Archives for the month of: February, 2018
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New York Celebrates Half Point Rise in Graduation Rate: Is It Real?

By dianeravitch
February 7, 2018 //
45

 

New York State released the latest graduation rate data. The grad rate went up by half a percentage point, from 79.7% to 80.2%.

http://www.nysed.gov/news/2018/state-education-department-releases-2013-cohort-high-school-graduation-rates

It is good to see more students finishing high school, and their teachers and principals and the students themselves deserve congratulations.

But.

Given the spread of online “credit recovery,” which allows students to make up for a failed course by taking an online course for a few days or a couple of weeks, is the grad rate real or is it margarine?

The recent graduation rate scandal in D.C. should raise red flags everywhere.

Future releases should report on the use of credit recovery courses. The NCAA became so concerned about credit recovery that it disqualified high schools that were allowing students to graduate with fake degrees, in some cases received after answering simple true-false questions. In some cases, with multiple chances to take the multiple-choice exam.

Campbell’s Law is immutable.

Categories Campbell's Law, District of Columbia, Graduation rates, New York

Trump Orders Top Brass to Plan a Grand Military Parade Like the One He Saw in France

By dianeravitch
February 7, 2018 //
49

 

Donald Trump, who dodged the draft in Vietnam with five deferments, ordered the military to plan a grand military parade like the one he saw in France. Trump loves the military, but avoided military service with four student deferments and a doctor’s letter claiming a bone spur in his foot. The bone spur has not interfered with his golf game in the years since he successful avoided wearing his country’s uniform.

http://wapo.st/2Beb9aQ

“President Trump’s vision of soldiers marching and tanks rolling down the boulevards of Washington is moving closer to reality in the Pentagon and White House, where officials say they have begun to plan a grand military parade later this year showcasing the might of America’s armed forces.
Trump has long mused publicly and privately about wanting such a parade, but a Jan. 18 meeting between Trump and top generals in the Pentagon’s tank — a room reserved for top-secret discussions — marked a tipping point, according to two officials briefed on the planning.
Surrounded by the military’s highest-ranking officials, including Defense Secretary Jim Mattis and Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Joseph F. Dunford Jr., Trump’s seemingly abstract desire for a parade was suddenly heard as a presidential directive, the officials said.

“The marching orders were: I want a parade like the one in France,” said a military official who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the planning discussions are supposed to remain confidential. “This is being worked at the highest levels of the military.”
Shows of military strength are not typical in the United States — and they don’t come cheap. The cost of shipping Abrams tanks and high-tech hardware to Washington could run in the millions, and military officials said it was unclear how they would pay for it…

“The inspiration for Trump’s push is last year’s Bastille Day celebration in Paris, which the president attended as a guest of French President Emmanuel Macron. Trump was awestruck by the tableau of uniformed French troops marching down Avenue des Champs-Elysees with military tanks, armored vehicles, gun trucks and carriers — complete with fighter jets flying over the Arc de Triomphe and painting the sky with streaks of blue, white and red smoke for the colors of the French flag.

”
Aboard Air Force One en route home from Paris in July, aides said Trump told them that he was dazzled by the French display and that he wanted one at home.
It was still on his mind two months later when he met with Macron on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly in New York.
“It was one of the greatest parades I’ve ever seen,” Trump told reporters. “It was two hours on the button, and it was military might, and I think a tremendous thing for France and for the spirit of France.

”
Seated next to Macron, Trump added: “We’re going to have to try to top it.”
Several administration officials said the parade planning began in recent weeks and involves White House Chief of Staff John F. Kelly, but they cautioned that it is in the preliminary stages. D.C. officials said they had not been notified of parade plans.

”
A date has not been selected, although officials said Trump would like to tie the parade to a patriotic holiday. Officials are weighing weather patterns as well as competing events, such as the massive annual Independence Day celebration on the Mall.
Trump officials had discussed Memorial Day on May 28, and July 4, but the Pentagon prefers Veterans Day on Nov. 11 — in part because it would coincide with the 100th anniversary of the victorious end of World War I and therefore be less associated with the president and politics. “That’s what everyone is hoping,” said the military official.

“It is unclear what role Trump would play, whether he may perhaps serve as a grand marshal or observe the spectacle from a reviewing stand.
The location is still being discussed, though Trump has said he would like it to proceed along Pennsylvania Avenue, which links the Capitol and the White House. It would be the same route as Trump’s inaugural parade and pass by his family’s showpiece: Trump International Hotel.”

Samuel Johnson said in 1775 that patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel.

Senator Brian Schatz of Hawaii wrote on Twitter that the millions would be better spent on more VA doctors, military housing and benefits, and other direct benefits to veterans and service members. Not on a parade to glorify politicians.

Categories Accountability

Laura Chapman on the Business Plan to Kill School

By dianeravitch
February 7, 2018 //
12

Laura Chapman writes:

 

“I think that charters, along with public schools are becoming captives of the tech industry with online education misrepresented as personalized. There is an effort to deschool education altogether by making everything a matter of choice from a menu of options leaving brick and mortar schools at the margins. Among other tools for moving in this direction are per-pupil cost analyses that include proportionate costs of buildings, maintenance, transportation and so on for specific grades, subjects, and levels of staffing. One conclusion: outsourcing music education is cheaper than offering it in school, so too for foreign languages, and AP courses.

“Charter schools, except for those operating as online schools, are too much like public schools insofar as they require investments in brick and mortar schools and land. That is one reason why so many charter operators are actually more attracted to land deals than education. Even with evidence of massive frauds, online education is marketable as the best way to do education reform with the advantage of being a big cost saver and “personalized.”

“Now add to the opportunities of deschooling education the proliferation of education dollars packaged as scholarships, vouchers, tax deductions or education savings accounts. Amazon is serving as a prototype for thinking about the parent/caregiver/student payments for educational products and services a la carte. Authorized providers would be listed in menus so purchasers see options and prices for “approved” products and service providers. Customers might view recommended interventions for specific students based on big data, prior purchases, and the (dubious) mindset of an artificial intelligence system.

“Of course, no one is talking about who approves the online catalog and the surveillance systems required to conjure recommendations. No one is talking about ways of rigging the whole system as is the case in Ohio’s ECOT online scam, or as Facebook and Amazon are known to do for a fee. No one is talking about the convergence of marketing spaces and platforms into one authorized site for spending the money in education savings accounts. Among those websites just shy of fitting the emerging view of Click it education is Great Schools (leases data to Zillow and others), and TeachThought (pays users of “Affiliate” tech products a fee).

“Florida is rolling out an online payment system for education savings accounts this year. The platform, called MyScholarShop™, will resemble Amazon, complete with parent/caregiver reviews of the authorized fare. The press release says parents: “will simply go online to the pre-approved catalog and ‘Pick It, Click It, Ship It.” The cost will be taken directly from their education savings account. Supplies, if ordered, will be delivered to customer-provided address.

“This project has been in the works with Step Up For Students, the Florida agency that distributes state money earmarked for Gardiner Scholarships for special education—nearly 10,000 students (autism spectrum disorder, muscular dystrophy, cerebral palsy and spina bifida) who, on average, are allocated $10,000 each per year. These approved services include private school tuition and fees, private tutoring, occupational therapy, instructional materials and other services.

“Step Up For Students also manages the income-based Florida Tax Credit Scholarship Program. Students qualify if they participate in the national free or reduced-price lunch program or if they are homeless, in foster or out-of-home care. These scholarships can offset the transportation cost to an out-of-district public school or for help pay for private school tuition. In 2017-2018, the MyScholarShop™ direct-pay platform will serve about 115,000 students

”The system will include a product and service-provider rating system “ so families can assist each other in making appropriate selections for their children.”

“The MyScholarShop™ platform is described as a Partnership with SAP Ariba and Premikati. SAP Ariba is a cloud-based system of business management, with analytics that track inventory (supplier information), performance (sales), and create digital invoices. Features of SAP Arib are available in four pricing tiers. All tiers have transaction fees, based on the volume of annual financial transactions with customers. All tiers also have a subscription fee, based on the number of documents in annual transactions with customers, and use of the technology. SAP Arib is designed to help “suppliers connect with profitable customers’ among other business services (provided in 190 countries, with three million companies).

“Premikati, Inc. provides services that cut red tape for users of the SAP Arib platform (e.g., planning, financial, contract management, legal). According to the website, Premikati has a new line of business, a national Group Purchasing Organization (GPO) for K-12 education and for non-profits.

“A GPO is designed to secure discounts with select vendors by leveraging the collective purchasing power of its members.

“Betsy Devos, Jeb Bush, and self-proclaimed gurus of disruptive innovation who love edtech are darlings of an industry estimated to be worth $365 billion dollars. Eliminating brick and mortar schools as a social, educational, and a communal asset is part of the new GERM–Global Education Reform Movement. The movement is aided by much talk about the emerging gig ( or jobless) economy where a major function of brick and mortar schools is not needed–child and adolescent care during a typical work day. That function, say entrepreneurs, will be diminished or vanish as child-care is seamlessly integrated into family friendly work facilities. WeWork in NYC is one example, and being planned for a world wide scale up by (you guessed it) an entrepreneurial billionaire.”

 

Categories Education Reform

California: Charter School Lobby Insists that “Public Charter Schools” Are Businesses, Not Public Schools

By dianeravitch
February 7, 2018 //
10

The recent defeat of legislation that would make charter schools accountable and transparent, AB 1478, established definitively that charter schools are private businesses, not public schools.

All public schools must comply with the Brown Act, the California Public Records Act (PRA), or the Political Reform Act of 1974, which make their spending and operations transparent to the public. The charter lobby insists that there are merely bureaucratic burdens and that charters must be free to operate without any public transparency, as private businesses do.

Carl Petersen writes about this issue here.

As recipients of public funding, one would expect that organizations running charter schools would be subjected to the same open government regulations that other government entities, including elected school boards, must follow. While it is not always convenient to conform to the Brown Act, the California Public Records Act (PRA), or the Political Reform Act of 1974, these provisions of California law help ensure transparency to the taxpayers.  Unfortunately, under the state Education Code, the charter industry is currently exempt from following these requirements, leaving parents of students in these schools blind to their operations…open government laws help to protect students and ensure that public funds are spent correctly. However, the California Charter School Association (CCSA) considers them to be part of a “bureaucracy” from which families need to be “protected” as if having access to information harms students and their parents.

The charter industry doesn’t want to be bothered complying with state laws that public schools must comply with.

If California State AB 1478 had passed, parents and students in Los Angeles and across the state would have had the same protections enshrined into the education code that are found in the LAUSD’s District Required Language. This bill expressly stated that charter schools and entities managing charter schools are subject to the Ralph M. Brown Act, the California Public Records Act, and the Political Reform Act of 1974. Unfortunately, the CCSA was able to use its vast lobbying power and campaign donations in Sacramento to ensure that the business interests involved in running charter schools can receive public funds without any public oversight. AB 1478 failed by what the CCSA called “a historic margin”.  You can thank those who voted “no” and those who lacked the courage to take a stand (and whose abstention counted as a “no”) for impending charter school scandals that will not see the light of day until children have been harmed:

What the charter industry proved beyond a shadow of a doubt is that charter schools are private businesses. They insist on the rights and privileges of private businesses. They are not public schools.

 

 

 

 

Categories Accountability, California, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Privatization

Peter Greene: The Full Story of the Closing of the Discovery Creemos Academy in Goodyear, Arizona

By dianeravitch
February 7, 2018 //
3

I wrote about the sudden closing of the Discovery Creemos Academy in Goodyear, formerly known as the Bradley Academy of Excellence. It ran out of money. The leader of the school made withdrawals of various kinds of nearly $1 million, which was certainly not good for the fiscal health of the school.

But as radio announcer Paul Harvey used to say, “here is the rest of the story,” in this case, told by Peter Greene. 

There is that nasty thing about “related businesses,” the ones that the charter schools give contracts to, that just happened to be owned by the person who runs the charter.

Once again, the charter founders make money, the kids are out on the street. But not until the 100th day of school, so the charter could collect full tuition, and the public schools that take these kids in get nothing.

People of Arizona, wake up! They are stealing your tax money! The kids are not getting an education. Do you care?

Categories Arizona, Charter Schools

Steven Singer: Disaster Capitalism Clears the Way to Privatize Schools in Puerto Rico

By dianeravitch
February 7, 2018 //
20

 

First it was New Orleans, its public schools crippled by a devastating hurricane, which was used to sweep away public education. Now, it is Puerto Rico, crushed by a powerful hurricane, with most of the island left by the federal government without access to electricity or clean water.

Now Puerto Rico will abandon public education and turn its students over to private operators and religious schools. Let someone else run the schools. The government prefers to abandon them.

Steven Singer writes a cogent analysis of the death of public education in Puerto Rico.

“More than five months since a devastating hurricane hit the island’s shores, some 270 schools are still without power.

“Roughly 25,000 students are leaving with that number expected to swell to 54,000 in four years. And that’s after an 11-year recession already sent 78,000 students seeking refuge elsewhere.

“So what do you do to stop the flow of refugees fleeing the island? What do you do to fix your storm damaged schools? What do you do to ensure all your precious children are safe and have the opportunity to learn?

“If you’re Puerto Rico’s Governor Ricardo Rossello, you sell off your entire system of public education.

“After an economic history of being pillaged and raped by corporate vultures from the mainland, Rossello is suggesting the U.S. Territory offer itself for another round of abuse.

“He wants to close 300 more schools and change the majority of those remaining into charter and voucher schools.

“That means no elected school boards.

“That means no public meetings determining how these schools are run.

“It means no transparency in terms of how the money is spent.

“It means public funding can become private profit.

“And it means fewer choices for children who will have to apply at schools all over the island and hope one accepts them. Unlike public schools, charter and voucher schools pick and choose whom to enroll.

“Make no mistake. This has nothing to do with serving the needs of children. It is about selling off public property because it belongs to poor, brown people.”

 

Categories Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Privatization, Puerto Rico, School Choice, Vouchers

America’s Most Important Export: Music!

By dianeravitch
February 7, 2018 //
47

If we really wanted to improve our global economic stature, we would invest in more music teachers.

That’s our competitive advantage in global commerce.

I recently returned from a trip to Vietnam, Cambodia, and Shanghai.

At the Park Hyatt Hotel in Saigon, a beautiful Japanese singer entertained each night in the c0mmodious hotel lounge and she sang the great American songbook. She was wonderful! When I requested it, she sang Leonard Cohen’s great “Hallelujah.”

On the cruise on the Mekong River, we had a last night party. The staff, about 36 young Cambodians, dressed in their most gorgeous Cambodian finery and they danced traditional Cambodian dances. Then the music changed to: “The Twist.” Suddenly all the passengers and all the crew–the cooks, the laundresses, the room cleaners, the sailors, the waiters and waitresses–danced together. All status and position disappeared in the joy of dancing to an American oldie. Then the record changed to Bill Haley, and “Rock Around the Clock,” and again Cambodians and Americans shared the fun of the music and the dancing.

In Shanghai, at the elegant Peninsula Hotel, there is a chanteuse with a gorgeous husky voice, and she specialized in American songs. She sang Cole Porter, Jerome Kern, Rodgers and Hammerstein, Billy Joel, Karen Carpenter. All of the Chinese in the room were reading their cell phones–it is a concerning obsessive behavior. We saw a family at breakfast where the mother, the father, and a child about five each had their own cell phones. But back to the singer. She even sang “All That Jazz” from “Chicago.” We applauded enthusiastically, but that doesn’t seem to be the local custom.

American music has a  universal audience. Every child who wishes to should have the chance to learn an instrument, sing, dance, enjoy the music that the world loves.

Categories Arts Education

Jesse Hagopian: My Students Are Individuals, Not Test Scores

By dianeravitch
February 6, 2018 //
37

 

Please watch and share this two-minute, eloquent and passionate statement by teacher Jesse Hagopian. Each of his students have lives. He knows them. They have their individual problems and needs. They are more than a score.

Please tweet, share on Facebook, share with your friends.

This video was created by videographer Michael Elliott, with the invaluable assistance of Kemala Karmen, and sponsored by the Network for Public Education.

Categories Network for Public Education, Students, Testing

DeVos Launches “Backpack” Trial to Spur School Choice

By dianeravitch
February 6, 2018 //
21

You have to hand it to Betsy DeVos. She never gives up on a bad idea, no matter what the evidence shows. With clear findings that vouchers don’t produce better results, with increasing numbers of charter frauds, and declining enthusiasm for charter schools, she does not waver in her commitment to destroy public education. No matter how much damage she inflicts on children, she pushes forward with her failed libertarian theories because she is “doing it for the kids.”

And now, DeVos puts Backpack funding in place in a federal pilot:

http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/campaign-k-12/2018/02/essa_weighted_student_funding_pilot_devos.html

“DeVos and her team have been especially interested in the pilot, pretty much from the time they took office. That could be because, in theory, adopting a weighted student funding formula could make it easier for districts to operate school choice programs, since money would be tied to individual students and could therefore follow them to charter or virtual public schools. Importantly, though, districts that opt to participate in the pilot don’t necessarily have to use it to further school choice.”

My advice: if you get the money, spend it where kids have teachers are certified to meet the needs of children with disabilities and children learning English.

Choice that busts up the public schools does not help children. Itcadvances the long term goals of libertarian zealots like the DeVos family and the Koch brothers.

Categories Betsy DeVos, Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), Failure, Fraud, School Choice

North Carolina: GOP Leader Berger Wants Merit Pay, Even Though It Has Failed Consistently for 100 Years

By dianeravitch
February 6, 2018 //
19

 

Phil Berger, leader of the Tea Party-dominated State Senate in North Carolina, thinks that anyone who opposes merit pay must be North Korean, but high school teacher Stuart Egan explains here why he is wrong. 

He doesn’t need a carrot or a stick to do his best in the classroom.

He doesn’t want to compete with his colleagues.

Students take the tests, not teachers.

He is not the only one who taught them.

The state had a bonus pay plan twenty years ago, and it didn’t work.

There is more, and I would add: Merit pay, bonus pay, and pay-for-performanc3 plans have been tried for 100 years. They have never worked. Teachers are doing the best they know how. Offering them money doesn’t make them work harder. If you want them to be better teachers, devise plans for them to work with mentors or to return to graduate courses. Read my chapter on merit pay in “Reign of Error.”

Nothing fails like failure. Again and again. Isn’t that the definition of insanity? Doing the same thing over and over and expecting to get different results?

Categories Failure, Merit pay, North Carolina
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