Archives for the year of: 2015
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A Documentary You Should Watch

By dianeravitch
December 12, 2015 //
12

I heard an interesting discussion on Terri Gross’ “Fresh Air” on NPR with the filmmakers of a documentary called “The Spymasters.” The filmmakers, two French brothers, happened to have been in the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001, making a film about a firefighter’s life. The new documentary is about the CIA and its role in dealing with terrorism. It appears until 12/26 on Showtime on demand (free). The film consists of interviews with 12 former directors of the CIA and some retired counterterrorism personnel.

 

I watched it and found it a fair and balanced discussion. I read the 9/11 report when it was published and was reminded that the CIA found Bin Ladin during the Clinton administration, but was stopped from attacking him because of Attorney General Janet Reno’s objections. She wanted him captured, not killed. Bin Ladin had already claimed credit for the bombings of two American embassies in Africa that killed a large number of people, as well as other deadly attacks.

 

George Tenet said that the agency became very alarmed about an impending attack on the U.S. in the summer of 2001. He said he called for an emergency meeting with Condoleeza Rice and President Bush in July 2001 and briefed them. After the meeting, nothing happened. Later Rice wrote that she ignored the meeting because she heard threats every day. Tenet made clear that this was no ordinary briefing or warning but a belief that an attack was imminent. But nothing happened.

 

Tenet also reviewed what the CIA knew about Iraq. He says that the CIA believed Iraq had “weapons of mass destruction,” as did other intelligence services. But he also said that the CIA did not support the invasion of Iraq, as there was no evidence that Iraq was tied to 9/11. He implies–loudly–that Iraq was a diversion from what he thought was a successful strategy of driving the Taliban out of Afghanistan and pursuing Bin Laden.

 

There is a lengthy discussion of torture–when and if it is ever justified–and drone strikes.

 

The documentary raises important questions about the role of the CIA and doesn’t answer them. These are questions we should all think about.

Categories Education Reform

Peter Greene Says the Cuomo Task Force Report is a “Nothing Sundae”

By dianeravitch
December 12, 2015 //
9

Peter Greene is not impressed with the Cuomo Task Force report on the Common Core, the tests, and teacher evaluation. He calls it a “nothing Sundae.” 

 

He goes through the recommendations one by one. But his big beef is that the report does not question the value of the CCSS, does not question the testing, and does not get to the problem of test-based accountability for teaching. The report assumes that the problem all along has been poor implementation, not that any of the fundamental ideas need to be changed or dropped or replaced.

 

 

Another blogger points out that the Task Force report includes this curious statement:

 

The Education Transformation Act of 2015 will remain in place, and no new legislation is required to implement the recommendations of the report, including recommendations regarding the transition period for consequences for students and teachers. During the transition, the 18 percent of teachers whose performance is measured, in part, by Common Core tests will use different local measures approved by the state, similar to the measures already being used by the majority of teachers.

 

The blogger writes:

 

Yes, tests will still count for 50% of a teacher’s evaluation.

 

 

Categories Common Core, Cuomo, Andrew, Education Reform, Standardized Testing, Teacher Evaluations

Report: “The Committee to Scam New York”

By dianeravitch
December 12, 2015 //
2

Over a century ago, a young teacher named Margaret Haley became active in the Chicago Teachers Federation. She and other members of the Federation became outraged by a proposal that would impose business practices on the schools and institute a new salary plan that favored mostly male high school teachers over mostly female elementary teachers. They organized and defeated the proposal.

 

In 1899, Haley led a campaign for better funding of the Chicago schools. She brandished tax records of the city’s biggest businesses, showing that they were not paying their fair share. As a result of her exposé, corporate taxes were raised as was school funding.

 

Margaret Haley is today recognized as a founder of the teachers’ union movement.

 

But some things never change. I recently received a copy of a report published in 2011 by a group called the Public Accountability Initiative. The report lists the businesses and individuals who have contributed to a campaign (“The Committee to Save New York”) to keep taxes low while their own corporations benefit from tax benefits and tax avoidance. The report refers to these corporations and individual s as the “Committee to Scam New York.”

 

The report shows how the Committee to Save New York is a coalition of many different pro-business, anti-tax lobbies. It also shows that its members have benefited by tax breaks and tax avoidance. The consequences: vast wealth for the rich, unemployment and poverty for everyone else.

 

Margaret Haley would have been delighted–and outraged–by this report.

Categories Equity, Funding, New York

North Carolina Faculty, Students Protest Spellings Appointment

By dianeravitch
December 12, 2015 //
5

Dozens of protestors swarmed the meeting of the University of North Carolina governing board, protesting the appointment of former Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings as president of the UNC system.

 

“The protesters — students, faculty, staff and others within the UNC community — come from a number of organizations, including the Faculty Forward Network, Scholars for North Carolina’s Future, UnKoch My Campus, the UNC Board of Governors Democracy Coalition, Greenpeace USA, Ignite NC and Progress NC.

 

“Leaflets passed out by the protesters said they want the Spellings appointment to be rescinded and for the school’s governing body to have a transparent process to find a replacement, a reference to what many said was a secretive process in the selection of Spellings. She was tapped last October to run the system of 16 universities, with 222,000 students, and awarded a $775,000 base salary for each of five years in a contract that also gives her deferred compensation of $77,500 annually and potential performance bonuses, and use of a presidential home.”

 

 

Categories Education Reform, Higher Education, North Carolina, Resistance

Leonie Haimson: Did Mark Zuckerberg Make Another Mistake?

By dianeravitch
December 12, 2015 //
19

Leonie Haimson, parent activist who fights for smaller class size and student privacy, has strong reservations about Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan’s decision to devote a considerable share of their vast fortune to “personalized learning.” She wonders whether he is making a mistake that has even larger consequences than the $100 million he squandered in Newark, led along by Mayor (now Senator) Cory Booker and Governor Chris Christie.

 

Haimson points out that some leading corporations in the technology industry have been data mining students and invading their privacy. That’s bad enough. But a recent OECD study concluded that the students who use computers the most in the classroom have the lowest scores, even when demography is taken into account. Zuckerberg has already funded a chain of for-profit private schools that rely heavily on computer instruction. But the history of such schools is unimpressive.

 

This is not a research-based approach to improving education, she writes. Some studies show that computer-based instruction actually widens achievement gaps.

 

The truth is there are NO good studies that show that online or blended instruction helps kids learn, and the whole notion of “personalized” learning is a misnomer, as what it usually signifies is depersonalized machine-based learning. All software can do is ask a series of multiple choice questions and then wait for the right or the wrong answer. It cannot read an essay or give feedback on how to improve an argument, or help extricate a child from a knotty math problem. It cannot encourage students to confront all the various angles in a controversy, as happens through debate and discussion with teachers and classmates. In fact, learning through computers reduces contextualization and conceptualization to stale pre-determined ideas, the opposite of the creative and critical thinking that we are supposed to be aiming for in the 21st century.

 

One thing is sure: Zuckerberg’s initiative will be good for the industry. Not so clear that it will be good for students.

 

 

 

 

Categories Billionaires, Technology, Computers

Who Funded the Opposition to Spending More on Education in Mississippi? (Hint: Can You Spell K-O-C-H?)

By dianeravitch
December 12, 2015 //
11

Mississippians went to the polls recently to vote on Initiative 42, which required the state legislature to fully fund the public schools. The initiative failed.

 

Who funded the opposition to Initiative 42?

 

Not Mississippians. According to this account of the post-campaign financial filings, 75% of the money to fight Initiative 42 came from outside Mississippi.

 

Here is a report on the scoundrels that don’t want to spend another penny on the education of children in Mississippi. How about those Koch brothers! They are billionaires, yet they put up nearly a quarter of a million dollars to block any increase in funding the education of children in Mississippi! What’s up with those guys? Why do national Republican PACs fight the fair funding of little children? Why is this an issue for them? I don’t get it. Here is an example of deceptive labeling: a group called “KidsFirst Mississippi” accepted the Koch money to oppose funding education for the kids. It should rename itself “KidsLast Mississippi” in the spirit of accurate advertising.

 

The article says:

 

Post-election campaign filings are revealing that opponents of Initiative 42, mostly from outside the state, spent much more money to defeat it than they were required to report before the polls closed. Initiative 42 would have changed the Mississippi Constitution to force the Legislature to follow state law and fully fund education or be subject to judiciary consequences. Campaign-finance reports for registered PACs and PICs were due on Nov. 10 for committee spending in October.

 

The Improve Mississippi Political Initiative Committee is the PIC that primarily ran the “No on 42” campaign with TV ads and a website, promoting fear that one (presumably black) judge in Hinds County would control education funding if 42 passed. Records filed Nov. 10 show the group spent $844,750 to defeat the citizen ballot.

 

About 82 percent of that money came from one donor: the RSLC Mississippi PAC, which is the state PAC arm of the Republican State Leadership Committee, a Washington, D.C.-based 527 political organization dedicated to “elect down-ballot, state-level Republican leaders.”

 

The RSLC Mississippi PAC gave $600,000 to the Improve Mississippi PIC in October, the PIC’s October campaign-finance report showed. Because RSLC Mississippi PAC did not donate to individual candidates in this election cycle, the PAC was not required to file reports, Secretary of State spokeswoman Pamela Weaver wrote in an email to the Jackson Free Press.

 

However, the RSLC Mississippi PAC’s latest report shows that it also donated $30,000 to The Watchdog PAC and $100,000 to the Mississippi House Republican Caucus PAC in September. The Watchdog PAC’s October campaign finance report reveals $100,000 in year-to-date donations from the RSLC Mississippi PAC on Oct. 9.

 

The Watchdog PAC then donated $90,000 to the Improve Mississippi PIC on Oct. 14, 19 and 27. If the Watchdog PAC used RSLC’s donation to fund its Improve MS PIC donation, which is unclear, the Republican State Leadership Committee gave $690,000 of the $844,750 donations used to defeat Initiative 42 through the PIC.

 

The Republican State Leadership Committee did not respond to requests for phone interviews, but instead provided emailed statements. RSLC is a national organization that focuses on state-level Republican leadership, largely through individual PAC arms for states. Funding for the 527 comes from several large, national corporations. According to 2014 Open Secrets data, RSLC’s top donors last year included the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Reynolds American, Las Vegas Sands and Blue Cross/Blue Shield, who together donated more than $6 million. Walmart Stores and Koch Industries were also on the top-10 highest donor list.

 

Americans for Prosperity, the Koch brothers’ national advocacy organization, donated $239,097 to the KidsFirst Mississippi PAC, the other prominent anti-42 PAC, which placed radio, Facebook, Google and other media ads against Initiative 42, campaign-finance records show. The KidsFirst PAC only reported spending $123,193 on its October campaign-finance report.

Categories Education Reform, Funding, Mississippi

Penn. Legislature Passes Plan to Shut Down Philly Schools, possibly the District

By dianeravitch
December 11, 2015 //
14

The Republican-dominated legislature in Pennsylvania passed a radical bill that could lead to the closure of public schools in Philadelphia.
The district superintendent William Hite called the bill “a recipe for disaster.”

 
“Aimed squarely at the Philadelphia School District, the “opportunity schools” language would remove from local control up to five low-performing schools per year.

 
“The state Department of Education would seize the struggling Philadelphia schools for at least three years, with the option to either turn the schools over to either a charter or outside manager or close them outright….

 
“Forcing the district to lose five schools per year – and possibly creating that many more charters – would deepen the very financial problems that cause lawmakers to be skeptical of Philadelphia.”

 
The district has been controlled by the state since 2001.

Read more at http://www.philly.com/philly/education/20151212_Hite__Pa__school_plan_is__a_recipe_for_disaster_.html#UEACvMb60jkBZYdH.99

Categories Education Reform, Privatization

Chicago Board Closes Only High School Library in Bronzeville

By dianeravitch
December 11, 2015 //
28

Things are hopping in Chicago. The Chicago Teachers Union is voting whether to strike. Protesters demand Rahm’s resignation for withholding the damning video of Laquan McDonald’s shooting. But the budget cuts keep coming. Why do the children who have the least get the least?

 

 

NEWS RELEASE
IMMEDIATE RELEASE CONTACT: Stephanie Gadlin
December 11, 2015 312-329-6250

Mayor’s Hand-Picked Board of Education Shutters Bronzeville’s only functioning neighborhood high school library
CHICAGO – This week, the librarian at Daniel Hale Williams (DHW) School, housed at the DuSable High School campus along with Bronzeville Scholastic Academy and the DuSable Leadership Academy, was notified that her position has closed. With the closure of the library on that campus, a resource that has been in continuous existence since the founding of this historic school, the mayor’s hand-picked Board of Education has shut down the only functioning library staffed with a fully-certified librarian in a Bronzeville neighborhood high school. The Chicago Teachers Union is outraged by this action.
“While it is not surprising that yet again, the burden of ‘broke on purpose’ budget cuts has fallen on the most segregated schools, this new disparity is alarming. CPS must restore these library programs,” said CTU Vice President Jesse Sharkey.
Over the last several years, the Chicago Public School’s dismantling of critical library programs has impacted every corner of the city, but has also led to a startling disparity where now only 7 percent (2 out of 28) of high schools with a student population over 90 percent African American has a library program staffed by a certified librarian. Across the 46 high schools with a majority African American student population, just 15 percent have librarians. In comparison, the dismal rate of librarian access across all CPS high schools is 32 percent. Such a deep disparity did not exist several years ago. In the 2012-2103 school year, 61 percent of high schools with a majority of African American students had a certified librarian on staff, compared to 69 percent across all district high schools.

The district’s refusal to stabilize their budgets with progressive revenue has led to annual cuts that have decimated our library programs, leading to librarian layoffs, librarians moving to other school districts, books of rooms without librarian staff, and in some cases, certified-librarians that have been shifted to teaching only the core English classes.
“We encourage parents, students and community members to demand that the Board restores the librarian at DHW so they can have a fully functioning library in their school,” Sharkey said. “This layoff is a taste of what is yet to come from a school district that closes schools, threatens to terminate 5,000 teachers and refuses to partner with the community to find real solutions to their budget problems.”

###

The Chicago Teachers Union represents nearly 27,000 teachers and educational support personnel working in the Chicago Public Schools, and by extension, the more than 400,000 students and families they serve. The CTU is an affiliate of the American Federation of Teachers and the Illinois Federation of Teachers and is the third largest teachers local in the United States and the largest local union in Illinois. For more information please visit CTU’s website at http://www.ctunet.com.
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Categories Education Reform

Los Angeles: The Statement of Charges Against Rafe Esquith

By dianeravitch
December 11, 2015 //
254

This is the statement of charges against celebrated teacher Rafe Esquith.

 

There is a lot here that is shocking.

 

But I can’t help but wonder about the claims of actions attributed to him forty years ago. Where is the evidence? How trustworthy are those statements?

 

I hope that Rafe’s lawyer is aggressive and insists on a fair hearing, with witnesses willing to stand behind their statements.

 

I still have a strong recollection of the McMartin daycare center and similar cases, where children accused adults of improper behavior and the adults were sent to jail for years. But the charges were false.  A charge is a charge. It is not evidence until someone is willing to back it up.

Categories Education Reform

Steven Singer: Putting the Arts Back in Language Arts

By dianeravitch
December 11, 2015 //
11

Steven Singer’s post is part of the series that Anthony Cody is running on his blog about the importance of the arts in education.

 

He writes:

 

Sometimes in public school you’ve just got to cut the crap.

 

No testing. No close reading. No multiple choice nonsense.

 

Get back to basics – pass out notebooks, crack them open and students just write.

 

Not an essay. Not a formal narrative. Not an official document. Just pick up a pencil and see where your imagination takes you.

 

You’d be surprised the places you’ll go.

 

You might invent a new superhero and describe her adventures in a marshmallow wonderland. You might create a television show about strangers trapped in an elevator. You might imagine what life would be like if you were no bigger than a flea.

 

Or you might write about things closer to home. You might describe what it’s like to have to take care of your three younger brothers and sisters after school until just before bedtime when your mom comes back from her third minimum wage job. You might chronicle the dangers of walking home after dismissal where drug dealers rule certain corners and gangs patrol the alleys. You might report on where you got those black and blue marks on your arms, your shoulders, places no one can see when you’re fully clothed.

 

My class is not for the academic all stars. It’s for children from impoverished families, kids with mostly black and brown skin and test scores that threaten to close their school and put me out of work.

 

So all these topics and more are fair game. You can write about pretty much whatever you want. I might give you something to get you started. I might ask you a question to get you thinking, or try to challenge you to write about something you’ve never thought about or to avoid certain words or phrases that are just too darn obvious. I might ask your opinion of something in the news or what you think about the school dress code or get your thoughts about how things could improve.

 

Because I actually care what you think.

 

Methinks that Steven is thinking of the famous line by David Coleman, architect of the Common Core standards, who once said that when you grow up, you learn that no one gives a —- what you think or feel. Steven Singer cares what his students think and feel. He wants them to think and feel.

 

He writes:

 

At times like these, I’m not asking you to dig through a nonfiction text or try to interpret a famous literary icon’s grasp of figurative language. It’s not the author’s opinion that matters – it’s yours – because you are the author. Yes, YOU.

 

You matter. Your thoughts matter. Your feelings. YOU MATTER!

Categories Arts Education, Joy, Real Education
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