Archives for the month of: June, 2015
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An Important Video About the Corporate Raid on Public Education

By dianeravitch
June 22, 2015 //
2

Film-maker Brian Malone has just completed a major documentary about the corporate raid on public education. Get a copy and host a viewing for your friends.

 

Anthony Cody reviewed the film here and says it is an eye-opening expose of the big money that is trying to privatize public education.

 

Cody writes:

 

A new documentary will be released in community-based screenings across the country on August 14th. This film could provide a powerful boost to local efforts to organize resistance to the corporate takeover of public schools. It is called Education Inc, and it tells the tale all too familiar to many of us – that of the drive to privatize one of the few public institutions left in our withering democracy.

 

If you are frustrated by what you see happening in your local schools, if your school board is beset by billionaire-sponsored candidates, and charter schools are starving neighborhood schools of funding, this film might give you a much needed rallying point. The film’s creator is making it available for community showings, and is building for a one-day national release on August 14. A film showings can provide a focal point that brings people together and inspires further actions…..

 

But first, a bit of background on this story. I met Brian Malone a couple of years ago, when some parent activists brought me to Douglas County, Colorado, to talk about what was happening with corporate education reform. It was just a week or two prior to a major election that pitted those who supported public schools against a pro-privatization slate backed by ALEC and big money from outside of the area. There was all sorts of skullduggery in this election. The District used taxpayer funds to commission a pseudo-academic “white paper” by the head of the American Enterprise Institute, Rick Hess. His paper, and accompanying blog post, described Douglas County as “the most interesting district in America,” because it was a wealthy district experimenting with school choice. This paper was released in the middle of the campaign, and put a rosy glow on the candidates who supported this approach. It came out later that the school district paid Hess and his co-author $30,000 for their praise.

 

This money was just the tip of a much bigger iceberg that threatens to sink public education in communities across the country.

 

Brian Malone writes:

 

“Friday, August 14th, 2015

 

“American public education is in controversy. As public schools across the country struggle for funding, complicated by the impact of poverty and politics, some question the future and effectiveness of public schools in the U.S.

 

“For free-market reformers, private investors and large education corporations, this controversy spells opportunity in turning public schools over to private interests. Education, Inc. examines the free-market and for-profit interests that have been quietly and systematically privatizing America’s public education system under the banner of “school choice.”

 

“Education, Inc. is told through the eyes of parent and filmmaker Brian Malone, as he travels cross-country in search of the answers and sources behind the privatizing of American public education, and what it means for his kids. With striking footage from school protests, raucous school board meetings and interviews with some of the most well known educators in the country, Malone zooms out to paint a clear picture of profit and politics that’s sweeping across the nation, right under our noses.

 

“Education Inc.

 

National Grass Roots Screening

 

Friday, August 14th, 2015

 

“Be part of the national movement to open up the conversation of outside money behind education reform.

 

“Host your own house party. Rent out a community center. Show the movie and then have an open and honest conversation about school reform and all of the dark money behind it.

 

“Get your DVD here!”

 

http://edincmovie.com/

Brian Malone
Malone Media Group

Categories Corporate Reform, Education Industry

Stephen Dyer: How to Protect Failing Charters from Accountability

By dianeravitch
June 22, 2015 //
6

Lets face it. The Ohio legislature and Governor John Kasich protect failing charter schools from any accountability. Could large campaign contributions have anything to do with it?

Stephen Dyer reports the latest gambit.

he writes that:

“The worst-performing general education schools in the state — E-Schools — are not being counted by the state when they calculate the performance of sponsors. SO, for example, even though the Ohio Council of Community Schools sponsors two of the worst-performing schools in the state — the Ohio Virtual Academy and David Brennan’s OHDELA, the astounding number of Fs those schools get on the state report doesn’t count for OCCS’s rating. So the state says they’re academically perfect, even though OCCS gets $1.5 million in taxpayer money to oversee these schools.

“The other schools not counted? Dropout Recovery schools. So the schools David Brennan earns his money on aren’t counted on sponsor ratings? So that means that no sponsor should fear oversight of a horrible White Hat school, especially now that they’ll only be online schools or dropout recovery schools, because they won’t count.

“Amazing what $4 million will buy you these days, isn’t it?”

Remember: it’s all about the kids!

Categories Charter Schools, Ohio

Stephen Dyer: Why Is Charter Magnate Closing His “Best” Schools?

By dianeravitch
June 22, 2015 //
22

Ohio is a happy state for the for-profit charter industry. They make huge profits regardless of school performance.

Stephen Dyer reminds us of the great financial success of David Brennan of White Hat, the state’s largest charter chain.

“Now we know what White Hat Management is all about. There was always a pretty strong indication that White Hat was about making money, not educating children.

“After all, when you get exactly 1 A on a state report card and have 72 opportunities to get an A, you’re probably not in the game for the same reasons most educators are.

“When you’ve collected more than $1 billion in taxpayer money without having to make a single appearance before a legislative committee, as White Hat founder David Brennan has been able to do, you’re probably not in the game for the same reasons most educators are.

“When you contribute more than $4 million to politicians, you’re probably not in the game for the same reasons most educators are.

“But then we got the news last week that Brennan’s White Hat Management was going to sell off their least profitable, “highest performing”, and most at-risk for closure schools to a group run by K12, Inc.’s founder Ron Packard. That’s right, the same guy who gave us the Ohio Virtual Academy and all its “success.”

“But White Hat will keep its cash cow online school, OHDELA, which has the worst performance index score of any statewide E-School — and that’s saying something, given how abjectly horrible Ohio’s statewide E-Schools perform. Its performance index score actually dropped more than 4% from four years ago, the only statewide E-School to see such a precipitous drop. Again, that’s saying something.”

Do you think the day will come when legislators will demand real accountabilility from charter operators? When they will stop giving away hundreds of million or billions to failed charter operators?

Categories Charter Schools, Ohio

1984 Arrives Thirty Years Late: Say Goodby to Privacy Forever if This Bill Passes

By dianeravitch
June 22, 2015 //
26

Legislation called “The Student Right to Know Before You Go Act” has been introduced in both houses of Congress. Nice name, no? Don’t you think you should have “the right to know before you go” to a college or university?

 

What it really means is that the federal government will:

 

authorize the creation of a federal database of all college students, complete with their personally identifiable information, tracking them through college and into the workforce, including their earnings, Social Security numbers, and more. The ostensible purpose of the bill? To provide better consumer information to parents and students so they can make “smart higher education investments.”

 

Big Data, the answer to all problems. All you need do is surrender your privacy and become someone’s data point, perhaps the point of sales.

 

Barmak Nassirian, writing on the blog of Studentprivacymatters, warns about the dangers this legislation poses. He wrote originally in response to an article endorsing the legislation by researchers at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, who viewed the invasion of personal privacy as less significant than the need for consumer information about one’s choice of a college or university:

 

First, let’s be clear that the data in question would be personally identifiable information of every student (regardless of whether they seek or obtain any benefits from the government), that these data would be collected without the individual’s consent or knowledge, that each individual’s educational data would be linked to income data collected for unrelated purposes, and that the highly personal information residing for the first time in the same data-system would be tracked and updated over time.

 

Second, the open-ended justification for the collection and maintenance of the data (“better consumer information”) strongly suggests that the data systems in question would have very long, if not permanent, record-retention policies. They, in other words, would effectively become life-long dossiers on individuals.

 

Third, the amorphous rationale for matching collegiate and employment data would predictably spread and justify the concatenation of other “related” data into individuals’ longitudinal records. The giant sucking sound we would hear could be the sound of personally identifiable data from individuals’ K12, juvenile justice, military service, incarceration, and health records being pulled into their national dossiers.

 

Fourth, the lack of explicit intentionality as to the compelling governmental interest that would justify such a surveillance system is an open invitation for mission creep. The availability of a dataset as rich as even the most basic version of the system in question would quickly turn it into the go-to data mart for other federal and state agencies, and result in currently unthinkable uses that would never have been authorized if proposed as allowable disclosures in the first place.

 

This is a bill that conservatives and liberals should be fighting against. Imagine if such a data-set existed; how long would it be before the data were hacked, for fun and profit, exposing personally identifiable information about students who had never given their consent? Didn’t the government recently become aware of a massive hack of its personnel records?

 

 

According to the New York Times:

 

For more than five years, American intelligence agencies followed several groups of Chinese hackers who were systematically draining information from defense contractors, energy firms and electronics makers, their targets shifting to fit Beijing’s latest economic priorities.

 

But last summer, officials lost the trail as some of the hackers changed focus again, burrowing deep into United States government computer systems that contain vast troves of personnel data, according to American officials briefed on a federal investigation into the attack and private security experts.

 

Undetected for nearly a year, the Chinese intruders executed a sophisticated attack that gave them “administrator privileges” into the computer networks at the Office of Personnel Management, mimicking the credentials of people who run the agency’s systems, two senior administration officials said. The hackers began siphoning out a rush of data after constructing what amounted to an electronic pipeline that led back to China, investigators told Congress last week in classified briefings.

 

How long will a treasure trove of personally identifiable student data remain confidential?

 

If this bill passes, farewell to privacy.

 

 

Categories Data and Data Mining, Higher Education, Privacy and Privacy Rights

Ask the Experts: Valedictorians Speak Out about Common Core

By dianeravitch
June 22, 2015 //
20

Newsday, the major newspaper for Long Island, New York, had the ingenious idea to ask high school valedictorians what they thought of the Common Core standards. Understand that Long Island has some of the best high schools in the state and in the nation. These students have their pick of elite colleges and universities; they are super-smart and super-accomplished. Here are their reactions.

 

 

 

“Simply, I think the Common Core is absolutely terrible,” Harshil Garg, Bethpage High School’s 2015 valedictorian, said. “It suppresses freedom and boxes children into a systematic way of thinking.”

 

Garg said he was concerned that the standards actually stifle innovation and discourage exploration.

 

“Kids are special, because they color outside the lines, and think outside the box, no matter how preposterous their ideas may seem,” he said. “To restrain that inventiveness at such an early age destroys the spark to explore.”

 

Some of the valedictorians drew from their experiences with younger students who have been more directly impacted by the implementation of Common Core.

 

“I tutor a few elementary and middle school aged students and the transition has been pretty hard on them,” said Emily Linko, valedictorian of Hauppauge High School’s Class of 2015. “All the effects I’ve seen have been negative.”

 

Another tutor, Rebecca Cheng, Smithtown High School West’s valedictorian, said she does see the purpose and potential benefit of Common Core, but is still against it.

 

“It closes your mind and forces kids to think in one particular way,” said Cheng, who tutors third and fifth graders. “There isn’t just one way to solve a problem, and it almost hinders the ability to solve a problem on your own.”

 

Kacie Candela, a private math tutor and valedictorian of H. Frank Carey High School, said the curriculum itself is good, but the roll out was botched.

 

“You can’t build a building without a solid foundation, and students just don’t have the knowledge base to do well,” Candela said. “Schools should have adopted it gradually.”

 

Watching his 6-year-old brother embrace the new standards, Vincent Coghill, Massapequa High School’s valedictorian, said he, too, can see a positive side to the Common Core’s approach to learning.

 

“I’ve seen him solve math problems in so many different ways, but it seems as though he has a better understanding of what is being taught,” he said.

 

Still, Coghill said he opposes the initiative, because he feels “uncomfortable” with federal government intervention into education, which he said should remain a “state priority.”

 

Hailey Wagner, Bellport High School’s valedictorian, agreed with Coghill, saying the federal government has no business dealing with a state matter like education.

 

And Alex Boss, valedictorian of Rockville Centre’s South Side High School, said politicians should stay out of the process altogether, stating: “Education should be left to teachers and parents, not legislators.”

 

Central Islip High School valedictorian Radiyyah Hussein finds herself somewhere in the middle of the debate.

 

“I like the fact that it is challenging and forces children in school to do more critical thinking,” she said. ” … However, I don’t like how much agonizing work has to go into solving simple problems or questions.”

 

She added, “If we want a more progressive world, we need ways for kids to figure things out in an easier and quicker fashion.”

 

Tyler Fenton, valedictorian of Plainview-Old Bethpage John F. Kennedy High School, had smiliar thoughts, acknowledging that students learn in their owns ways and also at their own pace.

 

Fenton said it’s “unrealistic” and “unfair” to hold everyone accountable to the same standards, and trying to causes “unnecessary stress and anxiety among kids.”

 

And Natalie Korba, valedictorian of Walter G. O’ Connell Copiague High School’s graduating class, said Common Core just puts too much emphasis on exams.

 

“Teachers are being unfairly judged on student performance and students are suffering as they are crushed under the pressure of standardized testing,” she said.

 

Korda added, “School should be about learning life skills and gaining knowledge, not about learning how to take a test.”

Categories Common Core, Education Reform, Students

Teacher Andy Goldstein Denounces Florida’s Devotion to High-Stakes Testing

By dianeravitch
June 22, 2015 //
13

Teacher Andy Goldstein greets the new superintendent of Palm Beach County with a brief lecture about the evils of high-stakes testing.

 

In Palm Beach County and in Florida, he says, the basic ideology is “Testing is teaching.”

 

Watch the video, where he explains that the purpose of all this testing is to label schools as failures so they can be privatized and turned into profit centers.

 

He predicts:

 

“At this rate, I can imagine the day in the not-too-distant future when my daughter comes home and tells my wife and I, ‘I want to be a standardized test-taker when I grow up.’ And my wife and I would beam at her and say ‘Oh, we’re so proud of our little data point. You’re gonna make some rich plutocrat so happy.’”

 

 

Categories Charter Schools, Corporate Reform, Florida, For-Profit, Standardized Testing

The Poet Laureate of Columbia, South Carolina, Writes About the Charleston Massacre

By dianeravitch
June 21, 2015 //
19

The poet laureate of Columbia, South Carolina, is Ed Madden. Does your city or town or village have a poet laureate? It should.

Madden read this poem at a rally on Saturday. There is nothing like a poem to get to the heart of the matter.

“When we’re told we’ll never understand”

Someone says a drug-related incident,
someone says he was quiet, he mostly kept to himself,
someone says mental illness,
someone says a hateful and deranged mind,
someone says he was a loner, he wasn’t bullied,
someone says his sister was getting married in four days,
a newsman says an attack on faith,
a relative says his mother never raised him to be like this,
a friend says he had that kind of Southern pride, strong conservative beliefs,
someone says he made a lot of racist jokes, but you don’t really take them seriously like that you don’t really think of it like that,
someone says he wanted to start a civil war,
he said he was there to kill black people,
the governor says we’ll never understand.
*

He is not a lone wolf,
he is not alien,
he is not inexplicable,
he is not just one sick individual,
he is one of us,
he is from here,
he grew up here,
he went to school here,
he wore his jacket with its white supremacist patches here,
he told racist jokes here,
he got his gun here,
he learned his racism here,
his license plate sported a confederate flag here,
the confederate flag flies at the state capitol here,
he had that kind of Southern pride,
this is not isolated this is not a drug incident,
this is not unspeakable (we should speak,
this is not unthinkable (we should think),
this is not inexplicable (we must explain it),
he is not a symbol he is a symptom,
he is not a cipher he is a reminder,
his actions are beyond our imagining,
but his motivation is not beyond our understanding
no he didn’t get those ideas from nowhere.

mental illness is a way to not say racism
drug-related is a way to not say hate
loner is a way to not say one of us
we’ll never understand is a way to not say look at our history

Look away, look away, look away [to be sung]

Ed Madden
20 June 2015

Categories South Carolina

Protest Against Pearson in Portland, Oregon, on Tuesday

By dianeravitch
June 21, 2015 //
12

The BATs of Oregon and Washington State are joining together to protest Pearson and high-stakes standardized testing on Tuesday. The timing is right since the Oregon Legislature just passed a bill allowing parents to opt their children out of state testing, and Governor Kate Brown is deciding whether to sign it (and the corporate privatizers are rallying to persuade her to veto). Help the parents and children by contacting Governor Brown; from her bio, she seems to be genuinely concerned about children and families. If she is, she will sign the legislation.

 

 

Join the Oregon and Washington State BATs Protest Pearson in Portland
#Tested2Death Rally June 23rd
Meet at Shemanski Park (Portland, Oregon) 10:30 a.m. then march to Hilton Executive Tower
Rally will be from 11 a.m.-1 p.m.

Categories Opt Out, Oregon

Hot Rumor! Will Chris Cerf Replace Cami Anderson in Newark?

By dianeravitch
June 21, 2015 //
7

Bob Braun reported it first, and Jersey Jazzman tells the rest of the story: The hot rumor in New Jersey is that Cami Anderson will resign as the state-appointed Superintendent of the Newark Public Schools and be replaced by Chris Cerf, who most recently worked for Joel Klein at Rupert Murdoch’s Amplify and before that was State Superintendent for New Jersey (who appointed Cami Anderson). It is a tight little circle.

 

Why would Cerf leave Murdoch’s Amplify? Murdoch’s $1 billion investment earned only $15 million in the first quarter. Amplify is cutting costs and laying off employees, and apparently Cerf lost his chair in the game of musical chairs.

 

Bob Braun writes:

 

Rumors of her impending resignation have been echoing throughout the school system for the last few weeks–sparked primarily by her apparent decision to empty her office. Employees at 2 Cedar Street have said her office has been empty for days. Cerf’s departure from Amplify Insight fed the rumors.

 

Still, there has been no confirmation from Trenton and the last word from Gov. Chris Christie on the subject of Newark is that he is not “changing my opinion.”

 

In the last few days, Anderson also has caved in on significant decisions–to make both East Side High School and Weequahic High School, both iconic institutions in the city, so-called “turnaround” schools.

 

The sources who reported Anderson’s resignation and Cerf’s appointment say they expect a formal announcement Monday or Tuesday. The Newark school board is expected to meet Tuesday night at a regular monthly meeting. Anderson has not attended a public session of the board since January, 2014.

 

No one can say for sure if this will happen, if Cami will resign, if Cerf will be appointed, or if it will make any difference in the state’s determination to charterize the entire district.

 

Newark matters for the nation because it has been under state control for 20 years. Privatizers latched on it as a source of fun and profit. Mark Zuckerberg’s $100 million gift disappeared into the pockets of consultants and entrepreneurs. Cory Booker ascended to the Senate.

 

Newark is a symbol of the corporate reformers’ belief that school districts in urban areas are different: They cannot govern themselves; they must be controlled by the mayor, the governor, an emergency manager, or handed over to entrepreneurs.

 

At the annual conference of the Network for Public Education, Jitu Brown of Journey for Justice called this neocolonialism. In her book Charter Schools, Race and Urban Space: Where the Market Meets Grassroots Resistance, Kristen Buras describes the process of privatization thus: First the state (controlled by the white majority) underfunds the majority-black district; political leaders condemn the district as failed and corrupt; then the state determines that it must take charge of the district (in this case, New Orleans); the state changes the rules for declaring “crisis” and “failure,” and turns large numbers of public schools into charter schools, run by white entrepreneurs; the white leadership hires black spokesmen to celebrate the success of privatization; as control shifts from the black majority in the district to white entrepreneurs and privatizers in the state capitol, hundreds of millions of dollars flow freely to the new charter schools to prove that privatization works. With control of the state department of education, the corporate reformers own the data, and no one has independent data to challenge their claims. And that is what Jitu Brown calls “neocolonialism.”

Categories Charter Schools, Corporate Reform, Newark, Privatization

Meet Jesse Turner in NYC on 6/24

By dianeravitch
June 21, 2015 //
5

Press Conference June 24, 2015 at 3:00 pm, City Hall Steps, Néw York City

Justice, Not Just Tests

Jesse Turner, Walking from Connecticut to Washington, D.C.

With Councilman Danny Dromm

Jesse “The Walking Man” Turner is walking from Connecticut to Washington D.C. this summer to protest the education malpractice that is demoralizing parents and teachers, and turning our children into human capital. It is a grassroots campaign to connect the dots across states and bring awareness to the testing abuse that is demoralizing children and their teachers. Jesse, a professor of literacy at Central Connecticut State University, is holding Walking Man Events along the way in people’s homes, libraries, coffee shops, churches, and on street corners, to gather evidence from parents, students, and teachers.

Jesse will hold a press conference with Councilman Danny Dromm on the NYC City Hall steps at 3:00 on June 24, 2015. He will be joined by representatives of Change the Stakes and several other organizations concerned with the quality of our public schools.

Why I Walk?

1. I am a Professor of Literacy and everything I know professionally informs me what is happening to our children in the name of education reform is child abuse.

2. Because Moses walked, because the Cherokee walked, because the Navajo walked, because Martin walked, and because Cesar Chavez walked. Walking may just be the most potent weapon human beings have against oppression.

3. Because childhood matters.

4. Because children come first.

5. Simple concept: Testing is not
teaching.

6. Top down Education Reforms have always failed.

7. NCLB is the most massive Education Policy failure in the history of public education.

Press contact Rosalie Friend, (718) 965-4074, saveourschoolsnyc@gmail.com, for further information

Categories Resistance, Testing
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