Archives for the month of: July, 2015
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Christine Langhoff: Broadie Takeover in Boston

By dianeravitch
July 26, 2015 //
17

Reader Christine Langhoff read a post about Philadelphia’s Superintendent William Hite, a graduate of the unaccredited Broad Superintendent’s Academy, who filled top jobs with other Broadies. Broadies are trained to support charter schools and to close down public schools.

Langhoff reported similar trends in Boston, since the appointment of Tommy Chang as superintendent. In Los Angeles, Chang was in charge of the disastrous technology program. Now, he has surrounded himself with corporate reform types, all either from Broadie groups or Gates groups trained in the corporate reform ideology.

She writes:

Superintendent Tommy Chang, late of LAUSD and the iPad melodrama; his previous school experience was to run a Green Dot charter school with 580 students. He’s Broadie, class of 2015.

He has named Barbara Deane-Williams, also a Broadie 2015, as his Senior Deputy Superintendent of Operations.

His Chief of Staff comes to us from Families for Excellent Schools.

Doannie Tran, the newly-appointed Assistant Superintendent of Professional Learning in BPS comes from TFA and TeachPlus.

At least one new principal was a TFA’er whose classroom experience is quite limited.

And TNTP is hiring – (isn’t that the school system’s job?) :

“Leadership Coach – Boston Public Schools

Boston, MA

Seeking passionate school leaders!
TNTP seeks a full-time Leadership Coach to support school improvement efforts in Boston, MA. This position is available immediately and is based in Boston.” Wondering if they’re bringing their walkie-talkies and bugs for teachers’ ears.

http://chc.tbe.taleo.net/chc02/ats/careers/requisition.jsp?org=THENEWTEACHERPROJECT&rid=1919&cws=1&source=LinkedIn
M

More of the same at the state level – Heather Peske, current Associate Commissioner for Educator Quality in DESE comes through TeachPlus, Education Trust, and Teach for America.

And – oh glee!

“E4E Focus Groups: Educators for Excellence (E4E) is a teacher-founded non-profit that works with teams of teachers to help them make change at the school, district, state, or union level. They are considering coming to Boston and are interested in learning from current BPS teachers: what are the current issues facing Boston teachers? what channels do teachers have to take leadership on issues that matter to them? This is also a chance to learn firsthand about E4E’s model and how it might work here in Boston. Fill out this brief survey to tell me which dates work for you for a 2-hr meeting (dinner/lunch included): http://goo.gl/forms/EHHMRQgHIH”

Stealth takeovers of the public system.

Categories Administrators, superintendents, Boston, Broad Foundation, Massachusetts

Los Angeles: The Charter Empire Strikes Back

By dianeravitch
July 26, 2015 //
67

On Thursday, the Los Angeles Times published an article I wrote (at their request) about what the next superintendent should do. I contended that he/she should be a cheerleader for public schools, should restore confidence in them by reducing class sizes and restoring a full and rich curriculum to every school, especially the arts. I also hoped the next superintendent would audit charter schools regularly and impose a moratorium on their growth (there are more charter students in L.A. than any other city). The superintendent’s mission should be to lead and improve public education, not to abet those who want to privatize it.

The response from the powerful charter industry came swiftly. Accustomed to pouring millions of dollars into school board races to capture control of the district, the charter lobby could not tolerate a direct challenge. Here is its response. The charter champion insisted that I was “polarizing” the situation by standing up for public education and opposing privatization.

Last October, KIPP announced plans to more than double its enrollment, from 4,000 to 9,000. Moody’s, the bond rating service, reacted by saying that the KIPP expansion would have a negative impact on the LAUSD bond ratings. This article, specifically about Los Angeles, reflected a warning by Moody’s in 2013 that charters posed a significant risk to some older urban districts because competition weakened the district by drawing away students and resources.

Categories Charter Schools, Los Angeles

Steve Nelson: The Beatings Will Continue Until Morale Improves

By dianeravitch
July 26, 2015 //
55

Steve Nelson, head of a progressive private school in Néw York City, writes vividly and cogently about the inevitable failure of so-called reform.

The corporate reforms fail because they are built on extrinsic motivation, that is, a regime of carrots and sticks to drive teachers and students to comply with reformers’ demands.

Extrinsic methods tend to depress motivation. People resent being compelled, and they lose the desire to do what they would have willingly done without the whip hand over them.

Intrinsic motivation, by contrast, brings out the best in people.

Nelson writes:

“Intrinsic motivation is driven by factors that emanate from within: Self-satisfaction, desire for mastery, curiosity, fulfillment, pleasure, self-realization, desire for independence, ethical needs, etc. Intrinsic motivation is a powerful innate characteristic of all humans, across cultures and societies. Anyone with children or working with children observes the natural intrinsic motivation of young children – a nearly insatiable curiosity, drive to explore, and desire for mastery.

“A considerable body of research confirms that intrinsic motivation is more powerful, long lasting and important. But intrinsic motivation steadily declines from 3rd grade until 8th or 9th grade as extrinsic structures dramatically increase. The stakes get higher. Tests increase in frequency and duration. Expectations around college and achievement ratchet up. Grade point averages, honor roles, valedictorians, salutatorians, class ranks, honor societies . . . all of these forms of extrinsic motivation are ubiquitous.”

As Jerome Bruner points out, “learning becomes steadily de-contextualized as children move from grade to grade. As school becomes more controlled, more about instruction than exploration, more about abstraction than experience, children’s natural intrinsic motivation declines. The learning is unrelated to their lives. Why would they care?”

Nelson concludes:

“Students and teachers are being subjected to increasingly punitive extrinsic structures: Scores, grades, evaluations, assessments, punishments, discipline, rigidity, standardization, absence of context, divorced from individual experience.
All the factors that stimulate and perpetuate intrinsic motivation are disappearing.

“To say education reform has it wrong is a monumental understatement. Policy makers and educational reformers seem hell bent on beating students and their teachers until their morale improves.

“That’s just stupid.”

Categories Corporate Reform, Merit pay, Teacher Evaluations, Testing

Parents Across America Decries Test Abuse

By dianeravitch
July 25, 2015 //
13

Parents Across America has gathered documentation of the stress suffered by children due to the overuse and misuse of standardized tests.

“Parents Across America has gathered extensive evidence of an alarming
upsurge in student test-related stress, along with information that
prolonged stress is abusive, actually undermines learning, and may be
harming our most vulnerable children the most.

“PAA has taken the position that we must attack the cause of this problem
— the misuse and overuse of standardized tests — rather than expect
our children to simply deal with test pressure that we never had to
face.

“Position statement:

Click to access Test-Stressposition7-25-15final.pdf

One-page fact sheet: Test Stress and our Children:

Click to access Test-Stress-7-25-15final.pdf

“Documentation paper:
http://parentsacrossamerica.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/Test-Stress-Documentation-7-23-15final.pdf”

For more information please contact Julie Woestehoff,
JulieW@parentsacrossamerica.org

Categories Parents, Standardized Testing

The Good Michelle Rhee

By dianeravitch
July 25, 2015 //
51

In the previous post, I recounted the various health issues I dealt with this past year, but I left out one. A few months ago, I learned that I had cataracts in both eyes. I had to have them operated on, one month apart, this summer (as Bette Davis supposedly said, growing old is not for sissies.)

I called around in search of a highly respected eye surgeon. With some trepidation and much hilarity (cue the nervous laughter), I settled on Dr. Michelle Rhee of Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City. She seemed very professional and skilled when I met her.

The first surgery is over. My left eye is healing well. Thank you, Dr. Rhee.

One of life’s little ironies.

Categories Personal, Rhee, Michelle

An Update on My Health

By dianeravitch
July 25, 2015 //
82

Stop here if you are bored with hearing people of a certain age talking about their health. That’s what I’m going to do.

In April 2014, I tripped coming down the steps outside my house and landed on a flagstone on my left knee. I had a ripping sensation and knew it was bad. The surgeon said I had torn my miniscus and ACL and needed a total knee replacement.

Two weeks later, I went to the University of Louisville to receive the Grawemeyer Award. I used a walker but managed to hobble to the podium without it.

On May 9, I had the surgery. Surgery is especially complex for me because I am on blood thinner and always at risk of bleeding too much or (without the blood thinner) clotting. Before the surgery, they took me off the blood thinner and started it as soon as the surgery was over.

The rehabilitation and physical therapy were intense over the summer, but no matter how hard I worked, I couldn’t straighten my leg. I switched physical therapists, and the new one–Karen Yanelli of M.Y.P.T.–was spectacular. She told me that my knee was encased in scar tissue. It is a condition called arthrofibrosis. She told me I had to go to Dr. Frank Noyes in Cincinnatti, at Mercy Hospital. He literally wrote the book on this condition.

I was fairly desperate. I was afraid I would be permanently disabled, and I was deeply depressed, feeling hopeless. I was willing to go anywhere, try anything. My neighbor on Long Island, Dr. Roxana Mehran, a reenowned cardiac researcher, spent an hour giving me a pep talk. She was my guardian angel. She persuaded me that I had to take any path that would help. She gave me the strength to persevere.

I flew to Cincinnatti with Mary, my partner, and met Dr. Noyes. He opposed further surgery, as I might get more scar tissue. Instead, his staff forced my leg straight with strong (excruciating) physical pressure and built a fiberglass cast while my leg was forced straight. They cut the cast open, lined it with cotton, and told me to wear it for 12 hours a day, wrapped tight with a giant Ace bandage.

After seven weeks, I did not need the cast anymore. My leg was straight and I could walk! I was so happy!

Just a few limitations. Often, it is difficult to get out of a car or rise from a chair or walk up or down stairs. Not painful, just difficult and uncomfortable. I feel like I am walking on stilts. In other words, I am fragile. I am frightened of stumbling, tripping, or having a little kid on a bike run into me on the sidewalk. I would topple over. I fell once. I was walking Mitzi, our dog, about 10 pm in a small city park, and a rodent ran in front of us. Mitzi took off in hot pursuit, and I was determined not to let go of her (she weighs 70 pounds). I went sprawling on the ground, but it was soft, I didn’t let go of Mitzi. I managed to fall flat without injuring the knee.

I am feeling much, much better. I am not depressed anymore. I know that I have a permanent disability, and I can deal with that. I can’t run, I can’t walk fast, I can’t walk long distances. But I can walk. I have recovered from an ordeal, and I am grateful to all those who helped me along the way.

The lessons I learned: Walk slowly, watch where you are going, always hold the handrail. And be very grateful to your caregivers.

Categories Personal

VAMboozled: Economists Declare VAM a Great Success, Without Any Real Live Examples of Success

By dianeravitch
July 25, 2015 //
35

Audrey Amrein-Beardsley writes in her blog VAMboozled that the VAM-loving economists are giving each other high-fives for the triumph of VAM. Almost every state has adopted some version of it. Success!

 

What they don’t offer is any evidence that VAM has improved education.

 

Where are the districts or the states that have identified and fired the ineffective teachers and seen a vast improvement in their schools?

 

Why do the VAM ratings continue to bounce around? Why are teachers known to be successful in their school community getting low VAM ratings? Why are teachers often rated based on the scores of students they never taught?

 

Does reality matter?

Categories VAM (value-added modeling)

Mitchell Robinson: What You Need to Know about “Achievement School Districts”

By dianeravitch
July 25, 2015 //
7

Mitchell Robinson, Associate Professor of Music Education at Michigan State University, has compiled a handy guide to the bold idea of “achievement school districts.”

 

There is the Recovery School District in New Orleans; the Education Achievement Authority in Michigan; the Achievement School District in Tennessee; and more on the way in other states.

 

The main thing you need to know about these experimental districts is that they promise rapid improvement in the state’s lowest performing schools, and all of them have failed.

 

Here are the key traits of Achievement School Districts:

 

School Funding

 

Individual ASD schools are often required to pay a “kickback” or “tax” to the state ASD authority for the “privilege” of being identified as a “low performing school”. In Nevada, “ASD schools receive the same state and local per-pupil resources that they would have received as part of their original home district. This includes local, state, and federal funding. As with other charter school sponsors, the ASD will receive a small administrative fee from each school it authorizes.” (bold added)
In other words, in spite of the probability that an ASD school has been chronically underfunded for years, perhaps decades, the state will now take its own cut from whatever local, state and federal funding the school may be receiving for administrative overhead, further decreasing the actual number of dollars that are going to classrooms, teachers and children.
Local Control

 

Local control, long recognized as a hallmark of public education, is a dinosaur in ASDs. In Detroit, the locally-elected school board still meets, but has essentially been stripped of all power and authority. The members of the elected school board refer to themselves as being “exiled,” and the newly elected state superintendent of schools has called on the governor and state legislators to return control of the Detroit Public Schools to the local school board, saying, “I believe we ought to have a Detroit school district for the Detroit community.” Instead, Gov. Rick Snyder has proposed a radical plan to split the city’s schools into two districts: one to educate children, and the other devoted to addressing the district’s debt problem.

 
Transparency

Even though it is often trumpeted as an integral aspect of effective school governance, very few ASDs follow their own propaganda when it comes to transparency in reporting. Detroit’s EAA is an especially notorious offender in this respect, making claims that do not stand even the faintest amounts of scrutiny. According to Wayne State professor of education Thomas Pedroni, the EAA’s “internal data directly contradicts their MEAP data. Even Scantron, the maker of the internal assessment, would not stand behind the EAA’s growth claims. And Veronica Conforme, the current EAA Chancellor, removed all the dishonest growth claims from their advertising and their website, and told me personally she doesn’t give them credence for the purpose the EAA used them for.” For more from Dr. Pedroni on the EAA’s specious relationship with transparency, see this, and this.

 
Punitive vs. Educative Methods

Many ASD charters include language regarding the possible consequences if schools do not meet “adequate yearly progress” goals, such as: “Operators of ASD schools that do not demonstrate meaningful improvement will be held accountable pursuant to policies set by the ASD.” Indeed, school closings have become a prominent tool in the school reform playbook:
Washington, D.C. closed 23 buildings in 2008. Officials are currently considering another 15 closures.
New York City closed more than 140 schools since 2002; leaders recently announced plans to shutter 17 more, beginning in 2013-14.
Chicago closed 40-plus buildings in the early 2000s. The district recently released a list of 129 schools to be considered for closure.
This approach follows guidelines first established in the No Child Left Behind legislation, which stipulate draconian changes for any school that fails to meet yearly progress within five years….

 

This thinking represents a sea change in terms of strategy with respect to schooling and education policy. Never in our nation’s history have we taken a punitive approach rather than an educative approach when schools or children have struggled with demonstrating expected levels of progress.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Michigan, New Orleans, Privatization, Tennessee

Arizona Struggles with Teacher Shortage

By dianeravitch
July 25, 2015 //
108

Arizona has a teacher shortage. School will open soon, and there are at least 1,000 vacancies.

The reason is not hard to find. Low salaries, which results in high teacher turnover. Arizona has been in the forefront of corporate reform. State policymakers want to hire “effective teachers,” but they don’t want to pay a middle-class wage.

“And the situation is likely get worse, with 25 percent of the state’s roughly 60,000 teachers eligible to retire within the next five years, said Cecilia Johnson, the state Education Department’s associate superintendent of highly effective teachers and leaders.

“Heidi Vega, spokeswoman for the Arizona School Boards Association, said there are many factors in play behind the vacancies but, “First of all, of course, the budget.”

“Vega said some teachers haven’t had a raise in six or seven years. The state routinely ranks near the bottom when it comes to per-pupil spending, she noted.

“Johnson said the average salary for a teacher in Arizona is $47,000 – well below the $54,000 national average – and an average starting salary in the state is $32,000.”

With a starting salary of $32,000, the state’s associate superintendent of “highly effective teachers and leaders” will not have many people to supervise.

Most teachers have not had a raise in years. Enrollments in teacher education programs are dropping. Some schools have no one to mentor young teachers.

“Once in the profession, Johnson said, teachers face greater accountability requirements and more demands of their time than they used to. Those demands “require them to take less and less time in teaching what they believe as experts should be taught,” she said.”

What do reformers think when they see stories like this, echoing the situation in many other states? Do they recognize a problem? Do they see a connection between the loss of teachers and their relentless campaign to belittle teachers and blame them for low scores?

Bill Gates used to boast that his data-driven approach to measuring teacher quality would produce an effective teacher in every classroom. How’s that working out, Bill?

Categories Arizona, Teacher Pay, Teachers

Denis Smith: Can a State Agency Both Promote Charters and Regulate Them?

By dianeravitch
July 25, 2015 //
19

Denis Smith worked in the Office of Charter Schools in the Ohio Department of Education. In this article, he points out the paradox of tasking a state agency with both promoting charter schools while supposedly regulating them. This is a conflict of interest.

 

This explains, he writes, why it was predictable that David Hansen, who was supposed to regulate charter schools, got in trouble for cooking the books to make the charters owned by Republican campaign contributors look good, even though their schools perform poorly.

 

Hansen, the husband of Beth Hansen, Governor John Kasich’s chief-of-staff, was put in place by the governor’s team to head the Office of Quality School Choice. His background, as head of the right-wing Buckeye Institute, famous for maintaining a database detailing the salaries for thousands of public school teachers and devoid of salary information for CEOs of national for-profit charter school chains and other privatizers, is now being examined by charter watchdogs as they discover a series of conflicts-of-interest that raise basic questions about his actions.

 

Here are a few morsels:

 

“Hansen and ODE were ignoring the big fish,” Stephen Dyer observed. “And that was, unfortunately, Hansen’s undoing. None of these crackdowns were against schools run by big Republican donors — David Brennan of White Hat Management or Bill Lager of the Electronic Classroom of Tomorrow — whose schools rate among the worst in the state and who educate about 20% of all Ohio charter school students.”

 

Plunderbund readers, in fact, were informed several days ago that Hansen is a serial data offender.

 

“This isn’t the first time Hansen has been caught altering charter school data to improve the image of these charter school operators. Hansen was President of the Buckeye Institute in 2009 when they put out a report on Ohio’s dropout recover schools. Similar to the current incident, Hansen’s group altered data to improve the apparent performance of the charter schools. The shady data changes resulted in “a dramatic overstatement of the graduation rates at the charters.” Many of the schools in the 2009 report were owned and operated by White Hat Management. Meanwhile, White Hat owner David Brennan was quietly contributing tens of thousands of dollars to the Buckeye Institute through his Brennan Family Foundation.”

 

Hansen was a cheerleader for charters who was supposed to regulate them. Never happened, never will happen,

Categories Charter Schools, Education Industry, For-Profit, Ohio
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