Mike Klonsky notes that Peter Cunningham (former flack for Arne Duncan, now paid millions to run a blog promoting charters schools and testing) basically gives up on any meaningful effort to reduce segregation and poverty. Arne himself once said that he opposes “forced integration,” strangely enough, the same phrase used by southern segregationists.
Poverty and segregation may be root causes of poor school performance, but Cunningham says it is just too darn expensive and politically too hard to change things.
Better to keep on reforming schools without addressing root causes.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Well yes, now that Trump has given us permission to say what’s on our minds, we can stop pretending…
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Say huh?
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Divide.
Conquer.
(Success Academy)
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Excellent and compact message.
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Reblogged this on Matthews' Blog and commented:
“Reforming without addressing root causes”. Interesting isn’t it? Wondering why reforming then if underlying issues are not to be addressed?
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To answer your questions:
No.
$$$$$$$$.
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“I support every effort to address poverty and segregation, but not at the expense of needed reforms. Moreover, ending poverty and integration are politically difficult and financially expensive goals at a time when political courage is in short supply and many elected officials – especially on the right – seem intent on starving government.
So here’s the question: Should America spend hundreds of billions more to reduce poverty and should we risk more bitter battles to reduce segregation, or should we just double down on our efforts to improve schools? The liberal in me says we should do both. The pragmatist in me wonders if we can.”
Sounds like the deformers are giving up on their larger alleged crusade for civil rights and are settling for deform for its own sake. What a racket.
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Not sure if nuanced, thoughtful conversation is possible on this blog, but I will try.
I share your desire for more integrated schools but we lack a strategy. Deseg has not worked very well and parents, especially white ones, don’t seem to want it. They flee from cities or fight forced busing. We can’t magnetize the whole system and most districts don’t have open enrollment policies that allow low-income kids of color to enroll in higher-performing white schools–so how do you propose to address these “root causes?”
I’m saying, focus on quality. White parents won’t enroll their kids in lower-performing schools, simply to promote integration. In fact, most do the opposite. But if the schools are good, they will choose them. If you have a better idea that will actually work, please share it. At least try and understand my point and respond honestly.
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I agree on this issue completely. Your points are not only valid, but they accurately reflect the realities of racial history in the US. I have said this before (and have been chastised for it), but black and brown parents do not want their kids shipped off to clean, orderly, well funded lily white schools in the suburbs, only to have them return home each day to the realties of hopeless, institutionalized poverty.
That is patronizing. That solves nothing.
They want the same kind of clean, orderly, well funded schools filled with the same opportunities and possibilities that are the norm in the middle and upper middle class suburbs. But nice schools alone will change nothing, witness Roosevelt LI (NY). What they really need is an economy that provides the hope and dignity that comes with a living wage that can properly support a family. I was watching a documentary on PBS in which Bobby Kennedy was touring a part of the deep south in 1967. He described the conditions in which blacks were living as bad as any third world country he had visited. When he asked what she wanted, the poor black woman simply answered, We just want jobs and decent home. Apparently not much has changed in the last 50 years.
Now the problem with reform Peter is that your answer to the clean, orderly, well funded school filled with opportunity has been the charter movement. A movement that provides clean, orderly, well funded schools – at the expense of real opportunities in the form of a rich and varied curriculum – and at the expense of the majority public school students left behind in classrooms and programs stripped bare by the shifting of taxpayer money into your charter schools.
The burden of solving generational poverty cannot fall on educators.
The political will for such sea change seems a long way off.
If reformers really care about our struggling urban and rural schools laid to waste by the debilitating effects of poverty and hopelessness, they would stop insisting that tougher standards and harder tests will somehow provide the hope necessary to lift poor black and brown children out of the ghettos and into colleges and careers. For 15 years your tests have been shining a light on the residue of generational poverty – but that’s all they have done.
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I’m not going to deny that there’s some accurate things in your post. But I do have some issues with your pragmatism because it appears to avoid responsibility for policies that have worsened the situation.
For example, I teach in an open enrollment district in an inner ring suburb in Detroit. We did this out of necessity as our community demographics became very full of empty nesters. Yes, second stage white flight has occurred as people have moved to new, farther away subdivisions where land was cheaper. What we’ve done is highlight our diversity and it really hasn’t changed the racial make up of the community. Graduates often tout the great experience of encountering multiple cultures in our district and how it has been beneficial for “the real world” and provided greater tolerance and understanding.
But, you have to admit that choice policies will always lead to segregation in every possible way. People nearly always avoid “others” as you noted in your post. And, in what is not shocking, quality of education is usually not the top reason that people choose charters. They choose them because they provide two things: the ability to routinely sift through student bodies and creatively usher out the low performers and troublemakers (who have to go to school somewhere) and because they seek a comfortable community which means people that are similar to themselves.
As an example, a nearby and almost entirely white suburb has a few NHA acadamies. It’s a respected school district. There is a local megachurch. The NHA charters are filled with the kids of megachurch parishioners. Even in an all-white community they managed to segregate in a different way.
SO, sure, focus on quality. But let’s not be blind to the fact that school choice exacerbates segregation.
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Peter Cunningham,
This blog is the place to go for nuanced, thoughtful conversation.
Here is a real-world strategy, actually a missed opportunity.
That $5 billion spent on Race to the Top promoted charters and high-stakes testing. Suppose instead you had rolled out a plan to reward states and districts that reduced racial segregation? It was measurable. It would have changed our society for the better.
You invested in more NCLB instead. Bad choice.
What’s left? Flat scores in NAEP. Demoralized teachers. Teacher shortages. Hyper segregation.
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Mr. Cunningham,
Where do you go for a nuanced, passive acceptance of segregation? After all, school segregation is okay because that’s what parents appear to choose, so why have local, neighborhood schools with equitable funding and resources? Some black schools are great! It’s what moviegoing audiences appear to choose, so why not have white actors play every role and dominate the Oscars? Some white movies are great! And what’s wrong with having separate restaurants? People choose them. And separate bathrooms, separate drinking fountains… Separate cities, separate states… Separate government…
You make me sick.
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LCT, the comment, “You make me sick” is not part of thoughtful, nuanced conversation.
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I’m in Los Angeles, predominantly Latino. Is it acceptable for black and white people to choose to separate themselves from recent immigrants? After all, that way we can focus on quality. Wink. How about separate charter schools for Muslims? Oh wait, that’s what vouchers are for. Wink. Are we going to focus on quality when we build the wall against Mexico? You wink at racism, Peter Cunningham.
Sick.
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Beth, you’re right. Thank you. I would be ashamed to fall into that racist trap.
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RageAgainstTheTetsocracy
And there you have hit the answer to integration,to education , to poverty. It is to be found in economic policy. At the point that Black America was given the opportunity “to sit at the at the lunch counter
and buy the sandwich ” those jobs that would have enabled that, were eliminated other jobs degraded. It is not just those disaffected working class white,Trump voters who have been left behind. The other victims are to be found behind the economic walls of the “GHETTOS”!!!! of this country’s once great industrial cities .
There is nothing preordained about economic policy. There are no free markets. Government (politics)inherently functions for one purpose, to regulate who gets what (economics ) . In the 1930’s we embarked on a path that empowered the middle class. It did not take long before the “Empire Struck Back “. In 1948 Taft Hartley created a situation that enabled employers to abandon the industrial North for the forever to be non union South (right to work). The process took thirty years . Our policy since the 1980s has created the incentive for employers to offshore these jobs as well as the taxes on their profits.
We can argue that other Industrial Nations have seen a decline as well
and that is a fair argument . Except it falls apart when one compares it to population growth(Dean Baker). Which is another key part of the discussion. You can point to to technology. Except productivity growth is slower than in past periods. But if it were technology, is not fair to ask how the fruits of productivity are shared? The simple fact is that as productivity rose the benefits of that increase did not go to American workers. It may have gone to my 401K, but not to the average worker . Whose wages do not afford him the luxury to be an investor.
There lies another problem. In that Golden age only 50% of profits were returned to shareholders the other 50% grew the economy by
investing in R&D, capital construction and increased wages and benefits for employees. Who in turn created the demand for tremendous economic growth. Today 92% of profits are returned to shareholders . Do we need Bernie to tell us which shareholders?
So let us make everybody “college and career ready”. If we create a million more engineers will we have created one more job for those engineers? Schools will never solve the problem we seek to solve, certainly not when their primary function, is viewed as careers.
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One more thing: Do schools have a responsibility to provide equal access to students with special needs, or should they “focus on quality” instead? Cunning Ham asked if we have better ideas. Yes we do. But equality requires the courage to do what is best for society rather than excluding others to do what’s best for ourselves.
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Pedestrian; not nuanced: An idea that has been rehashed too many times.
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The black woman living in abject poverty on the Mississippi delta in 1967 did not ask Robert Kennedy to help integrate her neighborhood or her children’s schools. She asked for hope and for dignity in the form of meaningful work and a quality of life that seemed far beyond her reach.
Cunningham’s reform movement has offered nothing hut harder tests and the false promise that better tests scores through charter-based test prep will somehow how offer black children trapped in the permanent underclass a way out. That bait and switch is immoral.
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Peter,
What is the fundamental purpose of public education? Where can one find that fundamental purpose stated? Who/what authorizes public education? TIA, Duane
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I strenuously disagree with you, Peter. The answer to “parents not wanting to integrate” is NOT to just sit back and let them have their way. That is NOT what America is all about. America is about equality. Segregation is the opposite of that.
Your giving up is ludicrous. Let’s have “great” schools, yes. But you never suggest the most obvious solutions: FUND SCHOOLS. ALL SCHOOLS. Not just some precious charters, but ALL schools. Yes, let’s get safe schools and great teachers.
But you don’t seem to understand that the policies you and your cronies champion will do the opposite of that. I live in a state that has attacked and grossly underfunded schools for 30 years. It has just eliminated certification for teachers. I know what it’s like to teach 38 students in the same class. All of my classes have 36 or above. And do you know what the results are? Fair to middling education, except for the wealthy, who pour money into their schools, and get good results. Yet, my state legislators are proud of what they have done. It’s what YOU want done everywhere.
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Duane Swacker
To each his own, I prefer this one. That I should not have to attribute.
“experience hath shewn, that even under the best forms, those entrusted with power have, in time, and by slow operations, perverted it into tyranny; and it is believed that the most effectual means of preventing this would be, to illuminate, as far as practicable, the minds of the people at large,…”
Power is economic, as are the solutions to the problems we are discussing here . Ethos are not holding people down.Sitting in a seat like a robot will not end poverty. Drilling for tests will not end poverty. Agency and power will . Which to a great degree is why have arrived to where we are in K-U education.
To me the assault on k-12-U is part of a much larger assault about maintaining power.
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“Following federal efforts to enforce Brown v, Bd. of Ed., southern states devised a ‘private school plan’ to defend segregation by leaving public schools and taking the money with them. Georgia Gov. Talmadge advanced a constitutional amendment that could have allowed the privatization of the state’s entire public school system. ‘In the event of court-ordered desegregation, school buildings would be
closed , and students would receive grants to attend private, segregated schools’…..(several paragraphs later) BAOE’s major funders include John Walton and the Harry and Lynde Bradley Foundation.” (Rachel Tabachnick, “The Right’s School Choice System”, 2012, Public Eye and AlterNet.
Cunningham’s identification of limited options is the same tactic used against Social Security. The forced choice is designed to benefit Wall Street, Silicon Valley, other scammers and social Darwinist ideologues.
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I give them credit though- “plus/and” was always dishonest.
They had priorities in the Obama Administration, and those priorities were expanding charter schools and investing in testing and data collection and reporting.
There’s nothing wrong with admitting that. We can’t make informed decisions on politicians if we don’t know what their priorities are.
It’s not a secret- the two pillars of ed reform are 1. choice and 2. accountability. “Accountability”, as a practical matter, is 99% testing and ranking. If your priorities for public schools are something other than opening charter schools or testing students you should look to hire leaders who are outside the ed reform “movement”.
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Exactly, Chiara! Where are the “reformers” when billions of dollars that goes to testing, and the technology to take the tests, are spent? Wouldn’t that money be much better spent if those billions were spent on the “clean, orderly, safe” classrooms that Peter insists he wants?
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The entire reform movement is a charade.
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“31 states were spending less per student in the 2013-14 school year than the 2007-08 year before the recession, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. In 15 states, that difference was greater than 10 percent.”
Can ed reform advocates explain this? They’re advocates for public education right?
How can we have so many paid advocates yet be losing funding every year?
We’re essentially at full employment in the US. When do we get the funding we lost back, if not now? We’re not going to get it back in the next recession. It’s now or never.
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We are far from full employment, when one adds those working part time who would prefer full time employment. Or compares the workforce participation rates of prime age workers. Even adding a point or two to the unemployment rate would demonstrate a weakness in the economy.
The stagnation of American wages is another issue . Those cuts to school funding are reflective of a much broader political problem. I will through out a little speculation, that they also were accompanied to cuts in the tax structure in many of those states. That those tax bennifits did not go to working class people.
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throw
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I have a problem accepting institutionalized segregation when I have seen the outstanding results we were able to achieve in a diverse school system. Giving up on integration is abandoning a core value.Whether is pragmatic or not, it is the law in our nation. We have been brainwashed by conservatives to continue to accept less. Where does it end? Anything for the common good can be argued as not pragmatic, and this includes our entire system of social safety nets. If we continue to bite the bullet while our policymakers chisel away at anything for the common good, we will not recognize what we will become. We will devolve into a “developing nation,” with billionaires living in armed compounds.
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“We will devolve into a “developing nation,” Well on our way with all income growth going where?
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Retired–The Ed. policies of the current administration do not address
the needs of the majority of its students who happen to be students of color. The test and punishment policies saw minimal changes in test scores for minority students and other sub groups and yet we are staying the course. In addition, the reform policies did nothing to change the fact that the majority of administrators in public Ed are white and less than 10% of high school educators are black. We were so hopeful when our first African American was elected and were hoping for a change in direction that would serve the majority of our students. Instead, we were handed a secretary of Ed who played into the hands of the billionaires. What a slap in the face to educators who have devoted their lives to fighting for their students. It is beyond frustrating.
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AlwaysLearing
And which teachers are being displace by reform policy and budget cuts ?
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Diane — do you oppose “forced integration”?
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Because of poverty, restrictive zoning laws and past housing policy, we already have “forced integration.” http://www.arthurcamins.com
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FLERP,
That’s a simplistic question. As Richard Rothstein has written, again and again, federal, state, and local laws created housing segregation. To leave segregated neighborhoods intact, while moving kids around, is a limited approach at best. Laws and programs that create good housing and encourage integration will eliminate segregated schools. We should have started in 1964, we should have started in 1974 or 1993 or 2009 (instead of Race to the Bottom). Start now.
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It may be a simplistic question, but I think it’s a fair one, given your comment about Arne Duncan “once said that he opposes ‘forced integration,’ strangely enough, the same phrase used by southern segregationists.” After all, Carmen Farina recently said that integration shouldn’t be put “down people’s throats,” strangely enough, a phrase that I’m sure was also once used by southern (and perhaps northern) segregationists.
From your response, I take it that you support attempts to reduce school segregation through laws that encourage housing integration, rather than through changes to school admission policies?
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Both.
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At $7.25/hr. it doesn’t matter where you live or how diverse your kids school is.
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RageAgainstTheTetsocracy
Yup .
Good paying Jobs,Jobs, Jobs , Jobs, …. ….
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Joel
Your perspective as a non-teacher but concerned citizen is much appreciated here. Selling the value of a good education to children mired in generational poverty is an impossible deal to close in most struggling urban schools. Without jobs that pay a living wage there is no dignity and there is no hope, and there is no real reason to work hard in school. And when oppressive economic policy is combined with institutional and cultural racism we end up with a permanent underclass that is growing more restless with each passing day. We have created a climate of desperation for millions of poor minority Americans. The solution is not forced desegregation through new zoning laws or busing. The problem will never be solved by blaming teachers and schools for conditions well beyond our control And the solution has absolutely nothing to do with “higher” standards, test-prep academies, or improved test scores. Until we find the political will to bring back meaningful work and a living wage, I’m afraid this same discussion will continue into the foreseeable future.
Thanks again Joel.
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RageAgainstTheTetsocracy
Thanks for the complements
Robert Reich Today ,
“The heart of American politics is now a vicious cycle in which big money has enough political influence to get laws and regulations that make big money even bigger, and prevent laws and rules that threaten its wealth and power.”…
“As economist John Kenneth Galbraith noted in the 1950s, a key legacy of the New Deal was creating centers of economic power that offset the power of giant corporations and Wall Street: labor unions, small retail businesses, local banks, and political parties active at the state and local levels.”
“These alternative power centers supported policies that helped America’s vast middle and working classes during the first three decades after World War II – the largest infrastructure project in American history (the Interstate Highway program), a vast expansion of nearly-free public higher education, Medicare and Medicaid, and, to pay for all this, high taxes on the wealthy. (Between 1946 and 1980, the top marginal tax rate never dipped below 70 percent.)”
“The most promising source of a new countervailing power in America was revealed in Bernie Sanders’s primary campaign: millions of citizens determined to reclaim American democracy and the economy from big money. (Donald Trump’s faux populism tapped into similar sentiments, but, tragically, has channeled them into bigotry and scapegoating.)”
Channeling several groups of people with a unifying message is the challenge. The Trump voter angry white men losing economic security, The Bernie voter under fifty voters mostly white who do not see the economic benefits their parents, had pretty much in spite of their education and the minority communities so let down by those corporate Democrats.
Thomas Frank famously asked “What’s the Matter With Kansas” perhaps the answer to that is in his new book “Listen Liberal”.
When the Democratic Party was seen as abandoning the needs of that white working class voter, they turned to the Republican message which was always racial dog whistles diverting attention away from economic realities. Now to the dismay of the Republican establishment they have turned to the bigoted Circus Clown who threatens to tear it all down, including their trade and economic policy, he wont.
The frightening part is that the establishment Republicans will now vote for Clinton. Giving her the false notion that all is well. She will walk into the White House in January feeling she has a mandate for business as usual.
If we want to see change, a mass movement, must arise between the election and the inauguration that seeks economic justice for all those groups. Then it must be translated into political action in the following years. Integration and the solution of our educational problems will follow. The rejection of Charters by the NAACP is a start . The rejection of of the neo liberal wing of the Democratic party and Black leaders who support it should be the next move. Cory Booker is no more a Democrat than Ben Carson. His attack on Public Schools just the tip of his neo liberal roots. When Newt Gingrich coined the phrase Vulture Capitalist what a strange world that Booker should be defending them.
That old Clinton commercial “its the economy stupid “
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Sen. Sherrod Brown. labeled a progressive”, didn’t find the charter school fraud in Ohio until this summer, despite the fact that the newspapers have written about it for years. Even now that, Brown claims to be aware, he still wants federal taxpayers to spend $71 mil. to privatize public education in Ohio. Gates and the Waltons seem more than willing to throw their money at privatization so why does Brown have to be a spendthrift, in addition to denying the public control of their local taxes and schools? Brown has yet to endorse the Ohio Democrat running for Senate. Apparently, he prefers Republicans and his convenient excuse, “But, for the Koch’s, there would be some clue that I give a damn about Ohio constituents.”
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Corey Booker is no more a Democrat than Ben Carson.
Preach!
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The underlying notion of being pragmatic about we can and cannot change represents what I call the Audacity of Small Hopes (http://www.arthurcamins.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/We-Can-Be-Better-Than-the-Audacity-of-Small-Hopes.pdf). Indeed, we will never be able to undermine either segregation or poverty unless we attack both simultaneously since they reinforce one another. Systemic problems by their very nature can be solved with partial solutions. What we lack, is political will and leadership. The market-driven solutions are tainted, not just because they lack evidentiary support, but because they are morally bankrupt (http://www.arthurcamins.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/Education-reform-and-the-corrosion-of-community-responsibility-_-The-Answer-Sheet.pdf). Similarly, current policies are suspect because they appear to be driven, at least in part, by corporations seeking to open up investment opportunities rather than what is best for all students.
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Imagine that every form of redlining had been targeted for reform, with banks and real estate and insurance firms and private investors in infrastructure were penalized for any direct and indirect influence on the creation and the maintenance of segregated communities.
So called reformers have targeted schools, teachers, and children not yet-of-age as if they can and should be responsible for eliminating poverty, social and economic segregation, while also ensuring the nation is ” globally competitive.”
The institution of public schools is a convenient scapegoat for problems that could be addressed if profit alone was not valued above all else.
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Excellent point.
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Agree. Ed. reform motives can’t withstand the light of day.
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Also, Diane, didn’t a recent post site a Jonathan Pelto blog post that mentions how the Obama administration bizarrely pledged $9 million for “relief” from assessments burden–assessments imposed BY the Obama D.o.Ed.–?
Peter Cunningham, riddle me this–the U.S.–still the world’s richest country–CANNOT “afford” to alleviate segregation & poverty but CAN afford to continue to give MILLION$ (probably billion$, by now) to te$ting companie$ (Pear$on come$ to mind) for absolutely USELESS, INVALID, UNRELIABLE te$t$ that in NO WAY inform good educational practices, telling teachers & parents NADA, ZIP, NOTHING?!
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The 9 million is pure politics. They don’t believe kids are over-tested.
The Best and the Brightest think people are whining too much and they should shut up and deliver their kids for data collection:
Education Post @edu_post Aug 12
Looks like #OptOut is Whiter, more privileged and more clueless than we even suspected, says @tracydell98:
We got our Common Core test results this week. I hope they’re good because I’m hoping that’s a guarantee that none of these people will be involved in “transforming” my school.
Solid scores as defense against the Best and The Brightest and their experiments and using tens of millions of public school students as test subjects. I’m hoping it works.
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Oh–& BTW–even if parents & students do opt out, children continue to be subject to relentless te$t prepping, rather than be given a REAL education–you know, like those given students at Sidwell Friends, U. of Chicago Lab School & that school which the Gates’ children attend.
But, no, the U.S. cannot “afford” to even ATTEMPT to eradicate poverty & segregation.
Just keep feeding the beast, Peter.
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Poverty cannot be ignored. We can’t humanly afford that.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/world/2016/aug/16/new-zealands-most-shameful-secret-we-have-normalised-child-poverty?client=safari
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Oh no!
http://www.freep.com/story/news/education/2016/08/15/closing-worst-performing-school/88798848/
This testing will never end!!!!
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‘Those meetings are resulting in “having honest conversations about how to create high-performing schools in the state of Michigan. And that means holding folks accountable and having consequences when they fail children.”
Baker has frequently said that the mission of the school reform office is to take the schools in the bottom 5% and move them to the top 25%.’
Willfully ignorant and dishonest.
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When have so-called reformers ever cared about poverty or segregation? Their entire program is intended to misdirect the polity away from those topics, while they happily privatize, privateer and loot public education budgets.
They care about three things, all of which are intended to augment their (already too-powerful) control of the purpose, governance and labor relations of the schools.
The purpose of education, in their myopic, unenlightened self-interested view, is to provide a reliable “human capital pipeline” for their investments and interests, as well as a obedient mass of consumer/debtor monads.
The governance of the schools is to conducted by them and their viziers, with no democratic input, or a fraudulent facsimile thereof.
Labor relations in the schools is to be based on temporary, at-will employment, based on pre-selected curriculum modules created by publishers well-placed in the reform-industrial complex.
While the so-called reformers lie about almost everything, you can occasionally take them at their word: Eli Broad has explicitly said that all he cares about is re-structuring school governance. Wendy Kopp has openly stated that TFA is not about developing career educators, but instead identifying, training and grooming “leaders” (a euphemism for serial public school killers and charter entrpreneurs).
Don’t listen to their banal and robotic talking points; observe their behavior, and you’ll consistently see that these people have the same “passion and concern” for children that predators have for their prey.
As for teachers, they are an obstacle to the hostile takeover of public education, and thus the decades-long demonization and scapegoating of them and their unions.
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Thanks everyone for the comments. So much to say that I will just focus on a few things. Glad to hear Diane Ravitch suggest federal incentives to integrate. In fact, President Obama has such a program called “Stronger Together,” so it’s great to see Dr. Ravitch, President Obama and Secretary King aligned.
To all the anti-testing comments, I say this. I agree we have overtested — mostly driven at the state and local level — but zero testing is not the answer. An accountability system based on multiple measures is the answer and that’s what the new law calls for so let’s embrace it and make it work. You have to define success somehow. Lean in.
To those critical of choice, I say this. The demand for choice comes from frustrated parents. All of us with the means to choose owe it to those without the means to provide better options. I have never suggested that charters are the answer but they are clearly part of the answer. That’s why 10 million kids today are in private schools, charter schools or they are homeschooled. That number will only rise if we don’t make progress in improving our schools.
Finally, I understand that it’s easier to demonize me as someone opposed to integration than to see me as as a lifelong liberal Democrat who values integration but doesn’t see much evidence of success due to political barriers–and therefore asks whether the fight is really worth it. That’s all I am doing. I fully support every effort to integrate schools but I will actively oppose anyone who insists that integration is a pre-condition to reform. The plain fact is there are many successful schools that are not integrated. Look at the Ed Trust website. But kids have only one chance for an education and asking them to wait while we fight battles over integration and poverty is indefensible. They need a better education today.
Thanks again for the conversation.
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Peter Cunningham writes: “To those critical of choice, I say this. The demand for choice comes from frustrated parents.”
Why are you dishonestly pretending that not wanting to PRIVATIZE public schools has anything to do with “choice”.
If the reformers believed in “choice”, they would have spent their billions subsidizing CHOICE schools like Central Park East, Brooklyn New School, The Children’s School that worked WITHIN the system.
But I forgot – those billions would not have been there because the people donating them are not interested in CHOICE, they are interested in PRIVATIZATION.
In NYC there were good choice schools and Mayor Bloomberg could have established more. He chose to outsource the ability for schools to rid themselves of expensive kids to private charters. That is what you apparently think is a good idea and not a problem.
In simple terms, what the charter movement did was to privatize the profits of teaching the cheapest to educate kids while socializing the costs of teaching all the expensive ones. And the profits are what allows even “non-profit” charters to spend millions on executive salaries and promoting the profile of the CEO by marketing and public relations designed to prevent any kind of close look at so-called “successful” charters.
What I find offensive is your pretense of caring about those kids. If you cared about those students, you could just as easily work to establish “choice” schools within the system. Schools where the incredible cost savings of shedding kids is not used to profit a few. Schools where the savings is spent in OTHER public schools that are taking on that much more expensive burden.
You don’t need privatization to help those students. You need privatization to help people like you who are very well-compensated by billionaires who hate public schools. And to keep that high salary of yours, you happily look the other way at the abuses of charters and their dishonesty in pretending that their success can be duplicated by any public school. Dishonesty because they pretend every missing child whose parents originally entered him in the charter is just an “anamoly”.
I know it is impossible for you to be honest and continue to be well-paid. Look at how people like you attack or ignore RiShawn Biddle’s concern with high suspension rates. You promote charter schools when the few doing better than public schools are suspending and excluding students in great number.
There are ways to reform schools, but as long as people like you care more about your paychecks than having an honest discussion, there won’t be. If your side win, there will be private actors getting rich from teaching the cheapest kids, and the remaining non-strivers that your beloved “privatizers” can’t make a profit from who are left in underfunded public schools. And blamed because it is all their fault for not being worthy.
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“I will actively oppose anyone who insists that integration is a pre-condition to reform.”
Its nice to find common ground. Anyone who defends integration as a pre-condition for improving schools has indirectly insulted the majority of black and brown parents who want nothing more than economic hope, meaningful work with a living wage – regardless of the diversity of their neighborhoods or classrooms.
“But kids have only one chance for an education and asking them to wait while we fight battles over integration and poverty is indefensible.”
Asking them to wait under the reform solution is also indefensible. Test-prep academies based on the plantation model of total subservience and compliance, rejecting entire populations of the neediest children, while fooling the chosen into thinking that some statistically insignificant bump in their test scores will magically lift them out of poverty and into colleges and careers is just plain wrong.
“To all the anti-testing comments, I say this. I agree we have overtested — mostly driven at the state and local level”
Not sure how you overlooked the test-and-punish demands of the USDOE: NCLB/AYP, RTTT/VAM, NCLB waivers????
“but zero testing is not the answer. An accountability system based on multiple measures is the answer and that’s what the new law calls for so let’s embrace it and make it work. You have to define success somehow. Lean in.”
Many of us here could have easily accepted grade span testing without the threats. The problem with “defining success” using test scores alone (to date) is that your reform movement has used them to unfairly criticize teachers and punish schools for being unable to do the impossible. And when Eva Moskowitz starts using “multiple measures” to define the success of her “scholars” I will find that part of your comment a bit more reassuring. Never forget that “accountability” in education is a BS term used to keep those in charge, employed and in control. As if we are not accountable to the 50 million children who we teach and care for on a daily basis.
Thank you Peter. Hope to see you back here again.
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The testing push is NOT a local or state thing. States would not be pushing testing if there weren’t the mandates of the federal government like NCLB, RTTT and ESSA.
And if the testing is so important, why not do grade-span testing, such as the NAEP, that is already being done? Then there is far more money to spend on real education priorities, wrap-around services, and other important services to help children be ready to learn.
But your side rarely suggests those things. What purpose is there to “prove failing schools” when no one will do anything about them? Identifying a problem alone won’t fix the problem.
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Making the case that education improvement, housing and school integration, resource equity, poverty reduction, and education improvement are synergistic does not mean do nothing in education unless everything improves. That is a straw man. However, it does mean that if we want sustainable, scalable improvement for all children we must think and act systemically. That a charter school may be the best individual option for an individual parent in a particular community does not make it a good policy choice. In fact, as policy and practically it may exacerbate rather than advance a long-term solution.
http://www.arthurcamins.com
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You cannot call yourself a liberal if you ask whether the fight for integration is worth it. You can call yourself a Democrat, but that title has all but completely lost its former meaning due to Wall Street effete and greed in its manipulation of our government.
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Oh, how I would love to participate in this.
However, I’m too busy planning, room decorating, prepping, for school right now. Today was DAY ONE of 180, and I’ve already got 35 essays — written during class — that I must proofread, grade, and provide feedback to write the next draft and they (the students & their essays) take priority over even this. That’s going to suck up a few hours, and then its bedtime, and then it’s back to the kiddies.
Discipline, discipline, discipline… the kids are priority NUMERO UNO.
Discipline, discipline, discipline… the kids are priority NUMERO UNO.
Discipline, discipline, discipline… the kids are priority NUMERO UNO.
Cheers, Peter!
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Is Peter’s, trite, “lean in”, in the same category as the quote from the Microsoft Canada manager, who labeled herself an “education partner” ? “Teachers have to shift or get off the pot?” (Entrepreneur magazine)
As a taxpayer and an American, who understands the threat of concentrated wealth, I beg local schools to shun the egomaniacal, self-serving, and self-anointed predators. They are a parasitic infestation. There’s no getting rid of them, once the politicians smell their money. Ohio is an example. The loss of economic multiplier effect, from local dollars making their way to Silicon Valley, Wall Street and the pockets of other scammers, destroys local communities and states.
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Just vacuous PR, on one hand; insulting commentary, on the other.
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Congratulations, Peter, on saying essentially nothing regarding testing.
Almost no one is for no testing (assessment, meaning, etymologically, sitting beside). It’s all about emphasis and use. Almost no one is against using multiple measures, but again it is about proper emphasis and use.
You appear deeply dishonest, though quite polite and affable, to me. You don’t appear to be looking for an honest, nuanced discussion, to tell you the unbelievable truth.
“To all the anti-testing comments, I say this. I agree we have overtested — mostly driven at the state and local level — but zero testing is not the answer. An accountability system based on multiple measures is the answer and that’s what the new law calls for so let’s embrace it and make it work. You have to define success somehow. Lean in.”
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Wow, Peter, are things so bad in ReformWorld that you must actually engage with the rabble?
Well, I guess better you than Bill and Melinda.
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Just one more effect of poverty that Eva’s best strivers will encounter:
“This is the season when newly minted freshman go off to college. They’ve studied hard. They’ve earned admission to the college or university of their choice. Would it surprise you to know that somewhere between 20% and 30% of college-bound youngsters who’ve been accepted, awarded financial aid and agree to attend never actually show up on the first day? Would it surprise you to know that nearly all of the “summer melt” — as college administrators call it — is made up of low-income students without college-educated parents to guide them?”
“Castleman and Page’s research suggests what the UA already recognized: that up to 40% of low-income students who are accepted to college and intend to enroll do not actually attend in the fall.”
Does anyone want to talk about “accountability” on this issue? And what fraction of the remaining 60% go on to graduate. This poverty thing is more insidious than we know.
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Obama Administration is pouring millions of public dollars into for-profit companies:
“The Obama administration will inject millions of dollars into a group of nontraditional education providers to address a vexing problem: Many Americans are leaving college with debt but without skills the economy needs.
The administration is turning to the private sector for help. In a novel experiment, the Education Department announced Tuesday up to $17 million in loans and grants for students to undergo training at eight entities that aren’t traditional colleges. Most are for-profit companies. They include coding academies such as New York startup Flatiron School and Portland, Ore.-based Epicodus, as well as websites such as Study.com and StraighterLine that provide online courses at reduced costs.”
Don’t worry though! They say they will regulate this time! Just like they regulated for-profit colleges.
I guess it’s somewhat better than for-profit colleges- at least students won’t get stuck with the debt.
http://www.wsj.com/articles/obama-administration-to-fund-nontraditional-training-for-students-1471341782?mod=e2tw
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Why does General Electric need a taxpayer subsidy to train their employees?
“The one that stands out from the group is corporate giant General Electric Co., which won’t receive funds directly but will provide training at one of its jet-engine plants under the program.
The program, called Educational Quality through Innovative Partnerships, or Equip, is designed to enable low-income Americans to learn skills in areas where colleges often fall short, such as learning how to write computer code, or using new software to operate high-tech manufacturing equipment to make jet engines.”
Can’t GE just pay to train their own employees? They carve it out of the ridiculous CEO and upper management compensation.
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Presumably these are students, not General Electric employees.
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Flerp! Read both of Chiara’s comments. The point is that taxes should support individuals. businesses need to support themselves. Don’t pay drug companies to research cures. Pay universities that shouldn’t have a profit in mind. It’s a simple concept.
And by the way, it just occurred to me that Cunning Ham is not claiming separate but equal. He’s claiming black schools are separate but better. That’s even worse.
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I could be wrong, but it seems unlikely to me that this program is generating a profit for G.E. If the question is whether G.E. is merely participating in this program simply to get college students to work for free at jobs that, but for this program, would be held by wage-earning workers, that’s a fact question. But the program itself sounds like a generic vocational/technical work-study program. If we want to end all work-study programs that send public money to for-profit companies, then so be it, let’s shut them all down.
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Flerp! Businesses shouldn’t receive government subsidies. Individuals should. Don’t give drug companies money to conduct research. Give the money to universities that shouldn’t have a profit as the goal.
And by the way, separate but equal was bad enough. Reformers’ new separate but better claim is too much.
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“Businesses shouldn’t receive government subsidies” is fine enough for a general, guiding principle. But businesses receive more government subsidies, in more forms, than you or I are aware of at this moment, and some of those subsidies may make a good deal of sense, even if they require a departure from the general, guiding principle.
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I recall a report, at the time that Obama appointed a GE executive to an advisory role in his administration. The report showed how little GE paid in taxes. What happens in D.C., is the fleecing of America. Sadly, it wasn’t always so.
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Hmm… I seem unable to reply to FLERP!.
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Oh, there it is. Sorry for the double post. My fault for not waiting for what appears to be a delay on my phone.
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LCT,
The delay was that your comment went into moderation, meaning that it required my ok. Which I did.
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The so-called “education reform” movement has always been based on a return to racial segregation of America’s schools. The fact that billionaires and hedge funds could pocket tens of millions of dollars from this new kind of segregation was just a bonus for many. The first calls for “reform” in the form of vouchers arose immediately after the 1954 Supreme Court ruling on Brown v. Board of Education in which the Court declared that separate but equal was inherently unequal and ordered racial integration of the public schools. That ruling triggered “white flight” from public schools to private schools — but parents quickly realized that the tuition cost of private schools was more than they wanted to pay out-of-pocket. That realization led political and private resegregationists to the concoct the “reform” of vouchers, and to sell it to eager parents by deceptively marketing it then (and now) as merely giving parents free “choice.”
But the 1950’s voucher reform faded away when it became clear that because of school attendance boundaries no more than a few token blacks would be attending formerly all-white public schools. In 1972 when the Supreme Court finally ordered busing to end the ongoing de facto segregation, the reform movement rose from its grave and has been alive ever since then trying new tactics to restore racial segregation because it’s unlikely that the Court’s racial integration order can ever be reversed. When it became clear in the 1980’s that vouchers would never become widespread, the segregationists tried many other routes to restore racial segregation, and the most successful has been charter schools because charter schools can be sold to blithely unaware do-gooder billionaires as well as to unscrupulous profiteers who recognized charter schools as a way to divert vast amounts of tax money into their own pockets and into the pockets of supportive politicians at every level of government.
An essential part of the strategy to mask their underlying motives has been for segregationists to sell the public on the necessity for charter schools because public schools are allegedly “failing.” With all manner of “research” that essentially compares apples to oranges against foreign nations’ students, and with the self-fulfilling prophecy of dismal public school performance generated by drastic underfunding of public schools, and with condemnation of public school teachers based on statistically invalid student test scores, the segregationists are succeeding in resegregating education in America via what are basically private charter schools that are funded with public money.
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“Lean in.”
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Are the schools that the reformers’ kids attend, “leaning in”. Of course not.
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They were born “in” – no need to lean.
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Cunningham calls for an “honest response”, which is more than ironic, in light of his false statement that charter schools are the result of “frustrated parents”. He should read the report that John Arnold and the Waltons paid for, which was written by Wohlstetter. If Cunningham read the analysis for Columbus, one of the “successful” charter school cities, he would see that the only support came from state politicians, who coincidentally, rec’d more than $1 mil. in campaign donations from just one charter school. There was no support from any other constituency. Wohlstetter identified “political support” as the first variable and, “quality”, last.
If there wasn’t money to made in education, the reformers would flee so fast, we’d
all get whiplash.
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