Archives for the year of: 2015
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Hedge Funds Vs. Puerto Rico

By dianeravitch
December 20, 2015 //
9

As reported here on several earlier posts, hedge funds saw that Puerto Rico was staggering under debt and bought up its bonds. Now that Puerto Rico is virtually bankrupt, the New York Times reports today that the financiers are fighting bankruptcy protection. States and cities may declare bankruptcy, but Puerto Rico must get permission from Congress to do so. Forcing Puerto Rico to pay back its lenders will require austerity that cripples the island and its people. Lenders have proposed that the debt could be paid off by slashing health care and education.

 

To block proposals that would put their investments at risk, a coalition of hedge funds and financial firms has hired dozens of lobbyists, forged alliances with Tea Party activists and recruited so-called AstroTurf groups on the island to make their case. This approach — aggressive legal maneuvering, lobbying and the deployment of prodigious wealth — has proved successful overseas, in countries like Argentina and Greece, yielding billions in profit amid economic collapse.

 

The pressure has been widely felt. Senator Marco Rubio, whose state, Florida, has a large Puerto Rican population, expressed interest this year in sponsoring bankruptcy legislation for the island, says Senator Richard Blumenthal, Democrat of Connecticut. Mr. Rubio’s staff even joined in drafting the bill. But this summer, three weeks after a fund-raiser hosted by a hedge-fund founder, Mr. Rubio broke with those backing the measure. Bankruptcy, he said, should be considered only as a “last resort…..”

 

“What they are doing, by getting all the resources for themselves, is undermining the viability of Puerto Rico as a commonwealth,” said Joseph E. Stiglitz, the Nobel Prize-winning economist. “They want their money now, and they want to get the rules set so that they can make money for the next 20 years.”

 

This is predatory capitalism at its worst.

 

On this earlier post, a couple of commenters argued that the hedge funds had only a small investment in Puerto Rico and that I was wrong for saying they were pressuring P.R. to cut services and programs to repay their debt. Why were they defending the hedge funds? Because one of the major lenders to P.R., John Paulson, made a gift of $8 million to Eva Moskowitz. So they take from the children of P.R. and give to the children who are retained in SA.

Categories Education Reform

Fred LeBrun: Education Could Ruin Cuomo

By dianeravitch
December 20, 2015 //
11

Fred LeBrun of the Albany Times Union says that time is running out for Cuomo. The angry parents who lead the opt out movement have pushed him into a corner. He has tie to recover. But if he is playing tricks, the movement will come roaring back in Spring 2016.
LeBrun writes:

While we haven’t a clue even at this late date who among a kennel full of Republicans is likely to challenge Hillary for the job, short of a major cosmic collapse we can be assured there will be no President Cuomo next November.
For a fiercely ambitious politician with the highest aspirations, Andrew Cuomo has to be bitterly disappointed at the trajectory of his once-promising career, which is pointed at his toes. He isn’t even remotely in the national conversation anymore. And even if he were to turn it around, the modern American political reality is even a George W. Bush gets two terms, so the earliest Cuomo could muster up a run of his own is for 2024. He’d be 65, still young enough. But between now and then, as Mario used to muse, a pope can be born.
Besides, Andrew will have to survive two New York gubernatorial elections to stay in the game. The thought of that is daunting enough, a reminder of his precipitous fall in popularity right here at home. Andrew Cuomo has been governed by the polls. Now the polls are burying him. On ethics and education he gets deeply failing grades from the public, and these are two categories about which the public cares deeply.
At the least, federal prosecutor Preet Bharara is making a fool of the governor every time there’s a new conviction of a legislator, which seems to be a perpetual motion machine. Remember, the governor with characteristic hubris proclaimed he’d cleaned up political Albany. Bharara is showing us how very silly and ineffectual the governor’s efforts have proven to be. Bharara has also taken the cocksure out of the governor’s step, the brash arrogance. Now, what Andrew can do to get Preet off his case may be out of his control.
But on reforming the reform of public education in New York, Gov. Cuomo created the problem. He can resolve it. But he’s going to have to work a lot harder at it than he has to reverse tumbling poll numbers because he’s lost the trust of the electorate on this. Getting it back will not be easy. Nor is a meaningful reversal amenable to shortcuts. The good news for the governor is that this sort of dilemma plays to his strong suit, adeptly moving pieces to achieve a particular result.
However, the time line is working against the governor.
Let’s cut right to the chase: the penalty if he fails. A manure wagon load of rejection from irate parents across the state as Opt Out numbers soar. The sleeping giant is the electorate rebelling, about the worst nightmares any politician can imagine, because what began as the forceful and effective rejection of the governor’s education policy can easily enough morph into a rejection of the governor himself.

Categories Education Reform

Pedro Noguera Reviews Vicki Abeles’ “Beyond Measure”

By dianeravitch
December 20, 2015 //
9

Pedro Noguera has an excellent book review in the New York Times Book Review of Vicki Abeles’ new book “Beyond Measure.”

 

Vicki is the California mom who created the film “Race to Nowhere” about the pressures of high-stakes testing and how they were ruining children’s lives. She traveled all over the country, showing her film in community centers, churches, wherever she could find an audience.

 

Her new book shows how the “reforms” of the past generation have crushed students’ appetite for learning. Noguera praises it highly and says it will upset the education establishment. He says it is a subversive book that has the potential to upset the current creativity-killing reforms that are popular in Washington and state capitols, but not in schools.

 

The only error in his review is his reference to America’s alleged “slippage” on international tests. As I have demonstrated time and again, our students have never been no. 1 or no. 2 on international tests; typically, we have scored in the bottom quartile or at the median, not at the top. We have not slipped. This has been the case for fifty years. The low scores of the poorest students drag down our average. And besides, the international tests don’t predict anything anyway.

 

Nonetheless, it is a terrific review of an important book.

 

 

Categories Accountability, Education Reform, Testing

Paul Lauter Explains the Original Purpose of Close Reading

By dianeravitch
December 20, 2015 //
24

Paul Lauter is an emeritus professor of literature at Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut. He is general editor of the Heath Anthology of American Literature.

He followed the discussion of Eric Brandon’s post about close reading and wrote this response.

 

 

 

It’s fascinating to me to see reproduced in this discussion much of the argument about the New Criticism that took place during the 1960s and 70s. In the dim past, I studied with Cleanth Brooks, one of the main architects of the New Criticism, and co-editor of “Understanding Poetry,” perhaps THE most influential of New Critical texts. Mr. Brooks did indeed teach us to read closely. That meant, first, understanding what the words meant, and that often required looking them up so that we could appreciate the range of meanings, and ambiguities, embedded in them. The Oxford English Dictionary was our main tool, but any dictionary was useful. Just to take one example, the word “deferred,” as in “What happens to a dream deferred?” I can imagine, indeed have had, an extended discussion about the relevance of the various meanings of “defer” to the Langston Hughes poem.

 
But second, Mr. Brooks also wanted us to be aware of what the “music” of the poetry suggested or revealed. Take Countee Cullen’s poem “Incident” (which I won’t reproduce here—it’s on line). It is quite deliberately set in a sing-songy, children’s rhythm and rhyme pattern. But then the last line and a half of stanza two shatters that childish peace: “but he poked out/ His tongue, and called me, ‘Nigger.’” That is, from my point of view, apparently “simple,” but in fact one of the most brilliant pieces of modern poetry in terms both of its diction and its implications with respect to racial politics.

 
That said, New Criticism had serious limitations and biases, and the attack on it insisted that we needed to reintroduce contexts, historical and cultural detail, in order fully to appreciate or more richly to understand a poem or a story or a movie. The last two weeks of the course I took with Mr. Brooks were taught by the poet Delmore Schwartz, and he wanted us to write a very different kind of paper, one that made use of historical contexts to explore a text. I wrote on Marvell’s “The Mower Against Gardens,” and to do so I learned more than I ever wanted to know about English and French garden styles, the enclosure movement, and how these shaped the ways people from different classes perceived gardens and gardening. I don’t recommend this as an exercise for most of our students, but it’s an approach that would be helpful in looking at a poem like e.e. cummings’ “Buffalo Bill’s/ defunct” or a story like Jack London’s “Koolau the Leper,” just to select two of thousands.

 
My point in this overlong post is that close reading is a valuable skill, whether we’re talking about poetry, a story, a lease, an indictment, or a political speech. It does not, in fact, lend itself to filling in test-bubbles and anyone who thinks it does is simply missing the point. It is also just one kind of reading skill; there are others that draw upon a variety of contexts and theories. As teachers, we should not be excluding anything that is useful in the classroom and helpful to our pedagogy.

Categories Common Core

Sara Sayigh: Do Reformers Hate Librarians?

By dianeravitch
December 20, 2015 //
14

Sara Sayigh is the librarian for the DuSable campus. She was suddenly laid off, then just as mysteriously rehired.

 

 

She wrote the following:
Chicago Public Schools and other school districts have been imposing the conditions of “school reform” on students, parents and communities with relatively little opposition from communities of color up until recently. I will never know the true reasons why my position was suddenly cut by CPS a week and a half ago- I do know that the decision was not at the building level – my principal is extremely supportive of the library, but I am sure that these decisions are made in an atmosphere of cynicism and disregard for the students who will be affected.

 
Since 2012 when ⅔ of CPS schools had a librarian, half of those positions have been cut resulting in a system where only ⅓ of CPS schools have librarians as of the beginning of this school year 2015-16. Even more have been cut during this school year. I know many of the librarians personally, especially the high school librarians.

 
Once the librarian is cut, the library is nothing more than a room, and the collection is dispersed and ruined. Many studies have shown the importance of school librarians but rather than cite them here, I urge you to find a single privileged person whose child goes to a school without a librarian and library. Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s children go to the Lab Schools where there are 7 or 8 librarians.

 
As of the current school year 2015-16, there are only 3 out of 28 predominantly African American high schools in CPS with librarians. So while the loss has been felt across the CPS system, it has disproportionately affected African American children and teens like my students.

 

 
There have been a number of excellent news stories and posts.

 

 
I especially recommend these two – School Library Journal writer Christina Vercelletto: In Chicago, Bronzeville School Librarian Layoff Inspires Outrage—and Support
and this one by the blogger Julie Vassilatos also known as Chicago Public Fools: Who lays off librarians? CPS, that’s who
The sleeping giant of student and parent activism has been awakened and that is the CPS appointed Board of Education’s greatest fear. The Board has done whatever they want to their staff but they cannot ignore the voices of their students and parents. CPS schools have been stripped of staff that are essential to a well functioning school; we no longer have social workers, nurses and other clinicians (staff shared among several schools), an adequate number of counselors, special education teachers and aides, art and music teachers and librarians. I am glad for my students that their “read in” protest attracted so much attention and support. Due to my students’ actions, CPS had to re-open my position for the rest of this school year. I hope that what my students have done will inspire others to take action together.

 

 

Sara Sayigh

Categories Chicago, Education Reform, Librarians

Joanne Yatvin: Will ESSA Make a Difference? It is Up to Us

By dianeravitch
December 20, 2015 //
5

Joanne Yatvin, retired teacher, principal, and superintendent, wrote the following about the likely consequences of the new Every Student Succeeds Act. Much policy has shifted to the states, but the assumptions that undergird policy remain unchanged. Only citizens acting together can change the fundamental assumptions, by taking action in their respective states.

 

 

Yatvin writes:

 

 

 

The major changes in the Every Student Succeeds (ESSA) law are the shift from Federal control to state control and the removal of the rewards and punishments for schools that were used by the the Department of Education to ensure compliance. Yearly student tests will continue, but they will be chosen or designed by the states. In addition, the effectiveness of schools will be judged on more evidence than just test scores. Finally, actions to improve the performance of students in high poverty schools will be the central focus of states for the next several years. Although these changes promise better days for our public schools in the future, I still see much to be concerned about.

 

First and foremost, the beliefs that have dominated American education over the past twenty-some years still hold sway among decision makers and the public at large. Those beliefs were first voiced in a 1983 report by a commission created by President Ronald Reagan, titled, “A Nation at Risk.” Its central theme was that the United States’ educational system was failing to meet the national need for a competitive workforce. On the opening page the report declared, “The educational foundations of our society are presently being eroded by a rising tide of mediocrity that threatens our very future as a Nation and a people.” And it continued with a frightening possibility: “If an unfriendly foreign power had attempted to impose on America the mediocre educational performance that exists today, we might well have viewed it as an act of war.”

 

Like its predecessor, ESSA will operate on the same beliefs about our system of public education, and for that reason states will be inclined to identify the same goals and use similar strategies to reach them. We are not done with judging our students, teachers, and schools mainly by test scores, or believing that comparisons with other countries’ scores on international tests are meaningful. Nor, are we done with top-down decision making on what, when, and how our students should learn, in disregard of teachers’ knowledge and experience. Many state legislatures–and their constituents–will continue to believe that charter schools, on the whole, are better than public schools and move to increase them. And some of those states will continue to offer vouchers to a few students to attend private or religious schools in the belief that they are throwing life preservers to drowning children.

 

Can these aberrations be stopped? The only way I see is for parents, teachers, and informed citizens to strengthen their efforts to support our public schools. We need to put pressure on state legislatures to use their funds and power to make intelligent decisions for our schools. If we are silent, thinking that all is well now that NCLB is dead, the future will be no better than the past.

Categories Every Student Succeeds Act

Will Fitzhugh: Why Students Should Read a Work of History in High School

By dianeravitch
December 20, 2015 //
14

Will Fitzhugh is the tireless publisher and editor of The Concord Review. He taught history in a public high school for many years, then stepped away from teaching to found The Concord Review. TCR publishes student work in history, original research papers that are well-written and reflect deep study. It has subscribers all over the world and submissions from students from many countries. It is a fine publication that recognizes the value of excellent historical studies in high school. But Fitzhugh has struggled throughout the life of TCR to keep it alive. He has applied to and been rejected by every foundation and government agency that he could think of. The journal gets plaudits from all who see it, but Will Fitzhugh has exhausted his savings keeping it alive. He is a man with a mission. Please consider subscribing to TCR and make sure that your history students are aware that they can submit essays for possible publication. If you happen to have a foundation, please consider subsidizing this wonderful publication so it will survive. TCR “is the only quarterly journal in the world to publish the academic research papers of secondary students.” It should be in every high school.

 

 

Will Fitzhugh wrote in the December 2015 issue of TCR:

 

 

When teachers say they have to spend so much time preparing for math and reading tests that they cannot give any attention to history, I always want to suggest that if they give their students history to read, they will not only get practice in reading, they will learn some history, too.

 

When some argue that only in literature can one find good stories of human fears, troubles, relationships, hopes, competition, and accomplishments, I have to believe that reading history was not a big part of their education.

 

I was a literature major in college, and only came to read history seriously afterwards. No one emphasized the benefits of history when I was in school. And I realize that the appreciation of history is a bit cumulative. That is, when a student first reads history she doesn’t know who these people are or what they are doing or why that might be important to know.

 

Teachers have to assume some responsibility for expressing their assurance that history is not only interesting but also essential—that is, if they are aware of that themselves. Things go slow in learning any new language. Students can’t love French poetry or Chinese philosophy right away. They have to work to learn the language basics first.

 

That goes for history as well. But after reading history for a few years, people and events come to be more familiar, and the chronology turns out to be no more difficult and perhaps even more interesting than irregular verbs.

 

People rightly defend the stories in literature. But history is nothing but stories, too, with the difference that they are true stories, about actual people, who faced and coped with real problems of very great difficulty, with varying degrees of wisdom and success.

 

These are the people and the stories who form the basis of the civilization the students have inherited, and neglecting them does indeed rob students of an important part of their birthright.

 

I believe high school students in particular, with whom I am most familiar, having taught in high school for ten years, should read at least one complete history book a year. After all, many of these students are reading Shakespeare plays, studying calculus, and perhaps Chinese and chemistry, so a good history book should be easy, and perhaps a bit of a break for them as well. And not only would they learn some history in the process, but they would experience some exemplary nonfiction writing at the same time. All our students deserve such opportunities. And most are now denied them.

Categories Curriculum

Kindergarten as the New First Grade

By dianeravitch
December 19, 2015 //
75

Due to the Common Core and testing pressures, children in kindergarten are now expected to learn to read. Kindergarten, writes Erika Christakis in The Atlantic, has changed, and not for the better.

“One study, titled “Is Kindergarten the New First Grade?,” compared kindergarten teachers’ attitudes nationwide in 1998 and 2010 and found that the percentage of teachers expecting children to know how to read by the end of the year had risen from 30 to 80 percent. The researchers also reported more time spent with workbooks and worksheets, and less time devoted to music and art. Kindergarten is indeed the new first grade, the authors concluded glumly. In turn, children who would once have used the kindergarten year as a gentle transition into school are in some cases being held back before they’ve had a chance to start. A study out of Mississippi found that in some counties, more than 10 percent of kindergartners weren’t allowed to advance to first grade.

“Until recently, school-readiness skills weren’t high on anyone’s agenda, nor was the idea that the youngest learners might be disqualified from moving on to a subsequent stage. But now that kindergarten serves as a gatekeeper, not a welcome mat, to elementary school, concerns about school preparedness kick in earlier and earlier. A child who’s supposed to read by the end of kindergarten had better be getting ready in preschool. As a result, expectations that may arguably have been reasonable for 5- and 6-year-olds, such as being able to sit at a desk and complete a task using pencil and paper, are now directed at even younger children, who lack the motor skills and attention span to be successful.”

“Preschool classrooms have become increasingly fraught spaces, with teachers cajoling their charges to finish their “work” before they can go play. And yet, even as preschoolers are learning more pre-academic skills at earlier ages, I’ve heard many teachers say that they seem somehow—is it possible?—less inquisitive and less engaged than the kids of earlier generations. More children today seem to lack the language skills needed to retell a simple story or to use basic connecting words and prepositions. They can’t make a conceptual analogy between, say, the veins on a leaf and the veins in their own hands.

“New research sounds a particularly disquieting note. A major evaluation of Tennessee’s publicly funded preschool system, published in September, found that although children who had attended preschool initially exhibited more “school readiness” skills when they entered kindergarten than did their non-preschool-attending peers, by the time they were in first grade their attitudes toward school were deteriorating. And by second grade they performed worse on tests measuring literacy, language, and math skills. The researchers told New York magazine that overreliance on direct instruction and repetitive, poorly structured pedagogy were likely culprits; children who’d been subjected to the same insipid tasks year after year after year were understandably losing their enthusiasm for learning.”

Categories Childhood, Pre-K, K, Common Core

New York Parents to Cuomo: Restore Our Funding!

By dianeravitch
December 19, 2015 //
17

Governor Cuomo has called himself the “students’ lobbyist,” but if so, he is not doing a good job. He has cut school budgets with a tax cap and other mechanisms. Apparently, his idea of breaking the “public school monopoly” is to starve the public schools that 90% of the children in the state attend. This letter was sent to Governor Cuomo by the PTSA of Hastings-on-Hudson:

 
Hastings-on-Hudson PTSA
Hastings-on-Hudson, NY 10706
℅ Lisa Eggert Litvin, Co President (917-881-3266)
hastingsonhudsonptsa@gmail.com

 

Dear Governor Cuomo:

 

We write to urge that full funding be restored to our public schools. Specifically, Foundation Aid should be paid in full to all school districts this year, and past due funds should be paid as well. In addition, funds diverted away from schools via the Gap Elimination Allowance (GEA) must be paid up, and use of the GEA must end immediately.

 

This gross underfunding all public school districts has lead to two unacceptable outcomes:

 

1. Schools statewide have been forced to cut meaningful and effective programing and staff. Class sizes have grown; language and advanced courses have been cut. Supports like summer school and after school have been cut. Positions that insure safety like bus monitors, security workers, social workers, and more have been cut or remain not fully invested. And more.

 

2. Our taxes have gone up in order to pay for the state’s shortfall. With full funding, many districts would have and should have instead seen tax decreases. As an example, had Dobbs Ferry received its full state funding in 2013-2014, it could have easily covered its budget increase of $1.5 million and avoided that year’s tax hike. But instead, the state diverted $2.25 million and Dobbs’s taxpayers were hit with a tax increase of 4.5%. (A full explanation is available at http://www.lohud.com/story/opinion/contributors/2015/11/30/view-school-taxes-rise-state-withholds-aid/76379942/.

 

Our state is flush with funds now. During Governor Cuomo’s re-election bid, he announced that our state has a $2 billion surplus. This grew by an additional $5 billion last spring, from a legal settlement. There is no excuse whatsoever to continue shortchanging our schools and avoiding paying what has been owed over the past several years.

 

Our schools cannot handle the lack of funds — which is rightfully due to them. And our property taxpayers cannot continue to shoulder these unnecessary increases, all the cover a debt of the state, a state that promotes a surplus.

 

Sincerely,
The Hastings-on-Hudson PTSA Executive Board
Lisa Eggert Litvin and Jacqueline Weitzman, Co Presidents

Categories Budget Cuts, Funding, New York

Tennessee: Memphis School Board Calls for Moratorium for Achievement School District

By dianeravitch
December 19, 2015 //
10

The Shelby County school board encompasses the schools of Memphis and the schools of Shelby County. A number of its schools were plunked into the Achievement School District, where they were given to a charter operator. Despite grandiose promises of lifting the lowest performing schools into the top 25%, it hasn’t happened. Achievement in the ASD has stalled.

 

The ASD is one of the Crown Jewels of the reform movement, based on its belief that charter schools are a magical solution that turns low-scoring students into scholars.

 

The school board of Shelby County has called for a moratorium on any expansion of the ASD.

 

 

Categories Education Industry, Privatization, Tennessee
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