Mercedes Schneider reports that the state of Louisiana has recalibrated letter grades for the state’s schools, which will lead to a dramatic increase in the number of “failing schools.”
The number of A rated schools will decrease by 38%.
The number of F rated schools will increase by 57%.
Ominously, this means that more districts will be eligible for charter schools.
She notes:
“Of course, the great irony here is that most charter schools in Louisiana are concentrated in New Orleans, and 40 percent of those scored D or F in 2017— prior to the anticipated, 57 percent increase in F-graded schools. But in the view of market-based ed reform, it is okay for charter schools have Fs because theoretically, these can be replaced by new charter schools ad infinitum with charter-closure churn being branded as a success.
“In 2010, Louisiana state ed board (BESE) president, Penny Dastugue, commented that “people can relate to letter grades,” implying that letter grades are simple.
“The shifting criteria behind them is not “simple”; it is simplistic, and as such, it is destructive and feeds a joyless, authoritarian, fear-centered atmosphere in schools and systems unfortunate enough to not have access to hefty doses of wealth, privilege, or the capacity for selective admission.”
Dropping grades across the board is a hasty maneuver to drop more schools into the F category so they can be handed off to private corporations.
Please note that, as I have written here on many occasions in the past, giving a letter grade to a school is a very stupid idea. It was pioneered by Jeb Bush in Florida as a way to label schools for state takeover and privatization. Imagine if your child came home with a single letter grade. You would go to the school the next day and raise the roof. What a dumb idea to think that all the facets of your child’s knowledge, skills, interests, activities, and performance could be reduced to a single letter.
Then think of doing the same to a school with 500 students and staff. This is madness. No, it is sheer malevolent stupidity.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
White, the disciple of Klein, the toady of Murdoch née Bloomberg.
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John White’s job in NYC was to measure public schools for charter takeover.
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What did he use?
A tape measure?
Or an accounting $pread$heet?
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The view of market-based ed reform, it is okay for charter schools have Fs because theoretically, these can be replaced by new charter schools ad infinitum with charter-closure churn being branded as a success.”
If it were not so tragic for so many children, families and teachers, it would be hilarious.
“Möbius Proof”
Möbius proof is all the rage
Make a loop from cutup page
Bend the proof back o’er with glue
That will surely prove it’s true
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“The Möbius Man”
The Möbius Man
Loops back with stealth
An odious plan
To hide himself
“The Möbius Loop of Deform”
Infinite Rhee-gress
Echo chamber
Sans an egress
That’s the danger
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“Loopy Deform”
Möbius loop
Escher stair
Bottom is top
Cheat is fair
Up is down
Back is fore
Round and round
Deformer lore
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I could publish a whole book of poems on the Möbius theme alone
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It’s the shape of deformer ideology. But, you know, Klein is a bottle.
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Yes, Joel Klein
Here’s another on that very subject
“Self-Reverence”
Deform is a whine
In bottle of Klein
The fruit of a vine
With Möbius twine
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Luckily, I compiled them all at
http://damthology.blogspot.com
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Luckily for me.
Prolly not for anyone else.
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Klein is also the German word for small, which also seems apt for school deform.
Klein bottle: a small deformed bottle with nothing inside.
In fact, a Klein bottle does not even have an inside because the inside is the same as the outside.
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Nothing but the ever present “whine”, of course.
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I like this one (below), since the deformers are not educators or even good actors, but the worst kind of efficiency people. The kind that claim high ideals yet revel in the trauma. You can almost hear an underlying “Schnell! Schnell!”
“Tools or Jewels?”
Public schools are public jewels
A common public good
They aren’t simply business tools
But for the neighborhood
You could expand your verses to privatization itself.
My lines for these efficiency folks:
You fail, we flail.
We spin drama into socioeconomic trauma.
We’ll fight urban blight with genocidal delight.
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Endless failing charters are no solution and no way to treat poor students that need stability and consistency. Tossing poor students into the slings and arrows of outrageous privatization is education malpractice. This would never happen in Scarsdale, NY. This treatment is reserved for poor minority students.
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I know it is trite, but I can’t resist repeating the old adage, “You can’t fatten a pig by weighing it.” The goal after all is said and done is not improving learning, but privatization. That is not a means to equity but rather an ideological goal and, for many, a means to profit. Anything or anyone that gets hurt along the way is, “collateral damage.” (Borrowed purposefully to recall Donald Rumsfeld’s heartless dismissal of Iraq war casualties.)
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Thanks for prompting me to look up the origin of collateral damage as a phrase. One web site I found laid its popularization to the US military, oddly enough before the onset of the Vietnam war, where many of us may recall its usage. It cited a reference to its usage in 1905 with the same approximate meaning minus the tension related to the phrase through its use in catastrophe and war in recent years.
Insofar as the education reform movement is concerned, I suspect that reformer ideology would view unjustly fired, harassed, or stressed teachers as collateral damage in the lofty goal of improvement.
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Deform is “bilateral damage” since it is inflicted by both Republicans and Democrats.
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YES.
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War from a distance is so overwhelmingly vicious.
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Neither do Those who see it close up feel compelled to argue with its vicious nature. It seems inexplicable that the fascists of the early twentieth century got popular by extolling the virtues of such a distinct outrage against humanity.
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It’s the classic tale and moral of how far will you go to achieve a goal or an ideal. Will you sacrifice or take a shortcut through your humanity? Of course, deformers project grit into this. They mistake it for their inhuman shortcuts and shortcomings.
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Of course deformers project grit onto this.
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They are “recalibrating” the letter grades? If I recalibrated my students grades, no amount of explaining would get me out of trouble: “Yolanda, you were getting an ‘A’ in English, but I recalibrated. Now you’re failing. Have a nice summer, goodbye.”
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Deformers are recalibrating their dishonesty.
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