Archives for the month of: October, 2016
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The Washington Post: What Trump and Clinton Say about American Education

By dianeravitch
October 15, 2016 //
45

Reporters at the Washington Post asked both major party candidates what they would do in the area of K-12 education.

Trump gave a brief reply and ignored the questions.

Clinton (or her staff) answered all the questions.

Donald Trump’s answer was, go to my website, and he (or his staff) added this:

“As your president, I will be the nation’s biggest cheerleader for school choice. I want every single inner city child in America who is today trapped in a failing school to have the freedom – the civil right – to attend the school of their choice. I understand many stale old politicians will resist. But it’s time for our country to start thinking big once again. We spend too much time quibbling over the smallest words, when we should spend our time dreaming about the great adventures that lie ahead.”

Clinton’s answers were ambiguous; she is for testing, but not too much testing. She is for charter schools, but only good charter schools.

She opposes for-profit charter schools, but doesn’t seem to realize that many allegedly nonprofit charters outsource their management to for-profit companies.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Clinton, Common Core, Education Industry, Privatization, Testing, Trump

Carol Burris on the Charter Mess in California: Part 3

By dianeravitch
October 15, 2016 //
19

Carol Burris is writing a four-part series about charter schools in California. She recently traveled to California to visit charter schools. She found it difficult to get information on certain charter schools, because some are not located in the district that authorized them. Transparency and accountability appear to be non-existent. A recent newspaper series about the online charter K12, Inc., demonstrated that it makes a handsome profit while delivering poor education. But the state has taken no action.

Public money meant for public schools is freely handed out to charters with no supervision or oversight.

She learned about a charter school called WISE, and it sounded good on paper:

The Wise Academy is tucked away on a Girl Scout camp on the Bothin Youth Center in Fairfax, Calif. Its students attend classes in yurts and barns. Wise, which stands for Waldorf-Inspired School of Excellence, follows the curriculum taught in Waldorf private schools — its students garden, enjoy a games class, and celebrate All Souls Day and Michaelmas.

Students must apply to attend, and its preliminary application makes it clear that parents are supposed to pony up cash. The full application demands that families provide all sources of income. The school’s donate button has a default donation of $2,000. A cash-strapped parent would quickly infer that their family “need not apply.”

How many students attend Wise Academy and how well do they achieve? For the taxpaying public, that is a mystery.

You cannot find this K-6 charter school, which has been in operation for three years, on the state’s Education Department website. Rick Bagley, the superintendent of the Ross Valley School District in which Wise is located, was never informed of its presence as required by law.

The state has thus far refused to monitor charter schools or hold them accountable.

A bill that would have banned for-profit charters in California was vetoed by Gov. Jerry Brown in 2015. An additional bill, which would have prevented financially troubled districts from authorizing charters in other districts, was vetoed by Brown last month. The president of the California State Board of Education, Michael Kirst, worked as a K12 consultant, before his appointment by Brown.

Categories Accountability, California, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, For-Profit, Fraud, Privatization

NEWS! George W. Bush Administration “Lost” 22 Million Emails Covering Crucial War Issues

By dianeravitch
October 15, 2016 //
45

Newsweek reports that the George W. Bush administration “lost” 22 million emails covering a time of crucial decisions about the war in Iraq.

“For 18 months, Republican strategists, political pundits, reporters and Americans who follow them have been pursuing Hillary Clinton’s personal email habits, and no evidence of a crime has been found. But now they at least have the skills and interest to focus on a much larger and deeper email conspiracy, one involving war, lies, a private server run by the Republican Party and contempt of Congress citations—all of it still unsolved and unpunished.Clinton’s email habits look positively transparent when compared with the subpoena-dodging, email-hiding, private-server-using George W. Bush administration.

“Between 2003 and 2009, the Bush White House “lost” 22 million emails. This correspondence included millions of emails written during the darkest period in America’s recent history, when the Bush administration was ginning up support for what turned out to be a disastrous war in Iraq with false claims that the country possessed weapons of mass destruction (WMD), and, later, when it was firing U.S. attorneys for political reasons. Try Newsweek for only $1.25 per week Like Clinton, the Bush White House used a private email server—its was owned by the Republican National Committee. And the Bush administration failed to store its emails, as required by law, and then refused to comply with a congressional subpoena seeking some of those emails. “It’s about as amazing a double standard as you can get,” says Eric Boehlert, who works with the pro-Clinton group Media Matters. “If you look at the Bush emails, he was a sitting president, and 95 percent of his chief advisers’ emails were on a private email system set up by the RNC. Imagine if for the last year and a half we had been talking about Hillary Clinton’s emails set up on a private DNC server?”

Double standard, anyone?

What will Donald J.Trump say? Will he start ranting about the “crooked Bush administration”? Will he threaten to throw the ex-President in jail? Will the FBI launch an investigation of the 22 million missing emails?

Categories Politics

Please Call the NAACP and Urge Them to Endorse Moratorium on Charters

By dianeravitch
October 14, 2016 //
39

The national board of the NAACP is meeting tomorrow.

Please call as soon as possible to urge them to support their conference’s resolution calling for a moratorium on new charter schools.

The number is: 410 580 5777

The national board will vote on whether to confirm the resolution passed by its convention this past summer calling for a moratorium on new charter schools because of their negative effects on African-American communities. This resolution shook up the billionaire-funded corporate reform movement because it pretends to be in league with the civil rights movement. The resolution stripped away this pretense, as the 1% have never been allies of the civil rights movement. Consider charter school leaders like the Waltons of Arkansas, whose Walmart stores employ over one million people and are resolutely non-union (make that anti-union). The best way for them to advance the rights of black and brown people is to pay them good wages so their children can be well fed and live in decent housing with good medical care.

The NAACP resolution recognizes that charter schools are a distraction from the income inequality that harms children and families. Address root causes. Help schools and children. Don’t close schools and destroy communities.

Categories Charter Schools, Civil Rights, Closing schools, Education Reform

A Brief Report from Massachusetts, Ground Zero of the Charter Fraud

By dianeravitch
October 14, 2016 //
17

I am on the train returning from Wellesley to New York City, after Pasi Sahlberg’s brilliant performance last night. I say “performance” because he didn’t give a conventional lecture. He used a multi-media platform to entertain, interact, and inform the audience. He began his talk by posing a mathematical question, which appeared on the screen behind him. He urged the audience to add the numbers, out loud, simple whole numbers, as they appeared on the screen. Many of us showed how easily we were fooled by what we thought we saw. How easily we draw false conclusions. That was his introduction to a performance that included film clips, music, data, and exposition. If you have a chance to invite him to your state or organization, I urge you to do so. He is amazing. As soon as I have the video link, I will post it.

In talking to parents and teachers during my visit, I learned that all those millions from hedge fund managers, billionaires, and union-busters are now showing up as television commercials blanketing the state with lies. Earnest “parents” explain in the commercials that they are voting for Question 2–the approval of more privately run charter schools–because they “support” public schools, they want to “help” public schools. They do not explain that passage of Question 2 means that neighborhood public schools will be closed and replaced by corporate-controlled charter schools. They do not explain that more money for charter schools means less money for public schools. They do not explain that those who vote for Question 2 are voting to cut the budgets of their own public schools.

It is a low, misleading, dishonest campaign. Why are the “reformers” dishonest? Simple. If they told the truth, the public would overwhelmingly reject their goal of privatizing public schools and turning over control to out-of-state corporations. This is the billionaire-funded propaganda campaign that dare not speak its name.

Corporate reform refuses to be truthful. It wraps itself in self-righteous lies about promoting civil rights and closing the achievement gap. Destroying a democratic institution is not promoting civil rights. Creating colonialist “no excuses” charter schools that exclude or kick out low-scoring students does not promote civil rights or reduce the achievement gap. Making a fetish of standardized testing guarantees that the “achievement gap” will never close because the standardized tests are designed to produce achievement gaps that never close.

Where do the “reformers” find the white teachers willing to enforce the harsh discipline of no-excuses schools and impose unquestioning compliance on nonwhite children? Very likely, these teachers attended progressive private or public schools. Did they learn the value of conformity and obedience in TFA training or at the Relay “Graduate School of Education”?

As Alan Singer wrote on Huffington Post, Massachusetts is now ground zero in the battle for public education. It may be the most liberal state in the nation. It is far and away the most successful state school system, as measured by the National Assessment of Educational Progress. If the billionaires can persuade the people of Massachusetts to turn over a dozen schools a year from here to eternity, they can do it anywhere. After all, what’s a couple of million dollars to the Waltons, whose family wealth exceeds $130 billion? If the billionaires can hoax the people of Massachusetts for only $15 million, what state will be outside their reach? You can be sure that the charter industry won’t stop in Boston and the small cities of the state. They have their eyes on the suburbs, too.

What happens on November 8 will matter to the future of public education in America.

Will the corporate reformers pull the wool over the eyes of the public? Will their deceptions and lies cover up their goal of undermining one of our most important democratic institutions?

Or will the grassroots actions of parents and teachers strip away their evasions, lies, and propaganda and demonstrate that the public schools of the Bay State are not for sale? Not at any price.

Categories Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Democracy, Education Industry, Fraud, Hoax, Massachusetts, Privatization

Jack Schneider: The Best Way to Help Charters in Massachusetts is to Vote NO on Question 2

By dianeravitch
October 14, 2016 //
15

Historian Jack Schneider fears that charter schools in Massachusetts have lost their capacity to innovate. Instead, they have a single-minded focus on test scores and “no-excuses” discipline. They have lost sight of the original vision of charters as laboratories of innovation.

http://commonwealthmagazine.org/education/charter-cap-debate-clouds-original-intent/

He writes:

“Yet an emphasis on the original vision of charter schools—charters as experimental hubs in an integrated network of public schools—might do a great deal to reestablish common ground. Perhaps more importantly, by thoughtfully regulating the charter sector with the aim of fostering system-wide innovation, policy leaders might make it possible to reap the benefits of charter schools without paying the steep associated costs.

“Of course, Massachusetts charter schools are regulated. The number of charter seats in each district is limited by the state—a cap being challenged by Question 2. And charters are held accountable by the state for their performance. But current regulations do little to support charters as laboratories. In fact, current state regulatory practices have fostered a climate hostile to innovation.

“The chief problem with current regulatory practices is that the state relies chiefly on standardized test scores to determine charter performance—a practice that severely undercuts any impulse to innovate. Additionally, given some high-profile charter implosions, the state has become increasingly risk-averse, and now only approves “proven providers.” Thus, rather than a thousand flowers blooming, we instead have seen the proliferation of a single model—one oriented towards rigid discipline and test-oriented instruction; three-quarters of the charters in Boston, for instance, are so-called “no excuses” schools. This kind of monoculture is fine for parents who desire it. But it hardly reflects the wishes of most parents, and it certainly isn’t going to promote systemic improvement.
Eliminating the cap on charter schools won’t solve this problem. In fact, it will exacerbate it, as a small number of chain operators will be in the strongest position to take advantage of the new opportunities to expand. Simply put, another KIPP, MATCH, or Uncommon school is not going to bring new ideas to Massachusetts, or to Boston, where most of the expansion is likely to occur….

“Charter schools were supposed to be places of innovation—something we have not seen in practice. This vision, however, can still be rescued. Charters can play a critical role in the strengthening of all public schools. But not if Question 2 passes and we eliminate the cap. However ironic it may seem, then, a vote against charter expansion may be the only way to save the original promise of charter schools—as places for innovation.”

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Massachusetts, Privatization

Michael Hynes Asks for Support of His Fellow Superintendents to Resist “Reform”

By dianeravitch
October 14, 2016 //
8

Dr. Michael Haynes, the bold and fearless leader of the Patchigue-Medford school district on Long Island in New York State, has called on his fellow superintendents to join him in fighting misguided and harmful “reforms.’

New York School Superintendents: What Side Are You On?

Michael Hynes

Patchogue-Medford School District

“The school reform debate is reaching a super crescendo. The latest wake-up call from the U.S. Department of Education highlights the fact that we are running out of time to the stop the imprudent attempts of reformers to make the case that public schools need to be fixed by them. By them… I mean both educators and businessmen and women who believe they know the answer(s).

“U.S. Secretary of Education’s John King’s latest unchildfriendly (that’s a new word) doubling down on the importance of standardized tests tells me he is unfit for this office. Secretary King is not only bad for students, he is terrible for teachers and principals as well. The man has zero business leading the nation’s public schools. To think the U.S. Department of Education will now look to hold teacher preparation programs (TPPs) accountable for how their teacher graduates perform as teachers merely based on their students’ success on standardized tests… it begs the question, when will the insanity end?

“There is no better time to finally draw a line in the sand and come together as the educational leaders of our school communities and say enough is enough. We are done with the scare tactics. We are done with the threats and we are done with the reformers holding our children and educators hostage.

“Make no mistake: this will trickle down to all 50 State Education Departments and impact our newest and brightest teachers. Sadly, it reinforces the reformers’ notion that standardized test scores are what’s most important because children and adults are merely widgets and numbers. The real numbers reformers care about is the $621 billion (with a b!) per year endeavor they stand to make.

“I challenge our school superintendents to publicly denounce this latest atrocity to our school system by Secretary King. We must stand together and declare enough is enough. Now is time to choose sides.

“Are you on the side of reformers who at every turn want to increase charter schools (at the public schools expense) and myopically over emphasize tests scores and weaken unions? Or are you on the side of public school advocates who fight for equity and opportunities for all students?

“New York Superintendents, let us collectively create a thunderclap response. The Council of School Superintendents should finally do something provocative and proactive by making a public service announcement asking King to step down. Tell our NY U.S. Senators we have a vote of no confidence for John King. That would be a first.

“Let me make this crystal clear to all school reformers out there…socio-economic status is the most relevant determinant of student success in school. The problem is you already know that.”

Categories Administrators, superintendents, New York, Resistance

What I Did on My Vacation

By dianeravitch
October 14, 2016 //
35

I have never visited the National Parks and so I decided that 2016 was the year. I didn’t realize when I started planning that 2016 was the centennial of the National Park Service. My partner Mary and I first flew to Los Angeles for our grandson’s 10th birthday. We had a great visit with the family, including his 3-year-old little brother and both my adult sons. On Saturday, I had coffee with Alex Caputo-Pearl, the president of the UTLA, and learned about his views on the issues in Los Angeles and California.

On Sunday night, after my grandson’s birthday party, I felt very lethargic and realized I was coming dowm with Flu-like symptoms. We flew to Las Vegas on Monday, and I was very sick indeed. Our friends Ted and Ray met us in Las Vegas. Ted is a professional cellist, and Ray is a retired New York City elementary teacher. Both are great travel companions. I stayed in bed while the others went to see Cirque d’Soleil. I heard it was spectacular. We were in Las Vegas for two more days. I rested in the hotel room, went out at night to see an amazing young magician-illusionist named Mat Franco. We couldn’t figure out how he did his tricks. He was fabulous. The third night we saw Lionel Ritchie, a singer we all loved but found the show very disappointing. He is a legend, a wonderful singer, and a composer of songs. But his band was so over-miked that it drowned out his voice. And the production was unnecessarily flamboyant, including pyrotechnics (which terrify me in an enclosed space and diverted attentiom from his music.) I’m not a gambler, but I dropped a few dollars into the slots and won about $15. I walked away with it before the house won it back.

The high point of my Las Vegas portion of the trip was meeting Angie Sullivan, who is a second-grade teacher in Clark County (Las Vegas) public schools. She got stuck in traffic and we barely got to speak, but we hugged and took pictures. Angie is my favorite source of news about education in Nevada. She keeps track of school board decisions, the legislature’s hearings and actions, the Governor’s actions. She sends out an email from time to time about what’s happening. It seems to reach every legislator, every journalist, and school board member in the state. She fights for the kids. She is the conscience of the state. She calls out the legislators and governor for ignoring the children who are poor and don’t speak English, this in a state where the casinos, tourism, mining, tech companies, and other industries are rolling in dough. The displays of conspicuous consumption exist side by side with underfunded schools for the children of the people who staff the tourism industry and do the low-wage jobs. When she was late, I was sitting with two of her friends at a coffee shop, and Angie kept sending texts about her progress. They said, “Angie’s crying now. Angie cries easily. Angie is passionate.” My friends were texting me that I was very late for dinner. But I couldn’t leave without hugging Angie.

On Thursday the 29th, we rented a car and drove to Zion National Park. It was astonishingly beautiful. I could not believe that I waited so long to see this great national treasure. The National Parks are our common heritage, like our public schools. I decided to tweet photographs everyday of the beauty I saw, along with a message that I gladly pay federal taxes to preserve our parks for future generations, But Donald Trump doesn’t. Selfish, greedy so-and-so.

From Zion, we went to Bryce Canyon National Park. Very different from Zion. Zion has steep, straight cliffs, Bryan is famous for its Hoodoos, which are startling, singular tall rock foundations, some of them isolated tall peaks, some great clusters of individual Hoodoos. Again, staggering beauty.

Then, we went to Capitol Reef National Park. Very beautiful, different from the others. A striking wall of petroglyphs carved by Native American tribes centuries ago. What I remember about this stay was a visit to a restaurant where our waitress was a very beautiful, very intelligent Mormon woman of 22. She told us that she waitresses to support herself but she is also a teacher in a private Mormon school. She is unpaid, as it is her contribution to her church. She teaches 6th and 7th grade children. We asked her about her own education, and she said she did not finish eighth grade. We urged her to get a GED. She seemed to think there was a stigma associated with a GED, but we insisted it would enable her to go to community college. She plays many instruments, including a pedal harp, and she wants to do something more with her life. We hope we persuaded her to get a degree.

Next stop, the Arches. A national park noted for great rock arches carved by thousands of years of erosion. No way to describe the arches other than to say you must see it.

We spent a night in Page, Arizona, which is centrally located among all the parks. Instead of touring, we went to the local urgent care facility (federally funded, but not by Trump), where I waited a long time, following a large number of Navaho families. There was only one nurse-practitioner on duty that day. I had been coughing throughout the trip, and I also cut my leg when I grazed it closing the car door a few days earlier. The nurse-practioner examined me and told me I had bronchitis and the cut on my leg was infected. Picked up several prescriptions, and we left the next day for the Grand Canyon.

The height of our Grand Canyon trip was a helicopter ride over the canyon. It is magnificent. What a beautiful country we live in. A great vacation. I recommend it to everyone. It will make you grateful to the foresighted leaders like Teddy Roosevelt, who recognized the importance of preserving our national heritage, and the many other Presidents who fought to assure this great gift to the American people and the people of many countries who travel there as we did, to experience awe.

Categories Personal

UCLA Study: Charters Suspend Disproportionate Numbers of Black, Disabled Students

By dianeravitch
October 14, 2016 //
10

The Center for Civil Rights Remedies at UCLA conducted a national survey and concluded that charter schools suspend extraordinary numbers of black students and students with disabilities.

http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2016-03-17/study-charter-schools-suspend-more-black-students-disabled-students

“Charter schools suspend students at a much higher rate than non-charter schools, some of which have suspension rates north of 70 percent. But a disproportionate amount of those suspensions fall on black students, who are four times more likely to be suspended than white students, and students with disabilities, who are twice as likely to be suspended as their non-disabled peers.

“Those are just some of the inequities highlighted in a blistering new analysis from researchers at the Center for Civil Rights Remedies at the University of California, Los Angeles.

“Notably, the data was from the 2011-2012 school year, when every one of the country’s 95,000 public schools, including charters, was required to report its discipline data.

“The report, which is the first comprehensive description of the use of suspensions by charter schools, covers 5,250 schools and focuses on out-of-school suspensions at elementary and secondary schools.

“Specifically, it examined the extent to which charter schools suspend children of color and children with disabilities at excessive and disparate rates.

“Among the many finding of the 36-page report: More than 500 charter schools suspended black students at a rate that was at least 10 percentage points higher than the rate for white students. And moreover, 1,093 charter schools suspended students with disabilities at a rate that was 10 or more percentage points higher than for students without disabilities.

“The most alarming finding, the research points out, is that 235 charter schools suspended more than 50 percent of their enrolled students with disabilities.

“In addition, while racial disparities in suspension rates between black students and white students were significant at both the elementary and secondary level, the rate exploded during secondary school, jumping from a 6.4 percent disciplinary gap to a 16.4 percent gap.

“It’s been well documented that the frequent use of suspensions, among many other things, contributes to chronic absenteeism, is correlated with lower achievement, and predicts lower graduation rates, heightened risk for grade retention, and delinquent behavior that often leads to the juvenile justice system.

“The host of findings, the researchers wrote, suggests that the excessive suspension rates are contributing to the school-to-prison pipeline and that at least some charter schools are likely violating the civil rights of students.”

Categories Charter Schools, Civil Rights, Discipline and Suspensions, Education Reform, Privatization

Politico: Five Trump Biographers Discuss What Makes Him Tick

By dianeravitch
October 14, 2016 //
7

Politico assembled five writers who have written biographies of Donald J. Trump.

They have watched him up close and personal.

They discuss his past, his motivations, what makes him tick.

You may find it interesting.

Categories Trump
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