Archives for the year of: 2015
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What John Boehner’s Resignation Means for Education

By dianeravitch
September 26, 2015 //
37

This is a scary possibility. The rewrite of No Child Left Behind was on track after months of work.

This is from the Washington Post:

— Even the rewrite of the No Child Left Behind education law, which everyone in both parties agrees needs to happen, might now get derailed. “In July, the Senate passed a bipartisan bill while House Republicans approved a GOP version — the closest they’ve ever come to a new law,” Lyndsey Layton writes. A bunch of conservatives opposed the House GOP bill because they don’t want any federal role in public education at all. “But to reach a deal with the Senate that could also win President Obama’s signature, House negotiators are going to have to compromise with Democrats, who insist the federal government must exercise some oversight of K-12 education.” Bob Wise, a former congressman and West Virginia governor who now runs an advocacy group, said the leadership shake-up means that the chances of a conferenced bill getting a lot of Republican votes is “slim to none.”

Categories NCLB (No Child Left Behind)

DISGUSTING! Critics Condemn Charter Ad as “Race-Baiting”

By dianeravitch
September 26, 2015 //
77

A coalition of organizations in New York City condemned a television ad promoting charter schools as “race-baiting.”

The ad shows a white boy and a black boy going off to different schools, one well-resourced, the other a failing school that would blight the black child’s chances of going to college.

“A coalition of elected officials, community organizations and union-allied groups criticized a new Families for Excellent Schools ad Friday, accusing the pro-charter group of “race-baiting” in order to advance its political agenda.

“The ad, first reported by POLITICO New York, is called “Tale of Two Boys” and argues that Mayor Bill de Blasio is forcing minority students into failing schools. It began running Friday, though it was not publicly promoted by FES.

“The ad buy will cost FES about half a million dollars this week and will become a multimillion-dollar ad buy over the next few weeks, according to a source.”

Who are these “Families for Excellent Schools” who can afford a multimillion dollar ad campaign?

It is not the families who send their children to charters or hope to.

Families for Excellent Schools live in excellent homes and excellent neighborhoods and send their own children to elite private schools. They are the 1%, the billionaires and multimillionaires who can pull together millions of dollars for an ad campaign in a day or an hour. They have names like Walton, Broad, and hedge fund magnate Paul Tudor Jones.

The tragedy of the charter school movement is that the original idea was admirable. They were supposed to be schools with a contract for five years or so, during which they would enroll students at risk of failure and dropouts; the teachers would seek innovative ways to spark their motivation in education. The teachers of charter schools would share their fresh ideas with their colleagues in the public schools. The students would return to their public school, re-energized and mmotivated. The public school would adopt the new methods pioneered by the charters. It was to be a collaboration.

But as charters began to open, the original idea was eclipsed by a philosophy not of collaboration, but corruption. Ambitious entrepreneurs created chains of charter schools. A new industry emerged, led not by educators, but by savvy lawyers, industrialists, and flim-flam artists. Some charters claimed they were far better than the public schools and showed contempt for public schools. They boasted that their scores were better than the public forces. They want to beat the public schools, not help them. They became a malignant force for privatization and union-busting.

Families for Excellent Schools is just one more of the deceptive names of organizations that are led by the 1% and whose goal is the impoverishment and –eventually–abandonment of public education.

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

Mary Butz: Hedge Fund Managers and Foundations Should Fund Catholic Schools

By dianeravitch
September 26, 2015 //
34

Mary Butz worked in the Néw York City public schools for 35 years. She was a teacher of social studies; an assistant principal; founded her own small high school, which was part of Deborah Meier’s group and Ted Sizer’s Coalition of Essential Schools. After seven years as principal, she stepped down and became a mentor to other principals. Chancellor Harold Levy asked her to take charge of a program to help 500 new principals. She created a group of 50 highly accomplished principals who were called the Distinguished Faculty. This group mentored new principals. In the summers, all the principals attended a “Principals’ University,” where they chose the practical workshops that met their needs. Many of the principals praised the program as the best professional development they ever had.

I mention all this detail because I know Mary well. She has been my partner for 30 years. While I was traveling in Waco and Dallas, she was glued to the TV, watching Pope Francis. She has her differences with the Church, but she loves the nuns who educated her, and she loves this Pope. I am Jewish, and I love this Pope too.

I have a principle: public money for public schools; private money for nonpublic schools. As readers of the blog know, I do not consider charters to be public schools; whenever they are sued for violating a state law, they say they are private corporations, not state actors. I agree with them.

Mary writes:

I am a product of Catholic education. I went to Catholic school, then to a Catholic college. I spent my career working in the New York City public schools. I deeply love each of these institutions down to my toes. Each serve the children in their care with dedication, love and concern.

Yesterday while watching the Pope’s visit a Catholic school in East Harlem, I watched Governor Andrew Cuomo, Senator Chuck Schumer, and Mayor Bill de Blasio hovering around the children. I was struck with a simple truth that this city is not facing. THEY (our influential leaders in government, business leaders, and philanthropists) are allowing Catholic schools to be closed and disappear. I am not advocating for vouchers – I am advocating for funding from the philanthropies and hedge fund managers who shower millions of dollars on charter schools that try to imitate Catholic schools.

Why is our governor opening more and more charter schools that receive extra millions from wealthy hedge fund managers? Why are these hedge fund managers pumping their money into the unknown? Why are we taking taxpayer funds away from public schools to support these schools? Why are they speculating that charter schools will succeed? Some will, some won’t.

The billionaires behind “Families for Excellent Schools” are spending millions of dollars on a television campaign to demand more charter schools. That same money would save many Catholic schools without undermining public education.

Can they not see the light before them? If they care about poor children, why don’t they fund Catholic schools? Why are they using their millions to drain students and resources from public schools? Why don’t they use their money as donations to Catholic schools, instead on spending it on political attack ads? The business community should help to sustain and grow schools with a long history of service while simultaneously allowing our public school to survive.

Catholic education has been and continues to be hugely successful. Children who come from poverty-stressed homes blossom in Catholic schools. Why is that? Is it because they are strict and orderly? Yes. Is it because their expectations are clear and defined? Yes. Is it because they require parents to participate in the education of their children? Yes. So, don’t charters do the same? Well . . not necessarily.

Charter schools have adopted the trappings of Catholic education: uniforms, neat and orderly buildings, defined objectives, parent involvement. It all sounds good and looks good on paper but they lack the genuine ingredient for student success. SOUL.

Charter schools focus on test scores; Catholic schools focus on character. Honesty, integrity, compassion, social justice.

Catholic schools care for the whole child. Catholic education fosters, teaches and preaches a body of belief that embraces service, gratitude and love. Children learn because they are loved. They learn because they are safe. These children learn because their principals, their teachers, their fellow students all adhere to a higher code.

Hedge fund managers, corporate leader, and foundations: Put your money where it will make a lifelong difference. It is such a simple, honest solution. It is clear and obvious. Catholic education works. It should not die. Stop funding imitations when the real thing is right before you.

Categories Education Reform

Commonweal: Why We Need Unions

By dianeravitch
September 26, 2015 //
4

Commonweal editors mark the departure of Scott Walker from the 2016 field with relief.

“The departure of Gov. Scott Walker from the Republican race for president should come as a relief to American working people. His campaign against public-employee unions in his home state of Wisconsin, underwritten by billionaire businessmen Charles and David Koch, proved devastatingly effective, and his goal was to take it nationwide. Not that he was the only Republican candidate to take aim at what is, by general agreement, a fading target—organized labor as both a political force and an advocate for workers is perhaps weaker now than it’s ever been. But Walker, even more than fellow Republican Chris Christie, had been especially vocal in demonizing unions. That put him at odds with many of his fellow citizens: Support for unions has been rising since 2008, according to an August Gallup survey, with 58 percent of Americans—and 42 percent of Republican voters—now viewing them favorably.

“A plan Walker issued days before stepping down, costumed in the rhetoric of freedom, flexibility, and expanded opportunity, was essentially a proposal for finishing off organized labor once and for all. Its title was “Power to the People, Not the Union Bosses,” as if Walter Reuther and Albert Shanker still strode the land, legions of auto-workers and schoolteachers massed behind them. Empowering people, in Walker’s view, would mean abolishing the National Labor Relations Board, rewriting federal law to make Right to Work “the default position for all private, state, and public-sector workers,” replacing overtime pay with unpaid time off, and stripping employees of their ability to bargain collectively. The plan appears to have died with Walker’s candidacy. But its spirit is very much alive among many in the GOP—those who recall Ronald Reagan’s decision in 1981 to fire eleven thousand employees in the air-traffic controllers union the way some remember, say, the establishment of Social Security. That they speak so cynically about labor is not surprising. That Democrats seem to speak so little of it is not reassuring.

“According to the Economic Policy Institute, since the beginning of the “Reagan Revolution” in 1980, American workers have seen their hourly wages stagnate or decline, while real gross domestic product has grown by nearly 150 percent and net productivity by 64 percent in this period. More and more of the jobs Americans hold today come without reliable, living wages or benefits like health insurance, retirement plans, training, and job security. Measures like Walker’s aren’t meant to improve things, but rather accelerate what began some time ago. The decoupling of wages and benefits from productivity has been evident over the past two decades, according to the EPI, a period that has “coincided with the passage of many policies that explicitly aimed to erode the bargaining power of low- and moderate-wage workers in the labor market.”

Categories Equity, Unions

Arizona Will Increase Charter Funding by Cutting Public School Budgets

By dianeravitch
September 26, 2015 //
10

Arizona’s Governor Doug Ducey appointed a commission to fix school funding. The commission has decided that The schools don’t need more money, even though the state is one of the lowest spending in the nation. What’s needed is more funding for charters. The pie stays the same, but the underfunded public schools will lose money to the charters.

A large proportion of the students in Arizona are of Hispanic origin. I wonder if any of their parents served on Governor Ducey ‘s commission?

Categories Arizona, Budget Cuts, Charter Schools, Funding

Mercedes Schneider: A McGraw-Hill Common Core Question: Can You Solve It?

By dianeravitch
September 26, 2015 //
34

Mercedes Schneider came across a fourth grade question in a McGraw Hill textbook. She shows how confusing the question is. She knows that the text is trying to form a Common Core question. She thinks it was designed to confuse everyone–students and parents alike. There is an easy way to solve it, and a hard way. The McGraw Hill text picks the hard way.

Categories Education Reform

Why So Many PARCC Failures in Illinois? A Teacher Explains

By dianeravitch
September 26, 2015 //
20

This Illinois blogger wondered why the failure rate was so high on the Common Core PARCC test. He probably didn’t know that the passing marks were set so high that mass failure was certain.

He asked a math teacher and this was her answer.

Categories Common Core, Illinois

Los Angeles: Eli Broad’s Illegitimate Proposal to Privatize Half the District

By dianeravitch
September 26, 2015 //
74

Eli Broad intends to raise $490 million to build 260 new charter schools for half the students in Los Angeles. Being a billionaire and moving in a world of billionaires, this will not be difficult for him. It’s true that he knows nothing about education; he has said so himself. But that should be no impediment since many charters are founded and run by people with no education experience.

The Los Angeles Times has an article about the test scores of charters, public magnet schools, and regular public schools in that city. The assumption, I suppose, is that whoever has the highest scorese is best.

But the test scores are beside the point. The really important question is why a billionaire should be allowed to buy half of a public institution. If Eli Broad didn’t like policing in Los Angeles, could he buy half the police force? If he thought the public parks were not well run, could he buy half of them?

Why should he be allowed to buy half the children in LAUSD?

It is widely believed that Eli Broad picked John Deasy as L.A.’s last superintendent. Deasy was a disaster, having cost the district at least $200 million for his failed plan to buy iPads at an inflated price for everyone in the district. The FBI is investigating the iPad mess. Deasy now works for Broad.

Many of the superintendents trained in Broad’s unaccredited superintendents academy have been fired because of their autocratic, top-down style. I happen to be in Dallas, which pushed out its Broadie, Mike Miles, after three tumultuous years, marked by a large exodus if teachers and principals and flat scores. I met with several superintendents, who said Miles had created constant disruption, my-way-or-out, and a “culture of fear.”

Eli Broad should not be allowed to take over half the children in Los Angekes.

Letting this deal go through would be the beginning of the end for public education, not only in Los Angeles but in many other cities as well.

Eli Broad’s power grab is an offense to our democracy. It is wrong. It is illegitimate. The elected board must not let it happen. They were elected to safeguard and improve the city’s public schools, not to privatize them.

Categories Broad Foundation, Charter Schools, Los Angeles

BREAKING NEWS: Florida Superintendents Announce They Have Lost Confidence in the State Accountability System

By dianeravitch
September 26, 2015 //
35

Florida superintendents issued a statement saying that they have lost confidence in the state’s accountability system.

Read it here.

Categories Accountability, Administrators, superintendents, Florida, Standardized Testing

Brian Crosby: Why Does Anyone Want to Teach?

By dianeravitch
September 25, 2015 //
39

Brian Crosby, a teacher in California, notes the dramatic decline in the number of people enrolling in teacher preparation programs. We know why. Loss of autonomy. Scripted curricula. Low pay. Teacher-bashing by politicians and the media.

Yet some people persevere. Why?

“California needed more than 21,000 teachers to fill positions this school year because the number of teacher candidates has declined by more than 55%, from 45,000 in 2008 to 20,000 in 2013, as reported by the California Commission on Teacher Credentialing.

“With fewer people going into the teaching field, shouldn’t the powers that be examine how to increase interest in it?

“Working conditions and salary clearly are not selling points.

“Much of the negative aspects of teaching stem from the lack of control teachers have over their own profession.

“Schools are still structured top-down as they have been for a century, with teachers viewed more as factory workers, not master-degreed professionals who can problem-solve without the intervention of those outside the classroom.

Teachers know how to improve their profession, but do not have a voice in the matter, impotent in their subservient roles. How many college students would gravitate toward such a future career?

“It wasn’t that long ago that the concept of site-based management was seriously championed as a way to involve teachers in the decision-making process at a school. But that grand idea vanished.

“So, education bureaucrats continue to mandate so-called reforms such as Common Core standards and standardized testing that teachers are expected to deliver with little input….

“Let’s face it. We all hope that selfless people join the military to protect our country. We all hope that decent people become firefighters and police officers to protect our society. And we all hope that quality people join the teaching ranks to mold our future commodity — children.

“But hoping will only get so far. If schools expect a line outside human resources of people applying for jobs, then a major overhaul of the teaching profession has to happen. And it will take teachers themselves to blast the clarion call since those in the upper echelon of education show no interest in changing the status quo.
Is there any chance of that happening in our lifetime?

“One can only hope.”

Categories Teacher Shortage, Teachers
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