Archives for the month of: September, 2016
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About My Conversation with Hillary

By dianeravitch
September 9, 2016 //
130

As readers know, I met Hillary Clinton at a fund-raiser on August 28. It was not the in-depth meeting I had hoped for, but it was better than nothing.

I endorsed Hillary after she secured the Democratic nomination. I assured you that I would support the winner of the Democratic nomination. I consider Trump to be an ignorant buffoon and a danger to our nation and the world. I wrote an even stronger endorsement in July.

As I watch this bizarre campaign unfold, I feel even stronger about the importance of stopping Donald Trump. His admiration for Putin, who murders journalists, stifles a free press, harasses homosexuals, invades another nation, and is re-establishing a dictatorship–makes me feel that what Trump admires in leadership is a disrespect for human rights, a commanding style that censors opposition: in short, dictatorship. Nothing in Trump’s background is reassuring. He should return to reality television to rant and boast.

So, I reiterate, on every issue that matters, I’m with her. Given Trump’s desire to turn $20 billion of federal spending into support for school choice, I now am certain that she will be far better than he on education, even if she doesn’t stand up to fight all forms of privatization

Valerie Strauss invited me to elaborate on my brief meeting with Hillary, which I did here.

As the response from the campaign makes clear, she is walking a fine line between major donors who support charters and the teachers’ unions, which know that the charter movement is meant to demolish them (90% or more of the nation’s charters are non-union).

As I have said to readers on many occasions in the comments, I don’t know what Hillary will do on education, although after Trump revealed his full-throated support for school choice, I am sure that Trump will be a wrecking ball for public education. She said that she would stop federal funding for for-profit charter schools, and that would be a big step forward.

But on every other issue, from climate change to gun control to civil rights to Supteme Court appointments to international relations, I support her enthusiastically and without reservation.

Categories Charter Schools, Clinton, Closing schools, Corporate Reform, Education Reform, School Choice, Trump, Virtual Charter Schools, Vouchers

Trump Pledges to Break the “Government Monopoly” of Public Schools

By dianeravitch
September 9, 2016 //
32

Donald Trump, whose own children went to private schools that cost about $50,000 a year (or more), has swallowed the far-right Republican doctrine that public schools are “government schools,” and thus somehow less than legitimate.


Donald Trump laid out a $20 billion initiative to bust up a federal “education monopoly,” accusing Democrats of having “trapped” black and Hispanic children in “failing government schools.”

In a speech in Cleveland, and on his website, Trump vowed to support school choice and merit pay for teachers.

“Our campaign represents the long-awaited chance to break with the bitter failures of the past and to embrace a new and strong American future,” Trump said, the Washington Examiner reports.

“There’s no failed policy more in need of change than our government-run education monopoly and you know that’s exactly what it is.”

The Democratic Party has “trapped millions of African-American and Hispanic youth in failing government schools that deny them the opportunity to join the ladder of American success,” he told the crowd, according to the Examiner.

Obviously no one has ever told him that every high-performing nation in the world has a strong public school system, not a choice system of charters and vouchers.

If this guy is elected, you can kiss public schools goodbye.

Categories Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, International, Privatization, School Choice, Vouchers

Zephyr Teachout: What the First Day of School Should Be Like

By dianeravitch
September 9, 2016 //
8

Zephyr Teachout is a law professor who ran against Cuomo in the Democratic primary and gained a third of the vote without any TV advertising or money. Now she is running for Congress in the 19th District of New York, where she grew up.

She took time from her campaign to describe what school ought to look like. It is a description that will be familiar to those of us who were in school long before the testing era began. Those who know only the last 15-20 years may find her article surprising.

She writes:

We are in the middle of a national fight about public education. Some people — backed by big billionaire hedge funders who would rather do away with the public part of public education — are trying to push Common Core high stakes testing down the throats of kids. But they have run into powerful resistance by parents, leading the national opt-out movement, who understand that children aren’t widgets, and teachers are good people who care deeply about their kids.

On this first week of school, let’s talk about what public education should look like, and what we, as a society, should aim for.

Schools need the resources and staff to keep them clean, comfortable, and safe. There should be nurses to meet health needs, counselors and social workers to make sure that children are making healthy choices. In a strong school system, teachers establish connections with the home, and ensure that anti-social behavior like bullying is addressed, while children struggling with such behaviors are supported to change.

I remember when I got in trouble in second grade, acting up in music class, I was disciplined; but I wasn’t rejected from the school and didn’t feel shut out: my teachers made sure I knew what was acceptable and unacceptable, but also treated me like I had potential and things to learn and contributed, instead of as a pariah.

Every child is different. It is essential to have a challenging and enriched curriculum, that respects the diversity of learners in the class. Students who struggle should get the support they need in the classroom and outside of it — my first job out of college was as a special education teacher’s aide in small rural public school, and I saw what a difference a supportive school system made.

Every school is different, too — look at Monticello, Tri-Valley, and Liberty, three school systems within 30 minutes of each other but each with different populations, with children bringing different gifts and different challenges. The one-size-fits-all model of the high stakes testing just doesn’t respect the differences within rural areas, let alone within the entire country. Local leadership in schools not only strengthens schools, but strengthens community.

Every school deserves well-prepared teachers who are evaluated and supported by well-trained school leaders and expert peers — not arbitrary high stakes tests. Teachers have some of the most rewarding jobs in the world, but the most difficult, because all the world — and the challenges in it — comes to the classroom. Teachers should have ample time to collaborate, learn, and grow.

It is painful to see great teachers, bringing enthusiasm and commitment to children, having to spend their time teaching to the test — and to Common Core testing standards that are disconnected from the curriculum. High Stakes testing narrows the curriculum, encourages teaching to the test, does not work, and pushes great teachers out of teaching when we need great teachers more than ever. Standardized low-stakes testing, given to a random sample of kids, can provide the feedback we need to know how our schools are doing.

It is all so commonsensical. Why are our “policymakers” wedded to so many bad ideas?

It would be wonderful to have someone in Congress who understands what schooling should be and who recognizes the failure of the punitive test-driven policies of the past 15 years.

Categories Education Reform, Real Education

DISGRACE! California Has the Most Unregulated, Unaccountable Charter Schools in the Nation

By dianeravitch
September 9, 2016 //
24

Please sit down before you read this column by Carol Burris about charter schools in California. Burris went to California to visit charter schools and meet with education officials. She has done careful research and concluded that charters in California are a massive rip-off of taxpayers. Burris, who recently retired as a high school principal in New York, is executive director of the Network for Public Education.

Her story begins like this:

You can find a charter in a mall right near a Burger King, where students as young as 12 meet their “teacher on demand.” Or, you can make a cyber visit to the “blended learning” Epic Charter School, whose students are required to meet a teacher (at a convenient, to be determined location) only once every 20 days. There is an added bonus upon joining Epic: Students receive $1,500 for a personal “learning fund,” along with a laptop computer. The enrollment site advertised that students could boost that fund by referring others to the charter chain.

A superintendent can expand his tiny rural district of 300 students to 4,000 by running “independent study” charters in storefronts in cities miles away, netting millions in revenue for his district, while draining the sometimes unsuspecting host district of students and funds. If he is clever, he might arrange a “bounty” for each one opened, while having a side business selling services to the charters. Charters can even provide lucrative investment opportunities for tennis stars and their friends. And then there is the opportunity to “cash in” on international students at a jaw dropping $31,300 per student.

Please read this in its entirety. Charters in California are a national disgrace. They cheat students and taxpayers. Why does the legislature and Governor Jerry Brown permit this sleaze?

We know that Governor Brown opened two charters when he was mayor of Oakland, so perhaps he is partial to charters. We know that the California Charter School Association is the most powerful lobby in Sacramento.

But why would the leaders of the state cheapen and destroy their state’s public schools by allowing this charade to siphon off public dollars?

Categories Accountability, California, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Privatization

Washington State: What Will the Legislature Do to Satisfy the Court’s Demand for Equitable Funding of Schools?

By dianeravitch
September 9, 2016 //
2

In a long-running battle, the Washington State Supreme Court ordered the Legislature to pay a fine of $100,000 a day for every day that it failed to produce a plan to change the funding of public schools in the state so that it meets constitutional requirements.

Now the Court wants to hold the legislature accountable for its turtle-like response.

Washington state has been here before, but this time the stakes are higher.

Attorneys for the state will appear Wednesday before the state Supreme Court to argue — once again — that lawmakers have complied with court orders to boost public school funding.

On the other side of the courtroom will be attorneys representing the coalition of parents, school districts and education groups that sued the state almost 10 years ago and maintains that lawmakers still haven’t done enough.

The hearing marks the latest development in the McCleary case, in which the state Supreme Court ruled in 2012 that the Legislature was failing to fully fund basic education and must correct school-funding problems by 2018.

The state is now in contempt of court and accruing fines of $100,000 a day over the Legislature’s failure to produce a plan to meet the 2018 funding deadline.

On Wednesday, the court’s nine justices will hear arguments to help them decide whether to lift the contempt sanctions, or to impose more serious penalties that could dramatically alter next year’s budget debates at the state Capitol.

Read more here: http://www.thenewstribune.com/news/politics-government/article99718447.html#storylink=cpy

The state contends that it has made lots of progress.

The chief justice was not so sure about the “progress”:

Chief Justice Barbara Madsen asked the state’s lawyer, deputy solicitor general Alan Copsey, to clarify when he thinks the deadline is for the state to fully fund public schools.

She compared the conversation to a child who promises to clean his or her room “in a little while.”

“I want to know when a little while is,” Madsen said.

Read more here: http://www.thenewstribune.com/news/politics-government/article100349332.html#storylink=cpy

Categories Funding, Washington State

Trump Pledges to Spend $20 Billion For School Choice

By dianeravitch
September 9, 2016 //
23

Speaking at a failing charter school in Cleveland run by for-profit entrepreneur Ron Packard, Trump promised that he would re-allocate $20 billion so that every disadvantaged child could enroll in a school of choice. This is a huge boon to charters and vouchers. Packard owns a new charter company but was previously CEO of K12, the virtual charter chain that has been universally panned for poor educational results. His background: Goldman Sachs and McKinsey.

Here is the report in the New York Times, where he promised to take existing federal spending and turn it into block grants to states, so that money would follow the child to the school of his/her choice, whether private, religious, online, or public. Unrestricted block grants have been a longstanding dream of Republicans as a way to advance school choice and the free market that will magically “save” all children everywhere.

The absence of any evidence for the superiority of charter schools, online schools, and vouchers is irrelevant to their goal of eliminating “government schools.”

“As president, I will establish the national goal of providing school choice to every American child living in poverty,” Mr. Trump said. “If we can put a man on the moon, dig out the Panama Canal and win two world wars, then I have no doubt that we as a nation can provide school choice to every disadvantaged child in America.”

Mr. Trump’s release of his education plan marked the second consecutive day that he laid out concrete policies along traditional conservative lines, after calling for expanded military spending on Wednesday.

It also reflected a new push by Mr. Trump, the Republican nominee, to broaden his appeal outside his traditional base of support. On Saturday, he visited a black church in Detroit. Critics say his outreach is aimed less at black voters than at attracting whites who may have been turned off to his candidacy by the racially tinged remarks he has made in the past.

“You’re going to like the job I do, folks, I’m going to do such a great job,” Mr. Trump told a largely black audience at the Cleveland Arts and Social Sciences Academy, a charter school with about 350 students in kindergarten through the eighth grade.

“You give me the chance — I’ll get all your votes in four years,” he said. “Everybody’s going to be voting for me, by the way: African-Americans, Hispanic-Americans, just everybody.”

Here is the politico report on Trump’s radical proposal, including the response of the Clinton campaign.

The Hillary Clinton campaign on Thursday blasted Trump’s new plan, saying it would “gut” nearly 30 percent of the federal education budget to fund private school vouchers, and “decimate public schools across America.”

Clinton’s campaign said Trump would have to cut all federal Title I funding for poor students, in addition to $5 billion in additional federal education funding, to pay for the proposal.

Hillary for America senior policy adviser Maya Harris said the “proposal could strip funding from up to 56,000 public schools serving more than 21 million children” and it “might only serve 1.4 million students, while stripping funding from the other 10.5 million low-income students in America.”

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, School Choice, Trump

Lest We Forget: Former Obama Officials Bought Nation’s Largest For-Profit University Corporation

By dianeravitch
September 9, 2016 //
22

The comments about the closing of ITT for-profit colleges by the U.S. Department of Education’s suspension of federal aid reminded me of another story that was published just a few months ago.

A group of men who are friends and former high-level officials in the Obama administration bought the University of Phoenix, the nation’s largest for-profit provider of “higher education.”

The purchase of University of Phoenix involved one of the President’s closest friends, financier Marty Nesbitt, and former Deputy Secretary of Education Tony Miller. Miller had been in charge of cracking down on the for-profit higher education sector. Senator Dick Durbin of Illinois said that the purchase raises the “appearance” of impropriety. On February 16, 2016, the Wall Street Journal ran an editorial called “Regulating For Profit,” accusing the Obama administration of driving down the stock price, so that former officials could then pick it up at a bargain price. (Sorry, I can’t give you the link, as the WSJ is behind a paywall, but you can find it by googling the article name.)

What does this mean? Closing Corinthian and ITT, while Obama pals take over University of Phoenix. I don’t know.

Categories For-Profit, Higher Education, Obama

GREAT NEWS! Pat Jehlen Beats DFER Opponent in Massachusetts

By dianeravitch
September 8, 2016 //
24

In recent weeks, hundreds of thousands of dollars poured into a race in Massachusetts for a State Senate seat. 

The incumbent Pat Jehlen opposes Question 2,  the measure on the state ballot in November to increase charter schools by 12 a year forever. 

Her opponent, Leland Cheung, supports Question 2. 

Jehlen was supported by the Massachusetts Teachers Association. Cheung was financed by the hedge fund managers’ group Democrats for Education Reform (DFER). 

Jehlen debated a representative of DFER, instead of debating Cheung. 

Jehlen won overwhelmingly, by a vote of more than 13,000 to less than 4,000.

Some think this race presages the vote in November,  in which pro-charter groups are prepared to spend millions of dollars to promote Question 2. 

Categories Charter Schools, Massachusetts

My Interview about Common Core on WNYC

By dianeravitch
September 8, 2016 //
10

I was interviewed by Brian Lehrer this morning about Common Core. It was a good show. Here it is.
http://www.wnyc.org/story/30-issues-whats-good-or-bad-common-core/

Categories Education Reform

Jon Pelto: Connecticut Funding Decision Includes a Diatribe Against Special Education Spending

By dianeravitch
September 8, 2016 //
5

Jonathan Pelto read the Connecticut judge’s funding decision, which many people were thrilled to see, and discovered that the judge harbors unbelievably negative views about spending money on children with profound disabilities. Pelto says that the judge’s views would set back special education by 40 years.

While the decision is an important milestone on the school funding issue, Judge Thomas Moukawsher’s Memorandum of Decision is nothing short of absurd, ill-conceived and simply wrong when it comes to Connecticut’s special education programs, the state’s illogical teacher evaluation system and the state’s over-reliance on the unfair, inappropriate and discriminatory Common Core SBAC and SAT testing schemes.

In his ruling, Moukawsher actually suggests that students should face even more standardized testing in Connecticut’s classrooms.

And of greatest concern is his unwarranted, outrageous and mean-spirited attack on special education services in Connecticut’s schools.

The truth is that Connecticut has actually been a leader when it comes to providing special education services to those who need extra help in the classroom. While issues certainly exist when it comes to adequately identifying and providing services to those students who have special needs, the underlying problem is not that students get special education services, but that Connecticut’s cities and towns are left with an unfair share of the burden when it comes to financing those extra educational activities.

In Connecticut, there has been widespread consensus that society and the state have an obligation to ensure that every child is provided with the knowledge, skills and opportunities to live more fulfilling lives and that includes children with special needs.

Yet in an stunning diatribe, Judge Moukawsher appears to suggest that Connecticut retreat from that commitment.

Categories Connecticut, Funding, Special Education
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