The Los Angeles organization Great Public Schools Now has awarded grants of $750,000 to two successful public schools to replicate themselves in new schools. This corporate-funded entity wants to demonstrate that it favors “all” successful schools, not just charter schools. Alex Caputo-Pearl correctly called them out for “bait-and-switch.”
The assumption behind the grants is the same as the charter school theory: Some schools have a secret sauce and “high-quality seats” and they should be replicated.
Soon there will be chains derived from these two schools. This is truly the factory model of schooling, a product that can be built, replicated and brought to scale.
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Again, thank you, Diane. You are amazing and I so appreciate ALL of your work and stellar posts.
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Then according to my thinking if they want the same results, they also need to replicate the students. This charterization and vouchers = WIDGETS!
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One size does not fit everyone. That’s why Finland lets teachers make their own decisions on how to teach without top-down meddling.
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Where there’s Replicants there must be Blade-Runners —
So watch out for that …
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Reformplicate: to close a public school and put a cheap cardboard imitation in it’s place
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Some school districts, including St. Paul, Mn where I live, have opened Montessori Public (district) Schools. They did this in response to suggestions from families and faculty who believe in Montessori. In some places, those schools have been either expanded or replicated in response to waiting lists.
St. Paul also has an “Expeditionary Learning” school, one of many around the country. This approach was developed in 1991, joining together some ideas of Outward Bound and some ideas developed in part by people at Harvard Grad School of education. Here’s a link to 10 principles that are used in EL schools:
https://eleducation.org/what-we-offer/our-approach
The 10 principles include “self discovery, having of wonderful ideas, empathy and caring, the natural world, service & compassion, collaboration & competition, diversity & inclusion, plus solitude and reflection.
Expeditionary Learning says it is working with 152 schools in 30 states serving 50,000 students.
Good ideas can be replicated with faculty who support them and have had the time and opportunity to learn about these principles and develop strategies, projects and lessons that support the principles, whether they are Montessori, Expeditionary Learning or otherwise.
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I agree that there are many good models of public schools, too many to number. But I respectfully disagree that good ideas can be replicated. Good ideas can be shared. Viruses and chromosomes replicate.
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“The Nerds have Taken Over”
The language of robotics
Has taken over schools
Invented by nerdotics
And other techy fools
The “best” are “replicated”
Like widgets mass produced
While rest are simply slated
For crushing and reuse
“Six-sigma” is the rule
By which they gauge success
For student and for school
Accepting nothing less
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Excellent
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The first line should read “The Nerd-Turds have Taken Over”
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The billionaire Eli Broad entity tried to give money (with curriculum and consulting strings attached, if I recall correctly) to an existing LAUSD school, but I am proud to say my colleagues on the faculty rejected the offer. So, the Broad entity gives money to build two schools without existing faculties to reject the offer. I’ll write that again, the offer cannot be refused by teachers this time. And remember, the LA Times just recently reported that we have been building charter schools in neighborhoods with more than enough schools. What’s wrong here? The grant is not being refused this time. Superintendent King is risking weakening the district by weakening the surrounding schools, spreading students and the resources that accompany them too thin. What influence will the Broad entity have within the new schools, and what existing schools with more democratic control may get shut down because of the drain? Acceptance of this grant could be catastrophic for LAUSD if it becomes a pattern.
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Beware everywhere of “Great Schools” and variants like “Accelerate Great Schools” and the Los Angeles variant “Great Public Schools Now.”
All of these non-profits create markets for charter schools and charter chains with a well-honed strategy. They rate district schools based on test scores and then identify how many “high performing seats” are needed to replace those in low performing schools. The Great Public Schools Now version is for LA schools with charter top representatives from the Walton and Broad Foundations on the board. “http://www.greatpublicschoolsnow.org “
The Great Schools.org website offers ratings of schools based on their test-centric values. Eva Moskowitz’s schools are top-rated. Although Great Schools.org it is a non-profit, it has a scheme for leasing data and for “pushing” website users to specific schools, services, and products. The website is a tool for red-lining districts. Zillion leases the ratings, among many other corporations. http://www.greatschools.org/gk/advertising/
Great Schools is a branding scheme whether in LA or any other state. In the Cincinnati version, “Accelerate Great Schools,” local foundations are working to get more charter schools, TFA teachers, and the rest, with some help from the Mayor’s office and United Way. The school board is put in a terrible position because these high profile collaborators are also looked to as supporters of public schools. Accelerate Great Schools is really attempting to undermine public schools.
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Insightful and spot on. I wonder what rules are in place to regulate this industry that so impacts public wellbeing.
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I want to know what these schools have done to “succeed” (if their definition of success matches ours). I would like to see as much news about public school successes as we do stories of the reform horror shows. I want the world to know about grassroots movements that put pro-public school people in political positions that influence education policy. If nothing succeeds like success, we need to let our communities know of our many successes.
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One of my friends from the UCLA Writing Project teaches at King Drew Medical Magnet, one of the two schools to be “replicated.” None of the teachers at KD participated in this proposal, and none of them want anything to do with this supposed replication, which lacks the organic quality of the original. None. I will SMS this post to him, and hopefully he can tell his own story.
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I was on a committee for a start up experimental primary school as an adjunct to the inner city (minority) school where I worked. The idea was to provide special services to up to 100 students (1 grade each of PreK, K, 1, and 2).
Within three years this school became a charter. Our principal, who did so much work in the set up, cried (and she was not a crying sort of person). Now it has expanded up to eighth grade (in a separate building) So much for special services for a small group of kids.
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Caputo-Pearl works both sides of the street.
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Big business thinks it can transfer it’s winning philosophy to education: find the most successful model, then replicate and distribute it to all factories and outlets.
When Bloomberg took over the NYC schools, he was told that, as a country, we were lagging behind other nations in the area of math.
He checked out the most successful schools in the city and saw that many were using Everyday Math program.
Considering the red looseleaf binders that he’d distributed to every general and special ed teacher in every school throughout the city, detailing the parameters of how every classroom and bulletin should be set up, it came as no surprise that Mr. Bloomberg dictated that all classes in all schools (general and special ed) were to use this math curriculum, at grade level, regardless of student functional level.
My Asst Principal caught me using the remedial program that my kids loved and told me that, if she ever saw me using those books again, she’d personally burn them.
These LA grants definitely fall into that “biz knows best” camp, adding the element of “competition”, which is also so central to the business philosophy of success. We try to teach that concept in tandem with “cooperation” in our schools; a term which seems to be sorely lacking in the area of education reform.
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Both as a parent and a home instruction teacher – I hated that Everyday Math, but there were even worse Math Programs out there such as Transitions Math.
My kids, however, are all good in math despite the Everyday background. If the child has an aptitude they’ll be okay, but if they struggle with math – well we’ve all seem the results.
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My daughter was in grade school when Everyday Math was first mandated.
The parents of many of her friends were embarrassed to say that they couldn’t help them with their homework at night because they didn’t understand the new methods of calculation.
Keep in mind that one of the cornerstones of this program (as stated in their introduction) is parental involvement.
I ended up holding homework class at my place after school. About an hour each day.
Relieved and thankful parents when they saw it was helping the kids. But not everyone had/has that kind of backup. Definitely not many of the special ed kids who I was teaching.
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