Archives for the month of: September, 2017
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Nancy Bailey: Beware of Laurene Powell Jobs’s Bad Advice About “Reinventing” High Schools

By dianeravitch
September 7, 2017 //
41

Nancy Bailey, experienced teachers, knows what make high schools successful. She posts a to-do list here.

She also knows that Steve Jobs’ billionaire widow Laurene Powell Jobs is peddling snake oil. Her goal is to eliminate the American high school and replace it with online learning, despite the lack of evidence for it–and the plethora of evidence that says it is a dramatic flop.

She writes:

“It’s especially ironic that Powell-Jobs uses a school bus to hype her venture philanthropic program. You won’t need school buses for what she’s proposing. That is unless they take students to places other than brick-and-mortar schools–like museums.

“Her “remake the American high school” mantra is really about replacing high schools with technology—learning anytime, anyplace. Here are titles and phrases from the website that hint of that.

Going to School in a Museum: Does Learning Have to Happen in a School?

Imagine a Super School

America Needs a New Way of Learning

High School Will Never Be the Same Again

The Next Generation Must Learn to Adapt to a Changing World

When Your School is a Museum

“Laurene Powell Jobs and the quest to change high schools are not new. If you want to blame someone for difficulties in public schools, blame politicians and corporate CEOs who have irresponsibly been attempting this feat on their own for years.

“Remember Bill Gates and the small school initiative? They tried to break up Manuel High School in Denver using more than $2 million. It was a failure.

“The Gates Foundation also failed at the first Philadelphia School of the Future—an all-tech high school.

“Go back even further.

“In 1995, the RJR Nabisco Foundation launched Reinventing Education: Entrepreneurship in America’s Public School, by the Chairman and CEO of IBM Lou V. Gerstner, Jr.

“Gerstner talked of New Century Schools—“clearing away restrictions” at the same time pushing for the standards that would eventually hamstring teachers into a standardization box when it came to teaching….

“Schools highlighted on the XQ website advertised as innovative are all driven by technology. Teachers might be mentioned, but it’s not clear if their use of the word teacher means a qualified teacher with an actual degree in teaching.

“It isn’t clear whether students have access to a well-rounded curriculum. Some of their innovative schools seem to specialize in a narrow area.

“One question to ask, did Powell-Jobs attend a public high school herself? Do her children attend public schools?”

Please, Laurene, stop reinventing the schools. You know nothing about it, and you are surrounded by people who know even less.

Turn your considerable wealth and energies to helping solve the problem of poverty.

Categories Accountability, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Education Reform, Privatization

St. Louis: a One-Great School District and the Vultures Who Destroyed It

By dianeravitch
September 7, 2017 //
43

Jeff Bryant of the Education Opportunity Network reports here on the sad story of what happened to public education in St. Louis, once a mecca of public education. The city has elegant public school buildings that were designed for eternity, but now stand shuttered and desolate.

What happened?

Racism. Segregation. White flight. Civic abandonment. Economic decline.

Remedies? The Broad Foundation and the Koch brothers to the rescue (not). Politicians committed to privatization. Business management. School closings, almost entirely in African-American neighborhoods. Incompetent business leadership. Some charter schools with high test scores, most with lower scores than the public schools. Charter scams and scandals. Profiteering. Loss of accreditation. State takeover. A new superintendent, determined to revive public education. Improved scores and graduation rates. Accreditation restored. New public schools with selective admissions, competing with charter schools.

Bryant visits some of the beautiful, abandoned schools and draws lessons from them.

“Many of these schools, like Cleveland High, are grand structures, built a hundred years ago or more, in a style that features intricate brick and stone exteriors with turrets and arches and spacious interiors with vaulted ceilings and sunlit classrooms.

“But the story of St. Louis’s schools is about so much more than the buildings themselves. It’s a story about an American ideal and what and who gutted that ideal.

“It’s also a story that merits important attention today as prominent education policy leaders, such as U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos, contend conversations about education should not even include the subjects of buildings and systems.

“Today’s current thinking that learning can “occur anyplace, anytime” prompts entrepreneurs to create networks of online schools and charter school operators to open schools in retail storefronts and abandoned warehouses.

“But the grand schools St. Louis built for its children caution that the permanency of schools as buildings and institutions is worth defending.

“More than a century ago, St. Louis embarked on a revolution in education that made the city’s schools the jewel of the Midwest and a model for urban school districts around the nation.

“I was recently standing in at one of the places where the revolution started: Elliot School at 4242 Grove St. It was padlocked with a graffiti-covered “For Sale” sign out front. The district closed the school in 2004.”

Footnote: Missouri legislation now debating expansion of charter schools to other districts.

Categories Broad Foundation, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Failure, Privatization, Racism, Segregation, St. Louis

Laura Chapman on the Merger of Two Failing Corporate Reform Groups

By dianeravitch
September 7, 2017 //
6

Laura Chapman writes:

Clayton Christensen’s ideas as interpreted by others for K-12 education are not original but part of the ritual promotion of tech as always better than human judgment and teacher collective bargaining as collaboration gone wrong.

Here is an example of actual disruption, mislabeled “Partnership for Educational Justice.” Begin quote from Politico.

By Caitlin Emma | 09/06/2017 10:00 AM EDT With help from Kimberly Hefling, Mel Leonor and Benjamin Wermund

EXCLUSIVE: GROUPS TEAM UP TO MAKE BIGGER MARK: Two reform groups are teaming up to drive change in state education policy by using the courts. The nonprofit 50CAN is joining forces with the Partnership for Educational Justice, a nonprofit founded by former CNN anchor Campbell Brown, which is known for lawsuits targeting state policies the group says allow ineffective teachers to remain in the classroom. The partnership will allow 50CAN to get involved in litigation for the first time. And it will allow the Partnership’s small staff to draw on 50CAN’s policy expertise to better determine where lawsuits might be successful.

The Partnership for Educational Justice will retain its name and pro bono legal help, but 50CAN will serve as PEJ’s fiduciary board. Both organizations will continue their push against teacher tenure laws in three states – Minnesota, New Jersey and New York – and may look at litigation on other issues, like school funding.

“50CAN has never done any impact litigation work, so we see an opportunity to provide the backend support for their work in a way that helps them go further,” said 50CAN CEO Marc Porter Magee. “I really think the next set of successes in education reform are going to come from these kinds of collaborations.” Ralia Polechronis, executive director of the Partnership for Educational Justice, said “the beauty of a partnership like this is that PEJ can take advantage of the policy expertise that 50CAN has at a very local level.”

The Partnership for Educational Justice has yet to prevail in lawsuits aimed at ending teacher tenure policies in Minnesota, New Jersey or New York. And the organization suffered a setback Monday when the Minnesota Court of Appeals upheld a dismissal of its lawsuit, The Star Tribune reports. Porter Magee said the lawsuits aren’t intended to bring about quick change, but are “long-term commitments.” End Quote.

So there it is, plain as day. “Successes in education reform” is defined as getting rid of teacher tenure laws. All wonderful things in education flow from this “long term commitment” to end collective bargaining among teachers.

Drive down the cost of labor by marketing tech for de-personalized learning, pay the least possible for human teachers. Teachers who will just have to get used to working at low pay without continuing contracts and erratic “on call” schedules.

Notice that teaching is also a profession dominated by women and that this effort, launched by a woman of great privilege, is marketing the legal challenges to teacher unions paid for by the “Partnership for Educational Justice.” So far, the only measure of educational justice is that the anti-union, anti-teacher have failed in the courts.

Campbell Brown and her 50Can friends are supporters of injustice for teachers. Why not just sue every union, including those for first responders, for firefighters, for police officers, for nurses, for all of the workers in civil service positions? Perhaps they will.

For the time being 50CAN will work for union-busting only for teachers.

IN case you did not know, 50CAN is an umbrella organization that enlists state and local foundations to campaign for privately managed charter schools and to close “failing” public schools so charter schools can expand.

In 2016, 50CAN merged with Michelle Rhee’s StudentsFirst to push for charter schools, and the five week wonder “Teach for America” temps passed off as if well prepared teachers, and other schemes to demolish public schools and teacher unions…not merely disrupt them. So these three groups– StudentsFirst, 50Can, and The Partnership for Educational Justice are now working in concert, as partners, to destroy public education and treat teachers as disposable temps as if this agenda is a matter of securing “educational justice.” Let’s call it a good example of Trumpianism with alt-fact labeling of the whole “partnership” effort.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Education Reform, Privatization, Teachers and Teaching

Corporate Reform Groups Merging: A Sign of Weakness or Strength?

By dianeravitch
September 7, 2017 //
6

Politico reports that two groups advocating for privatization and against teacher tenure are merging.

The merger is presented in typical “reform” doublespeak as a “victory,” but to the naked eye it appears to be an admission of defeat, an admission that neither group has been successful.

50CAN began as ConnCAN, with billionaire funding (supplied largely by the infamous Sackler family, which gained billions by producing and marketing Oxycontin, which is at the center of a national opiod crisis). 50CAN is supposed to spread privately managed charters everywhere, but what it can’t do is cook the research, which shows that charters don’t perform better than public schools unless they cherrypick their students, and many underperform public schools. Their new partner, Campbell Brown’s PEJ, has brought law suits intended to destroy the rights of teachers, but none of its lawsuits has been successful; its lawsuit in Minnesota was thrown out without so much as a hearing. You might say it was laughed out of court, by the judge.

EXCLUSIVE: GROUPS TEAM UP TO MAKE BIGGER MARK: Two reform groups are teaming up to drive change in state education policy by using the courts. The nonprofit 50CAN is joining forces with the Partnership for Educational Justice, a nonprofit founded by former CNN anchor Campbell Brown, which is known for lawsuits targeting state policies the group says allow ineffective teachers to remain in the classroom. The partnership will allow 50CAN to get involved in litigation for the first time. And it will allow the Partnership’s small staff to draw on 50CAN’s policy expertise to better determine where lawsuits might be successful.

– The Partnership for Educational Justice will retain its name and pro bono legal help, but 50CAN will serve as PEJ’s fiduciary board. Both organizations will continue their push against teacher tenure laws in three states – Minnesota, New Jersey and New York – and may look at litigation on other issues, like school funding. “50CAN has never done any impact litigation work, so we see an opportunity to provide the backend support for their work in a way that helps them go further,” said 50CAN CEO Marc Porter Magee. “I really think the next set of successes in education reform are going to come from these kinds of collaborations.” Ralia Polechronis, executive director of the Partnership for Educational Justice, said “the beauty of a partnership like this is that PEJ can take advantage of the policy expertise that 50CAN has at a very local level.”

– The Partnership for Educational Justice has yet to prevail in lawsuits aimed at ending teacher tenure policies in Minnesota, New Jersey or New York. And the organization suffered a setback Monday when the Minnesota Court of Appeals upheld a dismissal of its lawsuit, The Star Tribune reports. Porter Magee said the lawsuits aren’t intended to bring about quick change, but are “long-term commitments.”

As long as the money keeps coming in, the groups will survive. Results don’t matter.

Categories Charter Schools, ConnCAN, Corporate Reform, Education Industry, Privatization, Teacher Tenure

Erika Christakis: The War on Public Schools

By dianeravitch
September 7, 2017 //
33

Writing in The Atlantic, Erika Christakis describes “the war on public schools” that readers of this blog know well, but that has been sold to the public as “reform.”

She writes:

“Few people care more about individual students than public-school teachers do, but what’s really missing in this dystopian narrative is a hearty helping of reality: 21st-century public schools, with their record numbers of graduates and expanded missions, are nothing close to the cesspools portrayed by political hyperbole. This hyperbole was not invented by Trump or DeVos, but their words and proposals have brought to a boil something that’s been simmering for a while—the denigration of our public schools, and a growing neglect of their role as an incubator of citizens.

“Americans have in recent decades come to talk about education less as a public good, like a strong military or a noncorrupt judiciary, than as a private consumable. In an address to the Brookings Institution, DeVos described school choice as “a fundamental right.” That sounds appealing. Who wouldn’t want to deploy their tax dollars with greater specificity? Imagine purchasing a gym membership with funds normally allocated to the upkeep of a park.

“My point here is not to debate the effect of school choice on individual outcomes: The evidence is mixed, and subject to cherry-picking on all sides. I am more concerned with how the current discussion has ignored public schools’ victories, while also detracting from their civic role. Our public-education system is about much more than personal achievement; it is about preparing people to work together to advance not just themselves but society. Unfortunately, the current debate’s focus on individual rights and choices has distracted many politicians and policy makers from a key stakeholder: our nation as a whole. As a result, a cynicism has taken root that suggests there is no hope for public education. This is demonstrably false. It’s also dangerous.”

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Education Reform, Privatization, Propaganda, Testing

Facebook Admits Selling Space to Thousands of Russian Ads for Election

By dianeravitch
September 6, 2017 //
95

This is a shocking story about how Facebook allowed thousands of fake accounts targeting American voters in 2015 and 2016, with goal of influencing the election.

Facebook says it sold ads to Russian ‘troll farm’ during 2016 campaign
http://money.cnn.com/2017/09/06/media/facebook-russia-ads-2016-election/index.html

Some 3,000 ads were placed. Facebook collected $100,000 and sold out our democracy.

Way to go, Mark Zuckerberg!

Categories Accountability

Alexandra Petri: The Nightmare People Are in Charge Now

By dianeravitch
September 6, 2017 //
42

Alexandra Petri is a gifted writer, who works for the Washington Post.

This is one of her best.

The unshakeable sense that you are being persecuted is in charge of the Justice Department. In fact, it just announced this change in policy. The man with a slow eerie smile that you thought you got rid of in the ’80s is somehow back, standing behind a lectern, his smile growing wider and wider, even when you blink. How did he get here? You could have sworn—

The thing that lives under the bed has the president’s phone number and sometimes speaks for him at news conferences.

The thing that scuttles into the corner when you open the door to the attic, the clawlike hand that reaches out from under your closet door, they are both listed as Rational Voices in the Trump Cabinet and are about to come out in support of his plan for tax reform.

The sensation of drowning, drowning all the time, is what comes out every time you turn on your television.

All the clocks everywhere are melting. Weeks and months are indistinguishable. Everything partakes of a terrifying unreality. You try to write down what is happening but it doesn’t make any sense.

The Dreamers are out. The Nightmare People are in charge.

Categories Education Reform

BREAKING NEWS: Senate Rejects Trump Budget Cuts, Reduces School Choice Requests

By dianeravitch
September 6, 2017 //
7

Education Week reports on decisions made by Senate and House committees that preserve programs targeted for deep cuts by the Trump administration and sharp rebuffs to Trump plans to expand school choice. However, the federal appropriation for charter schools was increased by $25 million, which is a big victory for DeVos and a rebuff to the NAACP.


Lawmakers overseeing education spending dealt a big blow to the Trump administration’s K-12 budget asks in a spending bill approved by a bipartisan vote Wednesday.

The legislation would leave intact the main federal programs aimed at teacher training and after-school funding. And it would seek to bar the U.S. Department of Education from moving forward with two school choice initiatives it pitched in its request for fiscal year 2018, which begins Oct. 1.

The bill, which was approved unanimously by the Senate budget subcommittee that oversees health, education and labor spending, would provide $2.05 billion for Title II, the federal program that’s used to hire and train educators. Both the House spending committee and the Trump administration have proposed scrapping the program, so it remains in jeopardy despite the Senate’s support.

The measure rejects another high-profile cut pitched by the Trump administration, $1.2 billion for the 21st Century Community Learning Center program, which helps school districts cover the cost of afters-chool and summer-learning programs. The House also refused to sign off on the Trump administration’s pitch to eliminate the program. Instead, it voted to provide $1 billion for 21st Century, meaning the program would almost certainly see some funding in the 2018-19 school year.

The panel also dealt a blow to the administration’s school choice ambitions. And the bill seeks to stop the Education Department from moving forward on a pair of school choice programs it proposed in its budget request. The administration had sought a $1 billion boost for the nearly $15 billion Title I program, the largest federal K-12 program, which is aimed at covering the cost of educating disadvantaged students. The Trump administration had wanted to use that increase to help districts create or expand public school choice programs. And it had hoped to use the Education Innovation and Research program to nurture private school choice.

The Senate bill essentially rejects both of those pitches. It instead would provide a $25 million boost for Title I, and $95 million for the research program, a slight cut from the current level of $100 million.

But importantly, the legislation wouldn’t give U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos and her team the authority to use that money for school choice. In fact, the committee said in language accompanying the bill that the secretary of Education Betsy DeVos must get permission from Congress to create a school choice initiative with the funds.

A House appropriations panel also rejected the school choice initiatives in a budget bill approved earlier this year. Taken together, that’s a major setback for DeVos’ number one priority.

But the Senate bill does include a $25 million increase for charter school grants, which would bring them to $367 million. That’s not as high as the $167 million boost the administration asked for, or even as high as the $28 million the House is seeking.

Categories Accountability, Budget Cuts, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Funding, Privatization, Trump, U.S. Department of Education

Dana Milbank: Woman Prosecuted for Laughing at Jeff Sessions

By dianeravitch
September 6, 2017 //
22

Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank tells the true story of a woman who is being prosecuted because she laughed out loud at Jeff Sessions.

Be careful not to laugh at Jeff Sessions, or you too may be prosecuted. I myself compared him to Gollum in “Lord of the Rings” on this blog, but I didn’t intend it as a joke. I was serious. I hope that is not a thought crime.

He writes:

Did you hear the one about Jeff Sessions?

I’d like to tell you, but I can’t. You see, it’s illegal to laugh at the attorney general, the man who on Tuesday morning announced that the 800,000 “dreamers” — immigrants brought here illegally as children — could soon be deported. If you were to find my Sessions jest funny, I would be an accessory to mirth.

This is no joke, because liberal activist Desiree Fairooz is now being put on trial a second time by the Justice Department — Jeff Sessions’s Justice Department — because she laughed at Sessions during his confirmation hearing. Specifically, she laughed at a line about Sessions “treating all Americans equally under the law” (which is, objectively, kind of funny).

Police asked her to leave the hearing because of her laugh. She protested and was charged. In May, a jury of her peers found her guilty of disorderly conduct and another offense (“first-degree chuckling with intent to titter” was Stephen Colbert’s sentence at the time). The judge threw out the verdict, objecting to prosecutors’ closing argument claiming that laughter alone was enough to convict her.

But at a hearing Friday, the Justice Department said it would continue to prosecute her. A new trial is scheduled for November. Maybe Sessions, repeatedly and publicly criticized by Trump, thinks Justice’s anti-laughing crackdown will protect whatever dignity he has left.

This could be funny, but it is not. Since when it is a criminal offense to laugh at ridiculous public figures?

Categories Humor, Justice

Pennsylvania: Debate about School Choice, September 19

By dianeravitch
September 6, 2017 //
6

Here is an event you won’t want to miss:

CONSIDER IT: SCHOOL CHOICE AND THE CASES FOR TRADITIONAL PUBLIC EDUCATION AND CHARTER SCHOOLS

September 19 @ 5:00 PM – 8:00 PM Hilton Reading

Berks County Community Foundation
Panelists:

Carol Corbett Burris: Executive Director of the Network for Public Education

Alyson Miles: Deputy Director of Government Affairs for the American Federation for Children

James Paul: Senior Policy Analyst at the Commonwealth Foundation

Dr. Julian Vasquez Heilig: Professor of Educational Leadership and Policy Studies and the Director of the Doctorate in Educational Leadership at California State University Sacramento

Karin Mallett: The WFMZ TV anchor and reporter returns as the moderator

School choice has been a hot topic in Berks County, in part due to a lengthy and costly dispute between the Reading School District and I-LEAD Charter School.

The topic has also been in the national spotlight as President Trump and U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos have focused on expanding education choice.

With this in mind, a discussion on school choice is being organized as part of Berks County Community Foundation’s Consider It initiative. State Sen. Judy Schwank and Berks County Commissioners Chairman Christian Leinbach are co-chairs of this nonpartisan program, which is designed to promote thoughtful discussion of divisive local and national issues while maintaining a level of civility among participants.

The next Consider It Dinner will take place Tuesday, September 19, 2017, at 5 p.m. at the DoubleTree by Hilton Reading, 701 Penn St., Reading, Pa. Tickets are available here. For $10 each, tickets include dinner, the panel discussion, reading material, and an opportunity to participate in the conversation.

https://bccf.org/event/consider-it-2017/

Categories Charter Schools, Education Reform, Pennsylvania, School Choice
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