Leonie Haimson: Why New York’s ESSA Plan is a Nightmare for the Neediest Students

12 Comments Post your own or leave a trackback: Trackback URL

1. Laura H. Chapman says:

   June 7, 2017 at 4:47 pm

   ESSA plans from states are supposed to get reviewed by USDE either in June or (I think) October. In any case, state officials are probably exhausted with the ambiguities in ESSA before DeVos arrived, and now everything is worse.

   In Ohio, the confusion about graduation produced estimates that about two-thirds of students would receive diplomas. An alternate path to a diploma was put into motion.

   In the meantime, a least one OpEd mocked the government run schools and changing requirements. The OpEd came from a chapter leader of the college network, Students for Education Reform. He called for “higher” graduation standards and “support” for students to get there.

   Students for Education Reform is part of a nationally organized lobby funded directly by the Walton Family Foundation ($1.45 million 2012 to 2014) and by Education Reform Now among other groups who want public funds to flow to privately managed schools. Education Reform Now has received over $8.2 million since 2010 from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation, and the Walton Family Foundation, among others. Students for Education Reform serve as marketers for charters and TFA.
   Students for Education Reform is designed to appeal to the idealism of college students and to offer perks if they propagate the ideas of the people who fund them, They are paid shills and activists who can earn up to $4500 for a 16-week fellowship devoted to political organizing on local and state political issues. Chapters that get press coverage are high performers.
   Leaders of student chapters have to sign a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with the national organization. Here is part of the standard MOU.
   ” Section 3: Students for Education Reform, Inc. will provide access to following to SFER (name of chapter): recruitment support, professional development for chapter leaders, financial support, brand identity, access to national contacts, and programming/alignment support.”

   The DRK foundation is one of the professional PR firms working with Students for Education Reform as a client. page 4.

   Click to access DRK_2015_Annual_Report.pdf

   LikeLike

   Reply
2. retired teacher says:

   June 7, 2017 at 5:07 pm

   I am an “armchair” fan of real estate shows. I watch shows depicting the incredibly expensive New York City real estate market. I see apartments selling for prices up to $18 million and brownstones selling for $26 million dollars. People, including lots of foreigners, are making a fortune in New York City real estate. I cannot understand why children in New York City “are crammed into rooms with class sizes of over thirty students.” Perhaps much of the real estate is under appraised, or system of distributing funds needs “reforming.” I know Cuomo has ignored a court order from the state to pay the city its due. Something is rotten in Albany because the system seems rigged against needy students.

   LikeLike

   Reply
3. Chiara says:

   June 7, 2017 at 5:21 pm

   The ed tech industry is currently at about 8 billion dollars.

   “Two of the biggest names in technology and education philanthropy are jointly funding a $12 million initiative to support new ways of tailoring classroom instruction to individual students.

   The grant marks the first substantive collaboration of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, chaired by Microsoft founder Bill Gates, and the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, the philanthropic and investment arm of Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and his wife, pediatrician Priscilla Chan.”

   “Giving” 12 million dollars to schools when you’re hoping to chase billions of dollars down the road is not “charity”. It’s an incredibly cheap price to access a huge group of new
   customers.

   Don’t take this deal. They’re not doing us all a favor with this. We’re not beholden to these people. This isn’t “free”. What they are buying is access and influence and 12 million dollars is a great deal. For them.

   LikeLiked by 1 person

   Reply
   • retired teacher says:

     June 7, 2017 at 5:50 pm

     This is seed money for their investment. There is nothing even remotely charitable about it. Gates and company will use funds to bribe their way into systems, and cash strapped districts will take the bait. Many districts are cash strapped due to many states’ disinvestment in public education and the erroneous assumption that tax cuts “stimulate the economy.” It is a sad commentary on our current climate.

     LikeLiked by 1 person

     Reply
     • ciedie aech says:

       June 8, 2017 at 12:54 pm

       Too much like the ALEC legislation takeover game: small strategies which will lead to ultimate control implemented state by state, district by district, school by school.

       LikeLike

4. Duane E Swacker says:

   June 7, 2017 at 7:07 pm

   From student signs: “Use the right measures.”

   How can one use something that doesn’t exist? There are no “measures”. Are there evaluations, judgments, assessments of student learning and teacher effectiveness? Of course there are, but there are no measurements/measures.

   To measure something there has to be an agreed upon standard unit of measurement of whatever physical quality one is attempting to measure. There also has to be a measuring device calibrated against an exemplar of that standard unit of measure. Since there is neither of those two things in assessing student learning, which isn’t a physical quality to begin with, how can there be any “right measures”?

   There can’t be any!!

   Call a spade a spade!!

   Logical insanity and purposely misleading language usage abounds in today’s world of education. Don’t be fooled by it. It’s all a lie, yes a lie and a sick joke perpetrated on the most innocent of society, the children.

   LikeLike

   Reply
   • JEM says:

     June 7, 2017 at 11:34 pm

     Ah, Duane — a “vox clamantis in deserto” — what you say is so true.

     LikeLiked by 1 person

     Reply
     • Duane E Swacker says:

       June 8, 2017 at 8:52 am

       Please help me. How can we get this message out? I’m at a loss (and frustrated to hell to boot).

       LikeLike

   • SomeDAM Poet says:

     June 8, 2017 at 7:25 am

     Standardized testing is the modern equivalent of the phrenologist’s calipers.

     Fifty years from now, people will wonder how anyone could have been so stupid to buy into the whole testing charade.

     Maybe it has to do with their head size?

     LikeLiked by 1 person

     Reply
     • Duane E Swacker says:

       June 8, 2017 at 9:06 am

       Am currently reading Gould’s “Mismeasure of Man”. How we intellectually got from Binet, Terman, and Yerkes, with their very easily discerned biases and illogical methods to the modern biased and illogical standardized tests is surreal. It’s like no one in the psychometric game (it certainly isn’t a scientific endeavor being based as it is on so many rationo-logical errors and falsehoods) even gives a lick of credence to all of the critiques/criticisms of the “psychometric way” of viewing human cognition. It’s all a ruse to put a “scientific veneer” onto a week and totally defective substrate and claim it is a scientific enterprise.

       Damn, what does it take to counteract this inane and insane thinking?

       So many innocents harmed and so little opposition. People have been brought up in schooling to accept their own mental subjection via grades and test scores.

       From the back cover of my book:

       “We pass through this world but once. Few tragedies can be more extensive than the stunting of life, few injustices deeper than the denial of an opportunity to strive or even hope, by a limit imposed from without, but falsely identified as lying within.” Stephen J Gould in “The Mismeasure of Man”.

       “If the misery of our poor cannot be caused by the laws of nature but by our institutions, great is our sin” Charles Darwin

       And, indeed “our sin is great” according to the author as he shows us how the false, misleading and specious logic and language usage used in the standards and standardized testing regime can only result in the “stunting of life” for many children, not just “poor” ones. Ripping apart the arguments for accepting the misplaced usage of standards and measuring in the teaching and learning process, the author challenges anyone who supports those, what he labels, education malpractices:

       “I invite anyone associated with the testing industry, anyone who supports and/or demands the using of standards and standardized testing, educators, supposed policy expert or anyone else in general to refute and/or rebut what I have shown in this book about the insanities involved in using these malpractice!”

       LikeLike

     • Duane E Swacker says:

       June 8, 2017 at 9:07 am

       Somehow, I believe my challenge will be met with a silence louder than the tinnitus induced cicadas and crickets in my head.

       For “silence is golden” for those who extract profits off the backs of children in public education.

       LikeLike

5. Duane E Swacker says:

   June 7, 2017 at 7:14 pm

   Again from the article referenced:

   “I spoke about how their testimony further revealed the need to measure schools by Opportunity to Learn factors –”

   Until we quit using the edudeformer meme of “measuring schools” and call it what it is which is assessing, judging and/or evaluating, but my no stretch of the imagination “measuring” we will fall into their linguistic trap and be crushed.

   But why the hell listen to an old fart retired Spanish teacher? There are many “experts” who use that terminology, why would they be wrong and the old fart retired Spanish teacher be right? Just ignore the bastard’s pleadin. Like they’ve done with Wilson’s total destruction of their standards and testing and grading malpractices.

   LikeLike

   Reply