Mike Klonsky comments this evening on an especially meretricious list of “children’s rights.”
A reformer’s dream. School choice (vouchers and charters).
No collective bargaining for teachers.
Merit pay.
School closings.
Here is Mike’s bill of rights for kids:
“A real student Bill of Rights might include items like:
The right to learn in a safe environment in a safe community.
The right to be well-fed, rested and clothed.
The right to opt-out of high-stakes, standardized testing.
The right to attend a racially desegregated public school.
The right to gender equality including freedom from LGBT discrimination.
The right to vote and have voice on important matters concerning school policy.
The right to think critically, free from censorship, locker searches and book banning.
The right to have a qualified, certified teacher in every classroom.
The right to the same level of funding and resources as students in the wealthy suburbs.
The list of student rights could and would be a lot longer, if students had any voice in compiling it. I’m quite sure that didn’t happen over at the Tribune.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
From the article: “. . . produced no gains in measurable learning outcomes.”
Well, considering that there are no “measurable” learning outcomes in the teaching and learning process, what difference does not producing gains make???
Don’t believe that learning outcomes can’t be measured?
Well let’s read what one of the most strident and vocal supporters of the standards and testing regime, Richard Phelps has to say about what is supposedly being measured (he has written at least two books defending the standardized testing malpractices). In the introduction to “Correcting Fallacies About Educational and Psychological Testing” Phelps unwittingly lets the cat out of the bag with this statement (notice how he is trying to assert by proximity that educational standardized testing and the testing done by engineers are basically the same, in other words a “truly scientific endeavor”):
“Physical tests, such as those conducted by engineers, can be standardized, of course [why of course of course], but in this volume , we focus on the measurement of latent (i.e., nonobservable) mental, and not physical, traits.” [my addition]
Now since there is no agreement on the definition of a standard unit of learning, no exemplar of that standard unit and that there is no measuring device calibrated against said non-existent standard unit exemplar, how is it possible to “measure the nonobservable” which is what all this standardized testing insanity, truly insanity if you think about it, is about??? Measuring the nonobservable with non-existent measuring devices??
So much harm to so many students is caused by the educational malpractices that are standards and testing or as Phelps contends in “measuring the nonobservable”.
How insane is this all???
Utterly beyond my comprehension!!!
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Quite insane, Duane.
Neoliberal “reformers” present themselves aspositivists, but they’re not even that.
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“One way to guarantee the best guides, instructors, in every classroom: Pay for performance. Teachers who catapult their students’ academic success should expect fat bonuses in their paychecks. Teachers who don’t should expect to find other work.”
It’s so weird that this is an article of faith in ed reform.
Did anyone read about Wells Fargo last week? They robbed their customers to increase the bank’s stock value.
They were paid for performance. All of them.
Pay for performance doesn’t “guarantee” anything. It’s just nonsense to keep saying it does.
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Good point about meritocracy, Chiara.
I’m surprised they didn’t ask for a flood.
And I thought the Tribune Co’s other newspaper here in LA was bad. That editorial was ridiculous.
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They should read their own reporting on Wells Fargo.
This isn’t “science”. It’s ideology and a near-religious faith in private sector “solutions”.
Maybe private sector leaders should look at their own side of the street? They’re ethically bankrupt. Ordinary investors can’t even rely on these stock values. They’re based on fraud.
I laugh that these CEO’s want to “reform” the public sector. They need to reform the private sector. It’s riddled with crooks.
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Also important, once the dust settled many of the lowest-paid employees were FIRED. Not the administrators who pushed the scam down their throats. This is frighteningly representative of what is now happening with public education.
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Fire everyone but the ones who do the damage. I see superintendents and chancellors play ‘musical jobs’, going from one school system to another leaving destruction inter wake, accumulating pensions and benefits, while teachers entire careers vanish and they are thrown to the dogs.
We see it at Wells Fargo, where all the underlings are fired, and the top dogs go off with hUGE benefits and millions! They need to go to JAIL, not be rewarded.
Look at the Christie mess. That political beast set the tone, and everyone did his bidding. I hope his career is ended with what comes out in this mess.
it is the total lack accountability at the TOP, that is promoting all the fraud.
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Very well said.
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Chicago’s been “reformed” by both Arne Duncan and Rahm Emanual.
You would think they would try something else after 20 years of following this doctrine.
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Don’t forget Huberman and Claypool. Chicago gets “reformed” about as often as I renew my drivers license.
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Let us not forget Duncan’s “Renaissance 2010.” By now, Chicago was supposed to be completely reformed, in the midst of a Renaissance, after Duncan closed “bad” schools and opened 100 new schools.
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I also think the ed reform obsession with separating “children” and “adults” is bizarre.
Who thinks like this? Can we all agree children exist within the context of their communities?
Just as a parent I think it’s bizarre. I’m not actually fighting for resources with a political faction called “children”. That isn’t how real communities work.
They get that these children are part of something bigger, right? They don’t land from Mars. It’s not like dropping them off at boarding school in another state. We all live together. We’re not actually opposed to our own children. That’s ludicrous.
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So based on this recitation of ed reform doctrine, I’m supposed to believe that public school supporters are all greedy and self-interested and ed reformers are all operating purely out of goodness.
Why would that be true? If people act based on these incentives then why would ed reformers be immune?
If I accept that public school supporters are all acting out of self-interest protecting public schools, then why wouldn’t the same cynical assumptions apply to ed reformers?
They’re just better people? Inherently superior?
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I hate to nitpick but didn’t Rahm Emanuel make a bunch of promises to public school parents in Chicago when he closed all those schools?
Weren’t the savings supposed to go back into the remaining public schools?
That was just a giant lie, never to mentioned again?
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Another legislative session in Ohio devoted exclusively to charter schools:
“When legislators return to the Statehouse in November, a mess awaits them in the form of an ongoing fight over ensuring that online charter schools are paid only for students who are actually enrolled.
What does it mean to be enrolled? Teams of lawyers for the Ohio Department of Education and ECOT, Ohio’s largest online charter school, are battling over that in court.”
Can we hire some public employees in Columbus who have some interest in public schools? That doesn’t seem unreasonable. One or two out of the thousands we’re paying down there? It’s 93% of students in all income levels. That’s the public school population.
Total capture. You can’t pry these people away from charter schools with a crowbar. If they aren’t expanding charter schools they’re battling lobbyists over regulating them.
Meanwhile, the unfashionable public schools will be given yet another set of gimmicky mandates with no funding attached.
http://www.dispatch.com/content/stories/local/2016/09/19/ohio-legislature-might-delve-into-e-school-attendance.html
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All of ed reform promoted the “skills gap”. They traveled the country scolding working people on it. The problems with the economy were all the fault of working people, who are lazy and stupid.
It was baloney:
http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/dont-blame-a-skills-gap-for-lack-of-hiring-in-manufacturing/?ex_cid=538twitter
Everyone in ed reform from President Obama on down bought this nonsense, because it fit with their predetermined ideas about the lack of quality in the US workforce.
Google “skills gap”. The whole ed reform gang comes up. Echo chamber.
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The Trib is basically a propaganda arm for money-motivated real estate operators, who seek to close schools, drive the current neighborhood residents out, then rape and pillage the empty land and buildings.
Check on No. 7. It derides the 200-year-old system of public education as “an enormous real estate venture” (???!!!) with “lavishly paid” employees, while calling for policies that will enable the private sector’s seizure of and profiting off of public land holdings.
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“7. Farewell to yesteryear’s schools and protocols.
“Follow the money — by the billions: American public education is an enormous real estate venture where, too often, students and employees share structures that are the wrong size or shape for functional education in the 21st century. Illinois public officials in particular have chronically caved to demands that they not close underpopulated schools or consolidate small districts or shrink the number of middle-management educrats.
“The sheer number of districts (and lavishly paid superintendents and assistant superintendents and …) should shrink to meet today’s needs, not yesterday’s conveniences. And individual schools should be combined or reconfigured so that limited resources can serve the student populations they have — not the ones they used to have.
“In Chicago, that means more schools that empty out as neighborhood residents relocate will have to close. And soon. Schools don’t exist in perpetuity; they exist to serve students. And student populations aren’t static.”
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Yeah, you got that?
This Trib editorial is all about how to best “serve the students.” Ruthless real estate developers are the ones who really care “about the students” while it’s those “lavishly paid” teachers and administrators actually working in public schools every day, or the students’ parents who want to keep their neighborhood schools open so their kids don’t have to walk long distances through dangerous neighborhoods, crossing gang boundaries … well, they’re all selfish scum.
A stable public school anchors a community, but that’s what the privatizers and ruthless real estate profiteers hate the most. If those schools exist as glue to hold that neighborhood together, it’s consequently harder to ethnically and socio-economically cleanse that neighborhood, and effect gentrification that will benefit them as they then build, then sell off newly-built condo units with hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars.
There’s another part of the reason why Arne, Rahm, the unelected CPS school board, and others closed so many schools.
Call this an epilogue of sorts to the 2013 school closings of 50 schools on the same day in Chicago: (free market capitalism marches on!). These closings helped drive out lower income residents — since there was no longer any neighborhood school for their children to attend — thereby gentrifying certain neighborhoods even quicker.
Developers connected to Rahm Emanuel have been buying up the land and school buildings from CPS at cost.
And the latest is, according to the article below, is that the school buildings — some a century old, many several decades old — are being renovated for residence condos to be sold at top dollar. Classrooms in the former schools are being turned into expensive Yuppie condo lofts for the new well-to-do residents:
http://chicago.curbed.com/2016/9/1/12750594/cps-chicago-public-schools-apartments
The new residents can brag, “I live in a school classroom, where I wake up every morning, then walk to and from work every day and night, up the former school steps, and through the hallways that Chicago school children used to walk for decades.”
Weird.
Those buds and campaign backers of Rahm & perhaps buds of Arne, too — have been creating these new condos after rehabbing those closed Chicago schools: (not that you could afford it on a CPS teacher salary)
http://chicago.curbed.com/2016/9/1/12750594/cps-chicago-public-schools-apartments
Sometimes what hurts most is the fact that some of these “reformers” and/or their buds have been very intentionally buying up property years before actual school closures…
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Here’s a story out of Philadephia, but it’s relevant to the scene in Chicago, as all the same forces and attitudes are in operation here. Apparently, when you re-purpose a closed school, they have a new word for it
“maker-space”
There’s something really creepy about this story… as it’s about the intersecting clash of class and race and school reform and gentrification and… well… capitalism.
Two years ago, Philly School leaders executed a massive closing of schools, including Bok Technical School, an Art Deco school built by the Works Progress Administration in the 1930’s for working class Philadelphians. For 80 years, Bok Tech helped generations move into the middle class, and had one of the highest achievement and graduation rates for its working class and ethnic demographic
The school’s rooftop gave its then-students a beautiful view of Philadelphia… so some developers bought up the closed school, then turned rooftop into …
Le Bok Fin….
an ultra-trendy bar / cafe for upper class and upper middle class hipster yuppies to eat and drink and mingle. Patrons have to walk through the abandoned school hallways to get to the hip place.
Anyone care to go slumming?
Protestors have been handing out fliers to people as they enter:
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“You’re eating and drinking at a beloved school that was closed against the community’s wishes.”
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Here’s a positive portrayal of the transformation:
https://theawl.com/the-hottest-bar-in-philly-is-on-top-of-a-shuttered-public-school-96b5f37324d0#.gv8jwldk9
Look at the pictures. Upscale white hipsters wining and dining at the tragically hip site of a school that, until two years ago, served Philly’s black and Latino underclass.
Boy stuff like this is not for me… ”
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Here’s a piece that is critical: (young urban professionals are not called yuppies, but “makers”, and gentrified spaces like this renovated high school are called “maker-spaces.”
Who comes up with this jargon, by the way?)
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” ‘Le Bok Fin” will feature a French menu, and put the kitchen that used to train teenagers to use. I wonder how many of the neighbors will be able to afford a meal there. Even its name is a reference that most of the neighborhood won’t get–to possibly the most bourgeoisie restaurant ever in Philadelphia. I wonder how many nearby residents will even have the time, as time poverty is an issue that often gets overlooked.
“This underserved neighborhood needs affordable healthcare and childcare, ESL classes, business and finance classes in multiple languages, better jobs, living wages, technology classes, immigration services, and the such. It doesn’t need dog parks, a bus shelter for an alternate-route bus and a “living room.”
…
“And so (developer Lindsay) Scannapieco clearly hopes to usher in gentrification with her ‘maker-space.’ It’s a pretty easy conclusion when other Philly make-spaces are in Graduate Hospital and Kensington, both battlefronts in the gentrification war Philadelphia is currently waging again long-term residents.
“Furthermore, who are these ‘makers?’
“They’re young, white people–the sort who build start-ups and attend expensive, pointless pop-ups and don’t worry about the community that was already there.
“Will they invite in kids for free workshops (with meals provided)?
“Will they hire the community and train them for meaningful jobs, not just as janitors?
“Will they pay a living wage if they do?
“What will they do for parents and adults who are too busy to be “makers”?
“Is this a space for everyone, or a space for those privileged few who can afford myriad luxuries–the first of which might be the ability to be a “maker” in the first place?
“Scannapieco aims to build a community, but the community already exists. Taking a building that educated their children into the middle class and instead using it to showcase the very worst of the middle- and upper-middle classes in Philadelphia isn’t just tone deaf.
“It’s insulting, and it’s wrong.”
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Finally, here’s a Fox News-type that ridicules any such misgivings that working class residents have about cannibalizing a beloved 80-year-old school, and then turning it into a trendy upscale “maker-space” bar & cafe—ignoring the pre-existing community and also school’s rich, 80-year history in the process:
What follows is the very definition of the concept of MISSING THE POINT: (Did this guy Victor Fiorillo help write the Trib’s “Students’ Bill of Rights” Editorial?)
http://www.phillymag.com/news/2015/09/09/le-bok-fin-controversy/
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VICTOR FIORILLO:
“Don’t hate Le Bok Fin: Quite your damn whining:
“Did you hear about the latest scourge of Philadelphia?
“No, it’s not the violence in the streets or the corruption and incompetence in public office or even the PPA parking nazis. It is [cue sinister music] Le Bok Fin.
“This ‘controversy’ is one of the stupidest things I have heard all year. And I hear a lot of stupid.
“The ‘activists’ are upset that all this activity is happening atop a shuttered school, even though Le Bok Fin had absolutely nothing to do with the school closing. They are griping that the neighborhood doesn’t need French food or a dog park (another disastrously progressive aspect of the development at that location).
“And they are horrified that a bunch of privileged white millennials are coming there to drink and stretch.
“In short, they have summed up developer Lindsey Scannapieco as an evil gentrifier, invading their neighborhood with her big, fancy ideas.
“If anybody wants to invade my neighborhood with a bunch of millennials and their rooftop yoga and rooftop French food, I will personally roll out the red carpet. In fact, Will Smith’s alma mater Overbrook High School is just around the corner from me. And since it sits on the top of a hill along Lancaster Avenue — you can see the skyline quite nicely just from the front seat of the car — it will have a killer view.”
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More “public schools suck!, rah rah for charter schools!” from the echo chamber:
http://www.usnews.com/opinion/articles/2016-09-20/more-money-wont-fix-failing-public-schools
Every day. Over and over and over. Is it any wonder public schools fare so poorly under ed reform lawmakers? The whole goal is to replace them.
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Another dispatch from the echo chamber. Here’s an ed reform piece that purports to be about “great” public AND charter schools.
Except there are no public schools mentioned.
It’s another rah rah for charters piece.
It’s as if they believe saying “agnostic” makes it so, even if every word they write contradicts the claim.
I don’t mind people promoting charter schools. Just stop pretending you’re interested in ‘great public schools”. It’s deceptive. The public assumes you mean “public schools”.
Just run on replacing public schools with charter chains. Then we can have a debate.
http://educationpost.org/the-key-to-charter-school-success-is-collaboration-with-district-schools/?utm_source=Twitter&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=Choice&utm_content=TwChoiceKeyCharterSchoolSuccessLw1
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I posted Mik’e article at http://www.opednews.com/Quicklink/The-Tribune-s-so-called-S-in-Best_Web_OpEds-Agenda_Chicago_Chicago-Tribune_Choice-160921-878.html#comment618939
But, could not add a comment at this blog that tells him this… maybe you can.
I added a comment at the Oped link which brings readers to Diane’s blog, although the links do not appear here..so go there i you want to see them.
The billionaires, are buying our schools. Want proof…look at LA, where they bought half of the schools ! While the election circus is hiding this American tragedy there are sites where you can get the TRUTH; Living in Dialogue is a great site, like that of Diane Ravitch or the Network for Public Education (NPE), to learn how fast YOUR PUBLIC EDUCATION is being usurped by the plutocrats of the EDUCATIONAL INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX . There are 15,880 school systems, and the media is hiding there reality that schools are being systematically privatized, state by state. Put ‘PRIVATIZATION’ into the search field at the Ravitch blog, and see for yourself, or Put charter school failure in the search field and judge for yourself what is happening.
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Methinks Kristin McQueary (she, of the Trib’s Editorial Board), wrote this nonsense–& she & her publishers probably think they’ll win the Pulitzer Prize, or–at the very least–that the author(s) is/are as ingenious as our Founding Fathers.
I mention her, because she was the author of that earlier editorial wishing for a Katrina-scale catastrophe (following up on Arne Duncan’s brilliant blathering about Katrina being the best thing to ever happen to the New Orleans schools) in Chicago.
BTW–at the end, I believe, the Ed. Board asked for people to send in their “amendments.”
CPS Teachers, get your students writing!!
That is, if you have any extra time to squeeze it in, considering all the test-prepping that has surely already begun. (I would add, “The right to no longer take “standardized” (no such thing) tests, & the right to benefit from that money, then, NOT being spent on those tests, but on actual items one should find in schools–real textbooks (& not test-prep. books), real materials for real teaching & learning; librarians, school counselors; social workers, nurses, arts & P.E. teachers, and the right to smaller class size.”
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