Archives for the month of: June, 2016
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Reformers Debate the Black Lives Matter Movement

By dianeravitch
June 6, 2016 //
22

If you wonder what reformers are thinking about in private, here is a peek behind the curtain.

Elizabeth Green, founder of Chalkbeat, writes about the debate among reformers about the Black Lives Matter movement.

African American reformers questioned why there are so few people of color in leadership roles in the education reform movement, and whether it can even be called a movement because it is led by people who are white and privileged. Those are questions about power and control, which are important.

Among the questions that were not raised:

Why do reformers think that black children benefit by taking standardized tests that label most of them as failures beginning in grade 3?

Why do reformers express so little concern about class size, budget cuts, funding, and segregation?

Do reformers believe that black children benefit by being in classrooms filled with exploration and joy, rather than test pressure?

Why are reformers eager to open charter schools with no-excuses discipline, where black children are treated like robots and trained to obey?

Do reformers worry that the expansion of charters harms the remaining public schools, which enroll far greater numbers of black children than charters?

Do reformers worry about directing so many inexperienced, first-year teachers to the schools that enroll black children?

Are reformers at all concerned that charter schools are more segregated than the public schools in the same district?

Why do reformers think that giving black children a voucher to enroll in a church school with uncertified teachers will prepare them to thrive in the 21st century?

Why aren’t the leaders of reform fighting for schools that black children attend that look like the schools their own children attend?

Are reformers worried about the disparate impact that “reform” policies have had on black teachers?

Do reformers think twice about union-busting and supplying scabs for non-union schools?

Do reformers understand the role that unions have played in building a middle class?

Categories Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Privatization, Race, Testing

SHOCKER: Walton Funds Illinois State Charter Commission, Which Blocks Closure of Failing Charter Schools Funded by Walton

By dianeravitch
June 6, 2016 //
14

The Chicago Sun-Times reported on a startling conflict of interest.

The rightwing, anti-union Walton Family Foundation has been funding the Illinois State Charter School Commission, a state agency, as well as many charter schools in Illinois. When the Chicago Public Schools recommended closing two charter schools because of their poor performance, the Commission blocked the closing. The two failing charters were also funded by the Walton Family Foundation.

Have you ever heard of a public agency that relied for funding on a private foundation with a political agenda of privatization?

Reporters Dan Mihalopoulos and Lauren FitzPatrick write:

A private foundation started by the late Walmart mogul Sam Walton and his wife has contributed heavily to the Illinois State Charter School Commission and to two charter operators whose schools the state agency has blocked the Chicago Board of Education from closing over poor student performance, records obtained by the Chicago Sun-Times show.

Even in the complex history of public education in Chicago, the situation involving the two charters, the Chicago Public Schools, the charter commission and the Arkansas-based Walton Family Foundation is unusual.

Unusual is an understatement.

For years, CPS has faced criticism for allowing the expansion and taxpayer-financed funding of privately run charters even as it shut down traditional public schools over low enrollment and bad test scores.

Aiming to show it expects charters to meet the same standards as CPS schools, the Board of Ed moved last November to cut off funding for three schools — including the Amandla Charter School in Englewood and Lighthouse Academies’ school in Bronzeville — over poor student performance. The charter commission overruled the Board of Ed and, in March, blocked CPS from closing the schools.

Beside Amandla and the Bronzeville Lighthouse Charter School, the commission also saved the Betty Shabazz International Charter School’s Barbara A. Sizemore Campus in Englewood from being closed. The Walton foundation hasn’t donated to Shabazz.

CPS responded later in March by suing the state agency over its ruling, which Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s schools chief, Forrest Claypool, called “ill-advised and destructive.”

Over the past 20 years, the Walton foundation has given more than $45 million to educational groups in Illinois, including charter schools and the state commission that regulates them, records examined by the Sun-Times show.

The biggest recipients were the Chicago-based IFF — which helps charter schools finance construction projects and got more than $9 million — and the Illinois Network of Charter Schools, an advocacy group that’s received about $8 million.

The Illinois charter operator that benefited most from Walton grants was the UNO Charter School Network, which got more than $3.5 million from the foundation. Its last grant was in 2012 — a year before Sun-Times reports exposed a contracting scandal involving the politically connected charter operator.

Though the commission is a government agency, its initial funding came from private organizations and individuals, including the Walton foundation. Current and former commission leaders say they sought grants because state lawmakers didn’t provide funding when they created the agency.

Members of the commission insisted that they were not influenced by the Walton Family Foundation to stop the closure of the two Walton-funded charter schools.

Whether they were or they were not, it is strange to see a state agency underwritten by the sponsor of the organizations that the agency is supposed to regulate. A classic example of regulatory capture.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Chicago, Education Industry, Illinois

Just Published! A Revised Edition of “The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education”

By dianeravitch
June 6, 2016 //
17

I am very pleased to let you know about the publication of a newly revised edition of The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education.

Perhaps you read it when it was first released in 2010. It was big news at the time, because I broke ranks with the conservative think tanks and policymakers who had once been my allies. I spoke out against the misuse of testing and the dangers of privatization. This was unexpected from someone who had been an Assistant Secretary of Education in the administration of President George H. W. Bush, who served as part of three conservative think tanks, and who had written many articles about the “crisis” in American education.

I thought I had made a clean break with the Bush-Obama agenda. But in time I realized that I had not completely escaped the old, failed way of thinking (like a state, tinkering with people’s lives from afar). The book continued my longstanding support for a national curriculum and predicted that it would be smooth sailing now that the culture wars were over. I was wrong again!

In this new revision of the book, I have removed any endorsement for a national curriculum or national standards or national tests, and I explain why. The controversy over the Common Core standards taught me that the U.S. will never have a national curriculum, and furthermore, should never have one.

I also explain why a national curriculum and national examinations will not reduce the achievement gap among different racial and ethnic groups and will not reduce poverty. The advocacy for them–from the same people who support privatization–continues to be an excuse for avoiding the issue of poverty. And I rewrote the chapter on “A Nation at Risk,” showing how it dodged the most important issues in our society, which were economic and social, not educational.

Yes, there is a “crisis” in education, but it is not a crisis of test scores or failing schools. The crisis is caused by policymakers, federal officials, foundations, and business leaders who are imposing failed ideas on the schools. These impositions are hurting students, teachers, principals, communities, and public education itself. They have failed and failed, again and again, but those who support the Bush-Obama agenda of competition, choice, testing, and accountability refuse to re-examine their assumptions. Their inability to recognize their own failure has created disruption (which they admire), turmoil, and massive demoralization among educators.

I hope you will consider reading the book. I think that D&L continues to speak with passion to the terrible and real crisis in American education, a crisis caused by non-educators who want to turn our schools into job-training units, who want to emphasize standardized testing to the detriment of students, educators, and public schools, and who foolishly think that privatization will improve education.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Common Core, Corporate Reform, Curriculum, Education Industry, Privatization, School Choice, Standardized Testing

Ohio: Charter School Outrage!

By dianeravitch
June 6, 2016 //
26

Bill Phillis of the Ohio Coalition for Equity and Adequacy reports that taxpayers will be footing the bill for “facilities” for the low-performing but politically connected ECOT (Electronic Classroom of Tomorrow). The owner of ECOT, William Lager, is a major contributor to the Republican Party. Perhaps someone inGo st or Kasich’s office could e plain why an online school that is highly profitable needs to upgrade its “facilities.” Is that Lager’s office space?

 

 

It said:

 

“More students drop out of the Electronic Classroom of Tomorrow or fail to finish high school within four years than at any other school in the country, while companies tied to its founder have been paid millions.”

 

To learn more about ECOT and Lager, read Jan Resseger:

 

 

 

Phillis writes:

 

 

ECOT is receiving $378,000 this year for facilities
The low performing online giant charter business enterprise, ECOT, is receiving $378,000 in tax money for facilities! This is beyond outrageous. It reflects on the integrity of those who made this slap-in-the-face to taxpayers possible. State officials should be guilt-stricken.
ECOT lobbyists are now leading a charge to convince legislators that online charters should be assessed by a rating scale that inflates their grades without any improvement. With ECOT’s campaign funds and stable of lobbyists, all charter favors are possible for them.

Will anyone address this matter with his/her legislators?
William Phillis
Ohio E & A

 

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Ohio E & A
100 S. 3rd Street
Columbus OH 43215

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Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Education Reform, Hoax, Ohio

Laura Chapman: How the Gates Foundation Listens to Teachers

By dianeravitch
June 5, 2016 //
33

In her annual report, the CEO of the Gates Foundation admitted that mistakes had been made in the implementation of the Common Core. ” She promised to “double down” in the future and to listen to teachers. 
Laura Chapman describes how the Gates Foundation is listening to teachers: 

“The Gates Foundation offers up a lot of sweet talk about listening to teachers.
“The “listening” pitch is an excuse to get teachers’ emails. These provide teachers who cooperate in this deception with edited and hyped feedback designed to ensure any voices heard will be Gates-compliant. 
“Here is the link to one of the most recent “invitations.” It is one of many others that creates the illusion that “nobody knows teaching more than teachers.”
http://k12education.gatesfoundation.org/learning/nobody-knows-teaching-like-teachers/ 
“There are other initiatives to extract information from teachers and tell them what they should do and think. 
“In December 2015, the Gates Foundation solicited application for new positions. One was “an opportunity for a multi-talented strategist and communicator who will be responsible for managing and developing programming, partnerships and campaigns to support Teacher2Teacher including face-to-face experiences, integration of social media channels and other digital platforms, identification and management of key partnerships, and ongoing analysis to ensure that all efforts are meeting the needs of teachers. This Program Officer should be a team player, an experienced project manager, and have significant experience managing and integrating cross-channel campaigns and partnerships. Experience working across multiple teams in complex environments is preferable, as is demonstrated commitment to education and the values of the Foundation. This individual will work closely with the Teacher to Teacher working group, which spans different teams at the Foundation, and will provide the expertise and creativity to fuel community growth and engagement.”
“At about the same time, the Gates Foundation had a job opening for “program manager” of Teacher2Teacher. Teacher2Teacher was described as a portfolio of “Teacher2Teacher managed platforms.“ “The aim is to “grow” the portfolio through an annual marketing campaign to increase the engagement and connections among traditional and nontraditional “partners” and participants in Teacher2Teacher managed platforms. The manager will negotiate then oversee all contracts, communications, budgeting, and reporting. This position also requires monitoring the efficiency and effectiveness of all aspects of the program, internal and external. It includes a duty to work with Foundation staff on expanding the portfolio based on research and evaluation of marketing trends and other strategies to ensure the program is ‘cutting edge,’ especially in social media and digital activity.”
“The Foundation spawns initiatives and markets these as if the interests of teachers are a major concern. No so, by a long shot. The Gates Foundation pretends to listen while building a cadre of teachers who will comply with the Gates Foundation efforts to remove all remnants of independent professional thinking among teachers.
“http://k12education.gatesfoundation.org/teacher-supports/teacher-collaboration-leadership/teacher2teacher/
“http://www.teacher2teacher.education 
“Gates-loyal teachers are being cultivated in ways that distract attention from the longstanding role of teacher renewal, education, and advocacy offered by professional associations of teachers in specific subjects (e.g., National Council of Teachers of English) or grade levels (e.g., The National Association for the Education of Young Children).
“Here is an example of the Gates strategy of endless mission-creep.
http://teacher2teacher.education/ecet2/”

Categories Education Reform, Gates Foundation, Bill Gates

Join Me in a Webinar on June 8 at 8 pm to Discuss the Save Our Schools March and to Raise Money for Those Who Need Aid

By dianeravitch
June 5, 2016 //
6

I have been invited by organizers of the Save Our Schools March to lead a webinar on June 8 at 8 pm to discuss the future of education reform and our movement to steer it in a direction that supports students and educators.

We will also talk about the Save Our School March, which will happen in Washington, D.C., on July 8 and 9. You can learn more about the march here: http://bit.ly/1sG1oKy

Please join me in conversation this week. We hope to raise enough money to help students and adults who need aid to join us in D.C.

Please register for An Evening with Diane Ravitch on Jun 08, 2016 8:00 PM EDT at:

https://attendee.gotowebinar.com/register/8824328855840974852

Diane will be speaking about her vision for real education reform and sustainable community schools on a Peoples March Webinar at 8:00 PM Eastern July 8th.

On July 31 2011 Diane Ravitch electrified the more than 7000 teachers parents and students gathered for the first Save Our Schools March in DC. Diane continues to be a national leader in the movement to reshape and infuse Public Schools with the principles of Equity, Community Involvement and Voice and Teacher Respect Diane Ravitch is a co-founder and President of the Network for Public Education. She speaks, blogs, and advocates for and with educators, parents and students across the country for Public Schools and Social Justice.

After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the webinar.

Categories Resistance, Supporting public schools

Susan Ochshorn: Please, Mr. Gates, Help the Children!

By dianeravitch
June 5, 2016 //
24

Reactions to the mea culpa of Sue Desmond-Hellman, the CEO of the Gates Foundation, continue to roll in. Sue D-H admitted that “mistakes had been made” in the education arena and promised to listen to teachers. Many who have read the memo think that the foundation still doesn’t understand why its promotion of test-based teacher evaluation is failing or why the Common Core is meeting so much resistance.

Susan Ochshorn hopes that the Gates Foundation will listen to early childhood education professionals.

At the bottom of the totem pole of influence are early childhood teachers. None of these stewards of America’s human capital weighed in on the design of the Common Core standards. They were back-mapped, reaching new heights of absurdity, including history, economic concepts, and civics and government as foundations for two-year-olds’ emergent knowledge.

Most importantly, the standards make a mockery of early childhood’s robust evidence base. Young children learn through exploration, inquiry, hypothesis, and collaboration. Play, the primary engine of human development, has vanished from kindergarten and first-grade classrooms, replaced by worksheets, didactic learning, and increasingly narrow curricula, in keeping with standards’ focus on literacy and math. Policymakers are talking about bringing rigor and the Common Core down to four-year-olds.

If all lives have equal value, the core belief of the Gates Foundation, then our most vulnerable kids must have access to the kind of education enjoyed by those with greater resources: teaching and learning that nurtures creativity and innovation, attuned to the whole child. Too often, they’re subject to rote, passive, and joyless assimilation of knowledge. Collateral damage of your initiative—all in the name of higher test scores.

What if the Gates Foundation undertook a course correction, and put education back in the wheelhouse of educators?

Ochshorn points out that poverty is an enormous barrier to school participation and engagement. She briefly reviews the research base that establishes the harmful effects of poverty (an idea that Gates has derided in the past).

It’s hard, indeed, to be deeply engaged when you’re hungry or homeless—or traumatized by the growing number of adverse childhood experiences that plague our little ones. (As an oncologist, you have a deep understanding of physiological damage.) Moreover, it’s challenging for educators to do their job, no matter how well they’re prepared. The schools in communities of concentrated poverty are segregated institutions starved of investment, places fit for neither children nor teachers.

The results of a recent survey of teachers of the year, conducted by the Council of Chief State School Officers, are illuminating. When asked about the barriers that most affect their students’ academic success, family stress, poverty, and learning and psychological problems topped the list. Anti-poverty initiatives, early learning, and reducing barriers to learning were the teachers’ top picks for investment.

The Gates Foundation has done remarkable work across the globe. How about taking some of your formidable resources and bringing them on home to America’s children and communities?

Categories Accountability, Childhood, Common Core, Early Childhood Education, Gates Foundation, Bill Gates, Play, Poverty, Standardized Testing

The Biggest Charter School Theft in Georgia History

By dianeravitch
June 5, 2016 //
16

Molly Bloom of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution writes here about the biggest theft in the brief history of charter schools in Georgia. That state is in the process of expanding the number of charters and is considering creating an “Achievement School District,” modeled on the failed ASD in Tennessee, in which low performing schools are turned over to charter operators.

Here is the story of Atlanta’s Latin Academy Charter School.

A $12,000 charge at a strip club. Thousands of dollars spent at Mercedes-Benz of Buckhead. ATM withdrawals of hundreds of dollars at a time.

The charges to Atlanta’s Latin Academy Charter School should have raised eyebrows. For the top state education officials and corporate executives on the school’s board, they should have set off earsplitting sirens.

Instead, the charges continued for years, siphoning more than $600,000 in taxpayer dollars that should have been spent on students.

Christopher Clemons, the school’s founder, has been charged with fraud and theft in the largest such case in Georgia charter school history.

Clemons left Atlanta after the losses were discovered.

He left a rented townhome strewn with Hermes boxes, lease paperwork for a new BMW, used boarding passes and a Rolex receipt.

He left the school so financially troubled that board members closed it.

He left nearly 200 children with few options.

And he left a cautionary tale for Georgia’s growing charter school movement. Latin Academy, with its all-star board and experienced leader, seemed on track to thrive. But behind that facade of apparent success, the school spent millions of tax dollars with little public scrutiny and operated with a lack of public input foreign to many traditional public schools.

Latin Academy’s academic performance ranked in the top 25 percent of all Atlanta middle schools in an area where neighborhood middle schools are better known for hallway chaos than academics.

Clemons is presently in jail in Colorado, awaiting extradition to Georgia.

In the last decade, the number of students in charter schools has tripled to 91,000, with more growth expected. In addition, the legislature allows entire districts to have “charter-like” freedoms, which means deregulation and freedom from oversight.

Expect more scandals, fraud, corruption, and theft. If men were angels, there would be no reason for oversight or regulations.

Could someone explain why deregulation is supposed to create better education?

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Education Reform, Fraud, Georgia, Privatization

Readers React to L.A. Times’ Critique of Gates’ Meddling in Education

By dianeravitch
June 5, 2016 //
16

Here are letters to the editor printed in the Los Angeles Times in reaction to its editorial criticizing the Gates Foundation and other wealthy philanthropists for trying to control the nation’s education agenda.

http://www.latimes.com/opinion/readersreact/la-le-bill-gates-education-reform-20160603-snap-story.html#nt=blogroll

The theme of the letters is: why don’t people listen to teachers? If Gates had, he would have spent his $3 billion wisely and well. But instead, he squandered it on his own faulty ideas.

Categories Accountability, Billionaires, Failure, Gates Foundation, Bill Gates

Anthony Cody: The L.A. Times is Complicit in Failures of Gates Programs (Link Fixed!)

By dianeravitch
June 5, 2016 //
14

As readers know, the Los Angeles a Times published a scathing indictment of Bill Gates and his ill-fated forays into education policymaking. The Times noted Gates’ serial failures, one of which was his naive belief that teachers should be evaluated by the test scores of their students. This idea appealed to his technocratic, data-driven mindset.

Some cheered the Times’ about-face, but Anthony Cody did not. He argues that Los Angeles Times was complicit in some of Gates’ worst ideas, despite the absence of evidence for their likely success. It gave full-throated support to John Deasey when he ran the city’s public schools with a heavy hand and spent profligately on ed technology. While wiser heads were skeptical about Gates’plan to evaluate teachers by test scores, the Times decided to create its own test-based rating system and published the results.

Cody calls for accountability. The line between advocacy and reporting is thin, and he believes the Times’ reporters crossed it. They should have investigated the Gates’ theory, but instead they acted on it, assuming its validity.

Cody writes:


“I have a question related to journalistic integrity. How can the LA Times chastise the Gates Foundation – and their disciple John Deasy, without acknowledging their own embrace of Gatesian reforms? The LA Times did not just report on the issue – they created their very own VAM system, and criticized Los Angeles Unified for not using such a system to weed out “bad teachers” and reward those identified as “effective.” They were active advocates, instrumental in the war on teachers that has been so devastating to morale over the past decade.”

Categories Accountability, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Education Reform, Gates Foundation, Bill Gates, Los Angeles, Teacher Evaluations, Teachers and Teaching, Testing
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