Eliza Shapiro writes about New York City for Politico.
She wrote a somewhat wistful article about why New York City was no longer “the nation’s education reform capital.”
For one brief shining moment, she suggests, New York City had the chance to expand its privately managed charter schools and to break the grip of the teachers’ union. It came “this close” to evaluating teachers by test scores. It was near to a point where it might have eliminated tenure and seniority.
All of this is supposedly reform?
Well, as she well knows, this is the agenda of hedge fund managers and others on Wall Street. This is the agenda of the billionaires who never set foot in a public school and whose children will never go to public school.
What stopped the headlong rush to crush public schools and teachers’ unions?
Parents. The New York State Allies for Public Education, a coalition of 50 parent and educator groups (not the union), that organized the mass opt outs from testing.
When twenty percent of the parents in the state with children in grades 3-8 refused to allow their children to take the tests, Governor Cuomo stopped in his tracks. He had been gung-ho to evaluate teachers by student test scores; he boldly claimed to be the state’s charter school champion (even though only 3% of the state’s children were enrolled in charter schools). But when the opt out started, he realized he had a political problem. He hired Jere Hochman, the thoughtful superintendent of the Bedford Central public schools, to advise him, and for the first time, he had an experienced educator calming his passions. He formed a commission and grew silent.
Sheri Lederman, a much-loved teacher in the Great Neck public schools, challenged her evaluation, and the judge agreed with her that it was arbitrary and capricious.
The American Statistical Association said that the test-based evaluations in which Cuomo put so much stock were inappropriate for evaluating individual teachers.
Shapiro seems unaware of most of these developments. Her framework is: charter supporters=good; unions=bad; firing teachers at will without cause=good; tenure=bad.
She insists on seeing the New York City story through the framework of “reformers vs. union.” It would have made more sense to look at the NYC story as “parents (in New York State, not New York City) vs. high-stakes testing. Research vs. Cuomo.
Now that the reform laurels are no longer in New York City, she suggests that readers look to Louisiana and D.C. instead, both of which are among the lowest performing jurisdictions in the nation.
I want to suggest to Eliza Shapiro that she read my last two books: The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education (rev., 2016); and Reign of Error: The Hoax of the Privatization Movement and the Danger to America’s Public Schools. She should read Mercedes Schneider on John White in Louisiana and John Merrow on the subject of the D.C. “miracle” that wasn’t. (John Merrow and Mary Levy will have an article in the next issue of the Washington Monthly that takes apart the D.C. “miracle.” but in the meanwhile Shapiro can read this post that Merrow wrote: https://themerrowreport.com/2017/08/08/touching-the-elephant/comment-page-1/
If she contacts me, I will send her both books at my expense. If she reads them, she will be a better education writer. Certainly better informed.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
She won’t read them. Willful ignorance in support of ideology/benefactors. As you say frequently, follow the money.
Gordon Lafer in his book, “The One Percent Solution: How corporations are remaking states one at a time”, disabuses readers of the notion that ideology motivates the richest 0.1%. He draws the links to the bottom line.
There’s a very high likelihood that Shapiro is anti-labor. The availability of jobs with teacher salaries and protections force corporations to offer competitive conditions in the private sector.
Maybe Eliza Shapiro will read this post. You are correct that her article was particularly myopic and I have seen far better reporting by her in the past.
Among the most glaring flaws in this article was her wrong-headed take that this is about those high minded people wanting to ‘reform’ the schools and the teachers’ union. It’s almost as if she forgot about PARENTS. The only parents that mattered to her were the charter school parents that are taken by bus to rallies. What about the 90% of parents who send their children to public schools and have concerns about the dishonesty and lies the charter school movement has been using to undermine our children’s schools. Don’t we exist? Does she think we don’t notice when the reformers keep telling us lies? Does she think maybe Cuomo is getting worried that public schools parents — voters — see how dishonest they are and will question Cuomo’s embrace of the Betsy DeVos-loving “reformers?” Before he can win a national election he has to convince NY voters and we aren’t stupid.
Doesn’t Eliza Shapiro wonder why so many parents are not buying the lies? Doesn’t Eliza Shapiro even talk to the parents who SEND their kids to charters to hear them repeat how happy they are that “those” kids aren’t there? Despite the charters’ lies that they welcome everyone except the extraordinarily high number of violent 5 year olds who keep winning the lottery at the highest performing charters and not the others? (It’s very weird that the mediocre charters don’t have even a fraction of the violent kindergarten children that high performing charters do — and it’s amusing to watch gullible reporters who don’t even notice what is yet another one of the lies that the charter folks promote.)
The article seems like the ridiculous articles last year about how much the Republicans and the public hated Obamacare and how they were thwarted from replacing it with something much better by those awful Democrats. Wrong. Repealing Obamacare sounded nice until the public actually realized what it was the “health insurance reformers” really wanted. And until people started realizing that the Republican concern about the people “suffering” from Obamacare had nothing to do with their efforts to “reform”. They didn’t care one whit about those people suffering from Obamacare. They just wanted power. Thankfully, their immorality was finally revealed in all its glory when they presented their “charter school-like” health care reform. Help the richest and healthiest at the expense of the most vulnerable. It’s just like the education reformers. “we’ll make things better for some at the expense of the others”. In both education and health care reform, the reformers were really most concerned with benefitting THEMSELVES.
And nothing revealed it more than their reaction to the NAACP. Ugly and racist, just like their charter leader’s claims that so many 5 year old charter school lottery winners who aren’t white act out violently once they get to her charters. And the other reforms all agree!
I truly hope Eliza Shapiro becomes a bit less myopic and stops letting the education reform movement dictate her perspective. Because they are no better than the health care reform movement whose calls for “reform” are really about enriching themselves and hoping that the people being screwed by their policies will shut up because the reformers are much richer and more powerful than they are.
The Shapiro article captures the corporate privatization way of thinking, making it abundantly clear to anyone who reads it that charters and testing are NOT intended to improve education, but just to break up unions. People who think like that are (often unwittingly) right wing extremists who do not change.
Hear! Hear! Shapiro seems to have fallen for the slick ed “reform” PR hook, line and sinker. Hope she reads the Ravitch books and your comment.
“I want to suggest to Eliza Shapiro that she read my last two books:”
What is her address? I’ll put her on my list to send a copy of my book. (It’s finally on the actual printing production schedule for the early part of next week-what a process it is to get a book out.)
Duane, if I get it, I will share with you.
Thanks!!
http://www.politico.com/states/new-york/staff/eliza-shapiro
Maybe she’ll give you a PO box address if you ask?
Thanks, sent a letter offering the book.
Here is one paragraph in the article that demonstrates everything that is wrong with Eliza Shapiro’s article from the perspective of a parent.:
“At the same time, reformers were working to create an alternative to New York City’s traditional public schools, with a sprawling cluster of charters that could exist outside the city bureaucracy, and the typical union mandates. Eva Moskowitz, the combative CEO of Success Academy, and one of the organizers of the Albany rally, dreamed of expanding Success to 100 charter schools, in a kind of parallel district that would be capable of outperforming traditional public schools and siphoning their students.”
Parallel district? Alternative system? Yes, this is technically true except Eliza Shapiro left out the inconvenient little fact that this parallel district is given the special privilege of getting rid of any student who can’t learn in their “parallel district”. They only want to siphon the least expensive students. Which puts a huge burden on the district that they are “parallel” to.
“Outside the city bureaucracy” is a code word for “outside the bureaucracy that looks out for ALL children who live in NYC.”
That “bureaucracy’ that charter schools are so desperate to attack was put in place to protect ALL children — not just a class of favored ones. All of them. So that when a charter leader says “I know 20% of the at-risk kindergarten children were suspended, but they are all violent” someone actually says “that sounds about as truthful as the things Donald Trump says and we aren’t just going to take your word for it.”
That is EXACTLY why the NAACP wants a moratorium. And doesn’t believe that enabling oversight agencies like the SUNY Charter Institute should allow charters to get away with reprehensible practices because the word of a white CEO is more valid to them than the myriad of complaints from parents. Who would ever trust an oversight agency like the SUNY Charter Institute which has certified as true Eva Moskowitz claims that her suspension rates of 20% and 25% in some elementary schools that serve mostly at-risk non-white children are only because so many of them are violent? In Kindergarten.
And it’s beyond sad the Eliza Shapiro has been an education reporter for this long without understanding what is so wrong with Eva Moskowitz’ “parallel district” that has no pesky oversight from a “bureaucracy” that might not accept her claims of having lots of violent 5 year olds and might start asking inconvenient questions.
There is no public school district anywhere in this USA which can absolve themselves of their responsibility to educate large cohorts of children — especially at-risk kids — by simply labeling them as violent or uneducable! Or suspending, humiliating, flunking and using any reprehensible method they want to get them out.
At least not yet. No doubt once Eva Moskowitz and the woman she so admires, Betsy Devos enact their agenda, there will be lots of school districts that just decide their responsibility to children stops when the child is no longer worth teaching. And if that happens to be age 5 for many at-risk kids, well then too bad.
I agree that “bureaucracy” and “union rules” are red herrings –they’re not what causes public schools to be undesirable. It’s the disruptive and hard-to-teach kids. Our blue-collar suburban district is holding it together right now –no big exodus yet. But I know I ‘m not alone when I say it is HARD to run a successful class with a large dollop of kids who are very disinclined to play school. Don’t assume that I and my colleagues are “not engaging” –you’d be surprised. The major efforts we make to be engaging is what keeps the whole operation afloat. But it near kills us. I’m in great physical shape, but almost every day I wonder if I can make it through Periods 6, 7 and 8. I wish public school advocates would face the disruptive student problem more honestly. We could begin by quitting the jihad against suspension. That would relieve some of the strain on teachers, and would lessen the desire of the parents of academically-oriented kids to flee the public schools. I think that if public systems had invented their own parallel system of schools for uncooperative kids, the charter threat would not be nearly as bad.
There was a parallel in NYC years ago, they were called “600” schools for disruptive students. They were deemed racist since a large proportion of students sent there were minority. By no longer dealing with disruptive students the educational experience for all students is damaged. I am in agreement with you.
The charters were SUPPOSED to be that parallel system that taught the students who were disruptive. The students at-risk. The students left behind in failing public schools. The charters told us they had the magic formula to turn all those students into scholars for less money. Not just some of them — which public schools had always done. ALL of them.
They lied. Imagine if public schools kept all the best-behaved and most motivated students and sent the rest to charters. I suspect public schools would look quite superior to charters.
I do hope public school advocates like you, Ponderosa, stop using charter-approved phrases like “jihad against suspension”.
First of all, there is a difference in how one treats a 5 or 6 year old who is “non engaging” and a 14 or 16 year old. And the biggest “jihad against suspension” I have seen is Mayor de Blasio saying that public schools should not be suspending Kindergarten, first and second graders.
That does not mean you can’t address their issues though a myriad of different ways, including removing them from the classroom. You just don’t keep sending them home and thinking it will do any good. It doesn’t.
And I agree that disruptions of older students should be addressed. But just saying “suspend them all” does not work. There are a myriad of different reasons why kids act out and it’s worth spending a bit of time figuring out whether the kid doesn’t want to admit he can’t read or do math, or is being abused. No one says violent children — really violent children, not the 5 year olds who are harassed and made to feel less than nothing until they burst — can’t be suspended. But use other ways, too. And I am the first to agree that it shouldn’t be up to the teacher to figure it out — there needs to be more trained adults to address this while the student is removed from the class to a different place in the building.
Mike,
That’s interesting to hear.
NYC Parent,
I mostly agree with what you say. No one wants mass suspensions, but neither should administrators fear to give them. Suspensions are not a perfect tool, but they do send a strong message of disapproval, and by removing chronically unruly students for a time, they do often make for a marked improvement in the classroom environment. In these senses, suspensions do work.
I’ve always felt the way to deal with disruptive students, and this would have to be instituted from K on up, is that if a student is disruptive so much that the teacher feels a need to write them up and/or removed from class, is to make the student write in their own words some sort of apology to the teacher and class and then actually apologize to the class.
I am not talking about a “shaming”, I’m talking about a genuine apology wherein the student acknowledges the inappropriate behavior. I’ve tried to get that sort of thing instituted as part of a behavior committee and my idea was basically brushed aside. There is no doubt that in my mind that if instituted this type of personal acknowledgement would go a far way in helping curb future infractions of interrupting the teaching and learning process in the classroom. I’m not talking minor infractions, I’m talking of those major incidents that we all have had occur in our classrooms that leaves the teacher so flustered.
But a system like that would entail the admin having enough cojones to make it work, and I don’t see that ever happening.
I used to work at a residential facility for kids we called “severely emotionally disturbed” (I don’t know what the proper terminology is now; I’d call them traumatized). Many of them were DCFS wards who had experienced horrific abuse and/or deprivation, but that’s not the reason they came to us. They came to us because no one else (besides locked psychiatric facilities) could handle them – they were too aggressive and disruptive.
My experience was that they were as aggressive and disruptive as they were because they were so traumatized. They were in constant survival mode, they didn’t trust anyone, their traumatic experiences had left lasting damage to their nervous system, so they had extreme difficulty interpreting social situations and controlling their impulses. The only thing that worked with them was to keep the environment strictly controlled to instill a sense of safety and predictability so that they could eventually learn to trust. None of those kids would have had the capacity to apologize, sincerely or otherwise, and certainly not publicly.
I don’t think the majority of kids in public schools are anywhere near that level, but there are certainly strains of that, especially among kids who live in high poverty situations where they are exposed to abuse, deprivation and trauma. If schools are actually going to help these kids, then the same types of interventions are needed. A secure, safe environment where their needs are understood and addressed.
I understand that’s (allegedly) where the “no excuses” idea comes from – to maintain order and predictability. But where they go wrong is trying to control the child rather than the environment. No one reacts well to being controlled, least of all traumatized children who live in constant survival mode.
“… don’t think the majority of kids in public schools are anywhere near that level…”
These are the kids I teach, dienne77. District 75, in NYC. A citywide district devoted specifically to children and adolescents with severe “handicaps”.
We share similar backgrounds, you and I, and I completely agree with your assessment of the students (young and older) who we serve.
I’ve taught children with severe behavioral issues for a long time. Suspensions are the last resort and they are effective so long as they’re treated as such.
But that’s true for my special education school, where class size never goes above 12 kids and there’s also at LEAST one paraprofessional who’s assisting the teacher. We are specifically trained to work with this student population.
I’ve tried teaching classes, alone, of 25-30 where at least 5 of the kids were making it their business to take over the room. “Challenging” doesn’t even begin to describe the experience. and it you’re not trained in standard and innovative proactive behavior management techniques, then you’re REALLY up the creek without a paddle.
Most people won’t be galvanized to action until a particular set of circumstances begins to effect them, directly. Gentrification has had a lot to do with charter school expansion.
Young couple buys an affordable home in a poor area and has a child. The school in that district has problems with violent and disruptive students. The district has always had these problems but never had a “voice” before these more affluent people moved into the area. And it’s a whole lot easier (and more profitable) to add a charter school or two that will weed out the tough kids than to tackle the problems that inevitably arise from poverty.
The children who go to charters have adults in their lives who have made the effort to seek out a school for them. They are often required to sign a contract promising to all that a charter asks.
The children who go to charters are not nearly as likely to be DCSF wards or the kids who have experienced extreme trauma, especially for charters that begin at age 5.
But those charters use the comments like those above to justify suspending outrageously high numbers of 5 and 6 year old children — the vast majority of whom are not of dire need of a District 75 placement. Suspension is a great way to get rid of kids you don’t want to teach.
It is important to specify when you are talking about the kids in your class whether they are 5 years old or not. Five year olds may very well have a lot of trouble sitting still. It’s very easy to give a pass to the squirmy children who are learning what they need to know as many squirmy children can do, and target every single infraction of a child who is struggling.
Charter schools promote the lie that every child in a failing school can either be turned into a high-performing scholar by the inexperienced young teachers and their rote curriculum or the child is so disturbed or intellectually disabled that he needs a special placement that the charter is just so very, very sorry they aren’t able to offer. Since they have no oversight at all, they get away with this and it pretty much guarantees 100% success since they only teach children whom they have 100% success with.
It’s also why they “retain” (i.e. flunk as many times as necessary) an extraordinarily high number of students — something they also don’t talk about. No one knows if those students eventually leave or finally reach the finite grade at the charter. No one knows how many students are “retained” in charters, period.
If there was real transparency, as the NAACP wants, we might know a lot that would help all schools. Instead, charters reveal their real purpose which is not to share “best practices” because those practices always seem to be “use our curriculum (sometimes at a high price) or buy my book or watch a teacher teach” and intentionally hides the “best practices” like suspensions and retentions.
I wonder if Eliza reads this blog. I certainly hope so. Perhaps she’d like to take a moment to defend her positions. It’s one thing to write a personal opinion piece from above. Quite another to place yourself and your beliefs in a public forum attended by those who think otherwise.
I’ve been “defending” myself from public media assaults and at social gatherings since the first day I started teaching, 23 years ago. I’m up for the debate. And just to let you know: I am not yearning for the good ol’ days of school “reform@ in NYC. It was inhumane. For students, parents, and teachers.
Many journalists across the country do read the blog. I don’t know if Eliza Shapiro does. What was troubling about her article was that it was not an opinion piece. It was a straightforward news article that accepted the fake reformer rhetoric as real.
Wait, you mean a reputable news agency would present a propaganda piece as straightforward news? Say it isn’t so!
It ain’t so!
Ha, ha! Jokes on all of us!
You mean like the NYT publishing the WMDs of the fantasy world of Georgie the Least that resulted in so much death and destruction?
Thanks for the clarification, Diane. And it’s a big one.
While it’s true that the Times and other reputable papers have been distorting the truth about education “reform” for years, it still gets to me whenever I read an article that is meant to be taken as “fact” by readers who are not fully aware of the complexities of the situation(s).
IMO, the Shapiro quotes reflect Koch DNA. Eric Heubeck, a disciple of ALEC’s 2nd wave of founders used the term “parallel cultural institutions”, applied specifically to education. Wikipedia has a listing for him.
That’s the trouble in the United States right now – our leaders lack common sense. They probably went to private schools and were not taught any thinking skills, they just toed the line and believed all the drivel they were taught. (Not to mention they have no morals and can be bought). I’m going to include our journalists in the above batch. Either that or they’re just plain stupid.
Luckily parents see through all the lies and have the best interests of their children at heart.
From a previous post add: Preschoolers should be taught to be independent thinkers and that they have a voice. (That’ll drive Charter School operators crazy).