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URGENT: Pennsylvania Legislators Rush to Enact Vouchers, Take Money from YOUR Public Schools

By dianeravitch
October 23, 2017 //
28

Peter Greene writes here about a sneaky effort in the Pennsylvania legislature to push through a voucher bill without public hearings. Republicans following the DeVos script want to raid public school funds and transfer your tax dollars to unaccountable private and religious schools and for a variety of other purposes (in one state in the west, a parent used the “education savings account voucher” to pay for an abortion, another parent bought school supplies, returned them, and bought the family a big-screen television).

If you live in Pennsylvania, contact Your State Senator NOW.

Greene writes:

“Tomorrow morning, the Senate Education Committee will be once again considering a bill to promote vouchers across the state of Pennsylvania, and to pay for them by stripping money from public schools. If you’re in Pennsylvania, drop what you’re doing and call your Senator today.

“SB 2, Education Savings Accounts for Students in Underperforming Schools, sets up vouchers with no oversight and an extremely broad criterion for how the vouchers can be spent. According to the official summary, voucher money may be spent on

1) Tuition and fees at a participating private school;
2) Payment for a licensed or accredited tutor;
3) Fees for nationally norm-referenced tests and similar exams;
4) Industry certifications;
5) Curriculum and textbooks; and
6) Services to special education students such as occupational, speech, and behavioral therapies.

“So anything from private school tuition to buying books for home schooling to sending a child to massage therapist school.

“Money can be carried over from one year to the next, and if there’s still some left at graduation time, the money may be used for higher education costs.”

Districts like Philadelphia, already operating on a bare bones budget, will lose money. So will every other district.

“This bill is bad news, and would have an immediate and damaging effect on school finances across the state. It is an attack on public education. And conservatives really shouldn’t be fans, either– this bill provides zero accountability, and our tax dollars disappear down a black hole where we have no say and no knowledge of how they are spent. A family could decide that it would be educational for Junior to go to Disney World, and your tax dollars would pay for it…

“This is not the first time someone has tried to push a voucher bill, and it won’t be the last. But it is time, once again, for defenders of public education to hit the phones. Even if your senator is not among those who will act on the bill tomorrow, chances are good that he’ll be looking at it a bit later. Let him know that stripping funds from public schools in order to fund unregulated oversight-free vouchers is not okay.”

The research has been accumulating in recent years that vouchers don’t produce better education and often produce worse education. Increasingly, vouchers go to students already enrolled in private schools.

Citizens of Pennsylvania, get active. Stop vouchers! Stop DeVos! Save Your public schools!

Categories Education Reform

Stuart Egan, the Parent of a Boy with Down Syndrome, Responds to DeVos’ Cruelty

By dianeravitch
October 23, 2017 //
5

Stuart Egan, NBCT high school English teacher in North Carolina, describes what happened when he and his wife learned that the child she was carrying had Down Syndrome. They were advised that abortion was an option, even though it is not an option in their state, where it is illegal. They didn’t want an abortion. Now, they have a beloved son, Malcolm.

Egan will not judge those who made other choices. “I also will never carry a child in a womb. Neither will Donald Trump, Mike Pence, or all of the other “men” who stand to gain from their positions of power.”

But he is outraged by those who defend the rights of the unborn and take away the rights of children after they are born.

Betsy DeVos has decided to withdraw federal guidelines that protects Malcolm’s rights in school.

Egan takes it personally.

He has written a beautiful essay expressing his personal outrage.

“It seems that many of the politicians and policy makers like DeVos who claim to be hardline “pro-lifers” are helping to privatize the very institutions that are giving “life” to many individuals. And they are doing it in the name of free-markets, where people are supposed to be able to choose what they want hoping that the “market” controls prices and quality.

“How ironic that many politicians who proclaim to be “pro-life” become “pro-choice” when it pertains to those who are already born.”

Betsy DeVos has earned her place on this blog’s Wall of Shame. As a Jew, I cannot Judge her religious views. As a human being, I judge her cruel. Uncaring. Indifferent to those in need. Mean.

Categories Betsy DeVos, Special Education, Wall of Shame

DeVos Withdraws 72 Regulations Intended to Protect Students with Disabilities

By dianeravitch
October 23, 2017 //
14

During her confirmation hearings, Betsy DeVos seemed unclear about the extent to which children with disabilities were protected by federal law.

Democratic senators challenged her knowledge–or lack of knowledge–of the federal law protecting these children. Many assumed her unwillingness to comment reflected her ignorance of the Individuals with Disabilities in Education Act and other legislation and court decisions.

Now, however, there seems to be a darker reason for her incoherence. She doesn’t think the federal government should intrude into decisions that she thinks belongs to states and localities.

She has rescinded 72 “guidance documents” about protecting the rights of students with disabilities.

The Education Department has rescinded 72 policy documents that outline the rights of students with disabilities as part of the Trump administration’s effort to eliminate regulations it deems superfluous.

The Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services wrote in a newsletter Friday that it had “a total of 72 guidance documents that have been rescinded due to being outdated, unnecessary, or ineffective – 63 from the Office of Special Education Programs (OSEP) and 9 from the Rehabilitation Services Administration (RSA).” The documents, which fleshed out students’ rights under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act and the Rehabilitation Act, were rescinded Oct. 2.

A spokeswoman for Education Secretary Betsy DeVos did not respond to requests for comment.

Advocates for students with disabilities were still reviewing the changes to determine their impact. Lindsay Jones, the chief policy and advocacy officer for the National Center for Learning Disabilities, said she was particularly concerned to see guidance documents outlining how schools could use federal special education money removed.

“All of these are meant to be very useful . . . in helping schools and parents understand and fill in with concrete examples the way the law is meant to work when it’s being implemented in various situations,” said Jones.

President Donald Trump in February signed an executive order “to alleviate unnecessary regulatory burdens,” spurring Education Department officials to begin a top-to-bottom review of its regulations. The department sought comments on possible changes to the special education guidance and held a hearing, during which many disability rights groups and other education advocates pressed officials to keep all of the guidance documents in place, said Jones.

DeVos is moving with all deliberate speed to eliminate the federal role in protecting the civil rights of groups of students who relied on the U.S. Department of Education.

This is not the first time DeVos has rolled back Education Department guidance, moves that have raised the ire of civil rights groups. The secretary in February rescinded guidance that directed schools to allow transgender students to use bathrooms in accordance with their gender identity, saying that those matters should be left up to state and local school officials. In September, she scrapped rules that outlined how schools should investigate allegations of sexual assault, arguing that the Obama-era guidance did not sufficiently take into account the rights of the accused.

This should not come as a surprise. Betsy DeVos is a libertarian who does not believe in federal intervention to protect vulnerable groups of students.

Categories Betsy DeVos, Civil Rights, Special Education, U.S. Department of Education

Virginia: A Busload of Volunteers from Manhattan Went Door to Door for Northam!

By dianeravitch
October 23, 2017 //
4

I received the following note from a Virginia public school parent:

“Pleasant surprise today when we went to canvass for the pro-public education Democratic team of Ralph Northam, Justin Fairfax, Mark Herring & Danica Roem in VA13 Prince William County….a bus load of volunteers from New York City! They knocked on 549 doors!

“#ManhattantoManassas”

This is the first statewide election since the 2016 election.

It is widely seen as a referendum on Trump, since Lt. Governor Northam’s opponent is running as a Trump devotee. His big issue is Confederate statues.

Northam is running as a champion of public education, the environment, gun safety, affordable healthcare for all, justice and equality for all Virginians.

It’s time to restore American values of fairness, justice, equality, and decency.

If you can’t go to Virginia and knock on doors, send a donation to help turn America into America again, a land of hope, not fear.

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Categories Education Reform, Supporting public schools, Virginia

Virginia: Koch Brothers Launch Campaign Against Ralph Northam for Governor

By dianeravitch
October 23, 2017 //
82

The arch-conservative billionaire Koch Brothers have unleashed campaign ads against Lt. Governor Ralph Northam in the Virginia governor’s race.

The Washington Post reported that the Koch Brothers have spent nearly $3 Million Against Northam.

“Americans for Prosperity, the heart of the billionaire Koch Brothers’ conservative political network, plans to ramp up its campaign against Ralph Northam, the Democrat in Virginia’s governor’s race.

“The conservative group announced Friday that it would spend at least $1 million on mailers and digital ads targeting Northam’s record on taxes, education and economic development.

“It follows at least $1.8 million in anti-Northam television commercials and mailers to date, according to data collected by the nonpartisan Virginia Public Access Project. The group also says it has contacted hundreds of thousands of Virginia voters through its phone-banking and canvassing efforts…

“Americans for Prosperity is also launching a digital video featuring a charter school administrator criticizing Northam for voting against a bill to establish “educational savings accounts” that allow parents who remove children from public schools to receive 90 percent of the state funding that would have been spent on their child. They would be able to use the funds for private-school tuition, tutoring, books and other educational costs. Critics say such accounts are similar to vouchers in that they drain resources from public schools.”

The Koch Brothers despise public education and are eager to elect a governor who will promote the DeVos agenda of school privatization via charters and vouchers.

If you live in Virginia and you love your local public school, get active in the campaign for Ralph Northam.

Categories Billionaires, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Privatization, Virginia, Vouchers

The Death of the Credible Think Tank

By dianeravitch
October 22, 2017 //
51

I meant to post this article when it first appeared, but it got lost in my inbox.

It is a very important read. I worked for the Brookings Institution for two years in the mid-1990s, after working in the first Bush administration. I got to know most of the D.C. think tanks. They have a huge influence on federal policy, because they put on dog-and-pony shows with experts, and Congressional aides pay attention to their reports, studies, and conferences.

The original idea of the think tank, as Judis explains, is that it would be free of partisan influence. Ha!

How times change!

The “think tanks” of D.C. today are influenced by partisanship and by corporate money.

This was brought out into the open when the New America Foundation fired Barry Lynn and his “Open Markets” project. His criticism of the mega-tech monopolies hit too close to home, inasmuch as Eric Schmidt of Google is one of New America’s biggest funders. Apparently Lynn could not provide assurances that he would not embarrass Google, and he was dismissed. (I was on the board of the New America Foundation. I was outspoken, as is my way. I was asked to leave the board. As I have said before, I have been kicked out of some of the finest organizations in D.C. and elsewhere.)

Judis writes:

In fact, one can connect the events at New America to the transformation of American think tanks over the past century. The term “think tank” didn’t appear until the Kennedy administration, which relied heavily on Rand Corporation research, but these policy groups and research institutes date from 1916, when philanthropist Robert Brookings established the Institute for Government Research, which later became known as the Brookings Institution. Robert Brookings was one of a group of very wealthy businessmen who had become convinced that through the application of social science, government policies could be devised that would stem the rising conflict between the classes and parties and also achieve world peace. They were Theodore Roosevelt or Woodrow Wilson progressives in the broadest sense of the term.

Brookings wanted a research institute that was “free from any political or pecuniary interest.” The scholars didn’t raise their own money, but were employed like university faculty. In founding the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Andrew Carnegie went farther: In 1910, he endowed the new institution with bonds that he hoped would allow it to forego fundraising entirely. Other groups that began during those first decades included the Council on Foreign Relations, the Twentieth Century Fund (now the Century Foundation), the National Bureau of Economic Research, and the Committee for Economic Development.

The groups attained a reputation for intellectual independence. When coal company officials complained in 1933 to Brookings’ first president, classical economist Robert Moulton, about a study recommending their nationalization, Moulton responded, “We are concerned only in finding out what will promote the general welfare.” That reputation lasted into the 1960s, when, under John F. Kennedy, think tanks were conspicuously welcomed in the policy debate. But Robert Brookings’s early model of political disinterestedness and scientific objectivity began to erode soon afterward.

Three developments contributed to this change: Beginning in the 1940s, and in earnest in the early 1970s, conservative Republicans and business groups established think tanks and policy groups that had a specific economic and/or factional purpose. Businessmen dissatisfied with the New Deal created the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) in 1943. In 1964, it served as the policy arm of Barry Goldwater’s right-wing campaign for president, and in the ‘70s became the preferred think tank of the Fortune 500 and of center-right Republicans, even when, for appearance’s sake, AEI kept around a few liberal researchers.

The Heritage Institution was founded in 1973 as a sophisticated business lobby (its first president came from the National Association of Manufacturers) that, unlike the more scholarly AEI, actively worked on Capitol Hill to develop legislation. It became a key player in the growth of Republican conservatism. Other groups included the American Council for Capital Formation, the Competitive Enterprise Institute, and later “action tanks” like Citizens for a Sound Economy and its successors FreedomWorks and Americans for Prosperity.

Together, these business and conservative Republican groups attempted to take advantage of the reputation created by the older think tanks: They demanded attention for their “experts” in the media—on op-ed pages and, later, TV news shows—but they were in fact the kind of political organization or business lobbies that Robert Brookings and Andrew Carnegie had wanted to avoid at all costs. These groups’ scholarly output, particularly from a group like Heritage, was nugatory. They debased the coinage of the older thinking. And their model of partisan intervention and policy briefs spread leftward to groups like the Center for American Progress, which is something of a Democratic version of the Heritage Foundation.

My experience at Brookings in the mid-1990s was wonderful. I loved working there. The scholars were real scholars, and there was no partisan bias. Many or most of the scholars were tasked with raising their own funding, despite the hefty endowment at Brookings. I found myself constantly in a learning mode as a Senior Fellow because I was able to attend daily seminars about every sort of domestic and foreign issue. It was like being in college without any students. I started an annual conference of education issue, and while I was a conservative (at the time), I also included people from different camps and different parties to talk about every issue.

After I returned to New York City in 1995, I continued to manage the annual conferences for another decade. Tom Loveless picked up the conferences for a while after 2005, then they disappeared as he preferred to do his own research.

Then came my infamous firing in 2012. After the 2008 election, Brookings brought in the George W. Bush education research director, Grover Whitehurst. He was an advisor to Romney in 2012. I wrote an article slamming Romney on education in 2012 and that same day received an email from Whitehurst telling me that I was terminated as of that date as a Senior Fellow (unpaid) at Brookings. The reason: I was “inactive.” That was funny, because my most recent book was a national best seller.

It is hard to think of a “think tank” in D.C. that is truly nonpartisan and independent. They depend too much on corporate funding. They are over-identified with political parties. Every one of them should bear a warning.

How often have you read that the Center for American Progress is “left” or is the Democratic equivalent of the Heritage Foundation? Judis says that in this article. Yet we know that CAP is crazy for charter schools and has a hard time distinguishing its education values from those of Betsy DeVos. Well, at least they don’t support vouchers! But they use many of the same talking points.

The closest think tank to the original Democratic party of labor, minorities, poor and working people is the Economic Policy Institute.

The rest of the party has simply blown off the base of the party and looks to Wall Street and the billionaires to fill their coffers, then wonders where the base went and why they have lost so many state elections over the past decade.

Categories Education Reform

Nevada: Legislature Changes Rules for High School Graduation, Offers Chance to Those Without a Diploma

By dianeravitch
October 22, 2017 //
5

In too many states, legislators meddle in schools nonstop, mandating tests that most of the legislators couldn’t pass, changing the high-school graduation requirements without thinking of the consequences.

Nevada is a case in point.

But at least the legislators will give those who didn’t meet the last graduation requirement a new chance to earn a diploma.

Without a diploma, a young adult can’t get a decent job.

“Former Nevada students who failed to earn a high school diploma because they couldn’t pass the state’s proficiency exam now have a shot at redemption.

“In 2013, the state Legislature approved phasing out the proficiency exam graduation requirement in favor of four end-of-course tests. But before the end-of-course exam requirement went into effect, legislation removed that requirement in 2017.

“That created a situation where students who didn’t pass the proficiency exam were being held to a different standard than more recent students.

“That will change as the result of a guidance memo sent to district superintendents by the state on Oct. 13, as long as the student meets all other graduation requirements.

“The change levels the playing field for adult education learners who are still trying to earn a diploma, according to the state.

“If it wasn’t retroactive we’d have a situation where we’d say if you’re 22, here’s your diploma, if you’re 23, take the test,” said Henry King, an educational program professional in the state Department of Education. “It would have created an artificial age line in adult ed by which there would have been different graduation requirements based on how old they were.”

Categories High School Graduation

Florida: School Vouchers Gone Wild: Brilliant Investigative Reporting

By dianeravitch
October 22, 2017 //
11

When the Orlando Sentinel published an in-depth expose of Florida’s unregulated, unaccountable, wasteful voucher programs, defenders of vouchers rushed to attack the series.

Remember, Betsy DeVos considers Florida the model that she wants for America.

Scott Maxwell of the Sentinel responds to the critics here.

The nation needs more journalistic scrutiny of the unscrupulous, fraudulent, and incompetent hucksters who are siphoning billions of dollars away from public schools with certified teachers. In Florida, it is $1 Billion a year, and that is only for vouchers, not charters, which has its own share of scams and frauds. In Michigan, the charter industry drains $1 Billion a year away from public schools, and the charters don’t get better outcomes than the public schools; many are far worse, and 80% are for-profit.

Congratulations to the Orlando Sentinel for scrutinizing Florida’s voucher schools.

For the first time ever, I add a newspaper to the honor roll of this Blog.

Here is an excerpt.

“The “Schools without Rules” series exposed scores of problems at these publicly funded schools — everything from forged safety reports to a school run by a pastor accused of lewd or lascivious molestation.

“Just as importantly, it exposed a wicked hypocrisy among politicians who scream for “accountability” for public schools but let anything go when your tax dollars are whisked away to private ones.

“This little-regulated system needs an overhaul. And the world needs more real journalists.

“Among the findings from reporters Beth Kassab, Leslie Postal and Annie Martin:

“Teachers without certification or even college degrees.

“Forged documents: Schools faked up clean bills of health from fire departments, which had found safety problems. Even after the schools were caught, state officials let them remain open.

“Shady hirings: Two teachers worked at voucher schools (the state calls them “scholarship” schools) after being fired from public schools for having porn on their school computers.

“Alleged crime: At one school for special-needs kids, suspicions of impropriety — among parents and even a teacher — continued until authorities arrested the school owner, accusing her of stealing more than $4 million in Medicaid funds.

“Troubling finances and learning environments: Two school were evicted from their locations for nonpayment of rent while the school year was still going on. Another shared office-suite space with a bail bondsman.”

If there were newspapers in every state willing to investigate the privatization of their public schools, the public would understand the scandal that is going on in the dark. In Ohio, local newspapers started paying attention to charter scandals, and it affected public opinion. In the past two years, charter enrollments have fallen in Ohio as the public understands the risks they are taking by enrolling their children in schools without roots and the damage they are doing to their public schools.

More coverage, please!

Categories Betsy DeVos, Education Industry, Florida, Fraud, Privatization, Vouchers

Laura Chapman on Bill Gates’ Hubris, Ignorance, and Folly

By dianeravitch
October 22, 2017 //
54

A couple of days ago, Bill Gates said he has a new plan to reform education. As I pointed out in a post, Bill Gates is batting 0 for 3. He dropped $2 Billion into breaking up large high schools and turning them into small schools. He started in 2000, didn’t see a big jump in test scores, and backed out in 2008. Then, having decided that the answer to high test scores was to punish teachers whose student scores didn’t go up, he pushed value-added Assessment, partnering with Arne Duncan and Race to the Top. Thousands of educators were fired and many schools were closed based on Gates’s fancy. That lasted from 2008 until now, and it has been written into state law in many states, although it has distorted the purpose of education and created massive demoralization among teachers and a national teacher shortage. Then he funded the Common Core, in its entirety. It is his pedagogical Frankenstein, his personal belief that education should be completely standardized, from standards to curriculum to teacher education to teacher evaluation. Speaking to the National Board for Certified Teachers a few years ago, he praised standardization and talked about the beauty of standard electrical plugs. No matter where you live, you can plug in an appliance and it works! Clearly, that was his metaphor for education. What did he spend on the creation and promotion of the Common Core? No one knows for sure, but estimates range from $200 Million to $2 Billion.

There is one other massive Gates failure that I forgot to mention: inBloom. This was a $100million investment in data mining of students’ personally identifiable data. Several states and districts agreed to turn their data over to inBloom, which wipould use the data as its owners chose. Parents got wind of this and launched a campaign to stop in loom. Led by Leonie Haimson of New York and Rachel Stickland of Colorado, parents besieged their legislators, and one by one, the state’s and districts pulled out. InBloom collapsed.

We don’t know how much money Gates has poured into charter schools, but we imagine he must be disappointed that on average they don’t produce higher scores than the public schools he disdains. He bundled millions for a referendum in Washington State to allow charter schools, the fourth such referendum. Despite Gates’ swamping the election with money, the motion barely passed. Then the State’s highest court denied public funding to charter schools, declaring that they are not public schools because they are not governed by elected school boards. Gates and his friends tried to oust the Chief Judge when she ran for re-election, but she coasted to victory.

As you see, he is actually 0 for 5 in his determination to “reform” the nation’s public schools.

But he is not deterred by failure!

So what is the latest Gates’ idea?

Laura Chapman explains here:

“At the Meeting of the Council for Great City Schools October 19, 2017, Gates said:

“Today, I’d like to share what we have learned over the last 17 years and how those insights will change what we focus on over the next five years.”

“I think that Gates has learned very little about education in the last 17 years. He is still fixated on “the lagging performance” of our students on what he regards as “the key metrics of a quality education – math scores, English scores, international comparisons, and college completion.

“Gates wants his narrow definition of “quality education” to be accepted as if the proper doctrine for improving schools and also ensuring the “economic future and competitiveness of the United States.”

“Gates wants faster progress in raising test scores, and high school graduation rates. He seems to think that “constraints and other demands on state and local budget” actually justify his plans to “ increase high school graduation and college-readiness rates.”

“Gates takes credit for funding for the deeply flawed + Measures of Effective Teaching project (MET), claiming that it showed educators ”how to gather feedback from students on their engagement and classroom learning experiences . . . and about observing teachers at their craft, assessing their performance fairly, and providing actionable feedback.” The $64 million project in 2007 tried to make it legitimate for teachers to be judged by “multiple measures” including the discredited VAM, and dubious Danielson teacher observation protocol http://nepc.colorado.edu/newsletter/2013/01/review-MET-final-2013 Gates learned nothing from that micromanaging effort.

“Gates funded and promoted the Common Core. He says: “Teachers need better curricula and professional development aligned with the Common Core.”He remains committed to the ideas that “teacher evaluations and ratings” are useful ways “to improve instruction,” He thinks “data-driven continuous learning and evidence-based interventions,” will improve student achievement. This jargon is meaningless.

“Gates said: Overall, we expect to invest close to $1.7 billion in US public education over the next five years.“…“We anticipate that about 60 percent of this will eventually support the development of new curricula and networks of schools that work together to identify local problems and solutions . . . and use data to drive continuous improvement.

“Don’t be deceived by the “public education” comment. Gates wants to control public schools by dismantling their governance by and for the public. By “networks of schools” Gates means “innovation districts” where persons employed by private interests can control educational policy under the banner of “collaboration” or “partnership.”

“Gates offers several examples of networks. One is CORE, a so-called “partnership” of eight large urban school districts in California: Fresno, Garden Grove, Long Beach, Los Angeles, Oakland, Sacramento, San Francisco and Santa Ana,

“CORE stands for “California Office for Reform in Education CORE a non-governmental organization, based in San Francisco, funded by the Stuart Foundation, William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, S. D. Bechtel, Jr. Foundation (Stephen Bechtel Fund); and Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Here are some other things you should know about CORE.

“CORE was created in order to bypass the California State Board of Education and Race to the Top accountability, by marketing its new “School Quality Improvement Index.” This index includes social-emotional learning and school climate indicators in addition to California requirements—test scores, graduation rates, and the like.
Participating CORE Districts are bound to the terms of a memorandum of understanding, signed only by each district superintendent. This MOU specifies that the district will use: CORE-approved school improvement ratings based on existing and new indicators, a CORE-approved teacher and principal evaluation process with professional development plans, CORE-specific teacher and principal hiring and retention policies with cross-district sharing data—including results from teacher/student/parent surveys of school climate and student self-assessments of their social-emotional skills.

“The final rating for each school in a CORE district is a complex web of weightings and transformations of scores into performance and growth measures: 40% of the overall rating for school climate/social emotional indicators and 60% for academics.

“An autonomous “School Quality Oversight Panel” nullifies oversight of these districts by the State Board of Education. This “oversight” panel has CORE supporters recruited from The Association of California School Administrators, and California School Boards Association, California State PTA. The main monitors/promoters of this scheme are actually two panel members: Ed Trust West and the Policy Analysis for California Education. Bot of these organizations are sustained in large measure by private funding.

“Ed Trust West is funded by the Bloomberg Philanthropies, State Farm Companies, and these foundations: Bill & Melinda Gates, Joyce, Kresge, Lumina, Wallace Foundation, and the Walton Family. The Policy Analysis for California Education (PACE) is based at Stanford University, with participation by the University of California – Berkeley, and the University of Southern California. PACE is a conduit for grants from USDE and from the David and Lucille Packard Foundation; Evelyn and Walter Haas, Jr. Fund; S. D. Bechtel Jr. Foundation; Walter and Elise Haas Fund; and The Walter S. Johnson Foundation.

“School ratings developed by the CORE Districts flow directly to GreatSchools.org —a marketing site for schools and education products. GreatSchools.org is funded by the Gates, Walton, Robertson, and Arnold Foundations. Add the Friedman Foundation for Educational Choice, the Bradley Foundation, Goldman Sachs Gives, New Schools Venture Fund. and 15 other foundations.“GreatSchools.org in a non-profit in name only. GreatSchools.org sells data from all states and districts. For a fee, it will push users of the website to particular schools. Buyers of the data include Zillow and Scholastic.

“I think that the CORE District model illustrates how the private takeover of education is happening. Policy formation and favored school practices are being determined by the wealth and the peculiar visions non governmental groups with deep pockets. In the CORE Districts, this work is aided and abetted by superintendents who are eager for the money and the illusion of prestige that comes from permitting private funders to determine educational policies and practices.

“Gates’ speech to members of the Council of the Great City Schools also includes the example of Tennessee’s LIFT Education as a “network” that is worth replicating.

“LIFT Education enlists educators from 12 rural and urban districts across the state to promote the Common Core agenda and Teach for America practices. Participants in LIFT Education are convened by the State Collaborative on Reforming Education —SCORE. The SCORE website says participants in LIFT have spent the last year and a half collaborating on high-quality early literacy instruction, focusing on building knowledge and vocabulary by piloting knowledge-rich read-alouds in early grades.

“The LIFT/SCORE alliance provides a governance structure for insisting that teachers follow the Gates-funded Common Core. Teachers are given an instructional practice guide that is also a teacher evaluation rubric from Student Achievement Partner, authors of the Common Core. https://lifteducationtn.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/LIFT-Instructional-Practice-Guide-K-5-Literacy.pdf

“This LIFT/SCORE non-governmental network is the result of private wealth channeled to superintendents who have outsourced the “coaching” and compliance monitoring for the Common Core literacy project to the Brooklyn-based The New Teachers Project (TNTP). In effect, TFA coaching and systems of data-gathering are present in all of the LIFT/SCORE districts.

“SCORE, the State Collaborative on Reforming Education has been funded since 2010 by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, so far $10,623,497 including multiple years for operating support. Add a 2012 grant to SCORE as sponsor of a Chiefs for Change Policy Forum for district leaders so they would be “ambassadors for education reform.” The bait for the LIFT/SCORE network thus came from Chiefs for Change–Jeb Bush’s baby, unfriendly to public education.

“Gates says: “Over the next several years, we will support about 30 of these networks (e.g.., CORE, LIFT) and will start initially with high needs schools and districts in 6 to 8 states. Each network will be backed by a team of education experts skilled in continuous improvement, coaching, and data collection and analysis.””

“Our goal is to work with the field to ensure that five years from now, teachers at every grade level in secondary schools have access to high-quality, aligned curriculum choices in English and math, as well as science curricula based on the Next Generation Science Standards.”

“What else is in the works from the many who would be king of American education?

“We expect that about 25 percent of our funding in the next five years will focus on big bets – innovations with the potential to change the trajectory of public education over the next 10 to 15 years.” What does Gates means by “big bets?” He expects to command the expertise and R&D to change the “trajectory” of education. He will fund translations of “developments in neuroscience, cognitive psychology, and behavioral economics” in addition to “technology-enabled” approaches in education.

“There is money left for more.

“We anticipate that the final 15 percent of our funding in the next five years will go to the charter sector. We will continue to help high-performing charters expand to serve more students. But our emphasis will be on efforts that improve outcomes for special needs students — especially kids with mild-to-moderate learning and behavioral disabilities.”

“This proposal sounds like Gates wants to cherry pick the students with “mild to moderate learning and behavioral disabilities,” send them to Gates-funded charter schools to bring their scores up, then claim success where everyone else has failed. This same strategy is being used in “pay-for performance” preschools. Gates sounds like he expects to have a free-hand in ignoring the Individual with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA). Evidently he wants the “flexibility” to ignore IDEA that he believes to be present in charter schools.

“Bill Gates is still fixated on the idea that his money and clout can and will attract other foundations and private investors. He still holds on to the mistaken idea that “what works” in one community or state can be “scaled up,” and REPLICATED, elsewhere. He is ignorant of the history of education and efforts to replicate programs. He is trapped in an industrial one-size-fits-all model of education.

“Gates ends with this: “Our role is to serve as a catalyst of good ideas, driven by the same guiding principle we started with: all students – but especially low-income students and students of color – must have equal access to a great public education that prepares them for adulthood. We will not stop until this has been achieved, and we look forward to continued partnership with you in this work in the years to come.”

“Beware of billionaires who want to partner with you.

“Gates still seems to think that students, especially low income students, can and will be successful if they have “ equal access to a great public education.” He remains ignorant of the abundant research that shows schools alone are not responsible for, or solutions to, institutionalized segregation and poverty–the main causes of serious disadvantage among low-income students and students of color.

“Gates has grandiose plans. All are focused on privatizing education and selling that snake oil as if it is authentic support for public education.“

Categories Bush, Jeb, Charter Schools, Common Core, Corporate Reformers, Data and Data Mining, Failure, Gates Foundation, Bill Gates, John King, Privatization, Teacher Evaluations, VAM (value-added modeling)

Marion Brady on Curricular Fragmentation

By dianeravitch
October 22, 2017 //
33

Marion Brady is a veteran educator who is now 90 years old. He does not give up hope that a better education is possible.

He shared these quotes with me, and he invites you to contact him to discuss his views about curricular fragmentation. He has written often for Valerie Strauss’s Answer Sheet.

Curricular Fragmentation

John Goodlad: “The division into subjects and periods encourages a segmented rather than an integrated view of knowledge. Consequently, what students are asked to relate to in schooling becomes increasingly artificial, cut off from the human experiences subject matter is supposed to reflect.” A Place Called School, McGraw-Hill, 1984, p.266

Thomas Merton: “The world itself is no problem, but we are a problem to ourselves because we are alienated from ourselves, and this alienation is due precisely to an inveterate habit of division by which we break reality into pieces and then wonder why, after we have manipulated the pieces until they fall apart, we find ourselves out of touch with life, with reality, with the world, and most of all with ourselves.” Contemplation in a World of Action, Paulist Press, 1992, p.153)

Theodore Sizer: “The fact is that there is virtually no federal-level talk about intellectual coherence for [a student]. The curricular suggestions and mandates leave the traditional “subjects” in virtually total isolation, and both the old and most of the new assessment systems blindly continue to tolerate a profound separation of subject matters, accepting them as conventionally defined … The crucial, culminating task for [the student] of making sense of it all, at some rigorous standard, is left entirely to him alone.” School Reform and the Feds: The Perspective from Sam. Planning and Changing, v22 n3-4 p248-52 1991

Neil Postman: “There is no longer any principle that unifies the school curriculum and furnishes it with meaning.” Phi Delta Kappan, January 1983, p. 316

David W. Orr: [Formal schooling] “…imprints a disciplinary template onto impressionable minds and with it the belief that the world really is as disconnected as the divisions, disciplines, and subdivisions of the typical curriculum. Students come to believe that there is such a thing as politics separate from ecology or that economics has nothing to do with physics.” Earth in Mind, Island Press, 1994, p.23

Leon Botstein: “”We must fight the inappropriate fragmentation of the curriculum by disciplines . . .” The Chronicle of Higher Education, December 1, 1982, P. 28

Peter M. Senge: “From a very early age, we are taught to break apart problems, to fragment the world. This apparently makes complex tasks and subjects more manageable, but we pay a hidden, enormous price. We can no longer see the consequences of our actions; we lose our intrinsic sense of connection to a larger whole.” The Fifth Discipline, Currency Doubleday 1990, p.3

Harlan Cleveland: “It is a well-known scandal that our whole educational system is geared more to categorizing and analyzing patches of knowledge than to threading them together.” Change, July/August 1985, p. 20

Thomas Jefferson: “…every science is auxiliary to every other.” Extract from letter to Thomas Randolph, 27 August, 1786

Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. “The things other people have put into my head, at any rate, do not fit together nicely, are often useless and ugly, are out of proportion with one another, and out of proportion with life as it really is outside my head.” Preface to Breakfast of Champions

Buckminster Fuller: “American education has evolved in such a way it will be the undoing of the society.” (Quoted in Officer Review, March 1989, p.5)
Rene Descartes: “If, therefore, anyone wishes to search out the truth of things in serious earnest, he ought not to select one special science; for all the sciences are conjoined with each other and interdependent…” Rule 1, Rules for the Direction of the Mind, 1628.

Alfred North Whitehead: “[We must] eradicate the fatal disconnection of subjects which kills the vitality of the modern curriculum.” Presidential Address to the Mathematical Association of England, 1916

Felix Frankfurter: “That our universities have grave shortcomings for the intellectual life of this nation is by now a commonplace. The chief source of their inadequacy is probably the curse of departmentalization.” Introduction to Alfred North Whitehead’s The Aims of Education, Mentor 1948
John Muir: “When we try to pick up anything by itself we find it is attached to everything in the universe.”

Ernest Boyer: “All of our experience should have made it clear by now that faculty and students will not derive from a list of disjointed courses a coherent curriculum revealing the necessary interdependence of knowledge.” (Paraphrased by Daniel Tanner in his review of Boyer’s book High School. Phi Delta Kappan, March 1984, p. 10)

Robert Stevens: “We have lost sight of our responsibility for synthesizing knowledge.” (Liberal Education, Vol. 71, No. 2, 1985, p.163)

Jonathan Smith: “To dump on students the task of finding coherence in their education is indefensible.” Quoted in Time, April 20, 1981, p. 50

John Kemeny: “The problems now faced by our society transcend the bounds of the disciplines.” Quoted by William Newell in Liberal Education, Association of American Colleges, 1983, Vol. 69, No. 3

Arnold Thackeray: “The world of our experience does not come to us in the pieces we have been carving out.” Quoted in The Chronicle of Higher Education, October 1987, p. A 14

David Cohen: “Testing companies, textbook publishers, teacher specialists, associations representing specific content areas, and other agencies all speak in different and often inconsistent voices…The U.S. does not have a coherent system for deciding on and articulating curriculum and instruction.” (Phi Delta Kappan, March 1990, p. 522

Frank Betts: “Learning begins as an integrated experience as a newborn child experiences the world in its totality.” ASCD 1993, 13.7

Greg Stefanich and Charles Dedrick: “Learning is best when all of a student’s educational experiences merge to form an integrated whole, thereby transforming information into a larger network of personal knowledge.” Science and Mathematics, 1985, Vol.58, p.275

James Coomer: “Our educational systems . . . are now primarily designed to teach people specialized knowledge — to enable students to divide and dissect knowledge. At the heart of this pattern of teaching is . . . a view of the world that is quite simply false.” (Texas Tech Journal of Education, 1982, p.166)

Thích Nhất Hạnh: “People normally cut reality into compartments, and so are unable to see the interdependence of all phenomena. To see one in all and all in one is to break through the great barrier which narrows one’s perception of reality.” The Miracle of Mindfulness, Beacon Press, 1975, 6

David Bohm: “I think the difficulty is this fragmentation. All thought is broken up into bits. Like this nation, this country, this industry, this profession and so on… And they can’t meet. That comes about because thought has developed traditionally in a way such that it claims not to be effecting anything but just telling you the way things are. Therefore, people cannot see that they are creating a problem and then apparently trying to solve it… Wholeness is a kind of attitude or approach to the whole of life. If we can have a coherent approach to reality then reality will respond coherently to us.” Wholeness: A Coherent Approach to Reality (Presentation in Amsterdam, in 1990, documentary Art Meets Science & Spirituality in a Changing Economy.

Leonardo Da Vinci: “Learn how to see—realize that everything connects to everything else.”

Paul DeHart Hurd: “There are neither philosophical nor psychological grounds for compartmentalizing knowledge into islands of information as school subjects are currently conceived.” Middle School Journal, Vol. 20, No.5, p.22

James Moffett: “[It is essential to integrate] learning across subjects, media, and kinds of discourse so that individuals may continuously synthesize their own thought structures.” Phi Delta Kappan, September 1985, p. 55.

Tsunesaburo Makiguchi: “Through their studies, children must be brought to that point of awareness wherein . . . [they] get some sort of total picture of it all . . . In advancing level by level through the curriculum, students should be internalizing an overall idea structure of means and ends.” Education for Creative Living, 1989, p. 196

Stephanie Pace Marshall: “The natural world is now understood as an interdependent, relational, and living web of connections.” (The Power to Transform, Jossey-Bass, 2006, p. xii)

Richard A. Gibboney, “The atomized chop-chop of the high school curriculum has filtered up to higher education.” The Stone Trumpet, State University of New York Press, 1994. p. 9

Roger Schank: “Academics designed the school system. To them, it seemed natural that subjects that they were experts on should be taught in high school. Such a simple thought has created a major problem. Education ought not to be subject-based but, in a sense, we can’t help but think of it that way because we all went to schools that were subject-based.” (Teaching Minds, How cognitive science can save our schools). Teachers College Press, Columbia University, 2011

Arthur Koestler: “…all decisive events in the history of scientific thought can be described in terms of mental cross-fertilization between different disciplines.” The Act of Creation, Penguin, London 1964

Albert Einstein: “I like to experience the universe as one harmonious whole.” Einstein and the Poet: In Search of the Cosmic Man (1983)

Association of American Colleges: “We do not believe that the road to a coherent education can be constructed from a set of required subjects or academic disciplines.” (“Integrity In the College Curriculum, A Report to the Academic Community,” Project On Redefining the Meaning and Purpose of Baccalaureate Degrees, 1985)

Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching: “The disciplines have fragmented themselves into smaller and smaller pieces, and undergraduates find it difficult to see patterns in their courses and relate what they learn to life.” Prologue to “College: The Undergraduate Experience in America,” November 1986

Marion Brady’s homepage: http://www.marionbrady.com/
His email: mbrady2222@gmail.com

Categories Curriculum
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