Archives for the month of: August, 2017
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The Day That a Catholic Sister Took Paul Ryan by the Ear on National Television

By dianeravitch
August 27, 2017 //
28

Commonweal magazine published an interview with Sister Jordan, a Catholic nun who confronted Paul Ryan on his CNN Town Hall about the policies he wants that will hurt the poor.

Sister Jordan is fearless and has a mission to do good in the world.

“Earlier this week, Sister Erica Jordan asked House Speaker Paul Ryan a pointed question during a CNN town hall forum with his constituents. Her question—and the Speaker’s answer—attracted a flurry of commentary and social media buzz. “A Catholic Nun Schooled Paul Ryan in Humility Last Night,” read a headline in Esquire magazine. The retired educator and principal has been a sister for 55 years. She is an advocate for immigrants who once a week visits the Kenosha County Detention Center in Wisconsin, where Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) rents space for immigrant detainees. A member of the Sinsinawa Dominican Sisters, Jordan describes herself as a “news junkie” who watches MSNBC, listens to National Public Radio, never misses PBS Newshour and often records the Sunday morning political shows. “There is something about being a Dominican that makes you want to soak in knowledge,” she said. “My mother said when I started going to a Dominican high school they were ruining me because they were making me so opinionated. My senior year I was thinking of going into a particular convent but then I found out the sisters were not allowed to read newspapers. I said, ‘Oh, no that is not for me.’” Commonweal contributing editor John Gehring interviewed Sister Jordan over the phone.

“John Gehring: You asked Speaker Ryan a challenging question that called out Republicans for not standing with the poor and working class. Why was it important for you to ask this particular question?

“Sister Jordan: It’s unconscionable that our elected officials feel free to do what they’re doing right now taking away health care, threatening Social Security and Medicare. It is just wrong. Speaker Ryan is a leader and he seems to be totally complicit in this way of thinking. I want him to really think about my question. I’ve been so distressed by this Congress and going through what we did during the health-care debate. There is such a disregard for the common good and the poor. It makes me angry. I do believe he is a man of faith, but I think he is misguided.

“JG: Ryan said he believes that both of you share the same core principles of wanting to help the poor and provide quality health care. But he said there is “prudential judgement in processing our faith.” For him, he said, that means “mobility, economic growth, equality of opportunity.” What did you think of that answer?

“SJ: Those are all good things but you can’t take supports away from people who are vulnerable, sick, need health care, and can’t pay premiums. I think he is really naive. Trickle-down economics has never worked. The budget is cutting programs in a way that hurts the poor. I wonder how often he talks to poor people. I don’t think he has much opportunity to really talk to people who are struggling. I felt he was pretty condescending. He started his answer by saying “spoken like a great Dominican nun.” It felt like a pat on the head, which is the way sometimes people treat sisters.”

Read the whole interview. The last line is priceless.

I love this woman.

Categories Accountability, Courage, Justice

Accountability for Racism! SUNY Tells Eva to Dump Billionaire!

By dianeravitch
August 26, 2017 //
26

The State University of New York committee that authorizes Eva Moskowitz’s Success Academy charter schools told her to get rid of billionaire Daniel Loeb, the chairman of the Network’s board, because of a racist comment he posted on Facebook.

The story appears in The Wall Street Journal. I am not a subscriber. Perhaps someone who is can post the rest of the text.

It begins:

“The head of a group that approves New York charter schools said Monday that it would be “very difficult” for Success Academy Charter Schools to expand if hedge-fund manager Daniel Loeb doesn’t step down from the charter network’s board in light of his recent racial remark.”

Loeb slandered the leader of the Democrats in the State Senate, who is black, and said she had done more to damage black children than anyone wearing a hood.

He took down the post but the damage was done. Loeb is close to Eva, to Cuomo, and to the GOP. Civil rights groups have demanded that Cuomo return the hundreds of thousands that Loeb gave him.

What will Eva do?

Stand by her man or expand?

It is awkward to pose as a civil rights reformer when the chair of your board compares the state’s leading black legislator to the KKK.

Farewell, Danny boy, we hardly knew ye.

Categories Harlem Success Academy, Racism

John Danforth: Trump Is Not a Republican

By dianeravitch
August 26, 2017 //
34

John Danforth was a much-beloved Senator from Missouri. He is an old-style moderate. He was in office before the rightwing billionaire Rex Sinquefield decided to buy the state. He wrote to explain why Trump is not a Republican.

John C. Danforth was a Republican U.S. senator from Missouri from 1976 to 1995.

Many have said that President Trump isn’t a Republican. They are correct, but for a reason more fundamental than those usually given. Some focus on Trump’s differences from mainstream GOP policies, but the party is broad enough to embrace different views, and Trump agrees with most Republicans on many issues. Others point to the insults he regularly directs at party members and leaders, but Trump is not the first to promote self above party. The fundamental reason Trump isn’t a Republican is far bigger than words or policies. He stands in opposition to the founding principle of our party — that of a united country.

We are the party of Abraham Lincoln, and our founding principle is our commitment to holding the nation together. This brought us into being just before the Civil War. The first resolution of the platform at the party’s first national convention states in part that “the union of the States must and shall be preserved.” The issue then was whether we were one nation called the United States or an assortment of sovereign states, each free to go its own way. Lincoln believed that we were one nation, and he led us in a war to preserve the Union. That founding principle of the party is also a founding principle of the United States.

Even when we were a tiny fraction of our present size and breadth, the framers of our Constitution understood the need for holding ourselves together, whatever our differences. They created a constitutional structure and a Bill of Rights that would accommodate within one nation all manner of interests and opinions. Americans honor that principle in the national motto on the presidential seal: “e pluribus unum” — “out of many, one.” Today, the United States is far more diverse than when we were a nation of 3 million people , but the principle remains the same: We are of many different backgrounds, beliefs, races and creeds, and we are one.

The Republican Party has a long history of standing for a united country. Theodore Roosevelt raised up the ordinary people of his day and championed their cause against abusive trusts. Dwight Eisenhower used the army to integrate a Little Rock high school. George H.W. Bush signed the most important civil rights legislation in more than a quarter-century, a bill authored by Republican senators. George W. Bush stood before Congress and the nation and defended Muslims after 9/11. Our record hasn’t been perfect. When we have pushed the agenda of the Christian right, we have seemed to exclude people who don’t share our religious beliefs. We have seemed unfriendly to gay Americans. But our long history has been to uphold the dignity of all of God’s people and to build a country welcoming to all.

Now comes Trump, who is exactly what Republicans are not, who is exactly what we have opposed in our 160-year history. We are the party of the Union, and he is the most divisive president in our history. There hasn’t been a more divisive person in national politics since George Wallace.

It isn’t a matter of occasional asides, or indiscreet slips of the tongue uttered at unguarded moments. Trump is always eager to tell people that they don’t belong here, whether it’s Mexicans, Muslims, transgender people or another group. His message is, “You are not one of us,” the opposite of “e pluribus unum.” And when he has the opportunity to unite Americans, to inspire us, to call out the most hateful among us, the KKK and the neo-Nazis, he refuses.

To my fellow Republicans: We cannot allow Donald Trump to redefine the Republican Party. That is what he is doing, as long as we give the impression by our silence that his words are our words and his actions are our actions. We cannot allow that impression to go unchallenged. As has been true since our beginning, we Republicans are the party of Lincoln, the party of the Union. We believe in our founding principle. We are proud of our illustrious history. We believe that we are an essential part of present-day American politics.

Our country needs a responsibly conservative party. But our party has been corrupted by this hateful man, and it is now in peril. In honor of our past and in belief in our future, for the sake of our party and our nation, we Republicans must disassociate ourselves from Trump by expressing our opposition to his divisive tactics and by clearly and strongly insisting that he does not represent what it means to be a Republican.

Categories Education Reform

Robert Shepherd: How the Common Core Killed Teaching and Learning

By dianeravitch
August 26, 2017 //
179

Robert Shepherd, teacher, author, curriculum developer, assessment expert, etc., left the following comment on the blog about the deadening effects of the Common Core on teachers and students:


The biggest tragedy that has occurred in the last few decades in our schools is that they have been to an enormous extent turned into test prep organizations under the standards and testing regime. This is true in both public and charter schools. “Reformers” successfully rebranded the national standards by simply changing their name. So, for example, in Florida, the Common Core State Standards–unchanged–are now called the Mathematics Florida Standards and the Language Arts Florida Standards, but make no mistake about it, these are the CCSS.

The public largely believes that the standards and testing have been a good thing, and that’s because simple arguments can be made for them: who doesn’t want “high standards”? Who doesn’t want “accountability”? These phrases are easily promulgated sound bites. But go into K-12 classrooms, and what you find is that where in the past students were writing essays and reading novels and nonfiction books and short stories and plays, they are now doing exercise sets based on the questions on the standardized tests.

An English department chairperson recently told me that this is ALL she does until the kids take the test in April or May–test prep exercises, every day, for almost the entire school year. This teacher’s approach is now the norm.

Traditional materials for teaching English language arts have been largely replaced by ones that emphasize exercise sets in which each exercise is narrowly focused on practicing one skill described by one standard. What particular readings are involved has become largely irrelevant under this regime–any reading will do as long as it is accompanied by an exercise for practicing standard x or y. The content of these readings is often completely random–a piece about Harriet Tubman here, one about invasive plant species there–and so there is no sustained work in a particular context–that of a novel or a unit on some nonfiction topic–even though brains are connection machines, learning happens when it is connected to previous learning, and comprehension is largely contextual.

Where in the past, a teacher would announce that he or she was starting a unit on Robert Frost or the literature of the Civil War (Crane, Bierce, etc.), now it’s, “OK, class. We’re going to work on our recognizing the main idea skills.” But there’s a problem: There is no such thing as a generalized recognizing the main idea skill. Such a thing is entirely mythical, like the fairies that Sir Arthur Conan Doyle believed in. Meaning is contextual, and arriving at the main idea or main ideas (for often, there are several) depends upon particular knowledge of the text’s aims and context.

The CCSS for ELA give lip service to substantive reading and content knowledge, but the truth is that on the ground, where it matters, the national standards and testing regime has replaced traditional instruction in English with test prep exercises, and this has been a calamity of enormous proportions. It’s meant the end of the profession of English teaching as I knew it. I know many, many English teachers who have quit or changed fields because of this. They are sick of being pressured by administrators to do all test prep all the time. But the administrators are simply doing what they are incentivized to do. They are evaluated primarily on the test scores that they deliver, for who doesn’t want to be principal of an A school?

With this going on, worrying about other matters is like spending one’s time polishing the bright work on a sailboat when there is a hole in the hull.

Except in isolated classrooms where brave teachers are continuing to teach despite the standards and testing regime, the teaching of English in K-12 is dead.

RIP

Categories Common Core, Teachers and Teaching

Bianca Tanis: Don’t Let New York Destroy Early Childhood Education with 75 Standards

By dianeravitch
August 26, 2017 //
7

Bianca Tanis teaches young children in New York. She is a founding member of NYSAPE, New York Dtate Alliance of Parents and Educators. She is also a teacher of children with special needs.

Frustrated by the state’s indifference to the needs of young children, she wrote this post and interviewed teachers about what matters most for teaching and learning: PLAY.

Categories Accountability, Childhood, Common Core, Education Industry, Play, Teachers and Teaching, Testing

Joanne Yatvin: How to Evaluate Schools

By dianeravitch
August 26, 2017 //
22

Joanne Yatvin, now retired, was a teacher, principal, and superintendent, as well as a literacy specialist.

The Myth of “Our Failing Schools” and How to Destroy It

An interesting article on the public’s perception of the quality of our public schools appeared in The Atlantic on July 15. I will summarize it today and add my opinions.

As a long time reader of the Phi Delta Kappan, an education journal, I am familiar with the results of its yearly poll reports on the public’s perception of our public schools. As long I can remember, most parents have given their children’s school an A or B rating. But when it comes to rating public schools in general, the responders are not so positive. Around 70 percent of them have consistently given those schools a C or D grade.

What’s going on here? According to Jack Schneider, a researcher at the College of the Holy Cross, the answer is simple: When evaluating their own children’s school, parents know a lot about what is happening there first hand . Most of them are pleased with their children’s experiences, and what they see or hear happening for other children. But when asked to evaluate the vast number of schools elsewhere, they only know what they read in the newspapers or hear on television. And most of those sources report that our public schools are failing to teach students what they need to know to succeed in college or the workplace.

Schneider identifies the source of this belief as the “politics of education.” He says, “Beginning with the launch of Sputnik in 1957, the leaders in Washington have argued with increasing regularity that our country’s schools are in crisis.” He adds that, “The failing-school narrative has been quite effective in generating political will for federal involvement in education.” Unfortunately, that narrative is not an accurate description of any school; it is based only on a single piece of data: students’ test scores

Although the scores for their own school may also be low, parents get a much broader range of information about the progress of their children, which includes report cards, parent/teacher conferences, individual pieces of students’ work, and school events. They may also get monthly newsletters from the principal that highlight the good things happening at school. Even if their own child is not doing well academically or behaviorally, parents may very well be receiving information about the help he is getting and the progress he is making.

Although there doesn’t appear to be any change in the dominance of data in the news media, there is one thing in the new ESSA law that may give everyone a broader picture. In the plans for improving their schools all states are now required to report to the Department of Education on several other conditions beyond test scores, such as graduation rates, school attendance, and the numbers of students enrolled in advanced courses. The only trick in reporting all this information to the public is weaving it into a seamless report that will show the full quality of any school.

Unfortunately, broader pictures would still not be enough to make all schools successful. High poverty schools need better financial support to keep class sizes small enough for all students to get attention to their needs and class behavior to be manageable. They also need sufficient funding to lure in high quality teachers and give them the school structures and extra time necessary to do a great job.

In addition, testing for all schools needs to be more reasonable than it is now. Instead of tests created to match the unrealistic expectations of the CCSS, every state should be able to get a test designed to fit its curriculum and the values of its people.

Right now it is not our public schools, but the federal government that is failing to educate our children well. We must overhaul the system to allow, support, and accurately report the greatness of which this country’s schools are fully capable.

Categories Accountability, Education Reform, Teachers and Teaching

Some of The Billionaires Behind Charters, Trump, and Success Academy

By dianeravitch
August 26, 2017 //
30

It may be hard to believe that billionaires are deeply concerned with the well-being of poor children of color. They fight any tax ibpncreases that might reduce income inequality and improve the quality of life for the families of these children. But they are more than willing to invest in charter schools.

In this article, teacher-writer Jake Jacobs explores the charter-love of the billionaires. Bear in mind that he has only scratched the surface, as there are billionaires in Idaho (the Albertson family), in Texas (Tim Dunn), in North Carolina (Art Pope), in Washington (Bill Gates), in California (Reed Hastings, Eli Broad, Doris Fischer, etc.), all of whom would rather pay to expand charters than to pay for a successful public sector.

Jacobs spreads the blame in a bipartisan manner. But behind it all is charters instead of taxes for the rich.

Jacobs writes:

“Trump went further than Hillary, promising a rapid expansion of charter schools – but this meant charter advocates were siding with both presidential candidates. After winning, Trump wasted no time seeking out the notorious charter maven Eva Moskowitz, CEO of the 41 school Success Academy network in New York City.

“Moskowitz had financial ties to the Trump campaign through Wall Street financier John Paulson. An $8.5 million donor to Success Academy who served as economic advisor to the Trump campaign. Billionaire investor Julian Robertson who gave Success a record-shattering $25 million gift is also a donor to a prominent pro-Trump PAC.

“After meeting Trump, Moskowitz pledged support for his plan to expand charters – as well as controversial private school vouchers – but she stopped short of joining Trump’s cabinet. Next, Moskowitz offered praise to Trump’s Education Secretary Betsy DeVos (whose foundation had previously donated $300,000 to Success Academy). Moskowitz then invited Ivanka Trump and House Speaker Paul Ryan to tour Success charter schools in Harlem.

“Most people do not realize that PACs allied with Moskowitz also helped engineer a political coup in Albany. Her two charter school lobbying groups, Families for Excellent Schools and Great Public Schools PAC, an offshoot of Students First NY, spent over $10 million making pro-charter donors the biggest political manipulators in NY state.

“Another group of hedge funders called New Yorkers for a Balanced Albany financed a massive advertising campaign in 2014 to keep the NY State Senate in Republican hands and pro-charter. Success Academy mega-donor Daniel Loeb contributed $1 million to the group.

“Also pushing charter schools is Reclaim NY, a PAC disguised as a “charity” backed by reclusive billionaire Robert Mercer. When it’s founding VP Steve Bannon stepped down to work in Trump’s White House, it illustrated why The New Yorker’s Jane Mayer reported Mercer has “surrounded” Trump with “his people” by “paying for their seats.”

“MAYORAL CONTROL MATTERS

“As the plan to expand charter schools in NY starts with wealthy donors who in turn fund legislators, an important focus is wresting control from local stakeholders who might oppose charters opening in their neighborhood.

“Just as we see in charter-heavy Chicago, the key to this in NYC was mayoral control. In 2002, the NY legislature upstate first granted then-mayor Michael Bloomberg unilateral control of NYC schools for a term of seven years, dissolving locally-elected school boards. Because Bloomberg was an advocate for privatizing education and had successfully expanded charters, he was granted a six-year renewal in 2009.”

Categories Betsy DeVos, Bill de Blasio, Billionaires, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Failure, Inequality, Privatization

Wisconsin: Can This Man Beat Scott Walker?

By dianeravitch
August 26, 2017 //
8

Tony Evers, the State Superintendent of Instruction in Wisconsin, has announced that he will run against Scott Walker for governor. Walker is a puppet of the Koch brothers who achieved national notoriety for breaking the state teachers’ union in 2011 and for advocating for charter schools and vouchers. Despite the poor performance of vouchers in Milwaukee, which adopted them in 1990–Walker expanded them.


Tony Evers, Wisconsin’s state superintendent of public instruction announced on Wednesday, August 23 that he plans to run for governor against Scott Walker. In his speech declaring his candidacy, he promised to invest in children, public schools, and the middle class, and declared that he will heal the political divide exploited by Scott Walker and Donald Trump.

“Make no mistake—Donald Trump is using the same playbook Scott Walker has been using in Wisconsin for years to create divisions and pit people against each other,” Evers said in his announcement speech to about seventy-five people at McKee Farms Kids Crossing Dream Park in Fitchburg, Wisconsin.

The setting for his announcement was symbolic of the values Evers’s candidacy represents, he said: a public park where kids of all backgrounds come to play together: “It’s democracy for little kids—I love it.”

“We must be clear: Trump and Walker are not the symptom of our divisions,” Evers added. “They are the cause.”

Evers is optimistic that voters will respond to a better, more community-minded vision if one is presented to them.

He points out that on the same day Wisconsin voted for Trump, majorities in local school districts all over the state (including in Republican areas) voted to raise property taxes on themselves to support their local public schools.

“On the morning of November 9, when you looked at the results of referendum after referendum, they told a completely different story from the election of Donald Trump,” he noted in an interview with The Progressive.

He made a similar point in his speech: “Scott Walker’s policies have forced almost a million people to raise their own taxes in the last three elections. And these are local people—Democrats, independents, and Republicans.”

That’s important because it shows, in Evers’s view, that when it comes to issues where people feel they have a direct stake in their communities—like maintaining their local public schools—voters do not support the Republican slash-and-burn agenda. As Evers puts it, “Local communities get it. Walker doesn’t get it.

Evers himself has won statewide election three times with big majorities, while fighting Walker’s budget cuts and efforts to expand school vouchers, which further drain resources from public schools. In the last election he won 70 percent of the vote and carried 70 of 72 counties.

His candidacy is all about the core issue of defending public education as an engine of democracy and equal opportunity—an issue that has been at the center of Wisconsin politics throughout the Walker era.

Categories Charter Schools, Education Industry, Privatization, Vouchers, Walker, Scott

Trump’s Ban on Transgender Personnel in the Military

By dianeravitch
August 25, 2017 //
38

One day not long ago, Trump woke up and wondered what he could tweet that would distract attention from the Russia investigation. What red meat could he throw to his base? Aha, he thought, I will declare that no transgender person may serve in any capacity in the military. I will claim that I consulted with “my generals” and they agreed (although he had not consulted with anyone).

The military leaders were surprised but said they would make it happen.

Think of it. Trump got five draft deferments, one of them for sore feet. He never served. But he wants the military to fire transgender people who volunteered to serve in harm’s way.

Some unknown number of people in the Army, Navy, and Marines will be ousted, no matter how exemplary their service.

Why? They are the easiest people to attack. Their numbers are tiny. Who cares about them?

Trump won’t stop there. Who’s next? His base won’t be satisfied with just a few thousand transgender people? Will Muslims be next? Jews? Mexicans?

That is the way if the bully, the demagogue, the fascist. Start with the most disfavired group. Then pick off the others, one by one.

This is how it begins.

Do you care? He is betting that you don’t.

Categories Bias, Bigotry

Emily Talmage: How Data is Destroying Our Schools–and Education

By dianeravitch
August 25, 2017 //
61

Emily Talmage teaches in Maine. She recounts in this post her first encounters with data-driven instruction, both in public schools and in a no-excuses charter school. She has come to understand that the data are not meaningful and that they are inherently at odds with the individual nature of the child, who cannot be defined by numbers. She suspects that someone will use whatever data her classes produces to make money. Better to look at the children in front of you, not the data that reduces them to digits on a spreadsheet.

A few weeks into my first year as a teacher, my colleagues and I met for our first “data team” meeting of the year.

Our principal had printed results from the previous year’s standardized tests and given a copy to each of us.

“Take a few minutes to look at the data, and then we’ll decide what inferences we can make from it,” he instructed.

He had a book with him – something with “data coaches” in the title – and was following a protocol laid out within.

I looked at the graphs, then – smiling – at my principal.

Surely he was joking.

At that point in the year, I had only five students – four third graders and one fifth grader – in a self-contained special ed classroom for kids with severe emotional disturbances. They were children who had experienced extreme trauma and abuse, and who struggled to get through a day at school without an attack of panic, rage, or violence.

All five had gotten one’s – the lowest possible score – on the previous year’s math and reading tests.

“Ms. Kennedy,” our principal said flatly, “what inferences can you make from this data? This is how we will be planning our instruction for the year.”

…

It was my first time experiencing the absurdity of data-driven education, but far from my last.

Then she worked at a no-excuses charter school in Brooklyn, and remembering it still gives her nightmares.

Now teaching in Maine, she is swimming–or drowning–in data, and she learns nothing from it that she didn’t know already.

Yet somewhere, she assumes, someone is figuring out how to monetize the data, even though it is utterly meaningless.

Categories Data
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