Archives for the month of: April, 2018
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Guy Brandenburg: D.C. Made More Progress Under Elected Board Than Under Mayoral Control

By dianeravitch
April 23, 2018 //
30

 

Guy Brandenburg is a retired teacher of mathematics who taught in the D.C. public schools. He was very likely the first person to publicly explode the myth of Michelle Rhee, having pursued her initial claims about miraculously raising the scores of the students she taught as a new TFA teacher from the 13th percentile to the 90th percentile.

He continues to watch the D.C. schools, and he recently attended the public unveiling of NAEP scores for 2017. He was reviewing them in separate posts, and I invited him to combine them into a single post. He generously agreed to do so.

For his diligence and persistence as a researcher and whistle-blower, I name Guy Brandenburg to the honor roll of this blog.

He writes:

NATIONAL TEST SCORES IN DC WERE RISING FASTER UNDER THE ELECTED SCHOOL BOARD THAN THEY HAVE BEEN DOING UNDER THE APPOINTED CHANCELLORS

By Guy Brandenburg

Add one more to the long list of recent DC public education scandals* in the era of education ‘reform’:

DC’s NAEP** test scores are increasing at a lower rate now (after the elected school board was abolished in 2007) than they were in the decade before that.

This is true in every single subgroup I looked at: Blacks, Hispanics, Whites, 4th graders, 8th graders, in reading, and in math.

Forget what you’ve heard about DC being the fastest-growing school district. Our NAEP scores were going up faster before our first Chancellor, Michelle Rhee, was appointed than they have been doing since that date.

Last week, the 2017 NAEP results were announced at the National Press Club building here on 14th Street NW, and I went in person to see and compare the results of 10 years of education ‘reform’ after 2007 with the previous decade. When I and others used the NAEP database and separated out average scale scores for black, Hispanic, and white students in DC, at the 4th and 8th grade levels, in both reading and math, even I was shocked:

In every single one of these twelve sub-groups, the rate of change in scores was WORSE (i.e., lower) after 2007 (when the chancellors took over) than it was before that date (when we still had an elected school board).
I published the raw data, taken from the NAEP database, as well as graphs and short analyses, on my blog, (gfbrandenburg.wordpress.com) which you can inspect if you like.

I will give you two examples:

• Black 4th grade students in DC in math (see https://bit.ly/2JbORad ):

o In the year 2000, the first year for which I had comparable data, that group got an average scale score of 188 (on a scale of 0 – 500). In the year 2007, the last year under the elected school board, their average scale score was 209, which is an increase of 21 points in 7 years, for an average increase of 3.0 points per year, pre-‘reform’.

o After a decade of ‘reform’ DC’s black fourth grade students ended up earning an average scale score of 224, which is an increase of 15 points over 10 years. That works out to an average growth of 1.5 points per year, under direct mayoral control.

o So, in other words, Hispanic fourth graders in DC made twice the rate of progress on the math NAEP under the elected school board than they did under Chancellors Rhee, Henderson, and Wilson.

• Hispanic 8th grade students in DC in reading (see: https://bit.ly/2HhSP0z )

o In 1998, the first year for which I had data, Hispanic 8th graders in DC got an average scale score of 246 (again on a scale of 0-500). In 2007, which is the last year under the elected board of education, they earned an average scale score of 249, which is an increase of only 3 points.

o However, in 2017, their counterparts received an average scale score of 242. Yes, the score went DOWN by 7 points.

o So, under the elected board of education, the scores for 8th grade Latinx students went up a little bit. But under direct mayoral control and education ‘reform’, their scores actually dropped.

That’s only two examples. There are actually twelve such subgroups (3 ethnicities, times 2 grade levels, times 2 subjects), and in every single case progress was worse after 2007 than it was beforehand.

Not a single exception.

You can see my last blog post on this, with links to other ones, here:

https://gfbrandenburg.wordpress.com/2018/04/20/progress-or-not-for-dcs-8th-graders-on-the-math-naep/ or https://bit.ly/2K3UyZ1 .

Amazing.

Why isn’t there more outrage?

*For many years, DC officials and the editorial board of the Washington Post have been bragging that the educational ‘reforms’ enacted under Chancellor Michelle Rhee and her successors have made DCPS the fastest-improving school district in the entire nation. (See https://wapo.st/2qPRSGw or https://wapo.st/2qJn7Dh for just two examples.)

It didn’t matter how many lies Chancellor Rhee told about her own mythical successes in a privately run school in Baltimore (see https://wapo.st/2K28Vgy ). She also got away with falsehoods about the necessity of firing hundreds of teachers mid-year for allegedly being sexual predators or abusers of children (see https://wapo.st/2qNGxqB ); there were always acolytes like Richard Whitmire willing to cheer her on publicly (see https://wapo.st/2HC0zOj ), even though the charges were false.

A lot of stories about widespread fraud in the District of Columbia public school system have hit the front pages recently. Examples:

• Teachers and administrators were pressured to give passing grades and diplomas to students who missed so much school (and did so little work) that they were ineligible to pass – roughly one-third of last year’s graduating class. (see https://bit.ly/2ngmemi ) You may recall that the rising official (but fake) high school graduation rate in Washington was a used as a sign that the reforms under direct mayoral control of education had led to dramatic improvements in education here.

• Schools pretended that their out-of-school suspension rates had been dropping, when in actual fact, they simply were suspending students without recording those actions in the system. (see https://wapo.st/2HhbARS )

• Less than half of the 2018 senior class is on track to graduate because of truancy, failed classes, and the like. (see https://bit.ly/2K5DFx9 )

• High-ranking city officials, up to and including the Chancellor himself, cheated the system by having their own children bypass long waiting lists and get admitted to favored schools. (see https://wapo.st/2Hk3HLi )

• A major scandal in 2011 about adults erasing and changing student answer sheets on the DC-CAS test at many schools in DC in order to earn bonuses and promotions was unfortunately swept under the rug. (see https://bit.ly/2HR4c0q )

• About those “public” charter schools that were going to do such a miraculous job in educating low-income black or brown children that DCPS teachers supposedly refused to teach? Well, at least forty-six of those charter schools (yes, 46!) have been closed down so far, either for theft, poor performance on tests, low enrollment, or other problems. (see https://bit.ly/2JcxIx9 ).

**Data notes:

A. NAEP, or the National Assessment of Educational Progress, is given about every two years to a carefully chosen representative sample of students all over the USA. It has a searchable database that anybody with a little bit of persistence can learn to use: https://bit.ly/2F5LHlS .

B. I did not do any comparable measurements for Asian-Americans or Native Americans or other such ethnic/racial groups because their populations in DC are so small that in most years, NAEP doesn’t report any data at all for them.

C. In the past, I did not find big differences between the scores of boys and girls, so I didn’t bother looking this time.

D. Other categories I could have looked at, but didn’t, include: special education students; students whose first language isn’t English; economically disadvantaged students; the various percentiles; and those just in DCPS versus all students in DC versus charter school students. Feel free to do so, and report what you find!

E. My reason for not including figures separated out for only DCPS, and only DC Charter Schools, is that NAEP didn’t provide that data before about 2011. I also figured that the charter schools and the regular public schools, together, are in fact the de-facto public education system that has grown under both the formerly elected school board and the current mayoral system, so it was best to combine the two together.

F. I would like to thank Mary Levy for compiling lots of data about education in DC, and Matthew Frumin for pointing out these trends. I would also like to thank many DC students, parents, and teachers (current or otherwise) who have told me their stories.

Categories Accountability, Corporate Reformers, District of Columbia, Education Industry, Education Reform, Fraud, Hoax, Privatization, Rhee, Michelle

The Teacher That Jay-Z Remembered

By dianeravitch
April 23, 2018 //
9

 

There’s always one teacher, isn’t there? There is always one teacher you remember, the one who saw something in you that no one else saw.

For Jay-Z, rap mogul, that one teacher was Renee Rosenblum-Lowden. She remembers him very well as Shawn Carter, the poor kid from the projects with an extraordinary talent for reading.

”As the rapper tells it, in grade school, he found something of an escape in language. He’s mentioned this in interviews throughout his career, most recently telling David Letterman, “I had a sixth-grade teacher. Her name was Ms. Lowden, and I just loved the class so much. Like reading the dictionary, and my love of words — I just connected with her.”

“That teacher’s name is Renee Rosenblum-Lowden, and she remembers Jay-Z as well, though she still refers to him as Shawn.

“Rosenblum-Lowden, 77, now lives in Columbia, Md., but in 1980, she taught sixth grade at Brooklyn’s I.S. 318. Carter, a shy and avid reader, was one of her standout students.

“The thing I remember about Shawn is he took the reading test and he scored 12th grade in the sixth grade,” Rosenblum-Lowden told The Washington Post in a phone interview. “And I remember telling him — because I really feel it’s important to tell kids they’re smart — I said, ‘You’re smart, you better do well.’ And he listened….

“She said she’s equally proud of her students who found success in other careers, but there’s a certain sense of pride that comes with having affected a young Jay-Z — particularly when he uses his national profile to advocate for better teacher wages, as he did in the Letterman interview.

“One thing that I feel uncomfortable with is all the credit he gives me. I don’t think I’m deserving of all that credit. He was super bright,” she said. Still, “it makes me feel great that I had a part, or that he feels I had a part, in his love for words.”

Teachers make a difference. Sometimes it takes years to know the difference. The student who never forgets you. The one who credits you with changing his or her life.

 

Categories Education Reform, Teachers and Teaching

Peter Greene: In Search of My Next Career

By dianeravitch
April 22, 2018 //
40

 

Peter Greene has decided to retire and thinking about his next career, other than Stay at Home Dad.

He wonders why failed Superintendents can always find a cushy job as a consultant.

He wonders why the sweet do-little jobs at think tanks are reserved only for charter lovers.

“It’s odd how this works. If I had only taught for two or three years, I would be qualified to run an entire charter school, or even serve as the education chief for an entire state. But as I understand it, having worked an entire teaching career instead of just a couple of years disqualifies me for that kind of work.

“I could set myself up as a consulting firm. That seems to be a pretty sweet deal. Take Antwan Wilson. Wilson spent just a couple of years in a classroom, but upped his skills by attending the Broad Fake Superintendent School and then worked several school administration jobs, then got himself hired for the Big Show in DC Public Schools– and then got himself booted for skirting the rules of the system. But that’s okay, because Denver schools, where he previously worked, hired him to be a consultant with a contract that pays $60,000 for 24 days of work (two days a week for twelve weeks)– plus per diem and daily lodging expenses. The fee is based on a $150/hour rate. And for those of us considering the consulting biz, here’s the kicker– the Denver COO justified the huge no-bid contract by noting that other consulting companies would have been way more expensive. From which we can deduce that $150/hour is the low end of the money that a well-connected consultant could make (meanwhile, substitute teachers in my district make $100/day). That would certainly help put my board of directors through college.

“I like traveling and speaking; maybe I can con people into hiring me to travel to where they are and to talk at them. It could be fun to work at a thinky tank and crank out position papers in my robe at home while my board of directors plays on the floor, but most of the thinky tank money is going to tanks that support ed reform. Hardly anybody is operating a pro-public education thinky tank. Whether you’re left-tilted (Center for American Progress, the Century Foundation) or right-tilted (Fordham, American Enterprise Institute), you have to be a fan of charters and choice and privatization and busting Those Damned Teachers Unions. NEPC hires actual scholars, and NPE, while they support the values I care about, does not have the kind of money involved in hiring a bunch of tanky thinkers.”

What’s a successful teacher to do?

Categories Education Reform, Teachers and Teaching

Needed: A Trustbuster to Break Up Four Mega-Corporations

By dianeravitch
April 22, 2018 //
43

 

Four corporate behemoths dominate our economy, writes Ross Barkan. It is time to break them up and foster healthy competition. Progressives met that challenge over a century ago. Have the Big Four become too big to fail and too powerful to regulate?

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/apr/19/democrats-break-up-techs-big-four-apple-google-facebook-apple

”Four corporations dominate American life. They have the wealth of nations. They have generated unfathomable revenue, created a number of jobs, and decimated many more. Their control of the economy is total.

“They are Google, Amazon, Apple and Facebook. Unless we do something, their power will remain limitless.

“Any Democrat running for president who claims to be a progressive should put trust-busting at the top of their agenda. Socialist or capitalist, big government or small, the priority should be the same: to ensure the people who consume goods and create goods are not exploited.

“All four corporate behemoths are too large. These monopolies fuel staggering inequality and stifle the kind of economic growth that used to be more evenly distributed. Profits are immense and gains for actual workers are small – these corporations do not generate employment, let alone unionized employment, on the scale of earlier revolutionary giants.”

Will any candidate step up to the challenge? Will candidates from both parties court the 1% for campaign contributions in exchange for protecting them from taxation and regulation?

Categories Accountability, Billionaires, Democracy, Democrats, Economy, Education Reform

Michael Fabricant: A Plea to Candidates Not to Forget CUNY

By dianeravitch
April 22, 2018 //
25

 

Michael Fabricant is a professor at Hunter College and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York.

In this article,  he calls on the gubernatorial candidates in New York to pay attention to the state’s neglect of the City University of New York, which has historically been a very important path for low-income students to enter the middle class.

He writes:

”Fixing the subway will be a major election issue this year, and rightly so. The subway is a lifeline allowing people of all income levels to get around and enables New York to be a vibrant, world-class city.

“But another economic lifeline might not get the same attention in a race that will set the agenda for the next four years. The colleges of the City University of New York, many of which lead national rankings in terms of moving low-income students into the middle class, play a similar role.

“Yet the state budget, which includes $800 million for a subway “action plan” (half-funded by the city), shortchanged CUNY—which has seen per-student state investment in its senior colleges fall by 18% since 2008, accounting for inflation….

“Because of its success in moving students up the income ladder, CUNY is perhaps the most powerful anti-poverty public agency in NYC—educating nearly 70% of the city’s high school graduates. About 60% of students have family incomes under $30,000…

”CUNY has seen its labor force transformed over the past 25 years. The university relies on underpaid adjunct faculty hired on a course-by-course basis to teach most of its classes. They fill the gap left by a shortage of 4,000 full-time instructors. Adjunct faculty are able and gifted. That said, their ability to mentor or meet with students outside the classroom is limited by their need to run from campus to campus to cobble together a meager living. This impedes student retention and graduation. Only 18% of community college students receive their degrees within three years and only 55% of senior college students receive their degrees within six….

“New York City has the greatest income and wealth inequality in the nation. As long as politicians in Albany accept the assumption that the city’s wealthy should not pay their fair share to sustain and enhance basic services and infrastructure, CUNY and the MTA will continue to decline.”

Which candidate will reverse the harmful policies of the past decade?

Categories Higher Education, New York City

Linda Lyon: Will Arizona’s Teachers Walk Out?

By dianeravitch
April 22, 2018 //
7

 

Linda Lyon is the new president of the Arizona School Boards Association. She is familiar with the Legislature’s disdain for local control and their contempt for the public schools that 95% of the children in the state attend.

She writes here about the Governor and the Legislature’s empty promises, which have precipitated a likely statewide walkout.

”It is clear that there are many different approaches to achieving a goal that all seem to now agree on – Arizona’s teachers must be more adequately compensated. After all, teachers’ working conditions are students’ learning conditions. That in itself, is no small achievement. But, if we can’t deliver on that goal, it doesn’t matter how much we agree.

“A major stumbling block to “peaceful” resolution is obviously the lack of trust the public education community has in Governor Ducey. As Laurie Roberts, of The Republic, writes, “Ducey didn’t create the crisis in Arizona’s public schools. But in the first three years and three months of his four-year term, he didn’t do anything to fix it. Didn’t recognize that while he and his pals were focused on ways to boost private schools, the public schools – the ones attended by 95% of Arizona’s children – were suffering.” Roberts goes on to say that, #20by2020 (Ducey’s plan) may make for a “trendy hashtag”, but teachers know the funding for Arizona’s public schools is still almost one billion below where it was in 2008 when inflation is considered. And that doesn’t even include the billions in capital funding the state has withheld. The result Roberts says, “is 25-year-old biology books and roofs that leak. The result is rodents running amok and schools unable to afford toilet paper.” The result is a set of poorly paid teachers and support staff who are tired of being ignored and are now shouting “Can you hear us now?”

“This next week is going to be a cliff-hanger for our entire state. One thing is fairly certain. If Governor Ducey and our GOP-led Legislature hasn’t yet adequately “heard” our teachers and other education advocates, incoming shouts from all corners of our state, will no doubt drown out their ability to focus on much else. This issue isn’t going away and our lawmakers better start thinking outside the box they’ve cornered themselves in.”

Categories Arizona, Budget Cuts, Education Reform, Funding, Teacher Pay

Arizona: Why Teachers Plan to Walk Out

By dianeravitch
April 22, 2018 //
2

 

Dana Goldstein writes in the New York Times about the looming teachers’ strike (walkout) in Arizona, a right to work state, where most teachers do not belong to the Arizona Education Association. The state has cut $1 Billion out of the K-12 education budget since the 2008 recession, and is currently among the lowest-spending states in the nation on education. The tax-cutting Governor Doug Ducey has promised a 20% raise by 2020, but has offered no new taxes or revenue source to back up his promise. The New York Times is fortunate to have Dana Goldstein working the education beat because she is knowledgeable, having written “The Teacher Wars,” a history of the teaching profession in the U.S.

She writes:

Arizona educators voted late Thursday in favor of a statewide walkout, as teacher protests over low pay and school funding continued to sweep across the United States.

The spread of the protests to Arizona from West Virginia, Oklahoma and Kentucky, all Republican-dominated states with weak public sector unions, signaled the depth of frustration from teachers and parents over years of education budget cuts.

The movement first arose in West Virginia, where teachers walked off the job in February, winning a $2,000 raise. In Oklahoma, the threat of a walkout garnered a $6,000 raise for teachers, but they still picketed the Capitol for nine days, calling for additional school funding that mostly did not come. In Kentucky, teachers have rallied outside the State Capitol to protest changes to their pension plans and to demand more money for schools.

“It’s clear that our educators are inspired by what they’ve seen in West Virginia and Oklahoma and Kentucky,” said Joe Thomas, president of the Arizona Education Association, the state’s largest teachers’ union. “They see educators rising up and lifting their voices for their students, and doing so in a way that can’t be ignored.”

The vote in Arizona followed weeks of protest across the state and promises from the governor to raise salaries. The Arizona Education Association and Arizona Educators United, a group of teachers who organized independently on Facebook, said that 78 percent of the teachers and school workers who cast ballots supported a walkout.

The groups said the walkout would take place on April 26 if legislators and the governor did not meet their demands, not only for a raise for teachers but also one for school support staff. They also called for an end to tax cuts until Arizona’s per-pupil spending reaches the national average.

Unlike West Virginia and Oklahoma, Arizona has never before had a statewide teacher walkout, and has experienced only a handful of districtwide strikes over the past four decades.

The state has cut approximately $1 billion from schools since the 2008 recession, while also cutting taxes. It spent under $7,500 per pupil annually in 2015, the last year for which census data was available; only Utah and Idaho spent less.

As in the other states where teachers have picketed, many districts in Arizona are facing teacher shortages in subjects like math, science and special education, with principals reporting that staff members are moving to deeper-pocketed states to earn up to $20,000 more per year, or to work in better-funded classrooms.

Noah Karvelis, an elementary school music teacher and the founder of Arizona Educators United, said he was sympathetic to the disruption that widespread school closings would cause students and parents. But, he said, that should not forestall a walkout.

“If we maintain the status quo, that is way worse than missing a couple of days of school,” Mr. Karvelis said at a news conference outside the union headquarters in Phoenix. “The biggest disservice any of us could do for our students right now is to not act in this moment.”

Across Arizona, tens of thousands of teachers, parents and students, clad in red, participated in protests outside schools on April 11. Gov. Doug Ducey said he was “impressed” by the movement, which calls itself #RedForEd. He promised to provide teachers with a 20 percent raise by 2020, and to restore school budgets to pre-Recession levels over the next five years. He said he could do so without raising taxes, because the state’s economy is improving and existing state programs could be cut.

But many teachers rejected that plan, or said they distrusted Mr. Ducey, a first-term Republican.

“You don’t rob Peter to feed Paul,” said Kassandra Dominguez, who teaches kindergarten and first grade in the Pendergast school district, near Phoenix. “That’s so wrong, and I wouldn’t want that money.”

Alternate proposals for raising school budgets include increasing an education sales tax from six-tenths of a cent to one cent, or closing corporate tax loopholes.

The average teacher salary in Arizona is about $47,000 per year, according to the National Center for Education Statistics. But starting salaries are much lower, and many teachers leading the protest movement are in their 20s and 30s.

Ms. Dominguez, 27, earns $38,250 per year, and says that because of low education budgets, she has had to pay out of pocket, or raise money from private donors, to buy her students science supplies, chairs and snacks. She voted in favor of a walkout. Her district had lost a total of $1.6 million over the past five years because of budget cuts, according to administrators, and the school board had come out in favor of the #RedForEd movement.

In San Tan Valley, an exurban area an hour southeast of Phoenix, Mary Stavely, an elementary schoolteacher, said she had also voted in favor of a walkout. Ms. Stavely, 34, earns $36,800. Thirteen of 38 teachers at her school, Circle Cross Ranch K-8, are planning to resign at the end of this academic year, she said, because of factors like low pay and a lack of rental housing in the area.

“It directly affects students” when teacher turnover is high, Ms. Stavely said, because children “lose morale and the connections that were made” with caring adults. Ms. Stavely, a single mother, is currently living with her parents, and said she has considered looking for a higher-paying job. Still, she said she had spent her spring break going door to door to recruit parents to enroll their children at her public school. Arizona has aggressively expanded charter schools and private school vouchers in recent years, leading to enrollment declines — and potential budget cuts — for some traditional schools.

More than 57,000 educators filled out a ballot in the Arizona walkout vote. There are approximately 90,000 certified teachers in the state, but only 20,000 members of the Arizona Education Association, the union. As in the other red states that have had recent teacher protests, union membership is optional for Arizona educators, and labor organizing is new for many of them.

Among those who oppose a walkout is Jim Segar, 64, a colleague of Ms. Stavely’s at Circle Cross Ranch K-8 and a physical education teacher.

Mr. Segar said the proposal from Mr. Ducey was the best teachers could realistically hope for. “You can’t get everything at once after years of neglect,” he said. “I think people would be crazy to walk or strike now.”

Categories Arizona, Budget Cuts, Education Reform, Funding, Resistance, Teacher Pay, Unions

Fred Smith: How Did the Pearson-Designed, Common Core-Aligned Tests Perform?

By dianeravitch
April 22, 2018 //
23

 

Fred Smith is a testing expert who worked as an analyst for the New York City Board of Education for many years. In this study, he flips the question: Not, how did the students perform, but how did the tests perform?

He grades the tests and finds a remarkable increase in the number and percent of students who scored a zero, perhaps because they didn’t understand the question or provided a confused or incoherent response.

The increase in zeroes was particularly high for students with disabilities and English language learners. They were higher still for black and Hispanic students.

Smith writes:

”The data show that there has been an increase in the percentage of zero scores since the administration of exams aligned with the Common Core. We anticipate that officials will claim this outcome to be the consequence of tougher standards reflected by more rigorous exams.

“We argue that those assertions are insufficient explanations for what we found. Recall that a zero score indicates an unintelligible or incoherent answer. Certainly, some zeroes are to be expected. But the percentage of zero scores, particularly for students in grades 3 and 4, is unreasonable in our view. With so many answers deemed “incomprehensible, incoherent, or irrelevant,” we must ask whether such a program yielded any valuable information at all about our youngest students, as the testing was purported to do. The failure here is much more likely in the questions themselves and in the belief that it was acceptable to ask eight- and nine-year-olds to sit and take long exams over several days. That the data also indicate a widening achievement gaps cannot be ignored…

“Further evidence of flawed testing can be noted in the decline of zeros in 2016 — when the SED removed time limits — from the surge in 2013, for most grades. After three years of CC-aligned testing, the SED acknowledged that the time constraints imposed by the tests were an issue. This, in itself, is an after-the-fact admission that the tests were poorly developed, as test administration procedures, including timing, should be resolved as part of the test-development process before tests become operational.

“In taking stock of the testing program we must return to the fears and doubts that were expressed by a small number of people early on. Were New York State’s CC-aligned tests appropriate measures? Would they have a negative impact on students, especially the most vulnerable?

“The analyses and findings in this report vindicate these early concerns and give empirical grounding to the opt-out movement that grew to an astounding 20 percent of the test population between 2013 and 2015. Specifically, our findings raise questions about the efficacy of this kind of testing, particularly for our youngest students. They also open a needed discussion about the quality of Pearson’s work, the worth of its product, and SED’s judgment in managing the program.”

The unasked question is why we insist on testing every student in grades 3-8 every year. No other nation does it.

My guess: Congress is still inhaling the toxic fumes of NCLB, which was based on the nonexistent “Texas miracle.”

 

 

Categories Accountability, Education Industry, Education Reform, Failure, New York, Pearson, Testing

On Campbell Brown’s Evolution from Scourge of Public Schools and Teachers to Becoming the Face of Facebook

By dianeravitch
April 21, 2018 //
52

 

Have you been missing Campbell Brown? There was a long period when she stepped forth to position herself as the symbol of the corporate reform movement, warning the world to be wary of public schools loaded with pedophile teachers who were protected by unions and tenure. As Michelle Rhee faded away, Campbell Brown’s star rose in the corporate reform firmament.

Her Partnership for Educational Justice launched lawsuits against tenure, none of which have been successful. She garnered millions from the usual billionaires to start a news site called The 74 Million, to sing the praises of charter schools and privatization.  She served on the board of Betsy DeVos’s American Federation for Children, which handed out millions of dollars to fund candidates who support charters and vouchers. Betsy, in turn, funded The 74 Million.

But now she has left us! She has joined the messaging team at Facebook, where she is smoothing ruffled feathers and soothing angry critics. In this long profile in the New York Times, Campbell’s role as the dragon slayer of public schools gets only a few paragraphs.

Here is what the New York Times says about Campbell’s foray into education as the new Michelle Rhee:

“But after leaving CNN, Ms. Brown did shed her journalistic skin, and turned herself into a political animal.

“Ms. Brown became an activist focused on education. She fought teachers’ unions, a tactic some friends think was meant to position her for a run for office. A New York Magazine profile once posed the question, “How did an ex-news anchor become the most controversial woman in school reform?”

“She was a celebrity in ed reform,” said Eva Moskowitz, the founder and chief executive of the Success Academy Charter Schools, where Ms. Brown is a board member. “We just didn’t have people of her prominence before.”

“Ms. Brown also started an education news site called The 74 Million, which often reports on issues around teachers’ unions, and an advocacy group called The Partnership for Educational Justice, which funded a lawsuit against teacher tenure. She served on the board of Betsy DeVos’s American Federation for Children. (Ms. Devos has funded The 74 Million.) When President Trump nominated Ms. DeVos to be Secretary of Education last year, Ms. Brown wrote an op-ed in her defense, calling Ms. DeVos a “friend.”

“By then, Facebook was in crisis mode over how it handled news.”

Her career as the nation’s leader in the fight to crush teachers, unions, and public schools has receded into the background, perhaps ended.

Who will be the new face of corporate reform? Who will be the next bold reformer to grace the cover of TIME magazine, broom in hand, as Rhee once did?

Campbell Brown, we hardly knew ye.

 

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Privatization

My Speech in New Mexico, with Jesse Hagopian as Interlocutor

By dianeravitch
April 21, 2018 //
11

If you have nothing better to do today or tonight, you might enjoy watching my presentation to a lively audience at the Lensic Center in Santa  Fe, where I spoke about the negative result of eight years of “reform” based on the Florida model.

Since I will soon turn 80 and am ending my lecture career to turn to writing a new book (my last, I assume), I didn’t hold back. The warmth of the audience unleashed me to say what was in my mind and in my heart about the fraud that is now called “reform” (but is really privatization).

New Mexico has the highest rate of child poverty (under the age of 5) in the nation at 36.2%,  five points higher than Mississippi, which is in second place. It also has one of the nation’s highest rates of adult poverty. But the education leaders in New Mexico thought they could cure poverty with testing and teacher evaluation. All of it failed. New Mexico, with all its beauty and splendor, has made no education progress during these past eight years of “reform.”

Jesse Hagopian, teacher and author at Garfield High School in Seattle, who led a strike against mandated standardized testing at that school, introduced me and joined in conversation after I spoke.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Common Core, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Education Reform, New Mexico, Poverty, Privatization, Testing
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