After careful deliberation, the Network for Public Education Action Fund endorses Lt. Governor Ralph Northam in the Democratic Party run-off for Governor of Virginia. We were impressed by his strong support for public schools.
Archives for the month of: June, 2017
Eva Moskowitz’s Success Academy charter chain, known for its harsh discipline and cherryocking students, won the Broad Prize for Charter Schools.
In the past year, the New York Times ran stories about a “got to go” list, identifying students who were supposed to be pushed out because of their behavior or test scores.
There was also a prominent page-one story about a leaked video showing a teacher at SA humiliating a first-grade child and ripping her paper up in front of the class.
According to the press release, former Secretary of Education John King, a member of the selection committee for Broad, lauded the choice and said that Success Academy proved it was possible to give high-quality to “every child.” He meant “every child” except those with disabilities, English language learners, nonconformists, and others who can’t or won’t produce high test scores.
“Success Academy is intentional about delivering quality instruction and offering well-rounded, hands-on learning experiences to every child,” said former Education Secretary John B. King Jr., who’s now president of the nonprofit, The Education Trust, and a member of the Broad Prize’s review board.
“These charter schools understand the benefit of a diverse educational community, with children of different socioeconomic status, race, and background all learning together,” he said.”
In 2006, reporter Daniel Golden wrote a book called “The Price of Admission” about how uber-rich families buy places for their children at elite colleges.
In this article published in ProPublica, Goldren says that the Kushner story was included in his book. He never dreamed that the Jared Kushner story would one day be a big deal.
He writes:
“My book exposed a grubby secret of American higher education: that the rich buy their under-achieving children’s way into elite universities with massive, tax-deductible donations. It reported that New Jersey real estate developer Charles Kushner had pledged $2.5 million to Harvard University in 1998, not long before his son Jared was admitted to the prestigious Ivy League school. At the time, Harvard accepted about one of every nine applicants. (Nowadays, it only takes one out of twenty.)
“I also quoted administrators at Jared’s high school, who described him as a less than stellar student and expressed dismay at Harvard’s decision.
“There was no way anybody in the administrative office of the school thought he would on the merits get into Harvard,” a former official at The Frisch School in Paramus, New Jersey, told me. “His GPA did not warrant it, his SAT scores did not warrant it. We thought for sure, there was no way this was going to happen. Then, lo and behold, Jared was accepted. It was a little bit disappointing because there were at the time other kids we thought should really get in on the merits, and they did not.”
Tom Ultican left the private sector to teach physics and mathematics in a California public school.
He writes here about how setting targets for graduation rates has produced the same corruption as NCLB’s mythical target of 100% proficiency on tests. It is the inexorable workings of what is known as Campbell’s Law in social science: “The more any quantitative social indicator is used for social decision-making, the more subject it will be to corruption pressures and the more apt it will be to distort and corrupt the social processes it is intended to monitor.”
The corruption is by no means limited to California. It is nationwide, as Ultican shows.
It is promoted by schools eager to meet targets but also by for-profit entrepreneurs, who make easy money with inferior products.
The unanswered question in this discussion is what to do to help the students who don’t earn a legitimate high school diploma. Without it, they will have trouble getting a job. How do we restore the meaning of a high school diploma without leaving hundreds of thousands with no job prospects. The best answer is very likely career and technical training, especially if it is not forced into the same college-prep mold as other paths.
This is one of those brilliant posts that I am honored to share with you:
“A miracle has occurred. America’s high school graduation rates peaked at about 77% in 1970 and then drifted down for almost four decades to 69% in 2007. Astoundingly, even with increased graduation requirements rates have shot up.
“Many school districts in California now require all students to meet course requirements for entering the University of California system to graduate from high School. That is a dramatic increase in academic rigor. Yet, in 2016, over 83% of California’s freshman cohort graduated on time. In 2012, 81% of the freshman cohort in America graduated on time. These record setting numbers are the result of knuckleheaded political policy, cheating and credit recovery.
“What is Credit Recovery and Where did it Come from?
“In the 1990’s politicians like Bill Clinton and Jeb Bush were pushing for standards in education and accountability measures. Jeb Bush’s infamous school grading system called for 25% of a high school’s grade to be based on graduation rates. Bill Clinton wrote in 1998,
We have worked to raise academic standards, promote accountability, and provide greater competition and choice within the public schools, including support for a dramatic increase in charter schools.”
“We know that all students can learn to high standards, and that every school can succeed if it has clear instructional goals and high expectations for all of its students; ….”
“Donald T. Campbell’s 1976 paper presented a theory about social change that is now widely revered as Campbell’s Law: “The more any quantitative social indicator is used for social decision-making, the more subject it will be to corruption pressures and the more apt it will be to distort and corrupt the social processes it is intended to monitor.”
“Exactly as the Social Scientist, Campbell, postulated, this national push to increase the standards of school rigor and to use social indicators (graduation rates and high stakes testing) to evaluate schools has introduced distortion and corruption.
“How were school leaders going to protect their institutions and their own jobs from the ravages of horribly shortsighted and uninformed education policy? The solution was obvious; teach to the test and find a way to raise graduation rates.
“To the rescue, came both the Walton Family Foundation and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation along with many other lesser contributors. They perceived it was time for advancing the privatization of public education and accelerating the adoption of technology in education. Credit recovery was a perfect vehicle.”
Read on to learn about the roles of many other organizations that pushed the naive narrative that setting a goal and punishing those who didn’t reach it would produce great results.
In my travels these past few years, one of the most remarkable people I met was Kipp Dawson in Pittsburgh. She is a middle school teacher who is dedicated to her work and her students. She is a warrior for social and economic justice. Before she became a teacher, she spent ten years as a coal miner. I knew about her before I met her and expected to meet an Amazon. But Kipp is diminutive in size with a mighty heart. If I have not already named her to the honor roll of champions, I add her now for her tenacity in fighting for children and public schools.
She wrote:
“The article which follows is a vicious attack on public schools in Pittsburgh, and thus, by extension, on our public schools as a whole. It is on the front page of the Forum section of today’s Pittsburgh Post Gazette. I post it as a call to action to all of those who are fighting to save and improve our public schools, and against those who are working double-time to shut us down.
“Here is the response I just posted on the Post-Gazette page:
“No.
“Ms. Amankulor makes it personal, and I respond, at first, in kind.
“Like her, my family is biracial (my white mom married my black dad in 1952). Like her, I am from Northern California, via NYC, to Pittsburgh, though I have been here since 1977. LIke her, my grandmother was an Eastern European Jew who escaped the Holocaust by finding refuge, and becoming a social justice fighter, here in the U.S. (though she soon lost her husband to murder at the hands of xenophobic anti-Semites in Erie in 1922 — motivated much like the anti-immigrants of today). Like her, my passion is for our children. BUT.
“Unlike Ms. Amankulor, I have allied myself with those children — all of them — and WITH our public schools, even as Ms. Amankulor and her organization have been part of the billionaire-backed forces who first undermined our schools via hostile “reforms,” then stood back, looked at the problems they helped to create, pointed fingers at our public schools, and called them “failing,” even as their “solutions” are to do even more to destroy one of our most basic democratic institutions.
“The “reforms” included closing schools, overcrowding and under-resourcing those that remained, sending Gates-funded “evaluators” to terrorize teachers and drive out many who would not be thusly debased, replace trained teachers with untrained TFA-style passing-through young people (some of whom were highly motivated and so badly mistrained), destroy elected school boards and replace them (not here; not yet) with appointed anti-public-school politicians (Philadelphia and Chicago being among the most outstanding), and then use them to shut us — public education — down, by any means necessary.
“Please, everyone who cares, read up on PennCAN. Please read Diane Ravitch’s prescient book, “Reign of Error,” which predicted this demise.
“Then join us to do the hard but necessary work to make our PUBLIC schools the schools all of our children deserve. ALL of our children.”
Kipp Dawson
William Mathis describes Trump’s education budget as a demonstration of Doublespeak, meant to mask its indifference to children.
He writes:
“In 1965, the federal government, driven by the obligation to provide equal opportunities to the least fortunate of our citizens, passed the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. It was intended to lift the nation by strengthening our poorest children and schools, improving the quality of teaching, opening the doors of higher education, and providing skills to adults. It embraced the ideal voiced by the late President Kennedy that “a rising tide lifts all boats.” And the emphasis was on building the common good. By widely investing in our citizens, we invest in the health of our society and economy.
“Those principles have found no refuge in the work of President Donald Trump and Education Secretary Betsy DeVos; all that remains of these great purposes are a confusion of empty words made to appear as if the worst were the better. Larded with phrases like “commitment to improving education” and “maintaining support for the nation’s most vulnerable students,” Trump proposes to slash federal education programs by $9.2 billion, or 13.5 percent. This is on top of past unmet needs, since federal obligations to poor and special education children have never been fully met. Starved programs are now set to have their rations reduced or cut entirely.
“With a remarkable lack of compassion, the Special Olympics budget was zeroed. Twenty-two programs are eliminated including community learning centers, arts, pre-school and teacher improvement.
Blind to clear evidence, every dollar invested in high-quality early childhood education returns $8 in positive social outcomes such as reduced unemployment, stable families, less incarceration and the like. Yet the Trump budget treats this wise and productive investment as another area to defund: Head Start and child care are slotted for small reductions, while preschool development grants are entirely eliminated.
“The “civil rights” framing is stunning doubletalk, since a growing body of independent research shows that school choice segregates students by race, handicap and socioeconomic level.
“It doesn’t get any easier for poor and middle-class students as they get older. Loan forgiveness programs for new college graduates working in schools or government would be eliminated. Student loan interest would be increased. In Trump’s plan, 300,000 students would lose their work-study jobs. In all, $143 billion would be removed over 10 years.
“Why make these cuts? The proposal calls for an increase in defense spending of more than $50 billion (a 10 percent increase) plus tax cuts for the wealthy – and that money has to come from somewhere. By these deeds, a capacity for war is valued more than the needs of the citizenry.
“Yet, Trump says “education is the civil rights issue of our time.” This budget raises questions about whether his true objective is to cut civil rights. The proposal’s centerpiece is school choice. The budget seeks to funnel $1.4 billion, in new as well as repurposed funds, into private schools. The “civil rights” framing is stunning doubletalk, since a growing body of independent research shows that school choice segregates students by race, handicap and socioeconomic level.”
Read on.
A comment by a teacher:
“Young students in kindergarten are now labeled as having specific learning disabilities if they do not receive a certain score on district universal screeners(STAR, iReady, MAP), which are taken on computers. I watch this happen in my district. I’ve watched it happen in other districts in which I’ve worked. First graders are given Reading Improvement Plans if they do not receive a certain score on district universal screeners the first time they take the test in August, in the state of Ohio. Once on a Reading Improvement Plan (RIMP), they are expected to receive instruction from a prepackaged, “research based,” scripted program…with fidelity. Without real books. Kindergarten teachers talk more about close reading strategies, than they do about Eric Carle, Leo Lionni, Dr. Seuss, or Stone Soup. Even the interactive read aloud has become a thing of the past. What did you think would happen to unstructured play? Literacy is being systematically killed. The blood is on our hands.”
My view: This is Child Abuse. State and district education officials who mandate this spiritual and emotional abuse of little children should be reported to child protective services and referred for counseling about the developmental needs of children.
Dustin Marshall, the businessman who sends his own children to private school, was re-elected to the Dallas school board in a run-off election against parent Lori Kirkpatrick.
The result was a significant reversal from May’s three-way race between Marshall, Kirkpatrick and Richard Young. Kirkpatrick almost won the seat outright, beating Marshall by 291 votes, but falling 23 votes shy of the required 50 percent threshold.
Kirkpatrick’s election would have flipped the board. Marshall’s election keeps it where it has been, in the status quo grip of fake reformers.
It always comes down to turnout.
This is indeed a new world. When I was in my early 20s, and probably long after, the word “cancer” was not mentioned, especially to the patient. The protocol, for some reason, was to lie to the patient as long as possible.
Phyllis Bush, dear friend, founding board member of the Network for Public Education, and a retired teacher in Indiana who also founded the Northeast Indiana Friends of Public Education, has been fighting cancer head on. She may have fears, but she deals with them by writing about them. She holds nothing back.
Her courage gives all of us courage.
Kisses and hugs to Phyllis and her loyal friend Donna.
Donyall Dickey was chosen as the sole candidate for the Portland Superintendency. He announced his resignation as Atlanta’s top academic official. A few days later, he withdrew his name from the Portland job.
Something in his background report caused the Portland board to change its decision. They aren’t releasing the report.
Why didn’t they do due diligence before embarrassing Dickey and themselves?
Diane Ravitch's blog 