Archives for the month of: May, 2015
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Arthur Camins: The American Dream is about Progress for All, not Dog Eat Dog Competition

By dianeravitch
May 15, 2015 //
27

Arthur Camins writes of our nation’s current misdirection and our failure to dream big dreams.

This is an article I wish I had written. Camins nails the paucity of vision that narrows our goal to individual competition instead of seeking a better life for all Americans.

He writes:

“The United States is suffering through the audacity of small hopes. In the shadow of the Great Recession and after several decades of increasing wealth disparity in the United States, the politically and financially powerful have the audacity to call upon the nation to accept small dreams.

“Nowhere is this more evident than in the pathetically small hope that consequential testing and competition — among parents for entry into charter schools, among schools for students, and among teachers for pay increases — can lead to substantial education improvement and be a solution to poverty.

“There were times when our dreams were big. They can be again. The times demand it. A look back at what values and actions have broadened access to a decent life for all can illuminate a path toward greater equity in the future.
Images of workers on breadlines in the 1930s and of fire-hosed civil rights demonstrators in the 1960s catalyzed moral outrage and direct action leading to big dreams and substantive progress toward equality and equity for all Americans.”

He adds:

“To be clear, it was not the leadership, noblesse oblige or largesse of the powerful that led to improvement in people’s lives in the decades after the Great Depression. Nor was it individuals competing with one another for their personal chance to climb the economic latter. It was the values, vision, direct action, and political pressure of the labor movement- embodied in the song, Solidarity Forever- that pushed legislators to enact a new deal to address the needs of a nation that President Roosevelt called, “ill-housed, ill-clad, ill-nourished…..”

“Maybe the most important historical lesson is that only mass collective action guided by a moral vision will pressure elected leaders to prioritize the interest of the many over the selfish demands of the few. Hence, the claims of the empowered to be leading the charge to reduce poverty through their version of education reform should be taken with a healthy grain of salt. An additional lesson is that while the seeds of past triumphs for greater equality and equity were planted through local action, it was only when community engagement culminated in national legislation or Supreme Court rulings that progress was fully realized and secured.

“Unfortunately, those lessons have been obscured through decades of concerted propagandizing. Purposeful underfunding has reenergized the canard that government cannot be a force for general wellbeing. Once again, states rights, long the thinly veiled defense of segregation, is morally acceptable as political posturing. We need bigger, better hopes and dreams…..

“We can be better than the audacity of small hopes. The next anthem for equity needs to include the unifying theme: We’re in this together for jobs, justice, and equitable education.”

Categories Equity, Justice, Real Education

Bizarre: NY State Tests Harder than NAEP

By dianeravitch
May 15, 2015 //
38

New York State has bumbled into bizarre-O land. Chalkbeat reports that Néw York’s Common Core tests are more difficult than NAEP.

The NAEP tests are supposed to be internationally benchmarked. NAEP proficient is a very high standard that most students have never met (except in Massachusetts, where barely 50% reach proficient).

“In eighth-grade math, 22 percent of students earned what New York state called a passing score last school year, while 32 percent were deemed proficient on the NAEP exams. In fourth-grade reading, 33 percent passed the state test, while 37 percent of students earned a proficient score on the NAEP test. (Massachusetts was the other outlier, with more students earning a proficient score on the eighth-grade math NAEP test than on the state’s own tests.)”

State officials are pleased that their standards are beyond the reach of most students. For some strange reason, high failure rates are a source of pride. Bizarre.

The more they design tests to fail most students, the more the Opt Out movement will grow. When did education fall into the hands of technocratic sadists? They think education is a test of endurance, where only the stirring survive. Parents see education as a process of development, not a cruel race.

Categories Common Core, NAEP, New York, Standardized Testing

Mercedes Schneider Transcribes Yong Zhao’s NPE Speech

By dianeravitch
May 15, 2015 //
2

Mercedes Schneider has transcribed Yong Zhao’s wonderful speech to the second annual conference of the Network for Public Education. This is the last of five posts; it includes links to all the previous transcritions.

If you enjoy the speech, be sure to watch the video (link included), so you can see Yong’s ingenious use of visuals.

Categories International, Network for Public Education, Standardized Testing

International Outcry Against For-Profit Schools Funded by U.S. Philanthropists

By dianeravitch
May 14, 2015 //
54

Over 100 international organizations signed a statement critical of privatization of education in Kenya and Uganda. They specifically criticized the World Bank for endorsing a for-profit chain of schools called Bridge International Academies. According to the statement released today, “BIA is backed by Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, Pierre Omidiyar, and multinational publishing company Pearson, among others. It operates in Kenya and Uganda, with plans to invest in Nigeria, India and other countries. It now has close to 120,000 pupils enrolled in more than 400 schools.” The endorsers of the statement believe these countries need free public education with qualified teachers, not for-profit schools with untrained teachers.

The press release, with links, reads as follows:

Over 100 organisations around the world express deep concerns about the World Bank support for privatisation in education

Press release – 14 May 2015
(Nairobi, Kampala, Washington DC, Brussels)

Today, more than one hundred national and international organisations across the world released a joint open statement addressed to the president of the World Bank, Jim Kim. The statement expresses their deep concerns about the World Bank’s expressed support for the development of a multinational chain of low-fee profit-making private primary schools targeting poor families in Kenya and Uganda, Bridge International Academies (BIA). It comes as a response to a recent speech of the president of the World Bank, Jim Kim, who praised BIA as a means to alleviate poverty.

With signatories including community-based, national, and international organisations, as well as networks and trade unions representing thousands of organisations and millions of individuals in five continents, the statement reflects a growing global movement questioning policies in support for private education in developing countries, including from the World Bank. The statement was written and signed by 30 organisations in Uganda and Kenya, which are the countries primarily affected by the World Bank policy, and received the additional support of 116 organisations.

BIA uses highly standardised teaching methods, untrained low-paid teachers, and aggressive marketing strategies to target poor households, building on their aspiration to a better life to sell them its services.

According to a resident of Mathare, one of the oldest informal settlements in Nairobi, where BIA operates:

“Bridge, they come here, but they don’t understand how things work. They don’t work with other schools, with the community. They just come from door to door to sell their product.”

Nevertheless, the World Bank has invested 10 million dollars in BIA, while on the other hand it has no active or planned investments in either Kenya or Uganda’s public basic education systems.

In his speech delivered earlier in April, Jim Kim claimed that that “average scores for reading and math have risen high above their public school peers” in Bridge International Academies. Yet, the source of the data quoted by Jim Kim has not been disclosed by the World Bank, and it appears to have been taken directly from a study conducted by BIA itself.

The World Bank president further stated that “the cost per student at Bridge Academies is just $6 dollars a month”. This suggestion that $6 is an acceptable amount of money for poor households to pay reveals a profound lack of understanding of the reality of the lives of the poorest. Kenyan and Ugandan organisations have calculated that for half of the population in Kenya and Uganda, spending $6 per month per child to send three primary school age children to a Bridge Academy would cost at least a quarter of their monthly income – whereas these families are already struggling to be able to provide three meals a day to their children.

Moreover, the real total cost of sending one child to a Bridge school may in fact be between $9 and $13 a month, and up to $20 when including school meals. Based on these figures, sending three children to BIA would represent 68% (in Kenya) to 75% (in Uganda) of the monthly income of half the population in these countries.

Salima Namusobya, the Director of the Initiative for Socio-Economic Rights, a Ugandan organisation that also signed the joint statement, said:

“If the World Bank is genuine about fulfilling its mission to provide every child with the chance to have a high-quality primary education regardless of their family’s income, they should be campaigning for a no-fee system in particular contexts like that of Uganda.
The speech from Jim Kim came shortly after members of civil society from several countries, including Uganda, met with senior education officials of the World Bank specifically to discuss its support for fee-charging, private primary schools, and funding for BIA in particular.

It also comes at a time where there is an unprecedented increase in financing of private education across the world, especially in Africa, often with the support of foreign investors. These investments have attracted equally growing criticism, including in a recent report highlighting how the UK government, via its Department for International Development (DfID), supports privatising education and health services. DfID is also an investor in Bridge International Academies.
The organisations’ statement calls on the World Bank in particular to stop promoting and cease investing in Bridge International Academies and other fee-charging, private providers of basic education, and instead to support the free, public, quality education which the laws applicable in Kenya, Uganda, and other countries require.

Notes

BIA is backed by Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, Pierre Omidiya, and multinational publishing company Pearson, among others. It operates in Kenya and Uganda, with plans to invest in Nigeria, India and other countries. It now has close to 120,000 pupils enrolled in more than 400 schools.

Documents

* The statement can be found on http://bit.ly/statementWBprivatisation

* The letter accompanying the statement sent to Jim Kim, and which sums up the arguments made in the statement, can be found on http://bit.ly/letterWBprivatisation

* For more information on privatisation in education and projects currently being run, check http://bit.ly/privatisationproject.

* Follow the hashtag #EducationBeforeProfit on social media

Contacts

David Edwards, Education International Deputy General Secretary, via email: David.Edwards@ei-ie.org or mobile: 0032 473 84 73 61

Education International
Internationale de l’Éducation
Internacional de la Educación

Communications,
Head Office|5 bd du Roi Albert II|1210 Brussels |Belgium
Tel.:+32 2 224
06 11 | Fax: +32 2 224 06 06 | http://www.ei-ie.org

Categories Education Industry, For-Profit, Gates Foundation, Bill Gates, International

G.F. Brandenburg: Escaping All Those “At-Risk” Kids

By dianeravitch
May 14, 2015 //
24

G.F. Brandenburg studied the wait lists at charter schools in D.C., and he discovered that poor kids were fleeing from schools with the kids “at-risk.”

Lesson:

He says, “What we see here is not “No Child Left Behind” but instead ” “Let’s Leave All Those At-Risk Kids Behind”.

Categories Charter Schools, District of Columbia

Los Angeles: Charter Industry Blames Deasy Critic for iPad Mess

By dianeravitch
May 14, 2015 //
20

As regular readers know, this blog posted intensive and critical coverage of the failed iPad fiasco in Los Angeles, thanks to the many Los Angeles friends who forwarded articles and commentary. At a time when the editorial board of the Los Angeles Times continued to defend the commitment of $1.3 Billion for iPads, I questioned the legality of spending voter-approved bond funds dedicated to capital projects on disposable iPads.

Make no mistake: the iPad deal was Superintendent John Deasy’s creation. He said it was a civil rights issue. Anyone who opposed it, in his telling, did not care about civil rights.

Of course, the done deal with Apple and Pearson collapsed when journalists obtained emails showing contacts between Deasy and the winners of the contract well before the bidding. The FBI scooped up many boxes of documents and is still investigating the deal. Deasy moved on and now works for Eli Broad, the billionaire leading the national charge to privatize public education. Broad’s legacy will be: “I tried to destroy American public education…..” And we hope to add these words to Broad’s legacy: “And I failed.”

But don’t forget: the iPad mess was Deasy’s baby.

Now, however, the charter school industry (Deasy’s allies) is attacking school board member Bennett Kayser for approving the iPad deal.

This is the definition of chutzpah. Kayser, a former teacher, is a strong supporter of public education and was a critic of Deasy and an advocate for charter school accountability and transparency. That makes him an enemy of the charter lobby, which raises vast sums to silence critics. Anyone who wants accountability from the charter industry is its enemy.

Kayser’s opponent in the May 19 election, Ref Rodriguez, says he would have been more responsible than Kayser in oversight of the iPad deal. This is laughable since Rodriguez’s charter chain was recently criticized by a state audit for its lax financial practices. Rodriguez is treasurer of his charter chain. He didn’t notice, for example, that the husband of a high-level employee of the chain won a contract for food services, worth millions of dollars. Ref may have many strengths, but financial oversight is not one of them. Given his financial backing by the charter-Broad crowd, he would have been a reliable vote for Deasy.

Don’t forget to vote on May 19.

Vote for Bennett Kayser, dedicated friend of students and public schools.

Categories Los Angeles, Technology, Computers

What Is the Progressive Agenda in Education?

By dianeravitch
May 14, 2015 //
52

In the Washington Post, Katrina vanden Heuvel describes an emerging populist agenda for the nation–and the 2016 election. She is the editor and publisher of The Nation.

It is encouraging to see that the centerpiece of this agenda is a focus on reducing inequality by increasing jobs. Anything that reduces poverty will help children, families, and communities.

It is discouraging, however, to see that the putative progressive agenda offers so little hope to beleaguered public schools, students, and teachers.

This is the purported progressive agenda for education:

“The Basics in Education: Most challenge the limits of our punitive education debate, focusing instead on basic investments in education: universal pre-K, investments in public education and various roads to debt-free public college.”

Not a word about the privatization steam-roller, nor about the attacks on the teaching profession and unions. Nothing about the NCLB-RTTT debacle. Nothing about reversing the federal demands to close schools, to fire teachers, to facilitate data-mining, to promote charters, to accept schools and colleges that operate for profit.

Vanden Heuvel knows better. Her magazine has published some of the most hard-hitting exposes of the corporate assault on public education, such as those by Lee Fang.

We will have to write our own agenda to support public education from the rapacious hands of the profiteers and privateers.

And we will. Starting now. Send me your agenda, one or several, and I will combine them as our platform.

Categories Support for public schools, U.S. education

Peter Greene: Good News! Cancel the Tests Now!

By dianeravitch
May 14, 2015 //
34

Peter Greene reports on a study by Chris Tienken at Seton Hall University, who was able to predict test scores by analyzing demographics. As others have pointed out, standardized test scores are a family wealth/education indicator.

Greene writes:

“In “Predictable Results,” one of his most recent posts, he lays out again what his team has managed to do over the past few years. Using US Census data linked to social capital and demographics, Tienken has been able to predict the percentage of students who will score proficient or better on the tests.

“Let me repeat that. Using data that has nothing to do with grades, teaching techniques, pedagogical approaches, teacher training, textbook series, administrative style, curriculum evaluation— in short, data that has nothing to do with what goes on inside the school building– Tienken has been able to predict the proficiency rate for a school.

[Tienken writes]: For example, I predicted accurately the percentage of students at the district level who scored proficient or above on the 2011 grade 5 mathematics test in 76% of the 397 school districts and predicted accurately in 80% of the districts for the 2012 language arts tests. The percentage of families in poverty and lone parent households in a community were the two strongest predictors in the six models I created for grade 5 for the years 2010-2012.”

“Tienken’s work is one more powerful indicator that the BS Tests do not measure the educational effectiveness of a school– not even sort of. That wonderful data that supposedly tells us how students are doing and provides the measurements that give us actionable information– it’s not telling us a damn thing. Or more specifically, it’s not telling us a damn thing that we didn’t already know (Look! Lower Poorperson High School serves mostly low-income students!!)

“In fact, Tienken’s work is great news– states can cut out the middle man and simply give schools scores based on the demographic and social data. We don’t need the tests at all.”

Categories Standardized Testing

The Most Powerful Education Lobby in Washington, D.C.

By dianeravitch
May 14, 2015 //
8

The industry that has been the most effective in buying protection in D.C, for its predatory practices is the for-profit college industry. It has hired the top lobbyist in both parties. It makes generous campaign contributions. It collects billions from taxpayers to underwrite its behavior. All of this money is used to enrich the industry leaders. Need I add that these institutions are known for predatory practices and for supplying a lousy education.

This article, written by David Halperin and published in The Nation, lays bare the power of this industry and how well it has used its resources to avoid scrutiny of it. The article appeared nearly one year ago.

Now Halperin has published a new article, predicting the end of the predatory colleges. He cites the bankruptcy of mega-chain Corinthian Colleges as a hopeful sign. He thinks that Washington is ready to take them on. Count me cynical. I will believe it when it happens.

Categories Education Industry, For-Profit, Higher Education

Atlantic Monthly Now Funded by Walton

By dianeravitch
May 13, 2015 //
35

Thanks to reader Chiara for this disturbing story:

She writes:

Atlantic Monthly now funded by Walton Family:

“All of which is important context for spotlighting a grant of $550,000 made last year by the leading philanthropic proponent of charter schools, the Walton Family Foundation, to the Atlantic Monthly, a storied magazine that’s been commanding attention from the nation’s educated elite for a century and a half. The grant was made as part of Walton’s effort’s to shape public policy, with the foundation describing its goal in this area as catalyzing a “national movement demanding choice and accountability.”

“That’s funny because we have been told repeatedly there IS a national movement “demanding” choice and accountability. Apparently it needs paid cheerleaders to “catalyze” the public. It’s called “creating demand”.

http://www.insidephilanthropy.com/home/2015/5/11/whats-up-with-that-big-grant-to-the-atlantic-monthly-from-th.html

Categories Walton Foundation
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