Valerie Strauss reports that Secretary of Education John King is utilizing the drafting of regulations for the Every Student Succeeds Act to try to snuff out the opt out movement. The new regulations demand a 95% participation rate on state tests. Schools that can’t reach that target will be subject to sanctions.
Critics say he is engaging in the same federal overreach that ESSA was supposed to curtail.
Will Senator Lamar Alexander let King get away with this disregard of Congressional intent?
Diane Ravitch's blog 
For public education in the U.S. President Obama has been a total loser from day one. If any president set out to destroy the democracy he was elected to lead and protect for 4 to 8 years, what Obama has done to public education in the United States is the perfect long term agenda.
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Really, who could’ve seen that he would be more assertively invasive than his predecessor?
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He was chosen to seal the deal. He was trusted by the impoverished, the black, the brown. Who better than to plunge in the knife while his donors cackle all the way to the bank?
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Donna, indeed he was. Eli Broad said as much.
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I feel like it’s political theater with Republicans and Democrats. Does Alexander object to the substantive issue of testing or is he making a theoretical federalism argument?
We saw the same thing (in my opinion) with Common Core. Both sides supported it, but Republicans had to do this elaborate song and dance in order to pretend to comply with “principles”.
I don’t know how to break it to conservatives but they’re busy establishing national school systems when they fund these multi-state charter chains. They never object to that. My public school can’t expand into Michigan but charter chains can. There are never any “federalism” concerns there. This seems like a very convenient “bedrock” principle they have, that schools are state and local. Except charters, I guess.
Ed reform doesn’t hang together. It’s a mass of contradictions. It’s whatever they say it is at the moment they’re pushing one of their causes.
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The goal of New Schools Venture Fund (Kim Smith-founder, $22 mil. in Gates funding), “To develop charter management organizations that produce a diverse supply of different brands on a large scale.”
interpreted as greater wealth concentration, at the expense of the 99%.
The richest 0.1% won’t be content until they strangle all economic opportunity.
For-profit Bridge International Academies, owned by Mark Z-berg, Bill Gates, Pearson…
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I am not a fan of Obama’s education policies either. He has basically continued the ruinous NCLB legacy of Bush Jr. But to lay the problems of public Ed at Obama’s feet is grossly misguided The attacks began in earnest twenty years ago with the creation of charters and vouchers fueled by corporate interests. If any one person is to blame, its Gates and hi foundation that have poured millions upon millions of dollars not into public education but into alternatives that maximize profit and not learning.
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Ah, but with Obama, a handsome black president, we never even saw it coming as he plunged in the knives whiles his cronies and donors grabbed up real estate and took our schools away along with our tax dollars and our teachers, and ruined our neighborhoods. Never underestimate Obama’s charm and trustworthiness as a tool to undermine democracy and screw over the 99%.
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robyntowner: I vote for Democrats for a progressive vision of economics and education . I do not vote for a neo-liberal assault to be conducted by the party of FDR . Your time frame is a little off we are closer to a thirty five year assault. For Milton Friedman or Ronald Reagan the assault on Americas Public Schools and Public School teachers was a perfect fit with their political goals and economic philosophy, of privatization and destroying public goods and Unions.
But the assault from Obama comes from a different place it is a reflection of an elitist attitude that does not view Teachers as professionals not part of the best and brightest. If they were the best and the brightest they wouldn’t be teaching they would be on Wall Street or in Corporate suites, reaping obscene salaries with the rest of the donor class. Certainly no teacher or University professor could possibly be a professional and feel the need to be represented by a Union in the view of Democratic elites.
Oh they dispense with a little guilt by spending a year or two teaching in the “GHETTO !!!!” on the way to their more lucrative careers. If they become successful enough they may even donate vast sums of money to education reform . Or spend a little time on a charter board. . For in their view of meritocracy they are the best and brightest and their education enabled their success .Which is probably as much of a myth today as Horatio Alger was over a century ago.
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Hillary Clinton is running a tough race against Donald Trump a bigot flimflam man because on all too many issues she and Obama have dismissed the fears of the American people . From trade to education dismal Democrats empower Republican extremism. They just don’t get it . The employment numbers do not tell the picture of the job market, the worker participation rate ,the numbers working part time jobs involuntarily, stagnant and declining wages do. .College educated Millennials living home is far more revealing. If I a life long FDR/LBJ democrat has to worry more about a Democratic administration enacting Republican dreams like the destruction of Public Schools or deregulation of Wall Street or free trade in slave labor wages,than why should I bother to vote .
King was a disaster in NY, picking him for a cabinet level position was an in your face move by Obama . Obama can make all the stump speeches he wants to, it is policy that counts. “Listen Liberal ” your about to get your but kicked as you have on state levels through out the country because you aren’t liberal nor progressive .
You want a Republican Supreme Court leave King in Office and keep pushing the TPP.
http://inthesetimes.com/features/listen-liberal-thomas-frank-democratic-party-elites-inequality.html
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Hillary’s recent appointments to the Democratic Party platform committee – two employees of the Albright Stonebridge firm. Madelyn Albright is on the Aspen institute Board with David Koch. Her firm, has charter school zealot, Paul Singer, as a client. The firm has been described in this way, “It has the ability to win favors and influence government officials throughout the world on behalf of corporate clients.”
Before the education unions endorsed HRC, did they ask for a seat on the platform committee?
The US is screwed with either presidential candidate.
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I saw Obama chose a public high school to launch the latest campaign yesterday.
I don’t mind people who promote privatizing public schools- I disagree with it but they’re allowed to promote it- but I do wonder why they always launch their Heartland Tours from one of the schools they hope to replace.
I hope he wasn’t upset by all the mediocrity, low expectations and (gasp!) labor union members. I’d hate for him to catch labor union cooties or something 🙂
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Bernie is still in the race ! we can only hope that he somehow makes it, because Hillary will sell us out in a New York minute. Come to think of it, she has already done so.
If Bernie is not the nominee, I am voting for Jill Stein. I’m fed up with the betrayal of the corporate D’s.
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You probably know this better than I do Diane, because you’re a historian, but does it seem odd to you that conservatives only rediscovered their devotion to federalism when the lost the White House? They were more than happy to usurp “states rights” with NCLB.
It just seems mighty convenient to me, this “principle”. They run the majority of states (now) so we’re back to states rights on education. Meanwhile, they can’t throw enough money at charter chains to establish national schools which they’re busily planning on plunking down… wherever. They happily went along with the Obama Administration to take over Youngstown, Ohio schools. Where was Alexander then? I’m pretty sure Ohio is a state. We have charter chains that are run out of a PO Box in Virginia.
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Electoral college decides but let both the “front runners” lose in the court of common opinion.
Vote Bernie or Stein and humiliate the corporate crooks.
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Bring it on. Every time these idiots open their mouths, our numbers GROW!
Tracy
Admin for The Opt Out Florida Network
Opt Out Sarasota.
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Considering the amount of federal aid schools receive, the influence they command is very out-sized.
Perhaps there should a national “thumb your nose” movement … declining federal aid by districts … leaving them free of these asinine overreaches.
Then Mr. King can add that to his wretched New York performance.
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Lots of scurrying for pellets, doled out by oligarch-controlled government departments.
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Reblogged this on stopcommoncorenys.
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The “invitation” to comment is tightly limited to agreeing with these restorations of federal authority or not.
Here is lightly edited Invitation to Comment:
We invite you to submit comments regarding these proposed regulations. To ensure that your comments have maximum effect in developing the final regulations, we urge you to identify clearly the specific section or sections of the proposed regulations that each of your comments addresses and to arrange your comments in the same order as the proposed regulations.
…
During and after the comment period, you may inspect all public comments about these proposed regulations by accessing Regulations.gov….
Particular Issues for Comment: We request comments from the public on any issues related to these proposed regulations. However, we particularly request the public to comment on, and provide additional information regarding, the following issues. Please provide a detailed rationale for each response you make.
1. Whether the suggested options for States to identify “consistently underperforming”
subgroups of students in proposed §200.19 would result in meaningful identification and be helpful to States; whether any additional options should be considered; and which options, if any, in proposed §200.19 should not be included or should be modified.
2. Whether we should include additional or different options, beyond those proposed in this NPRM, to support States in how they can meaningfully address low assessment participation rates in schools that do not assess at least 95 percent of their students, including as part of their State-designed accountability system and as part of plans schools develop and implement to improve, so that parents and teachers have the information they need to ensure that all students are making academic progress.(§200.15)
3. Whether, in setting ambitious long-term goals for English learners to achieve English language proficiency, States would be better able to support English learners if the proposed regulations included a maximum State-determined timeline (e.g., a timeline consistent with the definition of long-term English learners in section 3121(a)(6) of the ESEA, as amended by the ESSA), and if so, what should the maximum timeline be and what research or data supports that maximum timeline. (§200.13)
4. Whether we should retain, modify, or eliminate in the title I regulations the provision allowing a student who was previously identified as a child with a disability under section 602(3) of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), but who no longer receives special education services, to be included in the children with disabilities subgroup for the limited purpose of calculating the Academic Achievement indicator, and, if so, whether such students should be permitted in the subgroup for up to two years consistent with current title I regulations, or for a shorter period of time. (§200.16)
5. Whether we should standardize the criteria for including children with disabilities, English learners, homeless children, and children who are in foster care in their corresponding subgroups within the adjusted cohort graduation rate, and suggestions for ways to standardize these criteria.
My take: John King and his staff intend to ram these gap-filling regulations into USDE conditions for reporting, effectively making law.That is the consequence of sloppy works by members of Congress and the staff who wrote the law. The draft regulations are designed to take away the authority that was supposed to be given to states. All five of these regulations are intended to restore the power of “the Secretary” to micromanage schools…contrary to the expressed intent of Congress.
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But there is no “executive overreach” without legislative retreat. Both things have to happen.
Congress has enormous power- they have all the power they need. I think they play a game where they insist they are being trampled on by the executive branch because they would prefer not to be accountable for policy they agree with.
You saw it with state legislatures and Common Core. All those Republicans who voted for enabling legislation at the state level suddenly realized Common Core violates their bedrock beliefs?
That’s just nonsense. They’re dodging accountability. They want this policy. They just want to avoid political accountability for backing it.
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Since it is the executive branch’s job to enforce the regulations established by the legislature, what power does the legislature have other than the courts to direct the way the executive branch enforces their legislation? Congress should have included language ceding all action not specifically reserved to the federal government to the states. We’ll see what the Congress’s true intentions were by how vigorously they pursue legal action against Executive over reach
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You don’t fix things by force. This is how the mafia works. Everything becomes broken and ultimately corrupt.
He is acting like an uneducated thug.
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Crossposted Valerie’s article at http://www.opednews.com/Quicklink/New-rules-old-fight-Crit-in-General_News-Deception_Education_Education-Testing_Educational-Crisis-160602-448.html
with this comment that has links to this site.
READ WHAT IS ONGOING as these valueless tests are used to throw the best teachers out of the schools.
Massachusetts is the latest battlefield over the question of how to evaluate teachers. http://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2016/05/30/new-school-testing-measure-under-fire/dUgVcsVizHZ1FnqiwYCj5J/story.html?s_campaign=email_BG_TodaysHeadline&s_campaign=
At the center of the conflict is the favorite idea of Arne Duncan and Bill Gates: evaluating teachers by the test scores of their students (or if not their students, someone else’s students). The new Every Student Succeeds Act relieved states of the obligation to tie teacher evaluations to students scores. Oklahoma and Hawaii recently dropped the measure, which many researchers consider invalid and unreliable
Rachel Rich: Everything You Need to Know about the /%# %+ Test | Diane Ravitch’s blog
says Ravitch: “Rachel Rich is a retired English teacher who has taken a deep interest in standardized testing. She wrote the following review of one of the two federally subsidized tests. Normally, I would tell you which test she has analyzed, but I have recently become acutely aware that the testing corporations hire security agencies to scan the Internet, looking for blogs and tweets that dare to mention their name. If you mention their name, the testing corporation goes to the Internet Service Provider and complains that you violated their copyright. The ISP then deletes your post or tweet. So I won’t tell you which national test she is writing about. I will just give you a hint: it is not the one that is CCRAP spelled backwards. It is the other one. (Let’s see if they miss this one.)”
Go and see the lengths to which Pearson and its cronies in the EDUCATIONAL INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX go to end our public schools by declaring them failures, based on these tests, and then legislating charter schools to replace our once great Institution of Public Education
Click to access eic-oct_11.pdf
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Republican ed reform lawmakers in Ohio are focused on the vital issue of federal overreach on bathroom rules. They’re delivering another federalism lecture instead of doing any work on, you know, public schools. It’s obvious there’s not much interest in the schools 93% of the kids in this state attend. Maybe we could hire people who are interested in the public schools that exist?
Ridiculously “traditionalist” I know, to expect public employees to expend any energy on public schools. How dare we ask for that.
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“Chicago Public Schools won’t open in the fall if state government fails to approve an education budget, CPS chief Forrest Claypool said Wednesday.
“Chicago schools would not open, and I suspect most of the schools in the state would not open,” Claypool said in a telephone interview a day after divisions among Democrats who control the House and Senate prevented passage of a school funding plan before the end of the legislative session.”
Boy, these ed reform folks are doing a bang-up job on public schools I must say. Did Rahm Emanuel deliberately set out to destroy that city, or what? Those poor people. Maybe next time they should look for basic governmental competence instead of ego.
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Yes, Rahm has done his best to destroy public education in Chicago.
But the entire state of Illinois is a mess. The governor and the state legislature are at loggerheads over a budget, and they’re going into their second year without one.
If they don’t pass a state budget, it’s not just Chicago schools that are in danger of closing, it’s schools in poorer districts all over the state. Not to mention the state colleges and universities. Not to mention many state social service agencies.
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And, in April, the President appointed a member of the Pahara Aspen Fellowship to one of his advisory committees, at the Ed. Dept.. Pahara receives Gates money, and was founded by the same person who founded New Schools Venture Fund and Bellwether, both Gates funded).
David Koch and Madelyn Albright are board members of the Aspen Institute. Pahara is an Aspen program.
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“New Test Rules” (peformed by the King”
Well, it’s one for the money,
Two for the show,
Three to get ready,
Now go, cat, go.
But don’t you step on my new test rules.
You can do anything but lay off of my new test rules.
Well, you can knock me down,
Step in my face,
Slander my name
All over the place.
Do anything that you want to do, but uh-uh,
Honey, lay off of my rules
Don’t you step on my new test rules
You can do anything but lay off of my new test rules.
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Hey there…I posted your poem: as a comment
http://www.opednews.com/Quicklink/New-rules-old-fight-Crit-in-General_News-Deception_Education_Education-Testing_Educational-Crisis-160602-448.html#comment599913
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It’s Elvis’ (aka the King’s poem, not mine.)
I thought everyone would recognize that.
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One problem with ESSA is that it pretends to stand on the same principle as NCLB, test and punish schools. With a number of governors getting campaign “donations” from the charter industry, it has led to allowing charters to take over mostly poor minority students’ education. Frankly, this practice seems to be a civil rights violation, and it should be
challenged. I thought ESSA was an update of Title 1. Under Title 1 poor mostly minority students qualified for supplemental support, and testing was used to confirm the need and show ‘growth,’ not to ‘fail’ schools. Title 1 was not about ‘failing schools;’it was all about helping needy children. To me giving the federal government the power to close schools based on test scores is an overreach of federal power. Let’s hope King goes down in flames
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LAWSUITS needed.
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If the US had an investigative 4th estate, it would get meeting information for the Gates-funded Aspen program, “Senior Congressional Education Staff Network”. If the group is non-ideological, as it claims, “experts” who meet with, the “key Congressional staff”, in their “structured safe space”, would show up in the minutes. The “experts” would include proportionate representation of the opt out movement and public school advocates.
The minutes would show CRITICS of charter schools, schools-in-a-box, “supplies of different (school) brands on a large scale” and “…reformers…(who) declare ‘We’ve got to blow up the ed schools.”
I have a gut feeling, based on Dept. of Ed. policy, that the corporate opposition is seldom, if ever, invited.
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What US Constitution? Who cares about the consent of the governed? Let’s have one point person for billionaires and hedge fund investors coopt and destroy the institution of public education in America. And do you know what? No one will stop him.
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Clinton appointed two employees of the influence peddling firm, Albright Stonebridge, to the DNC platform committee. For the same committee, the DNC vetoed any labor leaders, other than one representing civic government employees. (report from Campaign for America)
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Please fix the link to “Great News! Civil Rights Icon James Meredith Declares His Opposition to the Corporate Reform Movement “. I would very much like to read that please.
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The link to the James Meredith post is fixed
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The real question is where the presumptive presidential nominees stand. Both the arrogant, evasive, dismissive puppet of the wealthy, and Donald Trump. We have ended up with King there because Democrats wanted him there. Time for our wannabes to step up to the mic and talk to teachers, not nat’l union figureheads. Tell us how charter pretenders and reformists will be weeded out.
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John King is pond scum. He didn’t listen to New York parents. He isn’t even listening to Lamar Alexander either. Great choice guys. The Peter principle at work.
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King, is who senators like Sherrod Brown want.
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I’ve been wondering where this 95% requirement come from? I’ve heard that if less than 95% of students take the test, it invalidates the results. What does that mean?
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The 95% participation requirement is in the new federal law, ESSA (Every Student Succeeds Act). How it is enforced is determined by regulation, and King is trying to make punishment as strong as possible to stop opt out.
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Reblogged this on Network Schools – Wayne Gersen and commented:
This post closes with this question: “Will Senator Lamar Alexander let King get away with this disregard of Congressional intent?” Mr. Alexander SHOULD do so based on his assertion that Mr. King’s decision to stand up for the “supplement vs. supplant” language was “overreach”… but ESSA was never about abandoning TESTING: it was about abandoning FEDERAL testing so I doubt that Mr. Alexander will do anything to undercut Mr. King’s insistence that everyone participate in the testing charade…
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The very last thing I am is a radical. An advocate of the extreme.
But I think we all know in our hearts the single tactic that waits for us all … and that is to empty our schools.
And not for a day, but for several days in order to capture the attention of all of those imposing this rot on our children and our school leaders … teachers included.
We are being artfully dribbed and drabbed to death. The reform-imposers release enough information to appear responsive and little enough to remain taunting … as they did with the spring assessment questions. We are being played.
We now need to speak the language of action. We must separate certain forces from each other and fracture any opposition alliances.
I don’t think that we are in that moment of unity. Not yet. And I admit that achieving that sort of concord among such large numbers is daunting.
These reform chieftains are obstinate crowd and unperturbed by most of our actions. They seem passively reactive to our most impressive tactic … the opt-out/refusal. They are more than willing to wait us out.
Rubbling up against legislative leaders has yielded little. Same for sporadic marches and even traveling side-shows speeches. They are numb to emails and letters and phone missives. They fear us slightly at the ballot box, but not enough.
We cannot claim the luxury of time any longer. This reform is now taking fast-root despite us. And we’d better weed it out as soon as possible.
Effective and successful tacticians of resistance are not reactive … they’re proactive and ahead of the opposition … and the suppliers of unanticipated surprises..
This reform can continue with new, inexperienced, script-reading teachers. It can advance with acquiescing principals and superintendents. It can be sustained by timid, head-nodding boards of education. And it can proceed as a brigade of legislators … both state and federal … conspire with outsiders to sell out our children for ideologies and for profit.
But this reform cannot continue without our children. It cannot continue if school desks are empty. It cannot happen if parents withhold the single, most important constituent necessary for this nonsense to continue … and that’s our children. It is a time we vow to unite our own semi-independent forces into a singular force of reckon.It is time to think and plan while we are not in a frenzied moment. But we had better look ahead or we’ll be looking at defeat.
This is no time to kid ourselves.
Denis Ian
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It is truly a miscarriage of justice that King was promoted to the national stage after failing so badly in NY! How could Obama fail to research his previous tenure and how badly he treated parents and constituents! Really disappointing.
Sent from my iPhone
>
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Carol, Obama chose King deliberately. This is the type of person Obama wants in the Education Department.
Coerce and bully parents and schools and students to enforce the draconian and inappropriate testing mantra by any means necessary.
And, while you’re at it, encourage more charter schools in the guise of “school choice” by destroying the public schools.
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