Archives for the month of: February, 2017
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BREAKING NEWS: NAACP Calls for International Boycott of North Carolina

By dianeravitch
February 24, 2017 //
10

NAACP NATIONAL PRESIDENT CORNELL WILLIAM BROOKS AND NC STATE PRESIDENT AND NATIONAL BOARD MEMBER REV. DR. WILLIAM BARBER TO ANNOUNCE BOYCOTT AT FRIDAY PRESS CONFERENCE AT NC STATEHOUSE

The NAACP Board of Directors announced a resolution calling for an international economic boycott of the state of North Carolina in response to actions of an all-white legislative caucus, which unconstitutionally designed racially-discriminatory gerrymandered districts, enacted a monster voter suppression law, passed Senate Bill 4 stripping the incoming Governor of power and passed House Bill 2. HB 2 is anti-transgender, anti-worker and anti-access to the state court for employment discrimination.

NAACP National President/CEO Cornell William Brooks and North Carolina State President and National Board Member Rev. Dr. William Barber II are holding a press conference today (Friday, Feb. 24th @ 11:00 am) at the NC General Assembly to discuss the economic boycott and rally supporters for direct actions against the legislators.

“True democracy remains a distant ideal that the racist actions of members of the NC state legislature continue to disgracefully push further and further out of the reach of the African-American community,” said NAACP President Cornell William Brooks.

“The NAACP refuses to accept this attack on democracy or the commoditization of bias against people due to racial or gender identity here in North Carolina or anywhere else around the nation. This we will fight against with all of our resources until we win.”

Rev. Dr. William J. Barber II, stated, “The actions of the all white caucus of extremists in our legislature and the former Governor are out of control. They have consistently passed legislation that is a violation of our deepest moral values, voting rights, civil rights and the fundamental principle of equal protection under the law.”

“The federal court ruled against their voter suppression and racially gerrymandered districts. We believe their attacks on the transgender community and attempt to strip the Governor of power will also be found unconstitutional. Their decision to block local municipalities ability to raise wages and their limitation of access to state courts are wrong and we must stand strong against any and all attempts to deprive citizens their rights ordained by God and guaranteed by the constitution,” said Rev. Dr. Barber, NAACP North Carolina State President. “What has happened in North Carolina makes this state a battleground over the soul of America and whether our nation is sincere about making democracy real for all people, not just those with the right bank account, right sexuality or right skin.”

According to the NAACP Board of Director’s Resolution:

“The National Board of the NAACP will explore such a North Carolina Boycott along with the NC State Conference until the NC legislature passes bills that accomplish the following (or until such results are achieved through the courts):

a) Undo racially gerrymandered districts and create fair election districts;

b) repeal the entire HB-2 law;

c) repeal SB-4 law passed in a special session called for another reason that stripped trained civil servants in County and State Election Boards from supervising elections;

d) repeal the requirement that litigants to appeal to the en banc Court of Appeals before they can file an appeal to the NC Supreme Court;

e) repeal legislation that stripped the current Governor of powers his predecessor enjoyed.

Be It Further Resolved that the National NAACP and the North Carolina NAACP will engage in a joint media and public education campaign regarding this decision.

And be it finally resolved that in light of the adoption by other states of similar laws that reflect racial gerrymandering, discriminatory voter identification laws and similar types of laws to redistribute political power to the detriment of racial and ethnic minorities or change the nature of the electorate, the National NAACP will engage in applying various forms of economic sanctions or other appropriate economic or direct action to address these types of discriminatory legislative or executive actions around the nation.”

Two weeks ago in their 11th Annual Moral March on Raleigh and HKonJ People’s Assembly the NC NAACP and their 200 coalition partners, drew close to 100,000 individuals to the state capital to protest against extremism in the NC General Assembly and Trumpism in Washington DC. It was then that Rev. Barber informed the gathering that the NC State Conference Executive Committee had voted unanimously to ask the National Board of the NAACP to grant permission for economic boycott, which the NAACP National Board of Directors recently approved in a resolution last weekend during their annual board meeting in New York.

Along with the NAACP, at least 200 additional organizations are planning to join them in the economic boycott of the state. The press conference will kick off the economic boycott, which will include several stages and escalation of protest. The NAACP will refuse to hold its convention in North Carolina and will reach out to other organizations to take similar stances.

Additionally, the NAACP will create an internal task force to examine the ways in which the economic boycott can be expanded throughout the state as well as replicated in other states that have enacted similar racist voter suppression laws and laws like HB-2 which discriminates against the LGBT community, transgender people, workers, municipalities wanting to increase their minimum wage, and those in need of state access to courts for employment discrimination.

To see the complete resolution visit the NAACP here: (http://live-naacp-site.pantheonsite.io/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/Resolution-of-National-Board-as-Proposed-by-NC-State-Conference.pdf )

Categories Bias, North Carolina, Racism, Resistance

Bannon Promises “the Deconstruction of the Administrative State”

By dianeravitch
February 24, 2017 //
29

Trump’s brain, who is known as Steve Bannon, said many ominous things yesterday when he spoke at CPAC. He promised a daily fight in the Trump battle to remake America into something different. Most ominous, he said the goal was “the deconstruction of the administrative state.”

What does this mean?

No more environmental regulation? No more gun control? No more regulation at all? The rollback of the New Deal? No civil rights enforcement? A libertarian dream of no government? A Hobbesian world?

Categories Trump

Please Help Educate Betsy DeVos!

By dianeravitch
February 24, 2017 //
26

Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos repeats the hackneyed and erroneous claims that American public schools are failing.

She says the Obama ideas (testing, charters, and accountability) have failed, so she wants to impose her own ideas, which sound no diffferent from the failed ideas of the status quo.

American schools could use some support, not another four years of carping and disruption.

I explained in my book “Reign of Error” that the “Failing Schools” narrative is a hoax.

As of 2013, test scores on the federal tests called NAEP were the highest in 40 years of testing. For whites, blacks, Hispanics, and Asians.

The graduation rate was the highest in history, for all groups.

The dropout rate was the lowest ever recorded.

Scores on NAEP went flat from 2013-2015, possibly because of Common Core or because the test-and-punish approach had gone about as far as it could go. The flatline showed the failure of the NCLB-RTTT policies, not the schools.

We have the greatest economy in the world and the most productive workforce. Our public schools built our economy. Stop bashing our public schools, our teachers, and our students!

Please tweet @betsydevos and urge her to read “Reign of Error” or send her a copy.

I will send her an autographed copy.

Her address:

Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos
U.S. Department of Education
400 Maryland Avenue, SW
Washington, DC 20202

Categories Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Corporate Reform, Corporate Reformers, Graduation rates, Privatization, Reign of Error, Testing

Kevin Carey: Researchers “Surprised” by “Dismal Results” from Vouchers

By dianeravitch
February 24, 2017 //
22

Kevin Carey is the director of education research at the New America Foundation in D.C., a think tank funded by tech magnates.

He writes in the New York Times that researchers are reacting with surprise at the “dismal results” from vouchers.

I am not sure why this is news, because vouchers have been tried out since 1990 in Milwaukee and elsewhere and have been subject to numerous evaluations, almost all of which have reached the same conclusion: vouchers don’t have a significant effect on test scores.

This conclusion has been reported again and again over the past 25 years.

It doesn’t seem to have much effect on the pro-voucher crowd, who have been promising since 1955 (when economist Milton Friedman published his seminal essay about vouchers) that school choice would have dramatic positive effects. Back in 1990, John Chubb and Terry Moe predicted in their book “Politics, Markets, and Schools” that school choice was a “panacea,” and that the problem with schools is that they are democratically controlled. Take away the democratic governance, and all will go well, they said.

Anyone who looks at the many evaluations of the voucher programs in Milwaukee, Cleveland, D.C., Indiana, and Louisiana has to search hard for any positive news.

Still, it is good to see this research consensus publicly acknowledged in the New York Times.

Carey is part of the neoliberal Democratic consensus in the D.C. think tank world that favors charters, but not vouchers. So he takes care to say that charters in Massachusetts produce higher test scores than public schools, although he does not note the vote last November in which the people of Massachusetts voted overwhelmingly not to expand the number of charter schools. (He did mention it in his article in the Times last November, when he assured readers that DeVos could not possibly privatize public schools.) Nor does he make any reference to the numerous financial scandals associated with charters schools, nor to their frequent practice of excluding children with special needs and English language learners, nor to the fiscal burden they impose on public schools by draining away resources from them.

Carey is still trying to salvage the charter idea–which DeVos embraces wholeheartedly–from Trump’s wrecking ball approach to public education. The difficulty is that phony reformers like DeVos can use charters to destroy public education as easily as they can use vouchers. Michigan, after all, is a paradise for school choice, as is Florida, and neither has the sort of voucher program that DeVos prefers. They are hotbeds of rapacious, for-profit charter operators.

Neoliberals are caught on the horns of a dilemma. They think they can advance their kind of school choice (charters) while resisting going “all the way” with vouchers. But once you say that school choice is good, it is very tough to draw a line in the sand against vouchers. It is like being just a little bit pregnant. School choice produces community dissension and segregation. Its true forebears are not Milton Friedman but the racist leaders of the South after the Brown decision.

Full disclosure: Carey wrote an unfriendly article about me in The New Republic (referenced in his Wikipedia listing) in 2011. He sought to belittle my scholarship and credentials, although I had just been awarded the Daniel Patrick Moynihan Award by the American Academy of Political and Social Science for scholarship in the interest of the public good. That was Carey’s way of defending charters at that time, which was then and remains the favorite idea of the neoliberal consensus in DC. The neoliberals are still trying to save charters from their embrace by DeVos and Trump.

All that is past. I forgive him. I look forward to the day that Carey examines the charter scandals in Ohio, Michigan, Arizona, Florida, and Pennsylvania, and considers what they are doing to the public schools that are defunded by charters. The majority of students still go to public schools, not charter schools, and they have fewer resources as a result of a dual system. If deregulation makes schools better, why not deregulate them all?

But all that aside, I am pleased to see him skewer vouchers, which have failed again and again and again. They don’t help poor kids; they are all about diverting taxpayer monies to nonpublic schools. The majority of the public has consistently said that they don’t want their taxes to fund religious schools. Regardless of the religious school, taxpayers say no. Whenever there is a referendum, they vote against vouchers. But that doesn’t stop DeVos or her allies.

Categories Charter Schools, Failure, School Choice, Vouchers

Tennessee: Legislators Propose Vouchers for Shelby County, One of Nation’s Most Fiscally Distressed Districts

By dianeravitch
February 24, 2017 //
10

A bill was filed in the Tennessee legislature to establish vouchers for students in Shelby County. It would divert $18 million from the district, which is already one of the most fiscally disadvantaged districts in the nation.

The voucher program would deepen the fiscal distress of the district. With the amount of the vouchers, students would not be accepted at first-rate private schools but at low-quality religious schools that teach creationism.

The bill, filed by Sen. Brian Kelsey, R-Germantown, includes language that only students in districts with at least 30 schools in the bottom 5 percent in the state in academic performance would be eligible for a voucher. SCS is the only district in Tennessee with that many low-performing schools.

Students would also have to be zoned to or currently attending a school in the bottom 5 percent and would have to meet-age-and-income requirements.

The bill creates a phased-in Opportunity Scholarship Pilot Program that would eventually offer 20,000 students a scholarship to attend private school.

In the 2017-18 school year, the program would cost SCS an estimated $8.8 million in funding, followed by $13.6 million the year after and $18.6 million in 2019-2020. That assumes students claim just 25 percent of each year’s available vouchers.

The program would also cost the state a one-time expense of $330,094 in 2017-18 and a recurring expense of $230,394 in administrative costs per year. Vouchers would be worth just over $7,000 and would increase slightly each year.

Kelsey said Monday the funding loss for SCS would be proportional to the number of students the district would no longer have to educate. The bill also only diverts state money, and requires students using a voucher to be counted toward the enrollment of their local school district. That means the district still retains local funds for them.

“The beauty is they no longer have to educate the child, and yet they’re still getting paid some money,” Kelsey said.

What Kelsey fails to acknowledge is that the public schools that lose students would have to increase class sizes, would have to cut back on arts programs and other parts of the curriculum, but still must pay the cost of buildings and grounds, heating and cooling, and other locked-in expenses. If 10% of the students leave, the schools can’t pay 10% less for electricity.

Does Kelsey know that no voucher program in the U.S. has shown significant benefits to students? Does he care?

Categories Tennessee, Vouchers

Education Law Center: America’s Most Fiscally Disadvantaged School Districts

By dianeravitch
February 24, 2017 //
10

The Education Law Center lists the most fiscally distressed districts in the nation. You will note that one of them is Shelby County, Tennessee, where the Gates Foundation and Stand for Children expended a great deal of effort to introduce charters and district consolidation as a mini-bandaid to the district’s financial problems. The Gates Foundation paid to bring in the Boston Consulting Group to offer advice a few years back on merging districts, not on how to solve its fiscal problems. The Gates Foundation gave Shelby County a grant of $90 million over seven years to improve teacher quality. Yet Gates never addressed the basic fiscal disadvantage of the district. Presumably he thought that if he could VAM the teachers, then the test scores would go up, and the district’s budget would not matter. But it does matter. Once again, the Gates Foundation proved that it addresses the wrong problems and diverts attention from the need for a fair tax code that would reduce the billions accumulated by people like Bill Gates!

ELC RELEASES 2017 LIST OF NATION’S MOST FISCALLY DISADVANTAGED SCHOOL DISTRICTS

47 Districts in 20 States

Education Law Center released today the 2017 list of the most financially strapped public school districts in the nation. The 2017 list includes 47 school districts in 20 states, with every region of the country represented. Over 1.5 million children are educated in these districts, attending underfunded schools under severe fiscal distress.

The report – “America’s Most Fiscally Disadvantaged School Districts” &#45 identifies school districts across the country with higher than average student need and lower than average funding when compared to other districts in their regional labor market.

“A district’s funding level relative to other districts in the same labor market is perhaps the most important factor in whether schools have the resources they need, including effective teachers,” said Dr. Bruce Baker of the Rutgers Graduate School of Education and a co-author of the report. “School districts must compete for teachers and support staff, the largest share of any district’s budget. Districts are fiscally disadvantaged if they don’t have the funding to offer competitive wages and comparable working conditions relative to nearby districts and other professions.”

Among the report’s key findings are:

Sumter, South Carolina, and Shelby County, Tennessee, face extreme fiscal conditions, with nearly 3 times area poverty rates and less than 84 and 83 percent, respectively, of the average state and local revenue per pupil. School funding levels in Tennessee and South Carolina are among the lowest in the nation.

Reading and Allentown, Pennsylvania, are also in extreme distress, with nearly 2.5 times area poverty rates and below 80 percent of the average state and local revenue per pupil.

Chicago and Philadelphia are again the most fiscally disadvantaged large urban districts in the nation. Illinois and Pennsylvania have a highly regressive school funding systems, marked by wide funding disparities between low and high poverty districts.

California has the highest number of fiscally disadvantaged districts.

Massachusetts has a relatively progressive funding system, but Lowell is severely disadvantaged with a poverty rate 2.6 times higher than surrounding areas and only 83 percent of the average state and local revenue per pupil.

Connecticut has four districts on the list, while Michigan and Arizona have three fiscally disadvantaged districts.
“These findings again show that Governors and Legislatures in far too many states stubbornly resist investing in K &#45 12 education so all children have the resources needed to succeed in school,” said David Sciarra, ELC Executive Director and a report co-author. “The states with districts on this list chronically underfund their poorest schools, leaving behind thousands of vulnerable children. This is our national hall of shame.”

America’s Most Fiscally Disadvantaged School Districts is a companion report to Is School Funding Fair? A National Report Card. For the complete Report Card, please visit: http://www.schoolfundingfairness.org

Education Law Center Press Contact:
Sharon Krengel
Policy and Outreach Director
skrengel@edlawcenter.org
973-624-1815, x 24

Categories Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Funding, Gates Foundation, Bill Gates, Privatization

Westfield/Springfield/Agawam/Holyoke, Massachusetts: Do You Want a Gulen Turkish Charter to Compete with Your Public Schools?

By dianeravitch
February 23, 2017 //
11

A public school activist in Massachusetts sent this letter from Robert Amsterdam, an attorney retained by the Government of Turkey to investigate the large charter chain run by Fetullah Gulen. Gulen is an Islamic cleric who lives in seclusion in the Pocono Mountains of Pennsylvania. He has some vague connection with some 170 or so charter schools that are paid for with public funds but staffed and run mainly by Turkish nationals. Now, says Amsterdam, the Gulen chain plans to open another charter school in Westfield and other nearby districts in Massachusetts. This charter will drain resources and students from the democratically controlled public schools of Westfield. The private board of the Gulen charter will not be elected by voters, but selected by its Turkish owners.

Amsterdam writes:

“On February 27, the 12-member Massachusetts Board of Elementary and Secondary Education will be voting on whether or not to allow the Chicopee-based Hampden Charter School of Science to open a sister school in Westfield. In the application tabled by HCSS West, the new facility would aim to be a regional grade 6-12 school drawing 588 students from Agawam, Holyoke, Westfield, and West Springfield school districts.

“Parents and taxpayers should urgently Press the board to reject this request. This school has known ties to the Turkish-run Pioneer Charter Schools of Science in Everett and Saugas, which are part of a nationwide network of some 170 schools operated by Fetullah Gulen.”

Amsterdam goes on to point out the financial abuses associated with Gulen schools, in Massachusetts and elsewhere.

Two-thirds of voters in the affected districts voted against charter expansion last November.

Expanding charters is part of the Trump strategy for privatizing public schools.

Massachusetts has the best state school system in the nation. Protect it from privatization. Make it better.

Stop the Trump-DeVos agenda now, in Massachusetts!

Categories Accountability, Gulen Charter Schools, Massachusetts, Privatization

DeVos to Conservative Conference: I Will Replace the Bush-Obama Failed Ideas with My Own Failed Ideas

By dianeravitch
February 23, 2017 //
41

Betsy DeVos gave a speech to the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), explaining that the programs created by George W. Bush and Barack Obama had failed, and she would replace them with her own ideas. She did not point out that her own ideas have failed too. Just look at the mess she has made of Michigan, where the state’s rankings on the federal test (NAEP) have plummeted, and where Detroit is a mess thanks to the miasma of school choice.


DeVos argued Thursday that education is failing too many students, pointing to “flatlined” test scores (presumably on the National Assessment of Educational Progress, also called the Nation’s Report Card) and more than 1.3 million youth who drop out of school each year. The Obama administration’s $7 billion investment in overhauling the worst schools, called the School Improvement Grant program, didn’t work, DeVos said, making reference to a study by the administration that found no increase in test scores or graduation rates at schools that got the money.

“They tested their model, and it failed miserably,” she said. She emphasized that she was not indicting teachers.

She has said that she wants to return as much authority over education as possible to states and districts, and intends to identify programs and initiatives to cut at the Education Department. She has also made clear that she intends to use her platform to expand alternatives to public schools, including charter schools, online schools and private schools that students attend with the help of public funds.

“We have a unique window of opportunity to make school choice a reality for millions of families,” she said. “Both the president and I believe that providing an equal opportunity for a quality education is an imperative that all students deserve.”

Her own model of vouchers has not a single success to its name: evaluations of voucher programs in Milwaukee, Cleveland, the District of Columbia, Louisiana, and Indiana have found no gains for the students enrolled in voucher schools. Parents are happier, but that’s not a good reason to destroy public schools.

The overwhelming majority of charter studies have found that charters perform no better than public schools unless they exclude children with disabilities, English language learners, and behavior problems. When the charters kick them out, they go back to the public school, which must take them.

Cybercharters have been proven to be disastrous failures in every state. In Tennessee, the Tennessee Virtual Academy is the lowest performing school in the state. Ohio boasts the cybercharter with the lowest graduation rate in the nation, called Electronic Classroom of Tomorrow.

DeVos does not have a single innovative idea. It is the same old retreads of the privatization movement.

I recommend that she read “Reign of Error: The Hoax of the Privatization Movement and the Danger to America’s Public Schools,” where I patiently demonstrated, using data from the U.S. Department of Education that American students as of 2013 had the highest test scores in our history–for all groups, white, black, Hispanic, and Asian; the highest graduation rates in history; the lowest dropout rates in history.

The scores flatlined from 2013 to 2015, and that may have been because of the application of the Common Core standards and the disruptions foisted upon the schools by Obama and Duncan for the past eight years.

DeVos has proven that she is unqualified to be Secretary of Education. She is not dumb, she is just ignorant. She should do some reading and break free of her ideological contempt for public schools.

Categories Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Charter Schools, Common Core, Corporate Reformers, Detroit, Education Industry, Education Reform, Michigan, Privatization, Testing

DeVos Family Fight Over Transgender Students?

By dianeravitch
February 23, 2017 //
8

According to the media (which the president assures us is lying, corrupt, dishonest, and “the enemy of the American people”), Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos objected to the president’s decision to remove federal protection for transgender students. She expressed concern for the harm that might occur to the students, but was overruled by the president and Attorney General Jeff Sessions.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/mobile.nytimes.com/2017/02/22/us/politics/devos-sessions-transgender-students-rights.amp.html

What a family fight there must have been when the news got out! The DeVos family were among the original founders of such anti-LGBT groups as Focus on the Family and the Family Research Council. DeVos family foundations have given millions to them and sit on their boards.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/static.theintercept.com/amp/trump-education-nominee-betsy-devos-lied-to-the-senate.html

I wonder what the family said when they learned that Betsy was defending trannies. Did they believe it? Were they surprised? Was it true?

During the campaign, Trump said he didn’t care what bathroom his gay friends used. Caitlyn Jenner visited Trump, and he reassured her.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.cnn.com/cnn/2016/04/28/politics/caitlyn-jenner-bathroom-trump-tower-donald-trump/index.html

It seems that Jeff Sessions has the power to overrule both DeVos and Trump. Or were we all hoaxed?

Categories Betsy DeVos

Mercedes Schneider: When Tenure Is Abolished, Teachers Leave

By dianeravitch
February 23, 2017 //
40

Mercedes Schneider reviews a new report from the Education Research Alliance in New Orleans. The bottom line: When Louisiana eliminated tenure, teacher turnover increased.

Louisiana Research: When Tenure Ends, Teachers Leave.

This shouldn’t be surprising. Removing job security encourages attrition. Other research has shown that instability and teacher churn are not good for teaching and learning.

Schneider writes:

“In 2012, the Louisiana legislature passed Act 1, commonly known as the “teacher tenure law.” Moreover, the Louisiana State Department of Education (LDOE) has translated Act 1 into an evaluation system whereby 50 percent of a teacher’s evaluation is connected to “student learning”– the bottom line of which is student test score outcomes.

Act 1 began in 2012 as House Bill 974. The reason it is called Act 1 is that the 2012 Louisiana legislature rammed it though as the first act, with calculated speed, amid an atmosphere dripping with then-Governor Bobby Jindal’s business-and-industry-backed intention to bring “accountability” in the evaluating of the state’s teachers.

Once 2012 hit, Louisiana teachers began considering how and when to leave the profession. And each year beginning with 2012, Louisiana’s teacher workforce has experienced a noticeable exit of many experienced, seasoned teachers who otherwise would not have likely chosen to leave the profession so soon.

Thus, it comes as no surprise to me that a February 22, 2017, study by the Education Research Alliance (ERA) for New Orleans has found that based on teacher data from 2005 to 2012, Louisiana teachers did indeed begin leaving at a more notable rate, with those retirement-eligible comprising the greatest number of exiters.

Having 25+ years of employment, this group also happened to be the most experienced.

Moreover, it should come as no surprise that schools graded “F” lost the highest number of teachers in the post-Act-1 exit.”

The most experienced teachers left. The leavers disproportionately taught in high-needs schools. Can the state replace? The state seems to have succeeded in creating. A teacher shortage in hard-to-staff schools.

Categories Jindal, Bobby, Louisiana, Teacher Shortage, Teacher Tenure
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