Peter Greene will attend the Network for Public Education’s 5th annual conference in Indianapolis on Oct 20-21.
You should be there too!
Every gathering has been better than the one before.
You will meet Peter Greene, Mercedes Schneider, Carol Burris, Anthony Cody, Leonie Haimson, and all your favorite bloggers from across the country.
Join us!
Andrea Gabor, author of Education After the Culture Wars, believes that the latest Gates grant for “networks” is evidence that corporate reformers have decided to “go local” instead of funding big national plans like the Common Core.
“For two decades, the prevailing wisdom among education philanthropists and policymakers has been that the U.S. school system needs the guiding hand of centralized standard-setting to discipline ineffective teachers and bureaucrats. Much of that direction was guided by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which has spent billions since 2000 to influence both schools and education policy.
“But as schools open this year, top-down national initiatives based on standardized testing and curricular uniformity are in retreat.
“Last fall, the Gates Foundation ended its support for a $575 million, six-year teacher-effectiveness project; the initiative had failed to meet the foundation’s goals to “dramatically improve student outcomes,” according to a recent study commissioned by the foundation.
“Two dozen states started backing away from the Gates-backed Common Core State Standards not long after they were first embraced in 2010 (though many of these states retained “key elements” of the standards, according to a 2017 report by an education organization the foundation helps fund.) Earlier, the foundation acknowledged that “many of the small schools” that it invested in — the foundation’s first major education initiative — “did not improve students’ achievement in any significant way.”
“Now, the foundation seems to be stepping back from sweeping national initiatives in its bid to remake education. In the coming years, its K-12 philanthropy will concentrate on supporting what it calls “locally driven solutions” that originate among networks of 20 to 40 schools, according to Allan Golston, who leads the foundation’s U.S. operations, because they have “the power to improve outcomes for black, Latino, and low-income students and drive social and economic mobility.”
She believes this represents a significant shift from the top down mandates of No Child Left Behind, Race to the Top, and similar efforts cheered on by Gates and other titans.
I am not so sure.
The Gates grant of $92 Million for “networks” is chump change. It’s amorphous.
Besides, Gates is still funding Common Core, despite its failure to fulfill any of the bold promises made on its behalf eight years ago.
Worse, as Gabor notes, Gates and Arnold and other malefactors of great wealth are funding another “go local” project called City Fund, which draws together the leaders of privatization to plant charter schools in many cities. “Going local” in this case means trying to fly below the radar to push privatization in many places, whether the local people want it or not. Eli Broad has “gone local” by buying control of the Los Angeles school board (that is, until the swing vote was convicted and removed from the board. But he won’t give up.) Betsy DeVos went local by buying the state of Michigan. Jeb Bush engineered the hostile takeover of education policy in Florida. DFER long ago went local by bundling campaign contributions for state and local candidates who support charter schools and high-stakes testing.
Going local may be more insidious than pushing a noxious national agenda, which, in the Trump era, brings resistance to a boil.
The Washington Post has a new national education writer, Laura Meckler. She published an excellent article yesterday about the big-time failure of Betsy DeVos to accomplish anything in D.C. as Secretary of Education.
Despite Republican control of Congress (for now), her budget proposals have fallen flat. She arrived with Trump’s promise to transfer $20 Billion from other federal programs to create a federal school choice program for charters, vouchers, and online schools. That went nowhere. She has repeatedly proposed a $1 Billion plan for school choice. Congress rejected it.
Her only victory was to get a big increase in charter school funding, now up to $450 Million. This despite the GAO report in 2016 warning of waste, fraud, and abuse in the charter industry.
DeVos has helped to galvanize the opposition to school choice and to energize supporters of public schools, who now recognize that charters and vouchers take money away from public schools, a traditional community institution whose doors are open to all.
She is such a toxic figure, her contempt for public schools is so evident, her arrogance and snobbishness so transparent, that she has alienated even some Republicans. Many rural Republicans treasure their local public schools. As Meckler shows, conservatives are divided over the DeVos effort to create a federal school choice plan. Libertarians fear (rightly) that federal funds will be accompanied by federal regulations.
From our point of view, as supporters of public education, DeVos has been the gift that keeps on giving. She remains deeply uninformed about education policy. Her solution to everything is School Choice. She is a champion of charters, stripping away their thin progressive veneer. She wants to roll back civil rights protections for everyone but accused rapists. She has removed protections for students defrauded by for-profit “colleges,” while stopping federal efforts to regulate the institutions that defraud students.
In short, if you care about public schools and civil rights and the ability of students to get a good education, she is a disaster on all fronts.
The fact that she became a national figure at the very time that Research converged on the negative effects of vouchers was fortuitous. Similarly, the growing national recognition that the charter industry is rife with waste, fraud, and abuse undermines her cause.
Now our goal must be to convince members of Congress, especially Democrats, to stop acting as the biggest funder of charter schools, whose aggressive expansion hurts public schools, you know, the schools that enroll 85% of America’s students.
Steven Singer reviews the latest Phi Delta Kappa poll of public opinion about public schools and finds that public support is at an all-time high, with one exception: Though people admire and respect teachers, they don’t want their children to grow up to be a teacher. They understand that teachers are underpaid and undervalued.
He writes:
According to the 50th annual PDK Poll of attitudes about public schools, Americans trust and support teachers, but don’t want their own children to join a profession they see as underpaid and undervalued.
In almost every other way, they support public schools and the educators who work there.
When it comes to increasing school funding, increasing teacher salary, allowing teachers to strike, and an abundance of other issues, the poll found a majority of people unequivocally in favor of endeavors meant to bolster learning.
In fact, support for education and educators has never been so high in half a century.
“Two-thirds of Americans say teachers are underpaid, and an overwhelming 78% of public school parents say they would support teachers in their community if they went on strike for more pay,” according to PDK’s Website.
Scott Jaschik of Inside Higher Ed reports that the SAT is facing more trouble than usual due to its practice of recycling questions.
His story begins:
The SAT periodically faces controversies, such as when the mathematics test given in June was widely seen as easier than normal and — courtesy of the curve — resulted in many students being shocked by low scores. Outrage spread on social media, but after a week or so, many move on. But this year, another controversy has emerged before people have stopped complaining about the last one.
There are signs that the latest SAT controversy may not pass easily. The August SAT was based on an SAT given in Asia in October. The use of “recycled questions” became known to the public almost as soon as the administration of the August SAT was over — as reports spread that some students from Asia had taken the test in the United States and may well have had an advantage. The College Board responded, as it usually does to such reports, by saying that it had good security measures in place and would block scores of any who had access to the questions in advance.
The controversy is not quieting.
On Thursday in Florida, a class action lawsuit was filed against the College Board on behalf of the father of young woman who took the August SAT. The father and the daughter are not named, and the suit seeks damages on behalf of all who took the SAT in August.
The suit charges that the College Board knowingly went ahead with the use of recycled questions, despite knowing of the security risk the use of such questions creates. The suit notes that Reuters in 2016 published an in-depth report on SAT security problems, with a focus on the way versions of the test leak in Asia, and that these versions contain questions that are later recycled on other tests.
Let’s hear it for Rahm Emanuel. He is not running for a third term. He boasts about his education record. He closed 50 public schools in a single day. That was historic! Some locals think that this mass school closing led to violence, gang activity, and many deaths. But then, he was just following in the footsteps of Arne Duncan, who was Chicago’s superintendent of schools under Mayor Daley and started a program called Renaissance 2010. The heart of Renaissance 2010 was closing public schools and replacing them with charter schools. Chicago is still waiting for a “renaissance.”
This is what Politico said about Rahm, the education mayor:
EMANUEL SAYS HE WON’T RUN FOR REELECTION, TOUTS EDUCATION RECORD: Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel on Tuesday announced he won’t seek reelection to a third term. The mayor had already been campaigning for a third term, but his unpopularity had drawn an unusually high number of challengers, POLITICO’s Caitlin Oprysko and Shia Kapos report.
— In announcing that he won’t run, Emanuel put his education record front and center. He listed his long-time plan to make full-day preschool available to all 4-year-olds in the city by the fall of 2021, in addition to other education reforms, as his most significant accomplishments.
— “The changes we have made to our school system — universal full day pre-K, universal kindergarten and a longer school day and year will add up to nearly four more years of class time for Chicago’s students,” he said in remarks Tuesday. “In the end of the day what matters most in public life is four more years for our children, not four more years for me.”
— Flashback: Caitlin Emma spoke to Emanuel late last year about the progress and challenges that lie ahead when it comes to Chicago’s school system. More time in the classroom for a “child in poverty is essential,” he said. “I also think empowering the principal is essential. I think starting kids with a full day of kindergarten is essential. And not willing to accept failure as an option.”
Darn! They forgot to mention the historic closing of 50 public schools in a single day. That’s what Rahm will be remembered for.
Yesterday, in his opening statement at his confirmation hearing, Brett Kavanaugh spoke at length about his love for his daughters. He is a proud father. At the end of his hearing, as he got up to leave, he was approached by Fred Guttenberg, who lost his daughter, Jamie, in the massacre at the Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, last February. Mr. Guttenberg outstretched his hand to say hello to Kavanaugh. Kavanaugh listened for a few seconds, then turned on his heel and walked away.
Kavanaugh is an absolutist on the subject of gun rights. He doesn’t believe that the Congress or state legislatures should restrict gun ownership in any way, shape, or form. The Founders, after all, did not ban assault weapons. They did not ban 3-D printed guns or bazookas or civilian ownership of shoulder-fired missiles.
Just another reason to hope that this heartless man is not confirmed to the U.S. Supreme Court for the rest of his life, where he can be counted on to oppose abortion rights, health care, gun control, environmental regulation, and every other progressive legislation of the past century.
Corporate reformers have touted the New Orleans “transformation” as proof that privatization works. The recipe is simple: First, get a natural disaster to wipe out all the public schools. Then, fire all the unionized teachers and replace them with inexperienced, low-wage teachers willing to work long hours. At the same time, replace the public schools with privately managed charter schools. Let everyone choose. And, eventually, great things happen: test scores go up, graduation rates go up, college admission rates rise, college persistence goes up. All these great things happen by the miracle of privatization.
As Carol Burris explains in this important article, the narrative is all wrong.
Before Hurricane Katrina, there were 65,000 students in the schools of New Orleans. Today, there are about 45,000. The hurricane did the most damage to the low-lying areas where very poor people lived, and some of them never returned.
In mid-July, Douglas Harris and Matthew Larsen wrote a paper about the great success of the reforms in New Orleans. There are many caveats, mostly having to do with the causes of improvements. And, as Valerie Strauss points out in her introduction to Burris’s article, the New Orleans school district is still significantly below the state average on the state tests.
Burris notes that even Douglas Harris is cautious about whether the New Orleans reforms are “scalable.” Funding increased by almost $1,400 per pupil. That mattered, though Harris doesn’t know how much it mattered. Second, Harris warns that the situation in New Orleans was unique and that its reforms cannot be extrapolated to other districts that might want to adopt the portfolio model or otherwise expand charters. “New Orleans,” he said, “was uniquely situated for these reforms to work. The district was extremely low-performing, and pretty much everyone agreed that some type of major change was in order. It’s easier to improve from such a low starting point. … I don’t think we can extrapolate New Orleans to most of the country. It’s more like a best-case scenario.”
Burris reports that the Network for Public Education commissioned Bruce Baker of Rutgers University to review the Harris-Larsen report on NOLA.
Baker faults Harris and Larsen for downplaying the role of extra funding and the importance of demographic change.
Baker reviews the effects of adding substantial new resources to a struggling district. He points out that in the case of New Orleans, a disproportionate share of the new funding went to administration and transportation. Because the teaching staff was young and inexperienced, the cost of instruction was unusually low and is probably not sustainable in the long run.
He also points out the dramatic decline of concentrated poverty in New Orleans. This in itself was an important “reform” which helped to boost outcomes.
As usual, things are more complicated than they seem. Any reformer who blithely suggests applying the New Orleans model to a city without a hurricane, without a huge boost in funding, and without positive demographic changes to reduce poverty, is likely to be disappointed.
Governor Doug Ducey added two new members to the Arizona Supreme Court to ensure that the court would strike down an effort to raise the state income tax off the ballot in November. Last week, the court dutifully complied.
This was a slap in the face to the #RedForEd movement, which campaigned for increased funding. It raises the stakes in the Governor’s Race this November, when Ducey will face the Democratic nominee, educator David Garcia.
“The measure, recently titled Proposition 207, was expected to bring in $690 million in additional funding for Arizona public district and charter schools.
“Supporters had framed Prop. 207 as a way to fully restore the more than $1 billion in cuts to education funding since the recession.
“Prop. 207 would have raised income-tax rates by 3.46 percentage points to 8 percent on individuals who earn more than $250,000 or households that earn more than $500,000. It also would have raised individual rates by 4.46 percentage points to 9 percent for individuals who earn more than $500,000 and households that earn more than $1 million.”
The increase in taxes was opposed by the Arizona Chamber of Commerce and a group deceptively called “Arizonans for Great Schools and a Strong Economy.” Yeah, great schools with bare bones funding.
The opponents claimed that the referendum misstated the tax increase. Instead of saying that taxes would go up “by 4.46 percentage points to 9 percent,” they wanted the referendum to characterize the increase in the worst possible light:
“The complaint alleged the petitions were misleading because they referred to the proposed tax-rate increase as a “percent” increase and not the more accurate “percentage point” increase. According to the complaint, the tax rate would have seen a 76 and 98 percent increase and not a 3.46 and 4.46 percent increase.”
Supporters of the tax increase had collected 270,000 signatures.
“Supporters of Prop. 207 immediately placed blame for the measure’s defeat on Ducey, who is running for re-election.
“David Garcia, the Democratic nominee for governor, on Wednesday said Ducey had “stacked” the state’s highest court, leading it to shoot down Prop. 207.
“Ducey has appointed three of the seven judges who sit on the court’s bench. The governor also signed legislation in 2016 that expanded the court from five justices to seven.
“The stakes for the race for governor in Arizona just changed utterly and irrevocably,” Garcia said. “We must elect pro-public education candidates up and down the ballot to prevent this kind of corruption in the future. I’m proud to stand with our educators, parents and kids.”
“The Ducey campaign did not immediately comment on Wednesday’s court ruling. A spokesman for Ducey said Wednesday evening that the governor was still reviewing the five-paragraph ruling.”
Obviously, Governor Ducey reads slowly. He is still digesting the five paragraph ruling.
Jan Resseger has an excellent analysis of the slapdown of the AZ funding measure, which was supposed to be the means for Ducey to keep his promise to raise teachers’ salaries 20% by 2020.
She writes:
“In May, after Arizona teachers walked out of school and flooded the capitol, the legislature passed a budget to give the teachers the first installment in what Governor Doug Ducey promises will be a 20 percent pay raise by 2020. Wanting to ensure there will be a second installment of that promised raise, however, and worrying about catastrophic cuts in state expenditures on other necessities at their schools, organized teachers gathered thousands more signatures than were required to put an Invest in Ed initiative on the November ballot to raise taxes on families making over $250,000 annually, with the money designated for public education.
“The teachers secured the signatures before the deadline, but the Chamber of Commerce filed a lawsuit to block the referendum—alleging that the ballot language was not clear enough. A trial court okayed the ballot language, and on August 16, an appeals court affirmed that the initiative could go forward. However, last week, siding with the Chamber of Commerce, the Arizona Supreme Court yanked the referendum off the ballot.
“Here are some facts to explain why the tax increase was so desperately needed in Arizona, and why the Arizona Supreme Court’s decision to block the initiative is such a serious matter.
“The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities’ Michael Leachman describes Arizona’s desperate revenue shortage, the product of years of tax cuts: “At least 12 states have cut ‘general’ or ‘formula’ (school) funding—the primary form of state support for elementary and secondary schools—by 7 percent or more per student since 2008…. Seven of these states have also cut income taxes over the decade, making it particularly hard for them to raise revenue needed for their schools.” Arizona is one of the seven.
“In a recent report, ‘A Decade of Neglect’,: the American Federation of Teachers describes what the tax cuts have meant for Arizona’s schools: “In the years following the Great Recession, the Arizona Legislature cut funding for K-12 schools by $4.6 billion…. For 2015-16, Arizona ranked 49th among the states and the District of Columbia for per-pupil funding. Spending was down 12.7 percent compared with 2007-2008, and only two other states saw a larger decline in per-pupil spending between 2008 and 2016. The state ranks 46th for teacher salaries… After a 15 percent decline in the student-teacher ratio, Arizona ranks 50th among the states… Arizona also ranks near the bottom for support for higher education. For FY 2017, spending was 55 percent below pre-recession levels, and the state ranked last for spending on higher education. No other state showed a larger decline in post-recession support for higher education. Arizona’s failure to fund education is the result of what has been described as an ‘ideological aversion to taxes.’”
Arizona’s teachers trusted Ducey to keep his promise. He won’t. If he is re-elected, he will forget he ever promised to raise salaries.
Diane Ravitch's blog 