal to seriously pursue any meaningful, progressive revenue solutions for Chicago Public Schools (CPS) funding needs will without question lead to further mass school closings in the city’s most disadvantaged neighborhoods if he wins re-election on April 7. As Emanuel’s economic policies prioritize the financial interests of billionaire campaign donors like Ken Griffin and other big business supporters, at the expense of public education in Chicago, the mayor is making a clear choice to drive the district into even further dire financial straits that he will use to justify additional school closings.
Griffin, one of the top contributors to Emanuel’s re-election campaign and the richest man in Illinois, has accused Chicago’s mayor of being “lackluster” for not closing 125 schools instead of 50, and recently reiterated to the New York Times that the number of closings, which disproportionately affected African American and Latino students and their families, “should’ve been 125.” Griffin also has claimed that the top 1 percent of income earners have too little influence in politics, which is seemingly why he has backed Emanuel with more than $1 million in campaign contributions. As Griffin’s influence on City Hall grows, future school closings are inevitable if Emanuel is re-elected.
“Rahm’s pledge not to close additional schools for five years, which he refused to put into writing or pass into law, will conveniently run out if he wins a second term,” said CTU Vice President Jesse Sharkey. “In Ken Griffin, who is among the top donors to both Emanuel and his friend, Bruce Rauner, he has a billionaire puppet master for whom he’ll have to do a lot of dancing if he is fortunate enough to retain his office.”
In return for Griffin’s generosity, Emanuel has rejected holding the city’s most wealthy accountable for their growing untaxed income while he simultaneously fleeces working class families with regressive taxes. Emanuel also has committed millions of dollars in tax increment financing to one of Griffin’s hotel investments and remains silent on suggestions for a millionaire tax that nearly 2/3 of the state of Illinois voted to support.
In deference to his central contributors, Emanuel has refused to claw back losses from toxic swaps, capital appreciation bonds, TIFs and other forms of predatory finance that will cost the city $3 billion—money that would be better used in meeting pension obligations and expanding city services.
If Griffin himself were taxed at the individual income tax rate before it declined from 5 percent to 3.75 percent on January 1, 2015, his $1.2 billion annual income would have garnered $60 million. That amount alone would have saved 30 neighborhood public schools from closing, according to the Chicago Board of Education’s own calculations. If this same formula was applied to members of the Pritzker family, Grosvenor Capital Management CEO Michael Sacks and other financial titans financing Emanuel’s campaign, there would be substantially more resources available to the district to offset its projected $1 billion shortfall.
“If the mayor had the courage to take on the banks’ toxic swaps for market manipulation, unfair dealing and misinformation—along the lines of what the Department of Justice has done federally—we could recoup nearly $1.2 billion for our schools and the city, eradicating the current deficit,” Sharkey said. “Instead, CPS will face more mass school closings, more layoffs, more losses of retirement security for educators and more students in our already overcrowded classrooms.”
If the district closed the additional 75 schools that Griffin has called for, Emanuel’s handpicked Board of Education would have to layoff approximately 9,000 teachers, which would result in class sizes of 50 or more in most schools. Emanuel has threatened such actions in the past. If Chicago had a mayor who chose the city’s residents, their schools and communities over the interests of wealthy benefactors, the pain and suffering that Emanuel has caused can be avoided in the future.
Emanuel is the bankers’ candidate, for it is the bankers who are most enthusiastic about his willingness to defend their interests. His refusal to hold them accountable is an indication that future budget cuts and school closures are a certainty.
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Readers asked me to post the names of the legislators in the Democratic-controlled State Assembly who voted for and against the New York state budget, which contains one of the worst–maybe THE worst–educator evaluations systems in the nation. It clearly was not created by anyone who ever worked in a school. It clearly was intended to demonize and demoralize teachers and principals. It even includes a provision that teachers will be evaluated by independent persons, recruited from outside their own school, who do a drop-by visit, not only undermining the authority of the principal but asserting the claim that a brief observation by a stranger is a good measure of teacher quality. The system is heavily weighted towards test scores, which has been refuted by the American Statistical Association. In New York, under the new approach, 50% of teachers’ evaluations will be based on test scores; the ASA says that the variance in test scores attributable to teachers is 1-14%.
So for the benefit of those who want to know, I am reproducing the chart of votes in the Assembly, developed by New York BATs and the New York State Allies for Public Education, a coalition of 50 parent and teachers groups:
Kate Taylor of the New York Times got a rare look inside a Success Academy charter school and reported on a stressful, competitive, joyless environment. The photograph that accompanies the story is worth a thousand–or more–words. Little children, walking in straight lines, not a smile in sight. OOPS! THE TIMES REMOVED THE PHOTOGRAPH THAT WAS POSTED WITH THE ORIGINAL STORY. IT SHOWED TWO ROWS OF CHILDREN IN UNIFORMS, LOOKING DEPRESSED AND GLUM. IN THE WHOLE GROUP, THERE WAS NOT A SINGLE HAPPY FACE. WHEN THE STORY APPEARED IN PRINT, THE PHOTOGRAPH WAS GONE, REPLACED BY CHEERFUL CLASSROOM SCENES.
Its founder, Eva Moskowitz, now has 43 schools in her chain; with Governor Cuomo’s help, she will soon have 100. The goal of her schools is high test scores, and she gets them. Whatever it takes, including humiliating children in front of their peers. That works. Not every one can deal with the stress. Not even teachers. Teacher turnover is high.
In a rare look inside the network, including visits to several schools and interviews with dozens of current and former employees, The New York Times chronicled a system driven by the relentless pursuit of better results, one that can be exhilarating for teachers and students who keep up with its demands and agonizing for those who do not.
Rules are explicit and expectations precise. Students must sit with hands clasped and eyes following the speaker; reading passages must be neatly annotated with a main idea.
Incentives are offered, such as candy for good behavior, and Nerf guns and basketballs for high scores on practice tests. For those deemed not trying hard enough, there is “effort academy,” which is part detention, part study hall.
For teachers, who are not unionized and usually just out of college, 11-hour days are the norm, and each one is under constant monitoring, by principals who make frequent visits, and by databases that record quiz scores. Teachers who do well can expect quick promotions, with some becoming principals while still in their 20s. Teachers who struggle can expect coaching or, if that does not help, possible demotion.
Nothing matters but test scores on the state test. Two successive cohorts of eighth-grade students have applied for entry to New York City’s selective high schools, like Bronx Science and Stuyvesant, and not one was able to pass the admissions test despite years of test prep.
Jasmine Araujo, 25, who joined Success through the Teach for America program, quit after half a year as a special-education teacher at Success Academy Harlem 3. She now teaches at a charter school in New Orleans. “I would cry almost every night thinking about the way I was treating these kids, and thinking that that’s not the kind of teacher I wanted to be,” Ms. Araujo said.
If test scores matter more to you than anything else, this is the place to send your child.
Diane Ravitch's blog 