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Mercedes Schneider: Betsy DeVos Discovers “A Nation at Risk” and Claims That Choice is The Answer

By dianeravitch
December 5, 2017 //
14

Mercedes Schneider’s reviews Betsy DeVos’s speech to her friend Jeb Bush’s Foundation for Educational Excellence.

Betsy and Jeb have this in common: They both hate public schools and have devoted their life to demeaning, belittling, and attacking the schools that 85-90% of American children attend. They are in love with consumer choice, and they would like nothing better than to direct public funds to religious schools, for-profit schools, cyber schools, and homeschooling.

As Mercedes notes, Betsy (or more likely, a speechwriter) discovered “A Nation at Risk,” The 1983 jeremiad that blamed public schools for the loss of industries to Germany and Japan. The report was written in the midst of the 1982 recession, and the commissioners decided that the schools were to blame for the downturn. When the economy recovered, no one bothered to thank the schools.

Betsy devoutly believes that choice will fix everything, but “A Nation at Risk” didn’t mention choice.

And she continues to ignore the evidence of the past 25 years of choice. Her home state of Michigan is overrun with charter schools, and its standing on NAEP fell from the middle of the 50 States to the bottom 10 from 2003 to 2013. The news out of the New Orleans all-Charter District throws cold water on the Charter Movement, as New Orleans continues to be a low-performing District in a low-performing State. The evidence on vouchers continues to accumulate, and it is not promising. In the most recent voucher studies, students actually lose ground. After three or four years, those who have not left to return to public schools catch up with their peers who stayed in public schools, but that’s probably because the weakest students left.

Now that Betsy is talking numbers, maybe she will pay attention to the research on charters and vouchers and admit that her favorite panacea is not working.

But I’m not holding my breath.

Categories Accountability, ALEC, Betsy DeVos, Bush, Jeb, Charter Schools, Corporate Reform, Michigan, New Orleans, School Choice, Vouchers

AP Study: Charters Intensify Racial Segregation, and Charter Leaders Don’t Care

By dianeravitch
December 5, 2017 //
39

The Associated Press conducted a study of racial segregation in the schools and concluded that charter schools were responsible for intensifying segregation.

Charter schools are among the nation’s most segregated, an Associated Press analysis finds — an outcome at odds, critics say, with their goal of offering a better alternative to failing traditional public schools.

National enrollment data shows that charters are vastly over-represented among schools where minorities study in the most extreme racial isolation. As of school year 2014-2015, more than 1,000 of the nation’s 6,747 charter schools had minority enrollment of at least 99 percent, and the number has been rising steadily…

In the AP analysis of student achievement in the 42 states that have enacted charter school laws, along with the District of Columbia, the performance of students in charter schools varies widely. But schools that enroll 99 percent minorities-both charters and traditional public schools-on average have fewer students reaching state standards for proficiency in reading and math.

“Desegregation works. Nothing else does,” said Daniel Shulman, a Minnesota civil rights attorney. “There is no amount of money you can put into a segregated school that is going to make it equal.”

Shulman singled out charter schools for blame in a lawsuit that accuses the state of Minnesota of allowing racially segregated schools to proliferate, along with achievement gaps for minority students. Minority-owned charters have been allowed wrongly to recruit only minorities, he said, as others wrongly have focused on attracting whites.

But charter advocates respond that the segregation in charters is voluntary and therefore acceptable.

There is growing debate over just how much racial integration matters. For decades after the Supreme Court ruled in 1954 that segregated schools were unconstitutional, integration was held up as a key measure of progress for minorities, but desegregation efforts have stalled and racial imbalances are worsening in American schools. Charter schools have been championed by the U.S. education secretary, Betsy DeVos, and as the sector continues to grow it will have to contend with the question of whether separate can be equal.

National Alliance for Public Charter Schools spokeswoman Vanessa Descalzi said today’s charters cannot be compared to schools from the Jim Crow era, when blacks were barred from certain schools.

“Modern schools of choice with high concentrations of students of color is a demonstration of parents choosing the best schools for their children, rooted in the belief that the school will meet their child’s educational needs, and often based on demonstrated student success,” Descalzi said. “This is not segregation…”

Charter schools, which are funded publicly and run privately, enroll more than 2.7 million nationwide, a number that has tripled over the last decade. Meanwhile, as the number of non-charter schools holds steady in the U.S., charters account for nearly all the growth of schools where minorities face the most extreme racial isolation.

While 4 percent of traditional public schools are 99 percent minority, the figure is 17 percent for charters. In cities, where most charters are located, 25 percent of charters are over 99 percent nonwhite, compared to 10 percent for traditional schools.

School integration gains achieved over the second half of the last century have been reversed in many places over the last 20 years, and a growing number of schools educate students who are poor and mostly black or Hispanic, according to federal data.

The resegregation has been blamed on the effects of charters and school choice, the lapse of court-ordered desegregation plans in many cities, and housing and economic trends…

Howard Fuller, a prominent advocate of charters and vouchers whose organization was funded by rightwing foundations for millions of dollars said that “It’s a waste of time to talk about integration.”

He might have also said it is a waste of time to talk about charters and vouchers, which have not provided educational excellence for large numbers of black children. Boucher’s actually depress test scores, and the charter “successes” are those that winnow their students down to the survivors. There is no large-scale charter succcess story. School Choice has failed black and brown children.

The AP study gave breakouts for individual districts. I can’t find the link, but will keep looking. Here is the data for the schools of Jacksonville, Florida.

“Between the 181 public and charter schools in Duval County, 13 percent of them reported a black student population of 90 percent or higher in 2014, while none had a 90 or higher white population. Of the 10 most segregated schools in Jacksonville, seven of them were either charter or magnet schools; the other three being traditional neighborhood schools.

“Looking at the data a different way, 1 percent of white students attended a school that is overwhelmingly white while 23 percent of Duval County’s black students attend a school where at least 90 percent of the student body is black.”

Categories Charter Schools, Privatization, Segregation

Why Was a Pennsylvania Senator So Eager to Get a Tax Break for a Small College in Michigan?

By dianeravitch
December 5, 2017 //
9

Senator Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania sponsored an amendment to the GOP tax bill that would exempt small Hillsdale College in Michigan from a tax that would apply to other colleges with a sizable endowment. This exemption is worth $700,000 a year to Hillsdale College.

Why did he care so much about a college that is not even in his home state?

Hillsdale is an unusual college. It is one of the very few in the nation that refuses any federal funds, even for student aid, so that it is exempt from any federal regulations, like civil rights.

It is also a special object of the affection of the DeVos family. The DeVos family gave Pat Toomey $60,000 in his close 2016 election. He won’t face the voters again until 2022. Hillsdale College is also a favorite of the Koch brothers, who also supported Toomey’s re-election campaign.

Columnist Will Bunch explains Toomey’s peculiar affection for a super-conservative college not in his own state:

If you’ve never heard of a small institution of higher learning called Hillsdale College, here are a few things you should know about it. The school decided after a 1980s Supreme Court ruling to forego all federal funds, which means it doesn’t need to follow the Title IX rules aimed at reducing campus sexual assault, let alone any guidelines on affirmative action. The college is thus mostly white — and its longtime president once referred to non-white students at a legislative hearing as “dark ones.” It also has a reputation as an unfriendly place for LGBTQ students — which was driven home when the school’s chaplain called for prayer against “evil” gay marriage.

And there’s also this: Hillsdale College is located in southern Michigan, some 280 miles west of the commonwealth of Pennsylvania.

All in all, to paraphrase the cliché of the moment, this was a bizarre Hillsdale that one of Pennsylvania’s U.S. senators, Pat Toomey, chose to die on.

OK, maybe “die” isn’t the right word, but the state’s junior senator did reveal a lot about himself on the wee wee hours on Friday when — in a strange 11-minute debate amid the dead-of-night push for the GOP’s $1 trillion millionaire tax giveaway — Toomey tried to defend his amendment that would mean a $700,000 annual tax break for the conservative-oriented Hillsdale by exempting it from a levy on endowments that would hammer the University of Pennsylvania and several other schools in the state Toomey supposedly represents.

Thanks to a few wayward Republicans, the special carveout for Hillsdale College was deleted, but later recouped by adding a few more colleges to the mix:

And it was all for a murky outcome — Toomey’s amendment was voted down (even some of his fellow Republicans thought this a bridge too far), although a later, broader amendment removed not just Hillsdale but also many more traditional universities from the endowment tax.

The universities and colleges that will pay a tax on their endowments will have less money for scholarships for needy students. But that is of no concern to Pat Toomey, or Betsy DeVos, or the Koch brothers.

Categories Betsy DeVos, Higher Education, Koch Brothers, Michigan, Pennsylvania

Good News! Newly Elected Douglas County, Colorado, School Board Kills Voucher Program!

By dianeravitch
December 5, 2017 //
4

The Douglas County School Board voted unanimously to shut down its voucher program, the only one in the nation authorized by a school district. This was a big setback for the Koch brothers’ Americans for Prosperity, which lavished funding on the DougCo schools.

Douglas County is one of the wealthiest districts in the nation.

Anti-voucher parents and educators swept the rightwing school board out of Office in the November elections.

“The Douglas County school board Monday put to bed the district’s controversial Choice Scholarship program, ending a six-year battle to set up the nation’s only district-approved voucher program.

“The vote to end the voucher program, and the legal battle that went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, was unanimous: six to nothing. One board member, Kevin Leung, did not participate in the deliberations or the vote, fulfilling a campaign pledge that he would sit out the vote because he is a plaintiff in the lawsuit against the school district.

“Leung is one of four board members elected on a campaign pledge to end the voucher program. He initially asked to be excused from Monday’s meeting but was asked to be present as the board would also discuss its search for a permanent superintendent.

“The other three — Chris Ciancio-Schor, Anthony Graziano and new board Secretary Krista Holtzmann — all voted to end the program along with board President David Ray, Vice President Wendy Vogel and Board Treasurer Anne-Marie Lemieux.

“The Choice Scholarship was authorized in March 2011 by a conservative majority elected in 2009 and backed with tens of thousands of dollars in campaign donations from wealthy pro-voucher Republicans including Alex Cranberg of Aspect Energy and Ed McVaney, founder of software company JD Edwards.

“The program would have given a taxpayer-funded voucher, valued in 2015 at around $5,000, to up to 500 Douglas County students who lived in the district and attend Douglas County public schools for one year.

“The Choice Scholarship was the first in the nation to be authorized by a school district. Most voucher programs are created by state legislatures and are targeted to low income students in failing schools.

“Douglas County, the fifth wealthiest county in the nation, did not include an income qualifier for its voucher.

“Until recently, school board races have generally been low-key (and low-dollar) campaigns. But the big dollars spent in Douglas County and Denver on this year’s races signaled the beginning of radical change in those two school districts around the issue of school choice. In Douglas County, the hot button issue was the voucher program; in Denver, it was charter and “innovation schools.” The Denver school board hiked the number of charter schools from 17 to 60, beginning in 2010, and the number of innovation schools, similar to charters, from seven to 49.

“In June 2011, the parents group Taxpayers for Public Education filed for an injunction against the school district to block the program’s implementation. The case wound its way to the Colorado Supreme Court, which in 2015 ruled the program unconstitutional based on the state’s Blaine amendment, which bans the use of taxpayer dollars for religious purposes, including religious education.

“The district, the third largest in the state, with more than 60,000 students, received $1.8 million in donations for its legal expenses from the Daniels Fund and the Walton Family Foundation. The district appealed the Colorado high court’s decision to the U.S. Supreme Court, which sent the case back to the Colorado Supreme Court last June.

“Prior to Monday’s board vote, which took place just after 7 p.m., the board listened to more than an hour of pleas from those who wanted to make sure the new board members held to their pledge, as well as from those who wanted the voucher program to have a chance to work.

“During the board’s public comment period, every speaker who addressed the voucher program asked the board to end it.”

Here is the report from Chalkbeat Colorado.

“Public funds should not be diverted to private schools, which are not accountable to the public,” said board member Krista Holtzmann.

“The state Supreme Court, which during the summer was directed by the U.S. Supreme Court to revisit the case, will have the ultimate say in whether the legal challenge will end.

“However, the court usually does not consider moot cases, said Mark Silverstein, legal director for the ACLU of Colorado, a plaintiff in the case.

“The board’s action is a blow to conservative education reform advocates and voucher supporters in Colorado and across the country. Proponents of vouchers had hoped a victory at the U.S. Supreme Court would set a national precedent.

“The legal question at the center of the voucher debate is whether a local school district can send tax dollars to private-religious institutions. A majority of the schools that enrolled in the Douglas County voucher system, known as the Choice Scholarship Program, were religious.

“The state Supreme Court in 2015 ruled that the district could not because the Colorado Constitution forbids it. The U.S. Supreme Court gave voucher supporters renewed hope this year when, in a similar case, it issued a narrow ruling for a preschool run by a church.

“A network of voucher supporters has argued that such constitutional prohibitions, known as Blaine Amendments, are rooted in Catholic bigotry and are outdated.

“Americans for Prosperity, a political nonprofit [the Billionaire Koch brothers] that advocates for free-market policies including private school vouchers, announced Friday it was spending “five figures” to warn Douglas County parents about the board’s decision to end the program.

“The new school board must put the needs of school children before any political belief,” Jesse Mallory, the group’s Colorado director, said in a statement. “Ending this program before it even has a chance to succeed and provide real change in our communities would be extremely shortsighted. If the board believes they should deny children more educational opportunities, AFP-Colorado will hold them accountable.”

“Opponents of vouchers, who showed up in force Monday night, presented a lengthy list of claims against private schools and vouchers. Some argued that private schools discriminate against students. Others suggested vouchers were part of a scheme to privatize education.

“What happens to the educational quality of children in the community school where there is less money to work with because of the voucher outflow?” said one speaker, Barbara Gomes Barlow, who has grandchildren in Douglas County schools. “It is diminished. It’s a fiction to believe that vouchers open up choice for all students. They do not.”

“Monday’s meeting comes nearly one month after four anti-voucher candidates — Holtzmann, Anthony Graziano, Chris Schor and Kevin Leung — resoundingly won seats on the board. Their opponents campaigned to keep the legal fight alive.”

Categories Colorado, Corporate Reformers, Koch Brothers, Privatization, Vouchers

The GOP Tax Bill Will Smash Homeowners in Blue States

By dianeravitch
December 4, 2017 //
27

The Republicans passed a tax bill on both houses intended to hurt homeowners and public services in blue states. Home prices will tumble. And that’s not all.

“The tax bill approved by the Senate is many things, offering a huge tax cut for corporations, lower rates for the wealthy, and a big victory for Republicans and the White House.

“It is also an economic dagger aimed at high-tax, high-cost and generally Democratic-leaning areas — most notably New York City and its neighbors.

“The bill, if enacted into law, could send home prices tumbling 10 percent or more in parts of the New York area, according to one economic analysis. It could increase the regional tax burden, complicating companies’ efforts to attract skilled workers. It could make it harder for state and local governments to pay for upgrades to the transit system and other infrastructure. And it could force cuts in federal programs that help immigrants, the elderly and other low-income residents afford the region’s high cost of living.

“Most significantly, the bill would eliminate the deduction for state and local income taxes, and would cap the deduction for property taxes at $10,000.”

Categories Education Reform

Nonprofit Quarterly: What Happens When You Bust Public Sector Unions? Nothing Good.

By dianeravitch
December 4, 2017 //
21

Rob Meiksins writes in Nonprofit Quarterly about what happened to Wisconsin after Governor Scott Walker and the Legislature crushed public sector unions.

I previously posted the underlying study here about how teachers’ salaries and benefits declined.

Meiksins adds:

“An article by Mother Jones covering the same study cites a conversation with a professor at the University of Wisconsin teaching certification program, ranked by US News and World Report as one of the best in the country. This professor said that prior to Act 10, they would receive 300-400 applicants for their 125 openings, annually. Now they get one applicant per opening.”

Categories Education Reform

Valerie Strauss: New D.C. Chancellor Under Scrutiny for Budget Deficits in Oakland

By dianeravitch
December 4, 2017 //
6

If you have been reading this blog, you have already read about Antwan Wilson’s fiscal problems in Oakland, which he left behind to become the Chancellor of the D.C. schools. D.C. copied New York City, based on inflated claims of dramatic educational gains, and has a school system run by the Mayor. D.C.’s mayor chose Wilson and assured the public that he had a “proven record” of fiscal stability. But after he left, it turns out that he overspent the budget by 100% for administration, having added 75 positions–mostly in the central office–that had not been budgeted.

But as Valerie Strauss writes here, he left the Oakland budget in a shambles. Wilson is a “graduate” of the unaccredited Broad Superintendents Academy. Apparently one of the very important skills taught there is to load up the district with new administrators. Wilson did that.

Antwan Wilson came to Washington nine months ago to become chancellor of the city’s school system, a surprise choice by Mayor Muriel E. Bowser, who said she picked the Oakland, Calif., public schools chief because he was a “proven manager” who brought fiscal stability to that district.

But just a few months after Wilson left Oakland, the perennially troubled district is in such severe financial straits that the Board of Education on Nov. 8 ordered $15.1 million in immediate budget cuts — on top of millions of dollars in reductions made earlier in the year.

Mental health services, computer labs, librarians and supplies are now being pared or eliminated at some campuses, and the fiscal pain is expected to continue into the 2018-2019 school year, with additional cuts ordered by the school board. A recent analysis of the district’s finances by state auditors concluded that “the district has lost control of its spending.”

Wilson, who became superintendent of the 37,000-student Oakland district in 2014 after working as a teacher and principal in other states, through a spokeswoman declined requests for comment over the past week. Bowser’s office did not reply to requests for comment.

Categories Administrators, superintendents, District of Columbia, Oakland

How to Be an Effective Advocate for Your Schools

By dianeravitch
December 4, 2017 //
16

A regular reader who identifies himself as GregB has sound advice about how to advocate for your schools. His advice is similar to what is suggested by the Indivisibles. I would add that you can amplify your voice by joining the Network for Public Education. We exist to connect people to other activists in their community and state. Be informed. Participate. Work with allies.

GregB writes:

“For whatever its worth, I’ve worked as a legislative staffer, have organized and implemented grassroots advocacy campaigns in education, medical research, and health regulatory issues and Lloyd is far closer to the truth than Ed will ever be.

“First, phone calls are generally useless. Your call goes to young staffer–an intern or someone who has their first job–who literally take calls on every issue under the sun. They have no clue what people are calling about, take for/against tallies that few people pay attention to, and generally will answer you with something to the effect of: “I’ll be sure to pass your views on the senator/congressman.” The exception to the rule is when an issue becomes so big that it clogs up the phone lines, something like a Supreme Court nomination or a big issue that dominates the headlines and evening news. But it is aggregate numbers that matter, not individual messages. If you think your calls are being taken seriously, then you may as well agree with the argument that Hillary Clinton only won the popular vote because of widespread voter fraud.

“Second, emails are generally the same as phone calls, the only difference being that the computer algorithms generate pre-approved responses (if you are for the issue, you get one response, if you are against it, you get another). Occasionally when there are more than one issue addressed or nuances that don’t fit the algorithms, the message goes to a legislative correspondent who then patches together pre-approved language into “personal response.”

“Third, snail mail letters are effective if the stars line up such as: the arguments in the letter are personal with relevant examples and emotion and it reaches the eyes of a sympathetic staffer. While that is sometimes effective, more often than not, you will get an equivocal response that ends with “your views will be important to me should this issue ever be considered on the floor of the Senate/House.” In other words, nothing.

“If you do not know the names of: a local staffer who deals with constituents on the issue areas you care about, a DC legislative assistant and the legislative correspondent who supports him or her, and, if you are lucky, the local staff director and DC legislative director or chief of staff, then you are not doing effective citizen lobbying. You must contact one in the local and one in the DC staff a minimum of twice a year. You must be specific about your issue and remind them of what you contacted them about previously. And to be very effective, you should coordinate with other constituents who are like minded. You should share your correspondence to the boss with them.

“You should also know what committee/subcommittee memberships your senator/congressman has. If education is your issues and your senator/representative is not on the authorizing or appropriating committee on the issues you care about, then it is very unlikely that your views will ever reach the level of the boss. If it does, the best you can hope for is for that senator/representative to sign on to “Dear Colleague” letters about specific issue, i.e., they become lobbyists of a sort who try to influence the committees of jurisdiction. And if you are a real effective citizen lobbyist, you should find out about those “Dear Colleague” letters and make the staffers aware of them. If they are on the right committees, the tips below are even more important.

“If you can’t get to DC, you should try to schedule visits with local staffers (so that they become your lobbyists to their DC counterparts) once or twice a year and also request visits with their bosses during congressional recess periods. Town hall meetings used to be incredibly effective when only a dozen or so people showed up. That dynamic has changed dramatically since polarization has set in.

“Letters to the editor are more effective than phone calls or letters. They are more effective if you’ve done relationship building with staffers; you can make them aware of the letters. I have often received notes from my reps responding to letters I’ve written.

“One last tip. Should you get paper responses from your senators/representatives with signatures, know that signature machines are used. They have separate templates with full signatures and first names, the latter to make it more “personal.” But know that the boss has never touched that letter. When you get short, hand-written notes, then you know you’ve actually reached your senator/representative.

“But please don’t be deluded into thinking that your occasional call or email is actually accomplishing somethings. If you’re not willing to do your homework, build relationships, and keep it up since there is regular staff turnover (meaning you have to start the process all over again) you’re not engaging in effective advocacy.”

Categories Accountability, Supporting public schools

Rebecca Mead in The New Yorker on the Pedagogy of Eva Moskowitz

By dianeravitch
December 4, 2017 //
20

Most articles about Eva Moskowitz’s Success Academy charter schools report on her political ambitions, her love of combat with unions and critics, her ability to attract the generous support of billionaires.

Rebecca Mead writes here about the pedagogy of Success Academy charter schools. It is a weird combination of strict discipline and progressive instruction. The question is whether these two divergent approaches can co-exist.

These are schools where student behavior is monitored closely, and the smallest infractions are punished swiftly.

Can Deweyism flourish in a repressive environment?

A Success Academy classroom is a highly controlled, even repressive, place. In some classrooms that I observed, there were even expectations for how pencils should be laid down when not in use: at Springfield Gardens, the pencils had all been placed to the right of the desks, aligned with the edge. The atmosphere can be tense, and sometimes tips over into abuse, as was documented by the Times last year. The newspaper obtained a video that had been recorded secretly by an assistant teacher. It showed a teacher berating a first-grade girl who had made an error on her math worksheet, ripping up the sheet, and sending the child to sit in a “Calm Down” chair. Moskowitz has insisted that the event was an outlier, but the teacher in the video was an experienced educator who had been considered an exemplar of the Success Academy approach. Among some Success teachers, “rip and redo” was a term of art…

At some Success Academy schools, as many as twenty per cent of students are suspended at least once during the academic year. Moskowitz calls suspension “one tool in the toolkit,” and says that most occur during the first weeks of school, when students haven’t yet assimilated the school’s expectations. “I think some people have a fairly idealized view of the kind of language that even young children can use,” she told me. “We have young children who threaten to kill other people. And, yes, they are angelic, and, yes, we love them, but I think when you are outside schooling it is hard to imagine.” According to data from the New York State Education Department, three years ago, when Success Academy Springfield Gardens was starting up and had only kindergartners and first graders, eighteen per cent of the students were suspended at least once. It’s entirely believable that lots of children between the ages of four and seven found it impossible to meet the school’s stringent behavioral expectations. But it’s also fair to wonder whether, if one out of five young children cannot comply with the rules, there might not be something wrong with the rules….

But, even as Success seeks to inculcate its students with its strict behavioral codes, Moskowitz has embraced certain teaching methods that would not seem out of place in a much more permissive environment. Surprisingly, she cites John Dewey as an important influence on her thinking, and she champions hands-on science labs, frequent field trips, and long stretches of time for independent reading. Moskowitz has recruited as a consultant Anna Switzer, the former principal of P.S. 234, a highly regarded public school, in Tribeca. Before Switzer retired from P.S. 234, in 2003, she developed a progressive social-studies curriculum in which students undertake months-long projects on, say, the native populations that originally lived on Manhattan Island. At Success Academy, Switzer has been helping to build similar “modules,” such as an intensive six-week study, in the third grade, of the Brooklyn Bridge. For kindergartners, Success offers a six-week interdisciplinary study of bread. After students read about bread and baking—the importance of bread in different global cultures; the grains that go into making various breads—they take a field trip to a bakery, and bake bread as a classroom activity. Success modules remain heavy on reading and writing, Switzer acknowledges: when the kindergartners study bread, “shared texts” play a more prominent role than they would at a very progressive public school. Still, the curriculum for these projects belies the stereotype of Success as a rigid test-prep factory. “Being a progressive pedagogue is hard,” Moskowitz told me. “Your level of preparation has to be much higher, because you have to be responsive to the kids, and you have to allow the kid to have the eureka moment, while still mastering the material.”
Adding to the difficulty of implementing such ideals is the youth and relative inexperience of Success’s staff. On average, a school loses a quarter of its teachers every year; at some schools, more than half leave. Moskowitz told me that teachers typically stay with Success for just three years. This may be consistent with the job-hopping habits of millennials, but according to veteran educators it generally takes at least three years to become a decent teacher. An unseasoned workforce is not Moskowitz’s ideal, but, given the rapid growth of Success and the network’s projected expansion, it may be a structural inevitability. The system compensates for the inexperience of many of its teachers by having a highly centralized organization. Teachers do not develop their own lesson plans; rather, they teach precisely what the network demands. Like the students in their classrooms, Success’s teachers operate within tightly defined boundaries, with high expectations and frequent assessment….

One of the core tenets of John Dewey’s educational philosophy was the belief that, in school, children learn not only the explicit content of lessons but also an implicit message about the ideal organization of society. A school, he argued, was a civilization in microcosm. “I believe that the school must represent present life—life as real and vital to the child as that which he carries on in the home, or the neighborhood, or on the playground,” Dewey wrote in “My Pedagogic Creed,” which was published in 1897. The society for which the child was being prepared should not be conceived of as an abstraction from the remote future, Dewey believed. It should be replicated, in simplified form, within the structure and culture of the school itself.

“A school should be a model of what democratic adult culture is about,” Deborah Meier, a veteran progressive educator, and a theorist in the tradition of Dewey, told me. “Most of what we learn in life we learn from the company we keep. What is taught didactically is often forgotten.” A corollary of Dewey’s belief is that, if children are exposed in school to an authoritarian model of society, that is the kind of society in which they may prefer to live.

The question posed by the article, left unanswered, is whether a rigid and even repressive culture can be combined with a progressive approach to pedagogy, and whether these classrooms are the best preparation for life in a democratic society.

What can we learn from the Success Academy model? Its students get the highest test scores in the state.

This year, a Success high school, on Thirty-third Street, will produce the network’s first graduating class: seventeen students. This pioneering class originated with a cohort of seventy-three first graders.

So, seventeen out of an entering cohort of 73 first-graders survived to graduation. What does that mean?

Categories Discipline and Suspensions, Harlem Success Academy, Testing

Chicago: Public Schools Closed and Consolidated, While New Charters Open

By dianeravitch
December 4, 2017 //
17

Mayor Rahm Emanuel continues his crusade to push public schools out of Chicago.

In a wave of closings and consolidation, the mayor found room for a new charter school run by a megachurch and a hip hop artist. The mother of the hip hop artist serves on the zchicago Board of Education.

“Chicago Public Schools on Friday moved ahead with school closing and merger proposals that would affect thousands of kids next school year.

“Under a previously announced plan, four South Side schools would close over the summer and the district would send hundreds of displaced students to surrounding schools. One building would be demolished to make way for a new high school, and privately operated charter schools would take over two other sites, under the district’s plan.

“Students at two predominantly African-American elementary schools near downtown would merge with more diverse campuses. One of those buildings, in the growing South Loop area, would gradually convert into a new high school.

“In addition, Hirsch, one of the city’s lowest-enrolled high schools, would share space for a privately run charter school program that’s backed by a local megachurch and a foundation headed by hip-hop artist Common…

“Hirsch, one of the city’s most underenrolled neighborhood high schools, would open its campus to the Art In Motion charter school next fall. CPS said the charter program, which is backed in part by the New Life Covenant Church and Common Ground Foundation, would first open to seventh- and eighth-graders before expanding to include a high school program.

“Mahalia Hines, a member of the Chicago Board of Education and mother of the hip-hop performer Common, also serves on the board of her son’s foundation.”

Does Illinois have conflict of interest laws?

Categories Charter Schools, Chicago, Closing schools, Corporate Reform, Emanuel, Rahm, Ethics, Illinois, Privatization
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