A few months ago, Steven Singer wrote a critique of privatization that Facebook refused to let him post. It wa titled “School Choice is a Lie.” This Post was blocked by Facebook, and Steven was banned from Facebook for a week. It has happened again!
Steven wrote this post, “The False Paradise of School Privatization.” Once again, Facebook has banished him. Please read the post and put it on your Facebook page if you have one.
In Chicago’s rush to close public schools, one neighborhood will have no high school at all.
Wendy Katten of Raise Your Hand, a public education activist, interviews a parent who describes how the voices of parents were ignored in the latest round of school closings.
More school closings are underway in Chicago. In the Englewood neighborhood, which was hit hard by the shuttering of some 50 schools in 2013, there will be no public high schools left should the city follow through on the latest plan.
The Chicago Public Schools (CPS) claims the community requested the school closings this year but many people in the affected neighborhoods question that claim. Raise Your Hand, a public education advocacy group, spoke to one parent, a member of the Local School Council of Harper High School, one of the schools that’s slated for closure. Clifford Fields, who has been an active community member in West Englewood for decades, said that no one from the LSC, the elected parent body that oversees Harper High, was invited to be part of the group that that signed off on closing every public high school in Englewood.
In an interview with Raise Your Hand, Fields had blunt words for Mayor Rahm Emanuel and other city officials who, as he put it, “are treating our kids like they are cars, just trying to shuffle them around.” Fields also cited Chicago’s gang problem, which prevents children in areas like Englewood from moving safely even from block to block. “But you want to shift our kids to other schools in other neighborhoods.” Fields called on officials to redirect resources to schools like Harper. Field’s children graduated from Harper and TEAM Englewood. He was also a Local School Council member at Goodlow elementary, which was part of the 2013 closings.
In Chicago, parents don’t matter. Nor do students.
Tom Birmingham was one of the fathers of the Massachusetts Education Reform Act of 1993. He writes here that the teaching of history has always been considered a foundational part of education in Massachusetts, the birthplace of public schooling. History is fundamental to citizenship, and citizenship is the main purpose of public schooling.
He writes:
“ABOUT 25 YEARS AGO, as a member of the Massachusetts Senate, I co-authored the Massachusetts Education Reform Act. Drafting a complex bill with such far-reaching consequences requires significant compromise, but one thing my counterparts in the House of Representatives and then-Gov. Bill Weld all agreed upon was the importance of educating students about our nation’s history.
“As a result, the law explicitly requires instruction about the Declaration of Independence, the Federalist Papers and the US Constitution. We also made passage of a US history test a high school graduation requirement.
“Sadly, subsequent generations of political leaders have not shared our view of the importance of US history. It is now becoming an afterthought in too many of our public schools.
“The Founding Fathers believed that to exercise the rights and privileges of citizenship, Americans had to understand our history and its seminal documents. They also saw it as the role of public schools to pass on what James Madison called “the political religion of the nation” to its children. As the great educational standards expert E.D. Hirsch said, “The aim of schooling was not just to Americanize the immigrants, but also to Americanize the Americans.”
“Without this, they believed the new nation itself might dissolve. They had good reason: Until then internal dissension had brought down every previous republic.
“According to Professor Hirsch, the public school curriculum should be based on acquiring wide background knowledge, not just learning how to learn. This belief is diametrically opposed to the view held by many that the main purpose of public education should merely be to prepare students for the workforce. As it turns out, the evidence is fairly strong that students who receive a broad liberal arts education also tend to do better financially than those taught a narrower curriculum focused on just training students for a job.
“The role of public schools in creating citizens capable of informed participation in American democracy was particularly important in a pluralistic society like ours. Unlike so many others, our country was not based upon a state religion, ancient boundaries or bloodlines, but instead on a shared system of ideas, principles, and beliefs.”
Some people think that the way to reinvigorate history in the curriculum is to require standardized history tests. I disagree. History must be taught with questions, discussions, debates, theories, and curiosity. Standardized tests would reduce history to nothing more than facts. Facts matter, but what makes history exciting is the quest and the questions, the controversies and the uncertainty.
In 2000, when George W. Bush ran for President, we heard about “the Texas Miracle.” We were told that testing every child every year would produce high test scores and close the achievement gaps. Believing in the claim, Congress passed No Child Left Behind, which required testing every child every year from grades 3-8.
Then came “Race to the Top,” which ratcheted up the testing punishments, requiring that teachers be evaluated by student test scores.
In 2011, the National Research Council warned that test-based accountability was not working and was unlikely ever to work.
Congress ignored its report. In 2015, Congress passed the Every Student Succeeds Act, continuing the practice of annual testing, a practice not known in other nations.
What has 17 years of high-stakes testing produced? Narrowing of the curriculum to what is tested. Cheating scandals. Gaming the system. Teacher demoralization. Teacher shortages.
Billions spent on testing instead of teaching.
But nowhere closer to the “top.” Even the NAEP scores went flat in 2015, the first reversal in many years.
The latest international test results show no gains in reading. None.
This failure belongs to Reformers.
David Bloomfield and Alan Aja are concerned that Betsy DeVos’s effort to reduce regulations is a barely disguised assault on civil rights protections for students.
“Since taking office last February, the U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos has eliminated dozens of education directives to school officials. Now the Education Department is reconsidering a rule intended to hold states to a higher standard when determining if districts have overenrolled minority students in special education. It has also signaled an intention to pull back on considering “systemic” causes of discrimination during civil rights investigations at schools.
“The unprecedented cleansing and revisions of Department of Education guidance to states, school districts, and private schools is passed off largely as a response to President Donald Trump’s simplistic Jan. 30 executive order that agencies remove two regulatory documents for every one issued. Even if, as has been reported, large swaths of the documents the department has eliminated so far have been out-of-date or superfluous, other guidance revisions have grave implications for marginalized students. The department’s headline-making withdrawal of Obama-era policy guidance permitting transgender students to use bathrooms and locker rooms that match their gender identities is just one such example.”
As a private citizen, DeVos was not known for hpsupporting civil rights causes. She and her family were known for their support for vouchers, anti-gay organizations, creationism, and libertarian activism. She appointed a woman to run the Office for Civil Rights who is known for anti-feminism and opposition to affirmative action. Advocates for students must keep close watch over the activities of the U.S. Office for Civil Rights.
When I first saw that now-famous photograph of Mike Flynn at Vladimir Putin’s head table in Moscow in 2015, I immediately recognized Jill Stein sitting at the same table, to the right, in the foreground. I wondered why she was there. I googled and learned that leaders of the Green Party in Russia were angry at her for not calling out Putin for his egregious human rights abuses. I wondered why no one in the media questioned why she was there or even noticed her presence.
I just discovered in my browsing that last June “Mother Jones” picked up the storynoticed her attendance in Moscow, noticed she was seated at the head table. When Stein was asked why she was there, she said she went to Moscow “to lay out some of my foreign policy proposals and get Russian reactions to them.” Why would a candidate for the American Presidency travel to Moscow to do that? That is certainly not customary. Since when do presidential candidates seek out the Russian reaction to their ideas about American foreign policy before they run for Office?
Then she said she actually didn’t speak to any Russians. She shook Putin’s hand and had no idea who else was at the head table. So she never got a chance to “to lay out some of my foreign policy proposals and get Russian reactions to them.” There was no laying out of ideas and no reactions to them. So why was she there? Why was she at the head table with Putin? Why didn’t anyone speak to her? In the future, will it be routine for all presidential candidates to check in with Putin first?
Stein received 1 million votes. Was she a spoiler who threw the election to Trump?
My mind boggles thinking of the many books that will be written about the 2016 election.
“Lizabeth Dee” (With a lot of help from Edgar Allan Poe– “Annabel Lee”. And yes, her middle name really is “Dee”.)
It was many and many a year ago,
In a Kingdom by the sea [Michigan, by Lake Michigan]
That a Sec Ed there lived whom you may know
By the name of Elizabeth Dee
And this billionaire lived with no other thought
Than to loathe and be loathed by me
I was a teacher and she was a plant
In this Kingdom by the sea,
And we loathed with a loathe that was more than loathe—
I and Elizabeth Dee
With a loathe that the wicked devils in Hell
Coveted her and me.
And this was the reason that, long ago
In a Kingdom by the sea,
A wind blew out of a cloud, thrilling
The voucherful Lizabeth Dee
So that her highborn kinsmen came
And bore her away from me,
To put her up in a big White House
In the Kingdumb by D.C.
The devils, not half so happy in Hell
Went envying her and me—
Yes!—that was the reason (as all men know,
In this Kingdom by the sea)
That the wind came out of the cloud by night,
Thrilling, fulfilling Elizabeth Dee
But our loathe it was stronger by far than the loathe
Of those who were older than we—
Of many far wiser than we—
And neither the devils in Hell below
Nor the demons down under the sea
Can ever dissever my sole from the soul
Of the voucherful Lizabeth Dee
For the moon never beams, without bringing me dreams
Of the charterful Lizabeth Dee
And the stars never rise, but I hear “privatize”
From the dollarful Lizabeth Dee;
So, to all I confide, I will not let her ride
On my classroom— my schoolhouse — my life and my pride
In her wealth-bubble there by the sea—
In her Kingdumb there by DC
Robert Shepherd, teacher, author, curriculum developer, and all-round educator, does not like Common Core. Since he returned to the classroom, he likes it less each day. He wrote the following commentary for David Coleman, developer of the Common Core and now president of the College Board.
A piece I wrote for David Coleman, in Honor of Shakespeare’s 450th Birthday
I once read, in “The American Scholar,” I think, or perhaps it was in “Verbatim,” a tragic report on the paucity of dedicated swear words in classical Latin. The Romans were always envious of the subtlety of the Greek tongue, of its rich resources for philosophical and literary purposes, but the Greeks were even less well endowed with profanities than the Romans were. The poor Romans had to result to graffiti, which they did with wild and glorious abandon, while the Greeks stuck to salacious statuary and decoration of vases.
I have a nice little collection of books on cursing in various languages. French, Spanish, German, Italian–the modern European languages, generally–are rich mines of lively expressions. But our language, which has been so promiscuous through the centuries, has to be the finest for cursing that we apes have yet developed. We English speakers are blessed with borrowed riches, there, that speakers of other tongues can only dream of.
So, when I watch a David Coleman video, there’s a lot for me to say, and a lot of choice language to say it with.
Those of you who are English teachers will be familiar with the Homeric catalog. It’s a literary technique that is basically a list. The simple list isn’t much to write home about, you might think, but this humble trope can be extraordinarily effective. Consider the following trove of treasures. What are these all names of? (Take a guess. Don’t cheat. The answer is below.)
Green Darner
Roseate Skimmer
Great Pondhawk
Ringed Cascader
Comet Darner
Banded Pennant
Orange Emperor
Banded Groundling
Black Percher
Little Scarlet
Tau Emerald
Southern Yellowjack
Vagrant Darter
Beautiful Demoiselle
Large Red
Mercury Bluet
Eastern Spectre
Somber Goldenring
Back to my dreams of properly cursing Coleman and the Core, of dumping the full Homeric catalog of English invective on them.
I have wanted to do so on Diane Ravitch’s blog, but Diane doesn’t allow such language in her living room, and I respect that. So I am sending this post, re Coleman and the Core, thinking that perhaps Diane won’t mind a little Shakespeare. (After all, it’s almost Shakespeare’s birthday. His 450th. Happy birthday, Willie!)
Let’s begin with some adjectives:
Artless, beslubbering, bootless, churlish, craven, dissembling, errant, fawning, forward, gleeking, impertinent, loggerheaded, mammering, merkin-faced, mewling, qualling, rank, reeky, rougish, pleeny, scurvie, venomed, villainous, warped and weedy,
And then add some compound participles:
beef-witted, boil-brained, dismal-dreaming, earth-vexing, fen-sucked, folly-fallen, idle-headed, rude-growing, spur-galled, . . .
And round it all off with a noun (pick any one that you please):
Bum-baily
Canker-blossom
Clotpole
Coxcomb
Codpiece
Dewberry
Flap-dragon
Foot-licker
Hugger-mugger
Lout
Mammet
Minnow
Miscreant
Moldwarp
Nut-hock
Puttock
Pumpion
Skainsmate
Varlet
Or, if you want whole statements from the Bard himself:
“Thy tongue outvenoms all the worms of the Nile.” (worms = snakes)
“Methink’st thou art a general offence and every man should beat thee.”
“You scullion! You rampallian! You fustilarian! I’ll tickle your catastrophe!”
“You starvelling, you eel-skin, you dried neat’s-tongue, you bull’s-pizzle, you stock-fish–O for breath to utter what is like thee!-you tailor’s-yard, you sheath, you bow-case, you vile standing tuck!”
“Thou sycophantic, merkin-faced varlet.”
“Thou cream-faced loon!”
There. Glad I got that out of my system.
BTW. Those are names of dragonflies, above. Beautiful, aren’t they? Shakespeare loved odd names of things. Scholars have shown that he used in writing a wider vocabulary than any other author who has ever wrote in our glorious tongue. Again, happy birthday, Willie. What fools those Ed Deformers be!
We have noticed the pressure to put students in Advanced Placement classes, whether or not they are prepared or interested. My first thought was that the College Board was making big money and encouraging this unsound policy.
Laura Chapman sees other reasons:
Speaking of AP courses, I think part of the problem is not just the College Board but the stack ratings of high schools published every year by U.S. News and World Report.
Their metrics focus on students’ scores on standardized tests, graduation rates, but also the number of Advanced Placement or International Baccalaureate courses taken, and passed.
The awards for gold, silver, and bronze status differ for public and charter schools. There is killer “tie breaker” for schools forwarded by the College Board and US News Rankings. The CRI value is a composite score conjured from scores on statewide tests, graduation rates and the like.
Begin quote: This year (2017) U.S. News and the College Board collaboratively developed a new tiebreaker to avoid ties in the numerical rankings when schools had the same unrounded CRI values, which was the case for the top 25 ranked schools in the 2017 Best High Schools rankings.
This new tiebreaker was the percentage of 12th-graders in the 2014-2015 academic year who took AP exams and the percentage who passed those exams in at least four of the seven AP content areas. The tiebreaker measures the breadth of students who took and passed AP exams across multiple disciplines.
The AP content areas measured were English, Math & Computer Science, Sciences, World Languages & Culture, History and Social Sciences, Arts and AP Capstone.
Students who took and passed exams in two or three areas were given partial credit – 50 percent and 75 percent, respectively.
Those who took and passed AP exams in four of the seven AP content areas earned full credit.
The percentage of students taking exams in multiple areas was weighted 25 percent and the percentage of students passing exams in multiple areas was weighted 75 percent to derive the final tiebreaker score.
High schools where the largest proportion of 12th-grade students in the 2014-2015 academic year took and passed AP tests in at least four AP content areas scored highest in the tiebreaker.
The new tiebreaker was used to break ties among 297 schools – 61 gold medal schools and 236 silver medal schools. The College Board computed the tiebreaker. End Quote.
Of course for a richer understanding about the history of the idea that high school must be college, you can read any number of books, or some legacy reports from the American Diploma Project from which the Common Core evolved, to the Gates Foundation Database with some key works, among them “college and career ready,” early college, and College Board,
https://www.usnews.com/education/best-high-schools/articles/how-us-news-calculated-the-rankings
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Jeff Bryant has a warning for Democrats: Beware of corporate education reform.
Leave it to the Republicans.
Don’t promote privatization and charters. Don’t bash teachers. Don’t beat up on unions. You erode your base.
He points to Denver and Virginia. In Denver, a candidate for school board won, even though she was outspent nearly 5-1.
In Virginia, Ralph Northam made clear his opposition to charters.
Listen, Democrats.
Diane Ravitch's blog 