Archives for the month of: July, 2018
« Older Entries
Newer Entries »

Mercedes Schneider: 70% of Faculty at Eva’s Success Academy High School Leaves in One Year

By dianeravitch
July 26, 2018 //
29

Eva Moskowitz’s Success Academy High School for the Liberal Arts may have set a record: 70% of its Faculty left in one year.

Mercedes Schneider cites a story in the Wall Street Journal that says only 20 of 67 staff members will return in the fall. Of course, it’s not yet August, so that number could get worse when school opens.

Some of those who left complained about the “punitive culture.” Or the “rigid discipline” or “harsh policies.” Some first-year teachers quit teaching altogether.

Schneider notes:

“In June 2018, Moskowitz’s high school graduated 16 students, or 22% of the original 73 first graders from 2007.

“Maybe some of the remaining 2007 first graders were moved back a grade midyear (can you imagine??), so maybe, like some of those exiting SA high school teachers, they are technically still tethered to Eva’s World.

“Bright spot, though: At least the percentage of returning SA high school teachers is higher than the percentage of students who made it all the way through from first grade to high school graduation in 2018.”

When you read this, you can see why Eva needs to train her own teachers. Her methods are different from that of other schools. And with this kind of turnover, she must face a perennial teacher shortage.

Categories Accountability, Discipline, Harlem Success Academy, Privatization, Teachers

Steven Singer: Voucher Schools Don’t Increase Test Scores, But They Make Racism Acceptable

By dianeravitch
July 26, 2018 //
11

Steven Singer read the article explaining that voucher schools do not increase test scores, a fact now confirmed by multiple studies and evaluation, but they do make racism acceptable.

He writes:

For decades, school voucher advocates claimed that sending poor kids to private schools with public tax dollars was acceptable because doing so would raise students’ test scores.

However, in the few cases where voucher students are even required to take the same standardized tests as public school students, the results have been dismal.

In short, poor kids at private schools don’t get better test scores.

So why are we spending billions of public tax dollars to send kids to privately run schools?

A 2018 Department of Education evaluation of the Washington, D.C., voucher program found that public school students permitted to attend a private or parochial school at public expense ended up getting worse scores than they had at public school.

Their scores went down 10 points in math and stayed about the same in reading.

These are not the pie in the sky results we were promised when we poured our tax money into private hands.

However, corporate education propaganda site, The 74, published a defense of these results that – frankly – makes some pretty jaw dropping claims.

The article is “More Regulation of D.C. School Vouchers Won’t Help Students. It Will Just Give Families Fewer Choices for Their Kids” by far right Cato Institute think tanker Corey DeAngelis.

In his piece, not only does he call for less accountability for voucher schools, he downplays the importance of standardized test scores.

And he has a point. Test scores aren’t a valid reflection of student learning – but that’s something public school advocates have been saying for decades in response to charter and voucher school cheerleaders like DeAngelis.

Supply side lobbyists have been claiming we need school privatization BECAUSE it will increase test scores. Now that we find this claim is completely bogus, the privatizers are changing their tune.

The new song is, “why shouldn’t parents be able to choose a school that has a ‘culture’ more to their liking?”

Singer hears a racist dog whistle in that reference to “culture.”

So parents don’t like the CULTURE of public schools. And they’re afraid public schools aren’t as SAFE.

Hmm. I wonder what culture these parents are objecting to. I wonder why they would think public schools wouldn’t be as safe.

Could it perhaps be fear of black students!?

Give DeAnglis credit for his honesty. No more happy talk about higher scores. It’s all about picking a school where the children look like you. Why are we surprised?

Categories Accountability, Education Industry, Privatization, Racism, Segregation, Vouchers

D.C.: Teacher Fired by Rhee Wins Arbitration After 9 Years of Delays, Will Receive Lost Compensation and His Job Back

By dianeravitch
July 26, 2018 //
32

Michelle Rhee always boasted about how many teachers she fired. She was sure that “bad teachers” were the root of the low academic performance in D.C. She loved her IMPACT program, which weeded out teachers, and many good teachers were fired and went elsewhere, where they were not ineffective.

Here is one teacher who fought back and won. It took nine long years, but he won. Michelle Rhee ruined his life.

For nine years, Jeff Canady lived in a cash-strapped limbo. The D.C. Public Schools teacher was fired in 2009 after 18 years in city classrooms, the school system deeming him ineffective.

Canady, 53, contested his dismissal, arguing that he was wrongly fired and that the city was punishing him for being a union activist and for publicly criticizing the school system.

For nearly a decade, Canady, jobless and penniless, waited for a decision in his case — until now.

Earlier this month, an arbitrator ruled in favor of the fired teacher, a decision that could entitle him to hundreds of thousands of dollars in back pay and the opportunity to be a District teacher again. The school system can appeal the ruling, which was made by an arbitrator from the American Arbitration Association, a nonprofit organization that settles disputes outside of court.

“I’ve been a hostage for nine years,” Canady said. “And the District wants to keep it that way.”

School system spokesman Shayne Wells said DCPS “just received the arbitrator’s decision and is in the process of reviewing it.”

Elizabeth Davis, president of the Washington Teachers’ Union, said Canady isn’t the only one fighting to get his job back. Other educators who were fired years ago and allege unjust dismissals are waiting for their cases to be settled with the school system.

Canady was one of nearly 1,000 educators fired during the 3½ -year tenure of Michelle Rhee — the controversial former D.C. schools chancellor who clashed with the union and instituted a teacher evaluation system that dictated teachers’ job security and ­bonuses. About 200 of those teachers lost their jobs because of poor performance, 266 were laid off amid a 2009 budget squeeze and the rest failed to complete new-employee probation or did not have licensing required under the federal No Child Left Behind law.

The union, which had assailed Rhee’s evaluation system, filed a series of grievances in a bid to salvage the lost jobs.

In 2016, a teacher won a case against the school system after claiming he was wrongly fired in 2011 for a low score on Rhee’s evaluation system, known as ­IMPACT. The educator won on procedural grounds and the arbitrator’s decision did not address IMPACT, but the union still hailed it as a victory in its battle over the teacher evaluation system.

“We are certain that there are still a number of cases pending, unresolved, which were first filed during Michelle Rhee’s tenure as chancellor,” Davis said in an email.

Canady was a third-grade teacher earning about $80,000 a year when he was fired in 2009 from Emery Elementary, a school in the Eckington neighborhood that later closed. The school system, according to the arbitrator’s decision, said Canady scored low on an evaluation system that preceded IMPACT.

But Canady and the teachers union argued that his third-graders performed well and that he had previously posted strong scores on his evaluations. They said they suspected his low score was linked to his public criticism of the school system and not to his performance in the classroom. They also argued that the city did not follow proper protocol when evaluating him.

In defending its action, the school system claimed that the union had included Canady’s case as part of a larger class action complaint and had waited years to proceed with his case individually. By that point, the school system said it no longer had documents or email exchanges in the case.

Davis said she could not discuss specifics of the class action filing because parts of it are ongoing.

The arbitrator said the school system was responsible for many of the delays in the case. The ruling also said D.C. schools improperly evaluated Canady and showed “anti-union animus toward him.”

Canady said in an interview last week that he was confident he would prevail and that he had a moral imperative to keep fighting.

He said that he had ambitions to be a top official in the school system and that his firing stymied career opportunities. He imagines that by now, his salary would be substantially higher than $80,000 had he not lost his job.

“I’ve been fighting for justice for people for years,” Canady said. “Surely if I am going to fight for others, I am going to fight for myself.”

Canady remained in the District and continues to attend political and community meetings but has not held a steady job. With no income, he has moved around the city frequently and said his firing has extracted a physical and emotional toll and “devastated relationships.”

Even if the arbitrator’s decision holds, he said he is unsure if he will return to the classroom. He said he still disagrees with how the District operates its schools.

“I love teaching where they are actually trying to help people,” he said. “And I’ll do it at the appropriate time and in the appropriate situation.”

rhee

 

Categories Accountability, District of Columbia, Rhee, Michelle, Teacher Evaluations

Jan Resseger: David Leonhardt Doesn’t Know What He Is Writing About

By dianeravitch
July 26, 2018 //
12

What David Leonhardt Ignores, Denies and Gets Wrong about the 2005 Seizure of New Orleans Schools

Jan Resseger deconstructs David Leonhardt’s columns celebrating the privatization of New Orleans schools, which she says is riddled with ignorance. If charter schools were as great as he says, the best urban districts in the nation would be Detroit, D.C., and Milwaukee. They are not. They cluster at the bottom. Explain that, David.

Why am I posting so much about New Orleans?Because it is the foundational lie of Corporate Reform.

For her many links, open her post.

Jan writes:

What David Leonhardt Ignores, Denies and Gets Wrong about the 2005 Seizure of New Orleans Schools

What David Leonhardt Ignores, Denies and Gets Wrong about the 2005 Seizure of New Orleans Schools

The NY Times columnist David Leonhardt reflects anew on the school transformation in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina in 2005. After a recent visit to New Orleans, Leonhardt extols a New Orleans miracle. Many knowledgeable people have disagreed. Perhaps Leonhardt’s new column is a case of confirmation bias or maybe just rose colored glasses.

Leonhardt concludes: “(T)he academic progress has been remarkable. Performance on every kind of standardized test has surged… People here point to two main forces driving the progress: Autonomy and accountability. In other school districts, teachers and principals are subject to a thicket of rules, imposed by a central bureaucracy. In New Orleans, schools have far more control. They decide which extracurriculars to offer and what food to serve. Principals choose their teachers—and can let go of weak ones. Teachers, working together, often choose their curriculum.” “The charters here educate almost all public-school students, so they can’t cherry pick.”

Leonhardt is flat-out wrong on that last point. What is different about New Orleans’ charter schools is the Louisiana law passed right after Hurricane Katrina, a law allowing charter schools explicitly to select their students. Charter schools in New Orleans can use admission tests and other admissions screens that cannot be used by the charter schools in any other state. I remember being shocked by the formation of selective charter schools when I visited New Orleans myself in the summer of 2006. The Rev. Torin Sanders, a member of the Orleans Parish School Board, told me: “Pre-Katrina, New Orleans already had a dual system for privileged and poor children. We used to call the selective schools our magnet program. Then we used the term ‘city-wide access.’ These schools were created for children of promise. After the hurricane, legislators said Act 35 created the charters to demonstrate innovative ideas for at-risk students, but the highest performing schools… went charter first. The law was used to make these privileged schools unencumbered and autonomous.”

For example, after the hurricane, New Orleans added a selective charter high school by seizing the storied Uptown Neighborhood’s comprehensive, public Alcee Fortier High School and turning it into a charter high school with priority admission for the children of faculty at Tulane and other local universities. Tulane granted $1.5 million to clean and transform the old neighborhood high school into its model charter. Although Fortier’s former neighborhood students were allowed to apply to the new charter Lusher High School through an admissions test, the test was waived for children of professional staff at Tulane, Loyola, Xavier and Dillard Universities.

A decade after the New Orleans’ schools takeover, Linda Darling-Hammond and colleagues at the Stanford Center for Opportunity Policy in Education explored the implications of the Louisiana law that permits selective charter schools in New Orleans: “Louisiana’s charter law explicitly allows some schools to engage in selective enrollment practices that resemble those of private schools—for example, requiring minimum grade point averages and standardized test scores, as well as other criteria, for admission.”

The Stanford report continues: “It is clear that the organization of schools in New Orleans is highly stratified: The school tiers sort students by race, income, and special education status, with the most advantaged students at the top and the least advantaged at the bottom. Only the top two sub-tiers of schools within Tier 1 have any appreciable number of white and Asian students and any noticeable number of students who are non-poor… Because schools at the top of the hierarchy largely choose their student body, few students actually have the option to attend these schools, while those schools at the bottom are assigned students who are not chosen elsewhere or who are pushed out of schools further up the hierarchy… This stratification occurs as a function of both admissions patterns and transfer/exclusion patterns. The top schools not only have selective enrollment criteria, they are also permitted to ask students who do not maintain a certain grade point average to leave. Similarly, they are allowed to determine which and how many special needs students they admit, often turning parents away because they do not, for example, serve students with cognitive or physical disabilities that require significant accommodations. The students identified as ‘special education’ in the highest performing schools are generally designated as ‘gifted’ or ‘talented,’ and rarely include the kinds of disabilities found in lower tier schools. When schools at the top of the hierarchy, disenroll students whose GPAs have slipped, or turn away children with special needs, these children end up attending schools further down on the hierarchy.”

Not only is Leonhardt’s column based on a factual error when he highlights what he imagines to be “open admissions” in New Orleans’ charter schools, but there is also so much that he chooses to ignore. In a column last year for the Brookings Institution, Andre Perry describes the ideologically driven seizure of the city’s schools and details some of the collateral damage: “Sure, rebuilding school buildings and improving systems are worthy goals after any disaster. But Hurricane Katrina blew a window of opportunity wide open for New Orleans reformers to ram through a mostly predetermined agenda of disempowering the New Orleans Public School Board. In the weeks after the storm, the Louisiana legislature changed its previous definition of an academically failing school to be able to take control of the vast majority of schools in the city.”

Then the Recovery School District fired the entire staff of the public school district, ignoring tenure laws and eliminating the teachers union. Perry continues: “Of the more than 7,000 employees who were terminated from New Orleans schools in the months after Katrina… approximately 4,300 were teachers, 71 percent of whom were black, and 78 percent of whom were women. Not only did this negatively impact the black middle class of the entire city, it emasculated the black community as a whole, which still feels the sting of that decision today.” In 2015, Teach for America bragged about its “growing footprint” in New Orleans: “Today, TFA corps members and alumni comprise a full 20 percent of the New Orleans teaching force, and over 50 alumni serve as leaders at the school or school systems level.”

Andre Perry’s hindsight demonstrates his own personal learning from the charter experiment: Perry served for several years as the CEO of the New Beginnings charter schools in New Orleans. Writing for the Hechinger Report, Katy Reckdahl quotes Perry describing the way he had to exaggerate expectations as he proposed the formation of a new charter school: “Perry, then CEO of the New Beginnings Schools Foundation submitted an application for Gentilly Terrace Elementary predicting that 100 percent of the school’s fourth and eighth graders would reach proficiency or close to it… ‘If I had submitted more realistic numbers, the state would have never accepted it… There is a general belief that you have to shoot for the stars or you’ll be shortchanging a possibility of miraculous growth.’”

In this week’s NY Times piece, David Leonhardt alleges that, “(A)cademic progress has been remarkable. Performance on every kind of standardized test has surged.”

That conclusion certainly contradicts reports last November about a collapse of state standardized test scores. For The Lens, Marta Jewson reported: “State rankings for most New Orleans schools are on a three-year slide, with 65 percent of the schools dropping from 2014 to 2017. The drop in school performance scores from 2016 to 2017 caused hand-wringing among the city’s education leaders, but The Lens’ analysis of state data shows it’s just part of a worrisome trend… Charter networks Kipp New Orleans Schools, New Beginnings Schools Foundation, ReNEW Schools and Algiers Charters operate a combined 23 schools. Only one of them improved its school performance score from 2016 to 2017… The three-year drop appears to confirm education leaders’ fears about what would happen when tests aligned with tougher standards were introduced in 2015… Some school leaders say those tougher standards have caught up with the city’s schools….”

Yes, scores tend to drop when new tests and new standards are introduced. But the fact remains that Leonhardt’s boast about remarkable progress seems to contradict a three year slide in scores.

In the fall of 2006, writing for the Center for Community Change, Leigh Dingerson described the seizure of New Orleans’s public schools: “Over the past twelve months, buoyed by the support of the federal government, a network of conservative anti-government activists have moved with singular intensity to patch together a new vision for K-12 education that they hope will become a national model. It is a vision that disdains the public sector and those who work within it. It is a vision based on competition and economic markets. It is a vision of private hands spending public funds. Most disturbing, it is a vision that casts families and students as ‘customers,’ who shop for schools in isolation from—and even in competition with—their neighbors. It is a vision that, like the game of musical chairs, requires someone to be left without a seat.”

Several years after the hurricane and the New Orleans school takeover, in perhaps the most stunning moment I have ever experienced at a public meeting, a well-known keynoter echoed then Secretary of Education Arne Duncan—calling Hurricane Katrina a remarkable opportunity for New Orleans to redesign its schools. A woman in the audience leapt to her feet and loudly contradicted his conclusion by telling the truth of her own experience as a parent: “They stole our public schools and they stole our democracy, all while we were out of town.”

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Education Reform, Fraud, New Orleans, Privatization, Propaganda

America Just Became a Very Dangerous Place to Live

By dianeravitch
July 25, 2018 //
68

The federal government just dropped a case against a man who had figured out how to make guns at home on a 3-D printer. Everyone, they say, now has a right based on the First Amendment to print their own guns.

It is not enough that anyone can buy a gun online or at a gun show. It is not enough that there are 300 million guns in circulation. This guy has figured out how anyone can build their own gun at home using a 3-D printer. The Trump administration did not want to get in the way of his freedom of expression, his freedom to make millions more guns available. This is yet another example of how the First Amendment has been weaponized.

During the summer of 2012, Cody Wilson hung around J&J, a car-repair shop run by two “goofy” guys in their late 20s. The Austin warehouse was crowded with engine blocks, car parts and Pelican boxes that never seemed to have been opened, but the 24-year-old came as he pleased, with access to shop machinery.

He had spent the larger part of his second year at the University of Texas Law School learning how to operate a 3-D printer. Familiar with the robust gun culture of the South from his Boy Scout years in Arkansas, he soon began to wonder whether he could create the first fully 3-D-printed, functional firearm.

Wilson was not confident it was feasible. The technology was new, and printable materials were brittle and plastic. But Wilson was motivated by curiosity, hypothesizing that he could design a printable weapon and build a platform for users to download gun blueprints without government regulation.

“Even I was glamoured by the magic of 3-D printing,” he said, recalling when he removed the first functional plastic piece from the printer. “It had an unusual polymer, fleshy feel and a silicate structure about it that had to be washed off. All the trappings of some kind of alien birth.”

Wilson admired the object. The screw, buffer tower, the grip face. They all had perfect resolution, he said. “That’s the devilry of this technology. They can do things that have machine quality.”

Wilson drove to west Texas and learned to assemble a gun, swapping in his printed part — a green lower receiver. He shot the low-powered AR-15 into the dirt five or six times before it broke. Wilson showcased the accomplishment on YouTube.

Convincing Americans that 3D-printing guns was a worthwhile endeavor proved to be a challenge, said Wilson, who had begun fundraising. His bleak investor base was mostly 3-D printer enthusiasts with several straggling gun-rights advocates. Gun owners could already own many guns. Why did they need new ones printed?

Less than two weeks passed before 20-year-old Adam Lanza opened fire at Sandy Hook Elementary School, fatally shooting 26 people before turning his weapon on himself. Suddenly, interest and his efforts changed.

“After Sandy Hook, everything was backward, cast as some kind of race condition: Is there gun control in America or 3-D printing of guns?” he said. No longer the outliers, Second Amendment support flowed in. “These things become about red team, blue team after a while,” Wilson said.

With national interest piqued, Congress and the Obama administration stepped in, leading a nationwide crackdown on gun ownership. Citing corporate responsibility, websites took down gun files and online community forums removed gun enthusiasts. The Senate pushed for stronger laws and introduced the Manchin-Toomey Amendment in January 2013, calling for background checks on most firearm sales. The bill failed three months later.

Inspired by Julian Assange and WikiLeaks, Wilson and his friends set out to create an open-source platform.

“We wanted to be the wiki for guns,” Wilson said. Defcad.com, an unregulated file-sharing website, launched, birthing what became the first 3-D-printing gun community.

A printable pistol released online, named “Liberator,” in April 2013. (Cody Wilson)
Testing of the “Liberator,” his first fully printed pistol, finished in late April 2013, during his second-year exams. He dropped out of the program the same week and uploaded his design files for ghost guns, firearms without serial numbers. In a few days, there were more than 100,000 downloads. Then he was stopped by the feds.

In May, Wilson told Infowars’ Alex Jones, who has promoted various conspiracy theories, that the State Department emailed him demanding the files be taken down. The department alleged that by uploading a weapon blueprint, which constituted an export under the International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR), Wilson was violating federal law. With 30 days to respond to government demands, Wilson removed the files from defcad.com, then filed suit against the U.S. government for violating his First Amendment right to free speech.

What frustrated Wilson was that the government was attempting to stop him from giving knowledge away.

“It’s not that I’m a nihilist about it. I know that I can’t control it moving forward, but that’s the utopia of the present,” Wilson said, calling himself a political romantic. “Good, something might happen that I can’t anticipate! That’s what inspires a bunch of burnouts like me.”

He understood that the knowledge could be used for radical purposes. Still, he said, there was no way to “violate” his idea. In the public domain, the designs were “equally everyone’s and no one’s,” he said.

At the time it was a pipe dream, but he hoped he had a case.

Joined by the Second Amendment Foundation, Wilson spent five years in litigation. In an unlikely turn of events, on June 22, the federal government settled. It was a narrow victory for First Amendment fans, coming under an administration usually perceived as hostile to free speech.

Second Amendment Foundation founder Alan Gottlieb, surprised the government settled after years of battle, said that the victory cemented gun-ownership law. “The government can no longer effectively ban guns in America because anyone can download the code and make a gun in their own home,” he said.

Wilson, now 30, did not expect to win either. He expected to be content with a moral defeat, taking solace imagining the State Department tasked with the chore of regulating guns on the Internet.

“It’s a troubling 180-degree turn by the State Department,” said Adam Skaggs, chief counsel of Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence. “It’s going to make it much easier for dangerous people, otherwise prohibited from getting guns, to get them.”

Skaggs, like many anti-gun-violence proponents, blamed the policy U-turn on the Trump administration, saying it is more focused on the gun lobby’s bidding than protecting public safety.

A State Department spokesman, however, told The Washington Post that this was a voluntary settlement agreed upon by both parties. The June 29 settlement, a copy of which was given to The Post, comes during a transfer of oversight from the State Department to the Department of Commerce.

In 2010, when Barack Obama was president, the departments initiated an overhaul of the U.S. munitions list. Under the proposed regulations, the State Department would continue administrating exports under ITAR of military-grade firearms, munition and heavy artillery. Commercially available firearms and related manufacturing technology would transfer to Commerce control. “These proposed regulations would eliminate the ITAR requirements at issue in this case,” the department spokesman said.

The Trump administration has surged forward with deregulating gun exports, though the initial transfer between departments was in 2015, under the Obama administration.

Weapon manufacturing, in the meantime, is moving away from 3-D printing. According to Adrian Bowyer, a retired engineer, 3-D printers aren’t a suitable technology for weapon-making. The key component of a firearm is that it’s cylindrical and rotationally symmetric. 3-D printers are also restricted to the available materials, and the ones that work with metals don’t provide the best results.

Bowyer said that if he had an interest in making weapons, he would make them with conventional tools, like a lathe. “3-D printers are expensive. Even then, the end result is likely not to be as strong as a 200-year-old technology.”

Because there has been a proliferation of guns built with do-it-yourself kits obtained online, gun-control advocates have maintained that 3-D-printed guns are a future threat. Adam Winkler, professor at UCLA School of Law, said that when printing technology becomes more reliable and affordable — which, he said, is undoubtedly coming — it will have dangerous consequences for public safety. “Climate change isn’t affecting us today, but people can be concerned about the future,” he analogized. For now, though, the 80-percent-unfinished DIY gun looms larger.

Wilson’s website is scheduled to go back online Aug. 1. Throughout the litigation, he developed a trove of other 3-D-printable weapon blueprints, including Assembly AR-15s and AR-10s.

Regulating homemade weapons will be the future-facing obstacle. Several states introduced legislation increasing oversight, but with the proposed ITAR amendments, Wilson should be able to publish all of his blueprints.

“[Code] is the essence of expression,” he said. “It meets all the requirements of speech — it’s artistic and political, you can manipulate it, and it needs human involvement to become other things.” Alternatively, he said a digital file is a weapon, but only in the nonlegal sense. “You can’t characterize 16 lines of code as ‘a gun.’ It doesn’t want to become anything; you still have to make it one.”

Wilson relishes that he edged his way into American gun-control politics.

“Ghost guns are what got me where I got,” he said. “My contribution is to create the hyperbole politicians talk about. Now the public can have access to them.”

Categories Guns

Breaking News from the Center for Responsible Lending About a DeVos Rule Change That Will Hurt Student Debtors

By dianeravitch
July 25, 2018 //
30

Proposed Borrower Defense Rule Shortchanges Defrauded Students, Ends Accountability for For-Profit Colleges

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Today, the U.S. Department of Education released a draft proposal to overhaul the Obama Administration’s Borrower Defense to Repaymentrule. The revision would alter how students secure loan forgiveness when institutions fail to deliver promised requisite skills and knowledge. Under the new proposal, student borrowers would qualify for corrective action only when they could document institutional misrepresentations related to the program of study. Further, borrowers would be required to prove that institutional misrepresentations were made with knowledge, intent or a reckless disregard for the truth. The draft also further insulates bad institutional actors from accountability—making it harder for defrauded students to gain relief and taxpayers to recoup the losses caused by the abusive behavior.

If finalized, the rule will take effect July 2019.

In response, Ashley Harrington, a Policy Counsel with the Center for Responsible Lending Counsel released the following statement:

“This proposed draft reads more like a roadmap for institutions seeking to abuse students and avoid accountability and transparency rather than a plan to protect students and taxpayers. It ignores the pleas of more than 100,000 students, consumers, and taxpayers, as well as 31 state attorneys general who directly urged Secretary DeVos to stop shielding institutions and private companies.

“Under this rule, the Department goes further than any proposal discussed at negotiated rulemaking, proposing that relief be limited to borrowers in default in addition to very limited access to relief. A better solution to this growing financial burden would be preventing as many defaults as possible and holding institutions to a higher standard. Millions of consumers and billions of taxpayer dollars are at stake. Early and effective intervention would spare borrowers the multiple ramifications of loan default, particularly to their credit scores and resulting higher costs for future credit.

“The previous Borrower Defense rule was created to protect students and taxpayers from deceptive practices like that of ITT Tech and Corinthian Colleges that abruptly closed their doors after widespread abuses put them on the brink of bankruptcy and jeopardized the futures of thousands of students. This proposal shortchanges borrowers and will only inflate the growing $1.5 billion student loan debt crisis.”

###

For additional information or to schedule a media interview, contact Charlene Crowell: charlene.crowell@responsiblelending.org.

Categories Student Financial Aid and Student Debt

Gary Rubinstein: A Short and Powerful History of the Rise and Fall of the Corporate Reform Movement

By dianeravitch
July 25, 2018 //
5

Gary Rubinstein gave a delightful talk about education reform and its distortions at his alma mater, Tufts University, in April.

It is very enjoyable. Please watch.

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

Gary Rubinstein: TFA Releases New Video, and Two of its Three Big Ideas Bash Experienced Teachers

By dianeravitch
July 25, 2018 //
29

Gary Rubinstein began his post-college career in Teach for America. He was idealistic as are other recruits to TFA and eager to make a contribution to society. He worked in TFA and remained a loyal member for many years. But when he went to the TFA anniversary party along with the most powerful figures in American education, he got turned off. See his story here, when he spoke recently at Tufts University, his alma mater.

Rubinstein viewed the latest video from TFA CEO Elisa Villanueva-Beard and listened attentively. She has three big ideas. Two of them bash experienced teachers, who are “the status quo.”

Rubinstein learned the hard way that “high expectations” and “believing” are necessary, but not sufficient to be a good teacher. Contrary to TFA, experience matters.

Big Idea #2 — experienced teachers are lazy because they don’t believe their students can learn.

Big Idea #3 is that non-TFA teachers feel sorry for their students instead of working hard. Experienced teachers use their energy on pity for their students rather than working hard to teach them.

If only high expectations were enough!

He points out this irony:

One of the most ironic things about Elisa Villanueva-Beard is that she makes these oversimplified claims about how the problem in education is the status quo with low expectations while her own husband runs the YES prep schools in Houston which have a large number of TFA teachers. One of those schools, according to the latest 2018 rankings, is an F rated school and out of 328 rated schools in Houston, it is rated 312th.

Teaching is hard work. Change is incremental. High expectations and hard work are necessary; good preparation and experience enhance both.

Categories Teach for America

New Mexico: Judge Rules that State’s Inadequate Funding of Public Education Is Unconstitutional

By dianeravitch
July 25, 2018 //
29

This is great news from the Education Law Center, which is a champion for students, teachers, and public schools!

New Mexico is a state with high child poverty and very low NAEP scores. For the past eight years, under Republican/Reformer control, the state has tried to substitute the Florida model (charter schools, VAM, high-stakes-testing) for funding. It failed. Over the past two NAEP administrations, the state remained at the bottom. School choice and testing are not adequate substitutes for funding.

NEW MEXICO SCHOOL FUNDING FOUND UNCONSTITUTIONAL

By Wendy Lecker

In a major victory for New Mexico public school children, the district court, in a July 20 ruling, found that inadequate school funding violates the education article of New Mexico’s constitution, as well as violating the constitutional equal protection and due process rights of economically disadvantaged students, English Language Learners and Native American students.

The Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund (MALDEF) filed Martinez v. State in 2014, on behalf of parents and students, to establish education as a fundamental right and ensure meaningful educational opportunities for all students, especially those who are economically disadvantaged, English language learners (ELL), Native American, and/or of Spanish-heritage. The New Mexico Center on Law and Poverty filed a similar case, Yazzie v. State, also in 2014, and the trial court consolidated these cases. The trial team also included pro bono counsel Martin Estrada and his colleagues from Munger, Tolles & Olson in Los Angeles. The two- month trial before District Court Judge Sarah Singleton concluded in August 2017.

Adequacy Defined

Judge Singleton held that the Legislature, through various statutes, has defined what a constitutionally adequate education is for New Mexico students and, accordingly, relied on those statutory provisions to determine whether the state met its constitutional obligations. The court also established the burden of proof in a school funding case in the state, holding that the plaintiffs must prove a constitutional violation by a preponderance of the evidence.

Inadequate Inputs

Judge Singleton found that there was sufficient proof presented at trial of inadequate essential educational resources in New Mexico’s schools. The evidence demonstrated that schools across the state suffered from inadequate instructional materials, curricula and teachers. The court highlighted that insufficient instructional material for Native Americans violated statutory mandates and therefore the constitutional rights of those students.

Judge Singleton determined that the essential resources to deliver a reasonable curriculum must include resources to provide at-risk students the opportunity to compensate for any barriers they may face. Thus, the court found as essential such programs as quality full-day pre-K, summer school, after-school programs, small class size and research-based reading programs. The court credited expert testimony at trial that ELL students in particular benefited from smaller class size.

In finding inadequate funding for teachers and teacher training, the court addressed the trial evidence on the impact of New Mexico’s test-based teacher evaluation system, noting that “punitive teacher evaluation systems that penalize teachers for working in high-need schools” exacerbated the quality-teacher supply deficits in these schools. The court also found that high-needs districts had more inexperienced teachers, noting that it “is well-recognized that inexperienced teachers are systematically less effective than experienced teachers.”

Inadequate Student Outcomes

Judge Singleton found that the inadequate inputs in New Mexico’s schools led to inadequate student outcomes. She found that New Mexico students rank at the bottom of the nation in English and Math proficiency and high school graduation. The numbers are even worse, she found, for low-income, Native American and ELL students.

The court rejected state claims that outputs are sufficient because at-risk students show growth in achievement. She held that growth is not sufficient, since vulnerable student groups, despite growth, are do not attain proficiency. The court also remarked that even the state is unhappy with the rate of growth among at-risk groups.

The court also credited the evidence demonstrating that of the New Mexico students attending college, a substantial number require remediation-proof that these students were not college-ready.

State Defenses Rejected

Judge Singleton rejected the State’s contention that state intervention was adequate in compensating for any inadequacies, noting that these interventions have not altered the evidence demonstrating that “at-risk students are still not attaining proficiency at the rate of non at-risk students.” The court found that the state Public Education Department assistance and oversight programs are piecemeal, and thus cannot replace adequate state school funding.

The court also dismissed the State’s excuse that students’ inadequate outcomes stem from socio-economic factors not attributable to the school system. Judge Singleton noted that while many of these factors exist outside schools, school programs, such as quality pre-K, K-3 Plus, extended school year, and quality teachers, have been proven to mitigate these factors and raise the achievement of at-risk students.

In fact, Judge Singleton noted the testimony of the State’s experts, such as Eric Hanushek, who concluded that funding does make a difference in outcomes for at-risk students.

Judge Singleton also rejected claims made by New Mexico often made by states in other school funding cases. Notably, the court noted that the State could not escape its constitutional responsibility by contending that it cannot control district spending, since the state has supervisory responsibility over local districts.

The court also dismissed the contention that the State is constrained by the limited money in the State budget from doing more. The court declared that, “the remedy for lack of funds is not to deny public school children a sufficient education, but rather the answer is to find more funds.”

Rulings

In addition to finding the state in violation of the Education, Equal Protection and Due Process clauses of the state constitution, the court’s declaratory judgment also found that the State:

violated the rights of at-risk students by failing to provide them with a uniform statewide system of free public schools sufficient for their education;
failed to provide at-risk students with programs and services necessary to make them college or career ready;
failed to provide sufficient funding for all districts to deliver the programs and services required by the Constitution; and
failed to supervise districts to assure that funding has been spent in the most efficient manner to meet the need to provide at-risk students with the programs and services necessary to obtain an adequate education.
To remedy the constitutional violation, Judge Singleton ordered the Legislature by April 15, 2019, to -take immediate steps to ensure that New Mexico schools have the resources necessary to give at-risk students the opportunity to obtain a uniform and sufficient education that prepares them for college and career.- The court also ordered the state to implement an accountability system to measure whether programs and services in place actually provide the opportunity for a sound basic education and to ensure that districts are spending funds in a way that efficiently and effectively meets the needs of at-risk students.

Judge Singleton has retained jurisdiction over the case in order to ensure state compliance with her orders.

Wendy Lecker is a Senior Attorney at Education Law Center

Education Law Center Press Contact:
Sharon Krengel
Policy and Outreach Director
skrengel@edlawcenter.org
973-624-1815, x 24

Categories Funding, New Mexico, Poverty

Mercedes Schneider to Emily Langhorne: New Orleans is NOT a National Model

By dianeravitch
July 25, 2018 //
12

Mercedes Schneider responds here to an article in The Washington Post by one Emily Langhorne of the “Progressive Policy Institute,” which is one of those DC advocacy groups that champions charter schools.

Langhorne seems to be the designated point person at PPI assigned to churn out pro-charter propaganda. She was last seen writing about the graduation rates of D.C. charter schools, falsely claiming that they are higher than the graduation rates of the D.C. public schools. That claim was shot down by a genuine expert, Mary Levy, a civil rights lawyer who has been tracking the travails of education in D.C. for many years.

Recently, asserted that New Orleans has become a national model. As Schneider explains, this is simply not true, unless you are a fan of separate and unequal schools.

“When one writes an op-ed on the post-Katrina success of New Orleans schools, one should consider what one is trying to sell as success. Continued racial inequity, low school grades for almost half of the charter replacements for once-community schools, abounding fiscal corruption, and community exploitation are all components of the true narrative that is almost-all-charter New Orleans schools 13 years post-Katrina.

“Anyone omitting these sad and frustrating realities from an op-ed on the New Orleans charter miracle is either ill-informed or allied to promoting a flashy, market-based-ed-reform agenda likely from headquarters hundreds of miles away from those Katrina-swept streets.”

A note to Emily Langhorne: Be careful not to develop a reputation as a propagandist. The money is good, but think about your reputation.

Categories Charter Schools, District of Columbia, New Orleans
« Older Entries
Newer Entries »