Archives for the month of: May, 2015
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Rep. Brian Sims (Pa.) Slams Commonwealth Foundation

By dianeravitch
May 3, 2015 //
14

Most of the time, we engage in covil discourse, even with people whom we know are rigid ideologues whose minds are blted closed. but every once in a while, someone opens a window and yells out, “I’m mad as hell, and I’m not going to take it anymore.” And they say what’s really on their mind.

Rep. Brian Sims did that in Pennsylvania recently. He called out the conservative Comminwealth Foundation after he received a mailing from it. He wrote on his Facebook page:

“See, I already know that you are all racist, homophobic, sexist, classist, ableist, anti-American, bigots whose single driving motivation is to secure the wealth of your multimillionaire donors at the expense of every single working person and family in the Commonwealth. See, I told you I already get it so you don’t need to waste money sending me proof…actually go ahead and waste that money!”

Categories Pennsylvania

A Parody: How Reformers Saved the Schools from Parents

By dianeravitch
May 3, 2015 //
3

Blogger “Lace to the Top” (aka Kevin Glynn) has written a witty parody of life in the age of school reform, as seen by a principal, a parent, and a leader of the Opt Out movement. Glynn is the founder of Lace to the Top, which distributes green laces to members of the resistance.

 

If you don’t know the names of the people mentioned in the parody, they are all (except me) leaders of New York Allies for Public Education (NYSAPE), which led the historic opt out movement in New York.

 

In his parody, most are taken away to jail, deported to other countries, or fined for their insubordination. Carol Burris, the Long Island principal who consistently wrote and spoke against high-takes testing and the Common Core, was fined $100,000 for every article she published on Valerie Strauss’s blog “The Answer Sheet” on the Washington Post website; Valerie Strauss was sentenced to write about alien sightings for the National Enquirer.

 

The number of arrested teachers tells the story of just how damaged the education system in New York was. On Long Island, 70% of the teaching force was fired for their ties to social media groups such as Long Island Opt Out, Lace to the Top, and NYSAPE to name a few.

 

Activity in these groups was deemed unlawful by the recently passed bipartisan bill, “Save Schools from Parents Act.” This bill will guarantee every child will be assessed and eliminate the agendas of negative social media groups that attempt to promote activities that are ruled to be “dangerous to the ideals and beliefs of the American people.” Any families that join these groups or “friend” members of said groups are considered a “threat” to the children in American schools.

 

New charter schools will be created for the children of identified families. One of the interview questions officials have shared will be “Are you or have you ever been a member of the Green Lacer party?”

 

Teach for America has decided to reduce the time required for students to be certified to 45 minutes in order to fill the enormous number of vacancies left by the teachers who refused to obey the directives of the State Education Department.

Categories Humor, Opt Out, Parents, Resistance, Standardized Testing, Teachers

A White Suburban Mom Responds to Arne Duncan

By dianeravitch
May 3, 2015 //
20

Arne Duncan once made an insulting comment about “white suburban moms” who got angry about Common Core tests because they were disappointed to learn that their child was not as brilliant as they believed.

This white suburban mom has written a response to Arne.

Categories Common Core, Duncan, Arne, Parents, Standardized Testing, Testing

Peter Greene on EduShyster’s Interview with Peter Cunningham

By dianeravitch
May 3, 2015 //
15

Peter Greene fell for EduShyster, as everyone does. She can interview anyone, and she interviewed Peter Cunningham. Here’s Peter’s take.

He writes, for starters:

“I have now met Jennifer “Edushyster” Berkshire, and I totally get it. I don’t believe there is a human being on the planet who, upon sitting down with her, would not want to answer every question just to prolong the conversation and once you’re talking, well, lying to the woman would be like kicking a puppy.

“So it makes perfect sense that just about anybody would be willing to talk to her, even if she is on the Pro-Public Education side of the fence.

“She’s just put up an interview with Peter Cunningham, the former Arne Duncan wordifier who now runs Education Post, a pro-reformster political war room style rapid response operation (I knew I’d moved up in the blogging world when they took the time to spank me personally).

“I don’t imagine there are people who read this blog who do not also read Edushyster, but I’m going to keep linking/exhorting you to head over and check out this interview while I note a few of my own responses here.

“There are a couple of eyebrow-raisers in the interview that really underline the differences between the reformsters and the pro-public ed side of these debates. In particular, Cunningham notes that many reformsters feel isolated and under attack. When explaining how Broad approached him about starting EP, Cunningham says

“There was a broad feeling that the anti-reform community was very effective at piling on and that no one was organizing that on our side.

“Organized?! Organized!!?? It is possible that Broad et al have simply misdiagnosed their problem. Because I’m pretty sure that the pro-public ed advocate world, at least the part of it that I’ve seen, is not organized at all. But we believe what we are writing, so much so that the vast majority of us do it for free in our spare time (I am eating a bag lunch at my desk as I type this), and we pass on the things we read that we agree with.

“In fact, it occurs to me that contrary to what one might expect, we are the people using the Free Market version of distributing ideas– we create, we put it out there, we let it sink or swim in the marketplace of ideas. Meanwhile, the reformsters try to mount some sort of Central Planning approach, where they pay people to come up with ideas, pay people to promote those ideas, pay people to write about those ideas, and try to buy the marketplace so that their products can be prominently displayed.

“It is the exact same mistake that they have brought to education reform– the inability to distinguish between the appearance of success and actual success. If students look like they are succeeding (i.e. scoring high on tests they’ve been carefully prepped for), then they must be learning. If it looks like everybody is talking about our ideas (i.e. we bought lots of website space and hired cool writers and graphics), then we must be winning hearts and minds.”

Money can’t buy you love.

Categories ALEC, Broad Foundation, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Privatization, Walton Foundation

EduShyster Interviews Peter Cunningham: Sympathy for Reformers

By dianeravitch
May 3, 2015 //
44

In this interview with Peter Cunningham, EduShyster gains his insights into the current thinking of the billionaire reformers.

 

Peter Cunningham was Arne Duncan’s communications director during Duncan’s first term. In Washington, he was known as “Arne’s Brain.” He is smart, charming, and well-spoken. So far as I know, he was never a teacher, but that is not a qualification these days for holding strong views about fixing the public schools. Cunningham is now back in Chicago. He started a blog called “Education Post,” which was funded with $12 million from the Broad Foundation, the Walton Family Foundation, Bloomberg Philanthropies, and an anonymous philanthropy. Its goal, proclaimed at the outset, was to introduce a more civil tone into education debates and to advance certain ideas: “K-12 academic standards, high-quality charter schools, and how best to hold teachers and schools accountable for educating students.” Translated, that means it supports Common Core standards, charter schools, and high-stakes testing for teachers, as well as school closings based on testing.

 

You might say it is on the other side of almost every issue covered in this blog, as Ed Post praises “no-excuses” charter schools, standardized testing, Teach for America, and other corporate-style reforms.

 

EduShyster asked Cunningham if he feels the blog is succeeding, and he cites Nicholas Kristof’s recent column–admitting the failure of most reform efforts and the need to focus on early childhood programs–as an example of progress. When she pressed him about his “metrics” for “betterness,” he replies:

 

Cunningham: I think that an awful lot of people on the reform side of the fence are thrilled by what we’re doing. They really feel like *thank God somebody is standing up for us when we get attacked* and *thank God somebody is willing to call out people when they say things that are obviously false or that we think are false.* When I was asked to create this organization—it wasn’t my idea; I was initially approached by Broad—it was specifically because a lot of reform leaders felt like they were being piled on and that no one would come to their defense. They said somebody just needs to help right the ship here. There was a broad feeling that the anti-reform community was very effective at piling on and that no one was organizing that on our side. There was unequivocally a call to create a community of voices that would rise to the defense of people pushing reform who felt like they were isolated and alone.

 

EduShyster: That expression you see on my face is incredulity. But please go on sir. I want to hear more about the isolation and alone-ness of people pushing reform. How they are faring today?

 

Cunningham: Take Kevin Huffman. Now you can disagree with him on policy, but he felt like people were waking up everyday and just attacking him on social media. He tried to respond, and he just felt like it didn’t matter. By 2012-2013, Team Status Quo—your label not mine—was very effectively calling a lot of reform ideas into question. I mean look around the country. Huffman’s gone, John King is gone, John Deasy is gone, Michelle Rhee is gone. I’ve created the ability to swarm, because everyone felt like they were being swarmed. We now have people who will, when asked, lean in on the debate, when people feel like they’re just under siege.

 

There is much in this interview that is fascinating, but most interesting to me is that the billionaires, who have unlimited resources were “feeling isolated and alone.” They felt they were “being piled on and that no one would come to their defense.” They needed to hire bloggers to defend them.

 

This is indicative, I think, of the fact that social media is very powerful, and those who oppose the “reformers” own social media. The pro-public education voices are in the millions–millions of teachers, principals, parents, and students. The billionaire reformers hire thousands. Whether you consider the more than 200 bloggers who are part of the Education Bloggers Network, which advocates for public education, or consider Twitter and Facebook, the critics of billionaire-backed reform and privatization are many, are outspoken, and command a huge forum. No wonder the billionaires are feeling lonely and isolated. They can create astroturf organizations like StudentsFirst, Education Reform Now, 50CAN, TeachPlus, Educators4Excellence, and dozens more groups, but it is typically the same people running a small number of organizations and issuing press releases.

 

Is it time to feel sorry for the billionaires?

 

Be sure to read the comments that follow the interview.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Categories Broad Foundation, Charter Schools, Education Reform, Privatization, Standardized Testing, Teach for America, Teacher Evaluations, VAM (value-added modeling), Walton Foundation

Editorial: Time to Hit Reset Button on Teacher Evaluation in Néw York

By dianeravitch
May 3, 2015 //
32

The editorial board of the “Journal-News” in the Lower Hudson Valley calls out the absurdity of Goveror Cuomo’s teacher evaluation plan. The deadline for a new plan is June 30, which is impossible.

They understand why parents are angry at the testing system and the governor:

“Declining morale in neighborhood schools is one big reason that many parents boycotted the state tests. How can Cuomo not see the connection?

“Now our leaders are racing to fix the system, but are likely to make it worse. Cuomo and legislative leaders, as part of their budget agreement, gave the state Board of Regents until June 30 to re-create the evaluation system, setting strict rules that tie the Regents’ hands.
Stop it. It’s time for the Board of Regents to take a stand – and stand up to Cuomo. The board should declare that it can’t slap together a viable evaluation system. New York should keep its current system in place and use at least the rest of 2015 to design a system that would promote classroom instruction and hold teachers accoutable.

“Judith Johnson, the Lower Hudson Valley’s new representative on the Board of Regents, has the right idea. “What the governor has put in place makes no sense,” she said. “If you want a scholarly system, you can’t throw it together in 30 to 60 days. If we ignore the science behind teacher evaluations, it’s just a political decision.”

Does the Board of Regents have the backbone to tell the governor and the legislature that they are wrong? Will they stick to science and turn their backs on Cuomo’s vindictive agenda?

Categories Cuomo, Andrew, New York, Teacher Evaluations

Steven Singer’s Wonderful, Fabulous, Energizing Day in Chicago

By dianeravitch
May 2, 2015 //
2

Steven Singer describes his great time at the annual conference of the Network for Public Education in Chicago, where he ran into bloggers that he knew virtually but not face-to-face.

He felt that sense of exhilaration that almost all of us felt. That recognition that we are not alone, we are a movement. We are everywhere.

He includes photos of himself with his new and old friends.

Categories Chicago, Network for Public Education

Watch Jesse Hagopian and Rita Greene on #BlackStudentLivesMatter at NPE

By dianeravitch
May 2, 2015 //
4

Here is the video of an outstanding discussion at the Network for Public Education conference, featuring Seattle teacher-leader Jesse Hagopian and Rita Greene, education director of the Seattle NAACP.

I was in the audience, sitting next to Jose Luis Vilson. I was lucky to get a seat, as the room was packed, and people were sitting in the aisles and lined up against the back wall.

Jesse explained the racist history of standardized testing, and Rita Greene described why the Seattle NAACP had endorsed the Opt Out movement. She encouraged people to work with their local NAACP, since the national organized was supporting standardized testing.

It was a very important and powerful presentation.

Here is the discussion that followed.

This is your homework assignment! It will be on the test.

Categories Justice, Race, Standardized Testing

Network for Public Education Endorses Helen Gym for Philadelphia City Council

By dianeravitch
May 2, 2015 //
1

The Network for Public Education is very pleased to endorse Helen Gym for City Council in Philadelphia. Helen is a fighter for public education and for social justice. Her passionate and eloquent voice will make a difference when decisions are made. Please send her whatever you can. She has been endorsed by the Philadelphia Inquirer, the city’s major newspaper.

 

 

The Network for Education is proud to join the growing list of organizations endorsing Helen Gym in the Primary Election for a City Council At-Large seat in the city of Philadelphia.

 

NPE President Diane Ravitch has lauded Helen as a hero of public education and an inspiration for us all. When asked about Helen’s candidacy, Diane said she is “a great advocate for children and education. Philadelphia needs her eloquent voice on the City Council.”

 

Helen is the mother of three Philadelphia public school students, a former public school teacher, and a fierce advocate for public education in Philadelphia and beyond. She has been a dedicated community activist for two decades; her work has touched on issues regarding taxation, civil rights, criminal justice, jobs, labor, and neighborhood development. She is a founding member of Parents Across America, and the co-founder of Parents United for Public Education, a nationally recognized group of public school parents advancing broad causes for social justice in the Philadelphia public schools. Helen also serves on the editorial board of Rethinking Schools, a social justice education journal.

 

Philadelphia principal Chris Lehmann, founder of the renowned Science Leadership Academy, said, “Helen Gym has been a champion for the children and the teachers of Philadelphia. She is a tireless advocate who will work to improve public education in our city, and therefore, help Philadelphia become the city we all know it can be.”

 

Not only has she been a fearless advocate for fair funding, bringing national attention to the dire underfunding situation in Philadelphia, she has developed a plan to ensure that going forward the city’s schools have the funds they need without over burdening homeowners. Please read more about her Fair-Share Plan, which will ensure that all Philadelphia students have access to the services such as nurses, counselors, libraries, music, and the arts.

 

Helen also supports less testing in our schools stating, “Tests should be one measure which informs practice. It should not be used as a major measure to evaluate teachers, determine pay, close schools or deny children a diploma or access to a quality education.”

 

And true to form, Helen has backed up her belief with action. When the city recently estimated that only 22% of students would graduate, Helen called for the end of the state’s Keystone exams, which are end of course exams used as a graduation requirement. Helen said, “The School District’s projection of a 22 percent graduation rate when the state and city have failed to adequately meet schools’ needs is an outrage and threatens the future of hundreds of thousands of students in this city.” She added, “No one wins with a testing system destined for failure.”

 

You can read more about Helen’s education policy positions here.

 

Jerry Jordan, president of the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers said, “For Philadelphia’s educators, the choice to endorse Helen Gym for City Council At Large was an easy one. No other candidate possesses Helen’s combination of passion for quality public schools and deep knowledge of education issues.”

 

We urge you to do what you can to ensure Helen is elected to be the champion the children and teachers of Philadelphia so desperately need. Please visit her websiteto donate to her campaign and help spread the word about her candidacy.

 

 

Categories Network for Public Education, Philadelphia

NYC Will Pay $10 Million for Charter School Rent

By dianeravitch
May 2, 2015 //
11

The charter school industry in Néw York City is well-supported by hedge-fund billionaires, but they used their riches and political clout to compel the city to pay the charters’ rent in private space.

When Mayor Bill de Blasio had the temerity to suggest that amply-funded, privately-managed charters should pay rent (based on their ability to pay), the hedge-fund managers poured millions into a TV ad campaign attacking de Blasio and invested millions in Governor Cuomo’s campaign, assuring his loyalty to charters.

What a smart investment for charters, even though it robs the 1 million children who are not enrolled in charters.

“It’s huge,” said Great Oaks Charter School founder Michael Duffy, who became the first school leader to test the nascent law’s limits this summer. Duffy estimates his Lower Manhattan school stands to receive about $300,000 to cover rent for about 109 students in seventh grade this year.
Great Oaks is one of 46 city charter schools in private space that added grades, according to the New York City Charter School Center, and more than 3,600 students from those schools were enrolled in new grades. Most of those schools successfully appealed to the State Education Department for rental assistance over the last several months.”

Duffy ran the city’s charter school office from 2007-2010 when Joel Klein was chancellor.

“But the city’s costs are certain to continue to add up, as more schools open and enrollment increases at expanding schools. Next school year, the charter center’s enrollment projections would put the maximum tab just for expanding schools at $17.8 million.

“One of those new schools, South Bronx Early College Academy Charter School, will be due more than $300,000 for 110 six graders next year, according to the founding principal.

“It’s a heck of a gift,” said the founder, Ric Campbell.

“The city is obligated to spend $40 million to cover rent costs of eligible charter schools if they are not given space inside of a city-owned building, according to the law. Once the bills hit the $40 million ceiling, costs will be split with the state.”

Those hedge-fund managers are very smart. They even figured out how to get the city to pay the rent for their hobby schools.

Categories Charter Schools, New York City
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