Gary Rubinstein has begun reading the first book to be published by Campbell Brown’s The 74, the website that regularly celebrates charter schools and assails unions and tenure. The book is Richard Whitmire’s “The Founders,” about the men and women who launched the most successful charter schools. Whitmire has previously written admiring accounts of Michelle Rhee and the Rocketship charter chain. This book was underwritten by foundations that support the proliferation of privately managed schools.
When Rubinstein read the foreword by Arne Duncan, he realized that it was almost the same as the excerpt that appeared recently in The Atlantic. There were two missing paragraphs.
Duncan was again praising the all black, all male Urban Prep Charter Academy in Chicago for its 100% graduation rate, 100% college acceptance rate. And again, as in the past, Duncan didn’t mention the attrition rate nor the fact that the school has lower test scores than the average for Chicago’s public schools.
This was especially interesting, because Duncan first told this story in 2011 at the Teach for America anniversary celebration. Gary was there, and he later said that this claim turned him into a critic of the reform movement because Duncan said, “same kids, same poverty, totally different outcomes,” the implication being that a new set of teachers made all the difference. Duncan, of course, proceeded to hail “turnarounds” where the entire staff was replaced. And he hailed the public revelation of teacher ratings based on student test scores in Los Angeles. Even as the value-added measurements have failed to produce any positive results,Duncan continues to believe in firing teachers based on their students’ scores.
Gary contacted me after he heard Duncan, and with his help and that of independent researcher Noel Hammatt in Louisiana, I wrote an op-Ed for the New York Times called “Waiting For A School Miracle.” Duncan still wants to refute what I wrote then. But he and President Obama never, to my knowledge, ever went to a big-city school to praise it unless it had fired the entire staff.
I will leave it to others to explain why the Obama administration had such contempt for regular public schools and their teachers. I don’t understand it.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
I worked at a school in Chicago for eight years that accepted a lot of the kids that Duncan’s favorite privatizers couldn’t be bothered with. When I saw his Atlantic piece, I felt like it needed some corrections. If you click on the highlighted passages, you’ll see my notes.
http://genius.it/www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2016/08/the-myth-of-the-miracle-school/497942
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Who can understand Obama & Charters. FYI I just linked on Twitter to The 74 to see more immediately what it is spreading out into the education world. I tweet that I do NOT support the 74 thinking right back to its @ symbol. Thanks to you & Gary.
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What you see is enamourment with free-market ideas, combined with anecdotal evidence of government-run schools being resistant to commonsensical efforts of reform.
To combat this, what’s needed is to provide intellectual justification as to why the free-market can’t solve this problem, as well as to show that government-run schools can.
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Most of this blog over the years as well as a steady stream of publications continue to address the points you raise with intellectual justification buttressed by facts galore. Unfortunately that’s not what’s needed. ‘Contempt for public schools’ is a political posture signalling private interests that govt policies support a ‘spigot-open’ position for unmonitored siphoning of the public purse, as well as a green light to union-busters. It can only be countered politically.
In the present era US politics & govt policies are shaped by deep-pockets campaign-contributors & lobbyists. Yet for years the great majority of traditional-public-school parents poll positively for their district schools. That’s a group with considerable political clout when they choose to exercise it, as we’ve seen in states with active opt-out (of state-stdzd annual testing). As with other issues where polls consistently run counter to govt policy (e.g. gun control, Citizens’ United decision), what’s needed is grass-roots political organization to pressure elected representatives.
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“. . . to provide intellectual justification as to why the free-market can’t solve this problem. . .”
How about this little bit of “intellectual justification”:
THERE IS NO FREE MARKET, there never has been nor ever will be except in the minds of the free marketeers. No different than any other cult in believing in something, the supposed free market, that doesn’t exist. For shits and giggles I had google earth “fly me” to the “free market”. I ended up in the Atlantic Ocean a couple of hundred miles south of the Azores.
The free market is a description, albeit a sorry lacking one, of human economic activity. As a description the free market cannot do anything. It doesn’t allocate resources, it doesn’t determine costs of exchanges, it doesn’t set labor rates, etc. . . . Humans do all of that and quite inequitably most of the time.
Someone please explain how anyone can believe in this vaunted “free market”, which only in the minds of humans, that supposedly can solve educational problems that actually exist.
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bethree5 wrote:
“Contempt for public schools’ is a political posture signalling private interests that govt policies support a ‘spigot-open’ position”
For some people that might be true, but it’s a mistake to think that most of your opponents are so cynically guided. That is merely the demonization of the enemy, which renders so many struggles unresolvable. Like religious wars.
I stand behind my original claim. It’s great that some people are pointing out free-market flaws, but the efforts of many are undermined by probable ideological biases. It will take a while to turn around the views of well-meaning, but misguided people.
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@Duane Swacker:
Sorry, but I find your argument disingenuous. The free-market is a continuum and some markets are more free than others. And some markets are more effective than others. The free-market works well with consumer products because of 1) essentially identical products, 2) low barriers to entry, and 3) close to perfect information by the consumer.
None of these are true with the education market, of course. The government attempts to artificially create the conditions necessary for a free market, but it probably can’t be done.
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Finding this discussion interesting, and finding the suggestion that free markets exist only in the mind (that sounds very platonic), I would pose a question: what is the most perfect example of the free market that ever existed on earth?
Perhaps it was American Indians from the Gulf trading shells for obsidian. Or was it spices for gold in Africa? Could it have been Adam Smith trading for coffee with pounds?
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There is a lot of mythology that is pushed by the reform crowd that simply is not true. It can be difficult to change the minds and hearts of those they have misled. Much of their secret sauce is: already being done in public schools – technology – or is basically unethical -discipline policies, excluding ELD or special needs students. So it comes down to the fact that it is all a money grab and about privitazation.
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Scott,
You asked for “intellectual justification”. My statements that there has never been nor ever will be a “free market” and that since the term is a description of human interactions and in no way can be considered to have any volition and therefore cannot determine anything is that “intellectual justification.
Your response that you “find your argument disingenuous” certainly isn’t an intellectual justification remark but rather a I know better than you one. Why don’t you “intellectually justify” WHY you consider my argument to be disingenuous? Perhaps because you can’t, that my argument is very intellectually justified.
Have at it Scott!
Duane
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There remains a deep seated view in the black community that our kids are just as bright as white kids ( true of course) therefore their poor results are the fault of the school and school system. They fail to factor in poverty in the equation. Middle class black kids do very well and poor white kids do very badly but after 500 years of slavery, Jim Crow, and so on they see the state as an oppressor. An “anything must be better” POV is powerful.
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To counter the narrative that poverty impacts academic achievement, “reformers” are using their own voodoo math to calculate our poverty rate at 7.8% so they can continue to blame all those “lazy” teachers in public schools. When the data does not confirm their biased views, they construct data that will. http://curmudgucation.blogspot.com/2016/09/is-poverty-no-longer-thing.html
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In her HBO special, Wanda Sykes says “our schools are broken” at least five times.
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I’ve seen the same inside low-income schools across our district which serve a majority of non-white kids. No matter the racial background, parents who have lived in the USA long enough to be frustrated by cultural/racial inequity are the first to buy into this “broken” school mantra. Over and over they call for change, not seeing that each change brings less stability and less opportunity for the very kids which the “change” is theoretically made.
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Unfortunately there are cultural issues at play especially when children refuse to “engage” in instruction and prefer to disrupt the class with loud arguments or even animal noises.
I’ve heard it said that white teachers don’t know how to teach black students. I’d certainly like to know what this secret model of instruction might look like.
Yes, while poverty is a factor, students of color are just as intelligent as anyone else, but they don’t necessarily value the same outcomes.
So what is the answer?
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flos56
Chronically rude, defiant, stupid, uncooperative, mean, devious, threatening, bizarre and downright uncivilized behaviors are at the root of the “America’s failing schools” problem and have allowed the charter movement to proliferate.
The unwillingness of some students to take their classwork seriously is independent of their innate intelligence. Most disruptions can be explained as attention seeking behaviors – yet some are undoubtedly, sociopathic.
Root problems below; now try and solve them.
Unstructured, dysfunctional home lives.
Negligent or abusive parenting.
Frustration due to knowledge and skill deficits.
Disbelief in the value of education.
Immaturity.
Negative cultural influences
Psychiatric disorders: substance-related disorders, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, antisocial personality disorder, borderline personality disorder, conduct disorder and mood disorders.
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I agree with everything you expressed in your response. You could add that it’s more fun to exasperate the teacher than it is to actually participate in class.
However, not once did you mention those “rotten” teachers who simply don’t have the talent or drive to appropriately teach these misunderstood children.
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Where are you going to get super teachers? Two MAs like Finland? HIGHER wages like Germany or Canada? Testing for teachers – hint it doesn’t work.
The teachers you have are the teachers you need to work with.
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Thanks, Doug Little! “The teachers you have are the teachers you have to work with.” Reformers think they can attract only graduates of elite universities, but a) there are not enough, and 2) most who enter won’t stay because of pay and working conditions. Let’s be grateful for those who accept the challenge and stay. They are heroic.
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Or “motivate” them to do better.
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Also, please note, that the very parents who complain the loudest that their child’s teacher is incompetent and the school substandard, are completely astonished when, after enrolling them in a charter school, that same little angel quickly finds their way back into the public school system due to the inappropriate behaviors which will not be tolerated in this new environment (but which must be dealt with in the public schools)
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flos56
Torturing teachers for sport – don’t know how I missed it.
I am a firm believer that no teacher should require special training, cultural sensitivity expertise, or any other magical skills in order for students to exhibit normal classroom decorum. The question becomes, what on Earth can the public schools do with the recalcitrants and deviants that make up a very tiny minority but destroy classroom environments for the vast majority?
Alternate education programs?
Alternate curricula?
Expulsion?
Charter schools?
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Kipp?
Zero Tolerance rules?
Military style instruction?
Using behavioral science on students as if they were animals?
Success Academy?
All I know is that I wouldn’t want my own children exposed to a Gestapo style education. There has to be a better way.
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Very few “civilians” – including parents of said children – would ever believe the degree of abuse many teachers have to endure on a near daily basis from some students. behaviors that no other professional adults would ever dream of tolerating. And as soon as some schools try to crack down on the chronically disruptive, they get the “school to prison pipeline” insult thrown at them. Failing schools? Failing teachers? Failing parents? Failing politicians? Failing culture? Failing students? Take your pick . . .
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One word – complex reasons reduce to POVERTY.
Ask David Berlin.
Late to get glasses
Late to get dental work if at all
Summer doldrums
Poor role models
Low seniority green teachers
Food insecurity
Transit problems
Housing insecurity
Latch key lack of supervision
Low expectations
Days lost to illness.
Take your pick.
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I would be more specific about POVERTY Doug.
Some of my best students are immigrant children from typically poor homes – children whos parents made the effort to get here because of our educational opportunities.
I see it more accurately as a debilitating HOPELESSNESS spawned by generational poverty, dependence, and institutional/cultural racism.
.
And there is little discussion about how the behaviors of that small minority of disruptors, recalcitrants, and deviants negatively impact the psyche of teachers and can lead to a level of burnout and complacency that to me is understandable. So we allow these few deeply troubled kids to harm their peers and their teachers.
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Check out these articles by Julie Woestehoff, of the anti-corp.-ed-reform, pro-public-school parents group, PURE (Parents United for Responsible Education), which is affiliated with Parents Across America, of which Julie was one of its founders. Both back in his days in Chicago, and during his tenure as Secretary of Ed, Arne was familiar enough with Julie as one of his adversaries, that during protests, he would wave to her personally.
Julie has been keeping track of Arne Duncan’s lies. In fact, she just wrote this post in August 2012:
Julie points out how Duncan told a bizarre lie about certain high school buddies of his going to work at the “Chicago Stock Yards.” The problem with that lie is that the “Chicago Stock Yards” ceased all operations when Duncan was 7 years old.
Why tell such a stupid, easily-verifiable lie?
Here’s more posts form Julie about his lies:
— Duncan’s lies regarding claims regarding “turnaround schools”
http://pureparents.org/?p=15935
— Duncan’s lies regarding charter school “successes”
http://pureparents.org/?p=15909
— Duncan’s track record of lying in general
http://pureparents.org/?p=15916
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Of course, no discussion about Arne Duncan would be complete without spotlighting the Dodge Renaissance Academy fiasco.
In late 2008, just after Obama’s victory over John McCain, Obama and Duncan announced Duncan’s appointment at Secretary of Ed. To signal the changes Obama had in store for the nation’s schools, they made this announcement at a school that exemplified the efficacy of Duncan’s “corporate education reforms” in Chicago …
Dodge Renaissance Academy.
During the press conference / photo op, Obama pointed out that Duncan showed great courage when he had previously closed the pre-existing school occupying the Dodge campus and serving the students now attending Dodge. He fired all the adults—principal, other administrators, teachers… right down to the guys who sweep the floors. This was difficult decision where he had get tough, as there were major protests against this move.
However, this served as an example of how Duncan, as Secretary of Ed, won’t be letting defenders of the failed status quo get in his way, or stop him.
As a result, Dodge was transformed into a miracle charter school …
… until it wasn’t.
A couple years later, the school descended into administrative and financial chaos, and parents fled, leading to the school’s closure. This was a story not covered by the mainstream media, but covered by Huffington Post (Mercedes Schneider) here:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mercedes-schneider/school-ironies-the-fizzle_b_6504252.html
and Dr. Ravitch here:
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Oh, and the Dodge charter fiasco also encompasses the whole gentrification-thru-charterization phenomenon, as well as how military high schools are being — in the words of Jonah Edelman — being shoved down the throats of unwilling parents of poor and minority parents.
Chicago activist and teacher George Schmidt added all this to the comments section of the Ravitch article on Dodge:
—————————-
George Schmidt
May 10, 2013 at 6:30 am
“We are still waiting for the Chicago papers to cover this update on the sad Dodge story, and the Arne Duncan/Barack Obama ironies around it all. I took photographs at Dodge after Duncan announced the original proposed turnaround, which that year took place in two phases. In the first phase, the school was emptied out and one year of ‘planning’ was supposedly implemented.
“The kids were scattered to the winds, especially the homeless ones, and those whose families could not afford the new $200,000 townhouses that were being built down the street from Dodge. (A photograph putting Dodge in its geopolitical perspective would be taken from the United Center, less than a mile to the east, to depict accurately the displacement of poor and working class black families from the area…).
“Fewer than half the original Dodge kids returned to the ‘new’ Dodge the following year. And for those who were sent hither and yon, the results were bad. The Dodge kids who tried to go to Grant Elementary School (where many of them were sent) were beaten up by the (then) Grant kids. The Grant kids didn’t want the ‘Dodge Dummies’ to lower their school’s scores. (That was ironic because there really wasn’t that big a difference between Grant and Dodge, but perception is reality…).
“Eventually, Duncan’s versions of school reform got around to Grant, too. With the help of then Congressman Rahm Emanuel (who bragged he got a one million dollar earmark for the job) Grant became a ‘military academy.’
“First, the Phoenix (Army) high school was put in the Grant building. Then the ‘Marine Military Academy’ was put in there, too. As a result, the remaining kids who had been at Grant elementary school were scattered to the winds, just like the Dodge kids had been.
“The ability of Duncan, Obama, and Emanuel to get away with this stuff, decade after decade, rests on the failure of the corporate news media in Chicago to cover the tragedies of the poor and working class families who become, over and over, the voiceless victims of these policies. Their voices — thousands of them — are drowned out every day by the screaming of Rahm Emanuel’s PR machinery (only part of which is the multi million dollar ‘Mayor’s Press Office,’ which daily issues commands to the media to cover a media event starring Rahm and some corporate chieftains). It is a choice made for more than a decade by Chicago’s corporate reporters to focus on the official party line of the ‘School Reform’ crowd and ignore the tragic facts, year after year, school after school and child after child.
“And this year, we’re facing the largest and most tragic assault of all. But we can’t ever forget that this attack on children and truth was part of the program of Arne Duncan, Barack Obama and Richard M. Daley long before Rahm Emanuel returned to Chicago to purchase four years on the fifth floor of Chicago’s City Hall…”
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…child after child…
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Peter Greene, over at his blog Curmudgucation, read the same piece as Rubinstein, and has his own take;
http://curmudgucation.blogspot.com/2016/09/duncan-stops-pretending.html
————————————
PETER GREENE: “As the head of the United States Department of Education, Arne Duncan must have felt some pressure to be supportive of public education in this country. But now that he’s a private citizen and name-for-hire, he is held by no such restraints.
That’s made extraordinarily clear in his piece for Atlantic, in which he “examines the issues at the heart of the charter-school debate.” It would appear that the issue at the heart of the debate is that charter schools are freaking awesome.
” … ”
———-
At the end, Peter caught something that had escaped me.
Duncan acknowledges problems with charters — a week after John Oliver, how could he? However, carrying out his corporate masters’ marching orders, he was careful to point out that no one in the government should be involved in correcting those problems, or overseeing them in any way.
Instead, the solution should be the charter industry “policing itself”: (because (sarcasm) that’s worked out so well so far … again, watch John Oliver)
—————————-
PETER GREENE: “Of course, Duncan does admit that some charters fail to produce academic results, and here’s what he thinks about that:
DUNCAN: ‘…it is absolutely incumbent on the charter sector to be vigilant about policing itself and closing down low performers.’
“Notice that he doesn’t even go as far as admitting there are come bad actors and fraudsters in the charter sector, nor does he see a role for government in protecting students, families, and taxpayers from fraudsters. Nope– just let the charter sector police itself.
“There was never any doubt that Duncan was a charter fan, but this piece puts him in line with some of the most pie-eyed charter lovers. All pretense is gone, and in a way, it’s impressive that Duncan could pretend to be even semi-supportive of public education for as long as he did. But now he can stop pretending, and be the charter-loving, public school dismissing PR flack he always wanted to be.”
————–
And that’s what really ticks me off. Back in December 2008, when I saw that press coverage at Dodge, announcing Duncan as the next Secretary of Ed, I immediately thought, “This is NOT good. Millions of kids are gonna get screwed because of this.” I had phone-banked daily for Obama, so this was quite a disappointment.
For the last seven years, we had someone as Secretary of Ed. who, controlled by his corporate master, was out to demolish public education, and replace it with private, corporate-controlled McSchools.
I read ATLANTIC piece and something else struck me.
On the one hand, Arne ends the article by saying …
ARNE DUNCAN: “It doesn’t matter to me whether the sign on the door of a school has the
word ‘Charter’ in it, and it doesn’t matter to children.”
… yet the entire article proceeding this is a pro-charter propaganda piece — chocked with fulsome flattery directed towards charters — while, at the same time, the article…
— does not include a single positive portrayal of an actual traditional public school
— doesn’t include a single mention of a successful public school, or a single example of something positive at a traditional public school,
but, by implication, trashes the traditional public schools by saying…
DUNCAN: ” … what stands out for me is that high-performing charter schools have
convincingly demonstrated that low-income children can and do achieve at
high levels—and can do so at scale.”
… but those horrible public schools can’t.
DUNCAN: ” … Yet I absolutely reject the idea that poverty is destiny in the
classroom and the self-defeating belief that schools don’t matter much
in the face of poverty.”
… like they believe in those crap-can status quo traditional public schools.
Think about that for a second. This is a man who led the U.S. Department of Ed, where he and his department had the responsibility and mandate to improve the educational system and opportunities for ALL STUDENTS, where 96% of those schools attend schools that, then and now, Duncan believed and believes were hopeless failure factories that need to be closed and turned over to management by the private sector.
This is article is like the Postmaster General, shortly after leaving office, writes an ATLANTIC article about how awful the U.S. Postal system is —the one he just got through leading — and how Federal Express kicks its ass in every way. We need to close down as many post offices, and turn them over to FedEx.
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One more thing from the ATLANTIC:
ARNE DUNCAN: “Sadly, much of the current debate in Washington, in education schools, and in the blogosphere about high-performing charter schools is driven by ideology, not by facts on the ground.”
————————————
“Facts on the ground?”
Arne, you want “facts on the ground” that will “drive the current debate”?
Here’s 18 minutes worth of “facts on the ground:: (watched by 5.5 million people so far
These are “facts” that — whether Duncan likes it or not — both refute his pro-charter bias, and is, in fact, “driving the current debate”
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This describes John King’s response on NPR this evening when asked about the controversy surrounding charters. Kids do not care whether the school is a public school or a charter, he said.
This is the classic fallacy of generalization in action to prevent having to give an answer. Within a single class will be 30 different opinions on almost everything. Some kids like the teacher and some think he is a jerk. Some kids have parents who like the school and some do not. Some kids have parents. Some do not.
Those who talk of “failing schools” imply that these institutions are in it for the easy money or something. We need to do away with that phrase. It is a generalization.
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Answer: No, Arne Duncan doesn’t ever learn. He is a talking balloon with a face painted on the front and programmed with random phrases and sound bites, randomly repeated over and over regardless of context, that are supposed to sound like something. A balloon cannot learn; the question does not even make sense.
You occasionally meet administrators like this, where the same responses come back at you regardless of the question. You can only decide that nothing is back there and discussion, reason, is fruitless.
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Great posting. Great comments and links.
Many thanks to all concerned.
😎
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Conclusion: Does Arne Duncan ever learn? No. Mediocre at Australian basketball, though. Nice political connections too. That’s good, right?
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Arne, I have no doubt that the charter school industry can “police itself.”
Just as does the “standardized” testing industry.
And just what did you do to earn your SSSalary as D,o,Ed. Head, Mr. Duncan?
As a taxpayer, I want my money back!!
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Sunday’s NY Times reports that Trump told the black congregation in Detroit that he proposes a new civil rights agenda. Charter schools. In a city awash in them.
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