Archives for the year of: 2015
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Tweet Jennifer Hudson: Do Not Support Billionaires Privatizing Public Schools!

By dianeravitch
September 28, 2015 //
13

The billionaires’ front group called “Families for Excellent Schools” has enlisted the actress Jennifer Hudson to support their campaign for charter schools. She probably thinks these are regular families, not realizing that the “Families” are the Waltons, the Broads, the Paul Tudor Jones family, and other hedge fund managers and equity investors. These are the billionaire families, not the people who need quality public schools for ALL children. Their schools will exclude children with disabilities, English language learners, students returning from prison, and children with behavior problems. All of these children will be dumped in the public schools, while their more fortunate peers are skimmed off. Then the boasting begins. FES is the same organization that has tried to derail Mayor de Blasio’s progressive agenda for children and heaped tens of millions on charter schools, not public schools. Please, Jennifer Hudson, don’t be fooled!

Here are sample tweets:

Good Morning Twitter Brigade!

We need your help RIGHT NOW! Popstar Jennifer Hudson is set to perform at a Families For Excellent Schools Rally in support of Charter Schools.

Read Here for Details: http://bit.ly/1VmbqYA

Unfortunately, Hudson is under the misconception that Charter Schools bring equality to the city. That’s why RIGHT NOW we need your help!!

TWEET WITH US RIGHT NOW, tell Jennifer Hudson @IAMJHUD, the truth about charters!

See below for sample tweets, and if you need a little more inspiration, check out FES’ most recent racist ad here: http://politi.co/1NRNaND

Don’t forget to follow our tweets:
@AQE_NY
@zansari8
@BEastonNY

@Fam4ExcSchools recent ad has Outraged Communities & Civil rights leaders @IAMJHUD please #SAYNO to Performing http://politi.co/1FmqT9B

Let @IAMJHUD Know Why She Shouldn’t Be Supporting FES Rally, Just Look at Their Recent Racist Ad http://politi.co/1NRNaND

@IAMJHUD You Should Know the Equality You Stand For IS NOT in Charters. They Don’t Serve ALL Students http://bit.ly/1O4ZpI7

.@IAMJHUD Please #SAYNO to Performing at FES Rally, They Are Hurting Our Public Schools

See the Truth About FES, Watch Their Racist Ad and #SAYNO to Performing @IAMJHUD http://politi.co/1NRNaND

FES Has Outraged Communities with their Recent Racist Ad, #SAYNO to Performing @IAMJHUD http://politi.co/1FmqT9B

FES and Their Charters Are Hedge Fund Controlled, NOT For the Community @IAMJHUD, #SAYNO

Support the Local Community, #SAYNO to the FES Rally @IAMJHUD

FES Rally is a Political Rally to Promote Eva Moskowitz, NOT Schools, OR Our Children @IAMJHUD #SAYNO

Don’t Become Apart of Their Race-Baiting @IAMJHUD #SAYNO to FES Rally! http://politi.co/1FmqT9B

.@IAMJHUD If you Stand for Equality, #SAYNO to Charters and FES!!

.@IAMJHUD Charters Are Destroying Public Schools Nationwide While Racking Up Public $$ #SAYNO http://bit.ly/1NXhTZC

Categories Charter Schools, New York City, Scandals Fraud and Hoaxes

Where Is Eli Broad When He Is Really Needed?

By dianeravitch
September 28, 2015 //
27

Billionaire Eli Broad has proposed a plan to privatize the schooling of 50% of the students in Los Angeles. He plans to pool $490 million from fellow billionaires to achieve his goal. If he succeeds, the remaining 50% of the children in LAUSD will have fewer resources, fewer teachers, larger classes. This is a short-sighted approach, to say the least. Surely, Eli doesn’t want his legacy to be: HE DESTROYED PUBLIC EDUCATION IN AMERICA.

Here is a genuine crisis that he could easily address. LAUSD cannot afford arts education in every school. It currently spends $25 million a year on arts education. It needs $75 million a year to supply the teachers of the arts to every school. Eli Broad just opened a fine new arts museum, which cost him $200 million. The children in LAUSD will not be able to visit the Broad Museum because there is no money for field trips.

Some schools have arts resources but no arts teachers. Some have neither arts resources nor arts teachers.

Instead of funding a parallel privatized system to compete with the public schools, further impoverishing public schools, Eli Broad could build a model public education system, where every child has a full education in the arts.

Mr. Broad, what do you say? If you care about children, if you care about the arts, will you supply the $50 million needed to enable every child to act, paint, sing and participate in all the arts?

Categories Arts Education, Broad Foundation, Los Angeles

Broad and Walton Fund a Study to Promote More Charters Schools in D.C.

By dianeravitch
September 28, 2015 //
18

Big surprise. A study funded by the Broad Foundation and the Walton Foundation recommends more charters for the District of Columbia.

The report, “A Tale of Two Systems: Education Reform in Washington D.C.,” was funded by the Walton Family Foundation and the Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation. The Washington-based Progressive Policy Institute promotes market-based solutions to public policy issues. It appears that the long-term goal is to turn the entire district into a charter district, although a few public schools might remain open to enroll the students the charters don’t want.

The new study looks at the history of education reform in the city and includes research showing greater academic improvements in charter schools. It compares District and national test scores that show bigger gains for charter schools, particularly among African American and poor students.

It notes that comparisons are difficult because charter and traditional schools serve different demographics. Charter schools serve families who actively choose their schools, which can indicate a higher level of family commitment to education. D.C. Public Schools serve more students in crisis, who are are homeless or returning from jail, experts say. Also, charter schools don’t accept students after a certain month of the year or grade level, so they tend to serve a more stable group of students.

But the report argues that the governance model is the most important difference in the larger gains.

“It creates an environment in which the extraordinary measures necessary to effectively educate poor, minority children are not only easier to implement, they are virtually required if schools are to survive,” the report says.

In an interview, Osborne predicted that in 30 to 50 years, most urban districts will have mostly charter schools or other types of schools that are given more autonomy and expected to perform or be closed. “The magic is not in the word ‘charter,’ it’s in that arms-length relationship with the system,” he said.

So, even though most research shows that charters do not outperform ordinary public schools on average, D.C. should push for more and more charters. The report acknowledges that the remanning public schools serve children with greater needs than the charters, but so what. The charters get higher test scores because they don’t have the kids who have severe disabilities, the ELLs, the homeless, the students in crisis, and those returning from jail.

It must be the autonomy that makes the charters so terrific, not the fact that they exclude the kids who are most challenging and most expensive to educate.

Why don’t the Broads and Waltons come up with another pastime?

Why should the nation abandon public education because they like the free market that made them billionaires?

Categories Broad Foundation, Charter Schools, Corporate Reform, Walton Foundation

John Ewing: Let’s Celebrate Our Dedicated Teachers!

By dianeravitch
September 28, 2015 //
7

John Ewing is a mathematician and president of Math for America, an organization that supports STEM education. In this excellent post, he explains how the past several years of teacher-bashing has been deeply demoralizing to teachers. He writes that teaching must be a respected profession, and the teacher-bashers must recognize the harm they do.

Ewing writes:

“As another school year gets underway, the public receives its annual dose of hand wringing about the state of American education…..
Editorials excoriate public schools; pundits offer glib solutions; politicians excoriate “whining” teachers and their unions, which, we are told, have brought education to this state of affairs.

“This ritual of education bashing has become so commonplace that it’s easy not to notice and move on. But we ought to notice because the annual lamentation is causing great damage.

“Because of it, confidence in public schools has fallen by nearly half over the past four decades, from roughly 60 percent to below 30. Because of it, job satisfaction for teachers has fallen dramatically, from 62 percent to 39 percent in just five years. And because of it, experienced, accomplished teachers are leaving classrooms in droves, while interest in teacher training programs is plummeting.

“Each year, about 13 percent of the nation’s roughly 3.5 million teachers either move to a different school or opt-out of teaching altogether. This means schools are in a perennial scramble to find replacements. Some see recruitment programs such as Teach for America as the answer. But filling classrooms with bright people with little training or support is not much of a solution. A few recruits succeed, growing into talented and passionate long-term educators, but many more struggle and leave after a year or two. Recruitment is important, but until we find ways to retain outstanding teachers we will be pumping water out of a sinking ship instead of plugging the holes.

“Even more concerning, such programs are predicated on the belief that great teaching requires only enthusiasm and determination, not deep knowledge and carefully-honed skills. By perpetuating this view, they demean the profession and ultimately reduce its prestige. These programs may attract plenty of college graduates eager to burnish their resumes, but until teaching is viewed as a respected profession that requires both talent and training, our best and brightest will never consider it a career.

“Study after study shows that experience counts in teaching. While recruitment may be an immediate need, retaining a workforce of outstanding, experienced educators is the ultimate goal.

“So what do we do?

“First, stop casting teachers as the cause of the problem rather than partners in the solution. Stop pretending that one must choose between the interests of teachers and the interests of students. This only serves to demoralize the people on whom our education system depends. Teachers grow weary of having to defend themselves, and they eventually burn-out.

“Second, treat teachers like the professionals they are. Teachers, present and future, want two things–honest respect and sensible autonomy. Neither is automatic or easy in an accountability system that is designed on distrust, but both are possible. Programs like the one I head at Math for America attempt to create an environment in which teachers can thrive as professionals. We don’t fix them–our teachers don’t need fixing– but rather provide them with opportunities to grow, refine their craft, and take control of their own career. Teachers thrive in an environment of respect and autonomy…,

“We need to focus on excellence, not failure. We need to highlight teachers who are accomplished, not obsess about those who are not. We need to avoid driving away several outstanding teachers in order to rid ourselves of one who is mediocre.

“The good news is that retaining our most accomplished teachers–showing them respect, giving them independence, and making their careers not merely acceptable but prestigious–turns out to be the most effective way to recruit new teachers as well. If we want to attract talented people into the classroom, we must start by making the teaching profession more attractive.”

Categories Teachers and Teaching

New Research: Spending DOES Make a Difference, Especially for the Poorest Children

By dianeravitch
September 28, 2015 //
111

It should not be a surprise to learn that money matters. Certainly, affluent parents choose private schools and suburban districts with small classes, experienced teachers, and beautiful facilities.

Meanwhile, the children who live in the poorest communities have overcrowded classes in aging buildings and a steady churn of inexperienced teachers.

For years, we have been told by politicians and some economists that “throwing money” at schools in poor neighborhoods would not help the children.

However, new research demonstrates that spending does matter.

The authors–C. Kirabo Jackson, associate professor of human development and social policy at Northwestern University, Rucker C. Johnson, associate professor of public policy at University of California, Berkeley, and Claudia Persico, a doctoral candidate in human development and social policy at Northwestern University–show that “increased school spending is linked to improved outcomes for students, and for low-income students in particular…Increasing per-pupil spending yields large improvements in educational attainment, wages, and family income, and reductions in the annual incidence of adult poverty for children from low-income families.

As they also show, it matters how the new money is spent–such as on instruction, hiring more teachers, increasing teacher pay, hiring guidance counselors and social workers. Money well-spent “can profoundly shape the life outcomes of economically disadvantaged children and thereby reduce the intergenerational transmission of poverty. Money alone may not lift educational outcomes to desired levels, but our findings confirm that the provision of adequate funding may be critical.”

The only surprising fact about this study is that it appears in Education Next, a conservative journal whose contributors usually argue that money doesn’t matter, as compared to vouchers and charters.

Categories Education Reform, Funding

The Case of Malala: Would My Alma Mater Require an SAT for Admission?

By dianeravitch
September 27, 2015 //
28

In our blog discussion of Stanford’s requirement that Nobel Prize winner Malala Yousafzai must take the SAT, a reader suggested that she should apply to Wellesley instead. Wellesley is my alma mater, and I seconded the idea. A few of our blog’s skeptics sent me copies of the admissions requirements to “prove” that Wellesley would not make any exceptions for Malala.

I contacted the administration at Wellesley and received this response from Joy St. John, the Dean of Admissions:

“I cannot say definitively what the admission decision would be in Mala​l​a’s case because
the Board of Admission (which includes faculty, students and administrators) makes
Wellesley’s admission decisions. I can say, though, that while Wellesley requires SAT
testing for admission (except when the student is living in a country where neither the
SAT or ACT is administered), we work to assist students (on a case-by-case basis) who
have questions or challenges in complying with the requirement. If Malala, a young
woman with such​ a ​distinguished background, also has compelling academic credentials,
we would work very hard to clear the path toward her admission to Wellesley.”

I take that response to mean that Wellesley would find a way to “clear the path” to admit this remarkable young woman, whose accomplishments dwarf the value of the SAT.

Malala, if you get this message, go to Wellesley and enjoy “the Wellesley Effect,” which has produced remarkable women of accomplishment and leadership.

Categories Higher Education, Standardized Testing

A Teacher in Illinois: The Tests Are a Fraud

By dianeravitch
September 27, 2015 //
44

Dr. Terri Reid-Schuster writes:


I was disgusted by my IEA President, Cinda Klickna’s, response regarding the low scores soon to be released in Illinois. I sent her the following:

Dear Cinda Klickna,

I was very disturbed to read your recent response to the news that Illinois students’ recent PARCC score test release. You characterized it as something that will improve as teachers get better at the standards and students get more experienced with the test. You could not be more wrong.

First, I am a career Illinois teacher with more than 20 years of experience. I have a doctorate in developmental literacy and currently work as a reading specialist in Oregon, IL. I have been active in my union and am currently serving as OEA president. I vote democrat, and have always been a proud union member. However, now I am doubting whether IEA/NEA really has the best interests of children and teachers at heart. Your recent response has confirmed that.

Here is what you SHOULD have said:

The PARCC test is a capstone of corporate reform efforts to discredit hard-working teachers and school districts. It is a natural progression of developmentally inappropriate and unvalidated Common Core Standards that were written almost exclusively by test publishers whose intentions are to create a market for their “new and improved” curriculum materials, assessments, remedial programs and expensive consulting deals.

The test itself is written several years above the average student’s reading level, it is to be given on unfamiliar computer technology, contains intentionally vague and poorly designed questions with opaque directions, and is excessive in length. Additionally, cut scores were set outrageously high–ostensibly to align with NAEP proficiency levels and completely disregarding the fact that a rating of “proficient” on the NAEP means the equivalent of “A” level work in the classroom.

This is the new and impossible standard Illinois students have “failed” to reach. This is by design, it is absolutely the intention of companies like Pearson who stand to make billions off the misery the CCSS and PARCC are creating. Now politicians can “prove” teachers are lazy and incompetent and point to PARCC scores as evidence, then hand over public dollars to their business cronies and donors for charter schools. Your statement helps that process along by promoting the fantasy that it is possible to improve these test scores if only we numbskull public school teachers would just get up to speed on these dandy new standards.

Please, if you are going to take our money and purport to represent teachers collectively in Illinois, it is incumbent upon you to educate yourself about the reality of the monumental bamboozle that is corporate reform. I recommend Diane Ravitch’s book Reign of Error for starters, and her blog is a daily format for exposing the damaging effects of the move to privatize and profitize education. Todd Farley’s book Making the Grades is an insider’s expose of Pearson’s shoddy test design process and and standardized test-grading mills.

Additionally, I am requesting that IEA not accept funding from Bill Gates or Pearson or any other entity that seeks to destroy public education. Doing so ensures our demise as a profession, and will hasten the dismantling of democracy itself.

Democracy works best when we prepare students to be critical thinkers who are creative problem solvers and question authority–CCSS are preparing students to be obedient worker bees. Ask yourself why students at elite private schools aren’t being subjected to CCSS or PARCC testing? If these standards and tests are so essential to a great education, wealthy parents would be clamoring to have them for their own children. In fact, exactly the opposite is happening. CCSS and unfair, rigged exams like the PARCC are for the unwashed, undeserving poor and middle class.

Cinda, you disappoint me. I am beginning to believe my dues to the IEA and NEA are not money well spent. Please educate yourself and become an advocate for children and teachers in this state. Call out corporate reform for what it is: a blatant profit-making scheme. Stop falling for the slick marketing. Talk to real teachers about their struggles under this brutal and demoralizing test-and-punish regime. STOP looking to “have a seat at the table.” Don’t collaborate and cooperate with those who will destroy the education profession.

If you need real teachers to talk to, I volunteer myself and my colleagues. Thank you for your attention in this matter. It is critical teachers have the informed support of our biggest professional organization.

Categories Common Core, Corporate Reform, Illinois, Special Education

The Opt Out Movement is Scaring the Politicians

By dianeravitch
September 27, 2015 //
18

This article in The Hechinger Report says that the opt out movement will win some concessions. Policymakers in their cocoons inside the Beltway are not (yet) worried by the parent-led movement. They hope that if they ignore it long enough, it will go away.

But at the state level, the opt out movement looks threatening. Some states are rebranding the Common Core, dropping out of PARCC or SBAC, looking for other ways to respond to angry constituents.

If the Opt out movement spreads to other states and continues to grow, it will be a huge blow to those in D.C. who like to impose their ideas on other people’s children. Even inside the Beltway, they might have to listen to the voices of the people.

Remember the Lincoln line (Gettysburg Address) about a government “of the people, by the people, for the people.” He did not mean “of the billionaires, by the bureaucrats, and for the corporations”

Categories Opt Out, Parents, Resistance, Standardized Testing

A List of 2,500 Charter Schools That Closed

By dianeravitch
September 27, 2015 //
42

The Center for Media and Democracy has compiled a list of 2,500 charters that closed since 2000, either because of financial or academic problems.

This should dispel the myth that charter schools are superior institutions that “save” children.

Some of the schools closed before they opened, but their founders collected public money for “planning.”

Categories Charter Schools, Closing schools, Corporate Reform

A Teacher Sends a Love Letter to Principal Troy LaRaviere

By dianeravitch
September 27, 2015 //
8

Troy LaRaviere is a prominent elementary school principal in Chicago. He has been outspoken in his opposition to Rahm Emanuel’s budget-cutting and his preference for privately managed charters. He is on the honor roll of this blog for his courage and articulate support of the children and educators of the Windy City.

He recently spoke at the Chicago Club and titled his address, “A Love Letter to Chicago’s Teachers.”

Much to his surprise, he received an anonymous love letter from a teacher. She was deeply inspired by his speech.

Her letter to Troy begins like this:

I’ve been reading and listening to your love letter over and over the last few weeks. Your passion is contagious. Your sweet words, hard and true, light the darkness in my heart; the light I had forgotten. Although, your words I hold dear to my heart…I cannot leave my man (CPS). He provides for me…without him…I don’t know how I would be able to feed my kids. Yes, he is abusive…He constantly threatens to quit me. He reminds me annually that I can be easily replaced by someone younger, cheaper and less experienced. He doesn’t respect me…in fact he constantly belittles me with tests that constantly change and evaluations that are subjective and punitive…as if I haven’t proven that I am worthy or good enough despite the years that I have sacrificed for our relationship. He sends people to check up on me in hopes of catching me doing wrong.

Troy says he is a shy man by nature, but clearly he was moved by this letter. You can bet he will fight even harder now for justice and equity and respect for the city’s teachers, parents, and children.

Categories Chicago, Principals, Teachers
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