Our friend Peter Greene is now writing for the Progressive, as well as writing prolifically for his blog. He never runs out of material, because the madness that he lacerates never seems to end.
This is a different kind of Peter Greene essay, one that reflects on his feelings about returning to school on the first day. All of us, or nearly all of us, are familiar with the Unprepared Student Dream. Late in life, it recurs. You find yourself going into a classroom in high school or college and you realize that you never read the assigned books and are completely unprepared for the crucial test that you will take that day. You wake up and shake yourself, happy that it was only a dream. Peter tells you what a teacher dreams.
My first job was as an editorial assistant at a small publication called “The New Leader,” which no longer exists. It was founded by a Menshevik who left Russia after the revolution. Its politics were democratic socialist and anti-Communist. I was right out of college, just married, and had no job experience or skills. I was paid $10 a week. It was a great job. I did everything, from selling advertising to writing book reviews. I was introduced to the world of intellectuals who argued about politics all over the world and which writer’s latest novel was his best or worst. In an essay that I wrote for its last issue, I said that I earned my M.A. at the New Leader. (I have a B.A. and a Ph.D., no M.A.).
One of my greatest, most important lessons was about the nature of left-wing politics. The Mensheviks hated the Bolsheviks. But then there were the Trotskyites, the Lovestoneites, the Cannonites, and the Schachtmanites. And more. At the time, I learned the distinctions among them, but if asked today, I couldn’t tell you. Jay Lovestone, who led his faction, stopped in the office at least once. I went to an evening event where I met the great Max Schactman, a towering figure with piercing eyes who was said to have engaged in a legendary four-hour debate about the future of the left. (His wife, Yetta, was Al Shanker’s personal secretary during his UFT years in New York City.)
I also learned about the famous lunch tables at the City College of New York, each associated with a left-wing faction.
I didn’t know much about Marxist philosophy but the one abiding lesson I learned was that factionalism and divisiveness kept the left impotent. They spent more time fighting one another than framing an agenda about their common strategies and goals.
This is why I have always believed that our own movement to stop the privatization of public education and the degradation of their schooling into scripted learning must be inclusive. At the first annual conference of the Network for Public Education in Austin, I spoke of the importance of having a big tent, welcoming all to our side who share our vision of better schools for all, free of high-stakes testing, amply and equitably resourced, where teachers are treated with respect as the professionals they are, and students are treated with respect and have the opportunity to learn.
Thus, I will not join in the demonizing of allies. For example, I do not criticize the unions, first because I believe in the right to collective bargaining, and second because I believe that unions are vital in building and sustaining the middle class and reducing income inequality. Those of us who oppose privatization of the public sector are in the same boat. If we waste our time fighting one another, we won’t get anywhere and the boat might capsize.
This is my introduction to a touchy subject. Anthony Cody writes here about some recent internecine battles. I appreciate his support. Anthony and I have spent hours discussing the issues that confront us all. I continually learn from him, as I do from Carol Burris and from all the board members at the Network for Public Education, each of whom has deep experience in their own field.
I am always taken aback when someone I consider on the same side, fighting the corporate assault on our schools, attacks me. Then I remember what I learned at the New Leader about how people can destroy their movement by internal squabbling. I won’t do it. Send me your slings and arrows. I won’t react. I don’t care. We are up against some of the most powerful people in the nation, who want to impose their discredited ideas on other people’s children. I am saving my energy for that struggle. I want to see us win during my lifetime. The clock is ticking.
The Charter Lady, former Representative Marty Walz, who is now associated with the hedge funders DFER, thinks that the schools of Massachusetts are in awful trouble. Why? Because they have elected school boards. If only Wall Street financiers and friends of the Walmart-Waltons ran all the schools, then the state might amount to something.
How stupid is that? Massachusetts is far and away the top scoring state in the nation.
School boards across the state are furious. More than 112 have passed resolutions opposing Question 2. Not a single school board supports it.
If Walz had her way, then there would only be individual, non-elected boards comprised of corporate and financial executives to oversee a school or a network of schools. So, if any students leave a school or network (whether encouraged to do so by that school/network or not), then the school (or network) responsibility ends there.
Massachusetts would be free to emulate Louisiana’s all-charter Recovery School District (RSD), a “portfolio” district (one where “there is no single entity responsible for all children”)– and one where assistant superintendent Dana Peterson publicly admitted that he doesn’t know how many students just disappear from those portfolio-ed, New Orleans schools.
Mercedes adds:
Walz does not like that Boston Public Schools receives funds to offset its losing students to charter schools. Yet if there is to be compulsory education, there must be a system of schools in which students might enroll at any time. There must be a default system, a “catch all.” Otherwise, there will be students without a school to attend, for whatever reason, including the fact that Massachusetts charters are not required to backfill empty seats in all grades– which means the charters are off the hook for adding a single latecomer student to a number of grade level cohorts.
Unfortunately, the need for a catch-all combined with non-locally-controlled charters tends to create a dual school system– and a dual school system tends to foster segregation.
The Charter Lady is thrilled that out of state money is pouring in to destabilize communities and privatize public schools.
Her reasoning is seriously flawed, as is her knowledge of education and research.
The Electronic Classroom of Tomorrow (ECOT) is one of the most profitable charter schools in the nation. Its owner, William Lager, is one of the biggest donors to the Republican party in Ohio. ECOT offers K-12 instruction online and is paid full state tuition for every student. Most of this money is deducted from the funding of the local school district where each student lives. ECOT has the lowest graduation rate in the nation. According to the New York Times, in the 2014 fiscal year, the last year for which federal tax filings were available, the school paid the companies associated with Mr. Lager nearly $23 million, or about one-fifth of the nearly $115 million in government funds it took in.
The state recently asked ECOT to demonstrate that its students are actually logging on and participating in instruction. The issue is in court because ECOT says that the state is overstepping its bounds and the company has no obligation to demonstrate that its students participate even for a minute a day.
The state’s fight over whether the giant ECOT online school deserves the $106 million in state money it receives hit the courtroom today, with ECOT lawyers saying the state is using rules that are “unenforceable” and the state saying the school’s objections are “absurd.”
The school and Ohio Department of Education are expected to be before Franklin County Common Pleas Judge Jennifer French for the next three days to present their differing views on a crucial issue: Whether online schools have to show that students actually participate in their online classes, or just that the schools provide classes.
In opening arguments this morning, lawyer Marion Little said state rules and a 2003 contract with ODE only require the Electronic Classroom of Tomorrow to prove that students are enrolled, not that they are engaged in their lessons.
Little said that e-school funding is set by enrollment but the state this year has tried to “merge” the “distinct” and separate ideas of participation with enrollment to audit the school and put its funding at risk.
The original idea of charter schools, as espoused not by Albert Shanker but by people like Chester Finn Jr., was a deal: Autonomy in exchange for accountability.
ECOT offers a different deal: Autonomy without accountability. Just give us the money and trust us.
This item appeared in politico.com for New York, but it is not posted online, so no link.
Betty Rosa, chancellor of the state Board of Regents, was elected with the help of the New York state opt out leaders.
By Keshia Clukey
09/12/2016 02:39 PM EDT
State Board of Regents Chancellor Betty Rosa Monday called for New York State to be a national leader in taking a stand against the testing of English language learners and students with disabilities who are not ready to take the exams.
“I want us to take a super leadership role in our waiver,” Rosa said at the Regents meeting. The state has continued to apply for a federal testing waiver, but the request has yet to be granted.
“Not just children with disabilities, but with the English language learners, we know before they even take a test that they cannot,” Rosa said. “They don’t have [the] language proficiency to demonstrate their success story.”
Regents board member Roger Tilles agreed and said that former state Education Commissioner John King Jr. had signed on and sent the request for the federal testing waiver during his time in New York, but now as U.S. secretary of education has the power to act and has yet to act on it.
With the low proficiency rate of English language learners on the state exams, Regents board member Luis Reyes said, it could be taken up as a civil rights violation.
“Testing children who are recently arrived is child abuse, not to say bad education law or bad education policy,” he said.
Thanks to the website realcleareducation.com for pointing me to this shocking story. The Houston Chronicle did an investigation and discovered that state officials in Texas had set an arbitrary cap of 8.5 percent on the number of children who could receive special education services, thus saving the state billions of dollars. Consequently, many children who needed these services did not receive them. Kudos to the Houston Chronicle for a very important journalistic coup that reveals a malevolent state policy that hurts children, just to keep taxes low. Priorities?
During the first week of school at Shadow Forest Elementary, a frail kindergartner named Roanin Walker had a meltdown at recess. Overwhelmed by the shrieking and giggling, he hid by the swings and then tried to escape the playground, hitting a classmate and biting a teacher before being restrained.
The principal called Roanin’s mother.
“There’s been an incident.”
Heidi Walker was frightened, but as she hurried to the Humble school that day in 2014, she felt strangely relieved.
She had warned school administrators months earlier that her 5-year-old had been diagnosed with a disability similar to autism. Now they would understand, she thought. Surely they would give him the therapy and counseling he needed.
Walker knew the law was on her side. Since 1975, Congress has required public schools in the United States to provide specialized education services to all eligible children with any type of disability.
But what she didn’t know is that in Texas, unelected state officials have quietly devised a system that has kept thousands of disabled kids like Roanin out of special education.
Over a decade ago, the officials arbitrarily decided what percentage of students should get special education services — 8.5 percent — and since then they have forced school districts to comply by strictly auditing those serving too many kids.
Their efforts, which started in 2004 but have never been publicly announced or explained, have saved the Texas Education Agency billions of dollars but denied vital supports to children with autism, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, dyslexia, epilepsy, mental illnesses, speech impediments, traumatic brain injuries, even blindness and deafness, a Houston Chronicle investigation has found.
More than a dozen teachers and administrators from across the state told the Chronicle they have delayed or denied special education to disabled students in order to stay below the 8.5 percent benchmark. They revealed a variety of methods, from putting kids into a cheaper alternative program known as “Section 504” to persuading parents to pull their children out of public school altogether.
“We were basically told in a staff meeting that we needed to lower the number of kids in special ed at all costs,” said Jamie Womack Williams, who taught in the Tyler Independent School District until 2010. “It was all a numbers game.”
Texas is the only state that has ever set a target for special education enrollment, records show.
It has been remarkably effective.
In the years since its implementation, the rate of Texas kids receiving special education has plummeted from near the national average of 13 percent to the lowest in the country — by far.
In 2015, for the first time, it fell to exactly 8.5 percent.
If Texas provided services at the same rate as the rest of the U.S., 250,000 more kids would be getting critical services such as therapy, counseling and one-on-one tutoring.
“It’s extremely disturbing,” said longtime education advocate Jonathan Kozol, who described the policy as a cap on special education meant to save money.
“It’s completely incompatible with federal law,” Kozol said. “It looks as if they’re actually punishing districts that meet the needs of kids.”
Alan Singer writes here of Trump’s proposal to let federal funds follow students to the school (or the computer) of their choice, which would put a knife into public education, which has been a central institution in American democracy.
He writes:
Donald Trump has never had much use for public schools, or for that matter, his own children when they were younger. As a boy The Donald attended the private (and expensive) Kew-Forest School in Queens, New York. Because of “behavior problems” there, he completed secondary school at the New York Military Academy, a private (and expensive) boarding school. Sons Eric and Donald Trump Jr. were shipped out to attend and live at the private (and expensive) Hill School in Pottstown, Pennsylvania, while daughter Ivanka went to the private (and expensive) Chapin School in New York City and then the Choate Rosemary Hall boarding school in Wallingford, Connecticut. At Hill the tuition for 2015-2016 school year was $54,570. Choate is currently a relative bargain at $48,890 a year. Tiffany Trump escaped with her mother, Trump’s middle wife, to Calabasas, California, where she attended the private Viewpoint School. The youngest Trumpster, Barron, age 10, still lives at home and attends the private (and expensive, annual tuition is over $45,000) Columbia Grammar and Preparatory School on the Upper West Side in Manhattan.
All of this makes The Donald as much an expert on public education as he is on the military, foreign policy, or life on the economic margins. But that isn’t stopping Trump from promoting his education plan, one designed to destroy public education in the United States. The basic Trump proposal is to divert $20 billion in federal grants from public school districts to charter, private, parochial, and online schools, effectively bleeding public school systems to death.
Trump calls his school plan choice, as if ordinary Americans will ever be able to choose the kind of schools he chose for his kids. He demands that Americans trust him and boasts they should give him a chance because he will be a great president. The thing is, we already know Trump’s school plan is a recipe for disaster.
He says, “Trust me.” Why should we? Like the students who were defrauded at Trump University? No, thanks!
Our reader Jack Covey watched the Boston Globe debate about Question 2 closely and reports here, with links. Question 2 seeks to add a dozen charter schools every year without end. The state board already demonstrated in Brockton that it is willing to impose a charter school even if the community opposes it. The “choice” is made by the state board, not by parents.
Charter critics complained that charter boards have few if any parents of the children or members of the local community on them. The charter advocate explained that it’s a very good thing to have school boRds run by financiers because democracy is the problem. Charters can simply close if they don’t produce test scores. Of course, we know that’s not true. There are thousands of charter schools that have lower scores than the neighborhood public schools, and the charters are not closed. As many readers on this blog have noted, scores are not the only or best way to measure the value of community public schools. Closing public schools doesn’t help them, and a policy of charter churn doesn’t help children or communities.
What the charter advocates seem to say is that affluent communities can have democracy, but poor communities are not ready for self-governance. I think that’s called colonialism.
How embarrassing for Massachusetts that the “reformers” there rely on the Waltons and Wall Street to extinguish democracy in black communities.
At one point, the Female Moderator cites how,
with rare exceptions almost none of the Board
Members for charter schools are parents, or
live in the community. Instead, they are
corporate and financial executives who are
not elected by onyone. The charters are in
low income communities, and everyone on
their boards of directors are businesspeople
from upscale communities. Therefore, there’s
no mechanism by which thisparents or taxpaying
citizens in the communities in which these
charters are locatedcan execute any kind of
decision-making power, or that those charter
boards can be held accountable.
The response from Charter Lady Marty Walz is
basically.
“So what?”
… or that such a “local control” democratic system —
via democratically elected school boards — sucks
and should be done away with anyway.
BOSTON GLOBE:
“It is local control that got us into this situation that we’re in, where tens of thousands of children are being left behind by their local district schools,” said Marty Walz, a former Democratic state representative, fending off a question about the large number of corporate and financial executives who sit on the boards of Massachusetts charter schools.
MARTY WALZ:
“The reason charter schools exist is because local school districts have wholly failed to educate far too many children in this state,”
Walz said at the debate, which featured an audience of partisans hissing and clapping at various points.
Walz then says that the accountability mechanism — the only one needed, she claims — is that if the charter schools fail to perform, they can be closed. That’s ultimate accountability, she argues.
That’s like recommending the Death Penalty — going only to that — rather than fixing the schools while the schools are alive.
I guess the response to that is …
“How about parents and taxpaying citizens being able to hold charter governance accountable WHILE THOSE CHARTER SCHOOLS ARE STILL IN OPERATION… before the “ultimate accountability” of closing those schools occur?
… is complaining about. The scenario that Charter Lady Walz is defending and promoting creates a scenario for major corruption and egregious mis-management … and discovery and correction of such malfeasance can only happen IF— and it’s a big IF — the charter industry operates with some transparency in regards to the tax money is is spending, which they, as a rule, most certainly DO NOT. Indeed, it’s a big IF because those same charter folks fight tooth-and-nail any attempts to audit their books, or their admissions and expulsions policies, etc.
Eva at Success Academy has sued multiple times to prevent any examination of her organization.
The whole controversy regarding funding S.A.’s Pre-K is about this.
KIPP got Arne Duncan’s Ed. department’s okay to hide all this information from the public
The Center for Media and Democracy’s PR Watch reported that the KIPP charter chain received permission from Arne Duncan and U.S. Dept. of Education one that can only be discovered and corrected AFTER these outrages occur.
Here’s that part from the debate:
(34:30 – )
(34:30 – )
FEMALE MODERATOR: “Representative Walz, for some who oppose Question 2, one of the issues that it comes down to is this, and I’m going to paraphrase Carol Burris, she’s a former New York high school, and she says:
CAROL BURRIS:
” ‘The democratic governance of our public schools is a American tradition worth saving.’
” … and then the Annenberg institute for school reform at Brown University earlier this year released a study, and they analyzed EVERY board for EVERY charter school in the state of Massachusetts. and they found that ..
“31% of trustees (school board members) statewide are affiliated with the financial services or corporate sector. Only 14% were parents.
“60% of the charter boards had NO parent representation on their boards WHATSOEVER.
“Those that DID were largely confined to charter schools that served MOSTLY WHITE students.
“Here’s an example: City on a Hill (Charter) Schools in Roxbury — again, this is according to the Annenberg Institute Report — has schools in Roxbury and New Bedford, (has a) 14-member board, trustees for all three of those schools.
“ONLY ONE member of the board lives in New Bedford. Three live in Boston, but NONE in Roxgury. The rest live in (upscale communities) Brookline, Cambridge, Cohasset, and Hingham.
“So they (at Annenberg) ask:
” ‘How can those charter schools be considered locally controlled and locally accountable?’ ”
Charter Lady Walz responds by claiming — and winning applause from the charter folks stacked in the audience — that local control through school boards has “wholly failed’ to produce quality schools and educate children, and need to be wiped out. Those in the audience are cheering the end of democracy? Really?
Wait. Isn’t Massachusetts the highest achieving state in the U.S.? Really? She says that democratically-governed schools with elected school boards in Massachusetts have “wholly failed” students? Really?
At another point in the debate, Charter Lady claims their group is about improving all types of schools, but here she is recommending replacing all of them with privately-managed charter schools. So which is it?
The Moderator interrupts by insisting that Charter Lady answer the question about accountability, and Charter Lady brings up the only method needed — the Death Penalty AND THAT’S IT…. but no accountability while those schools are actually open. And we need to watch John Oliver again to find out how well that works out:
Jan Resseger writes that the New York Times has done a great disservice to the public by its incoherent reporting on the recent court decision in Connecticut.
In its “Room for Debate” feature, the Times continued its practice of citing people who had not read the decision and just repeated their talking points. This does not inform the public.
The Times has decided that this decision has national implications. It does but some of them are muddled. The judge says the legislature should fix the funding formula because the property tax-base of funding disadvantages poor children. He goes on to say that the teacher evaluation system is broken and teachers should be judged by student performance, which reveals his ignorance of the flaws and repeated failures of this method. He says that money spent on profoundly disabled children is wasted, which ignores federal law.
Let’s hope the New York Times soon finds the education editor it has advertised for, and that the editor is deeply knowledgable about research and the learned experience of the past 15 years of failed federal policies.
Last week, a judge in Connecticut overturned the property-tax based system of funding and correctly noted that this system produces and reproduces inequity for the state’s neediest children.
Those who have read the decision saluted this finding but see errors in the judge’s statements about education policy.
She explains that the New York Times’ front-page analysis was “wishful and foolishly simplistic.”
She quotes Wendy Lecker and Molly Hunter of the Education Law Center:
“At least Judge Moukawsher did declare the current system unconstitutional. Molly Hunter, in an analysis for the Education Law Center, explains: “Separately, the court dismissed the State’s claim that local school districts bore the responsibility for education, not the state. The court quoted Connecticut Supreme Court holdings: ‘Obviously, the furnishing of education for the general public is a state function and duty,’ and ‘…in Connecticut, education is a fundamental right,’ raising education to the most important level known to law.”
“Hunter identifies several additional serious problems in Judge Moukawsher’s decision: “If there was any one thing in the trial that stood out as good…. Witnesses for both sides agreed that high-quality preschool would be the best weapon to get ahead of the literacy and numeracy problems plaguing schools in impoverished cities. But, the court failed to order it.”
“Hunter continues: “In striking contrast, the court took deep dives into education policy regarding teacher evaluations and students with disabilities. The court ordered policy changes for teachers and other educators that are controversial and have been proven ineffective, even harmful… ”
“And finally, Hunter derides the decision’s impact on special education: “Also, many will find the court’s extensive discussion of students with disabilities and funding for their services troubling. The court indicated that funding for students with severe or multiple disabilities was irrational and not connected to ‘education’ if they were not capable of receiving an elementary and secondary education.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 