Archives for the month of: January, 2020
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Audrey Watters: Don’t Believe the Techno-Pundits and Don’t Put a Ring Camera in Your Home

By dianeravitch
January 4, 2020 //
12

Audrey Watters may be our  most articulate critic of tech obsession. I enjoy her regular posts, and her ability to connect birds with events. Open this link to see what I mean. 

She begins every post with a bird and finds a way to connect it to what she is thinking about.

In this post, she begins with:

This week’s Columbidae is the Gallicolumba luzonica — the Luzon Bleeding Heart Dove. The bird, which is endemic to the island of Luzon in the Philippines, is listed as “near threatened” due to habitat loss.

This bird has something to do with the term “bleeding heart liberal.”

She briefly critiques one of the latest proclamations about technology, then links to a piece about the dangers of Ring in the home, which can be hacked. The link refers to a story that circulated widely on CNN and in other major media about a man hacking into a little girl’s bedroom where her parents had installed a Ring for her protection. Scary stuff.

Categories Privacy, Technology

These Are the Court Cases That Could Reshape K-12 Education in 2020

By dianeravitch
January 3, 2020 //
11

The courts have become the arbiters of much that happens in American education.

The U.S. Supreme Court now has a 5-4 conservative majority, due to Trump’s appointment of two Justices.

This article summarizes the most important court cases of 2020. 

The country is three years deep into Donald Trump’s presidency, which has seen, among other changes, significant policy overhauls from the U.S. Department of Education and a right-leaning Supreme Court bench ruling on landmark cases.

With multiple lawsuits pending in federal courts, the nation’s public education landscape could change significantly in 2020. 

Recent oral arguments before the Supreme Court on DACA that will affect thousands of educators, students and their families are just the tip of the iceberg. A five-year-old Virginia case over transgender students’ rights to bathrooms and other school facilities could finally be heard by the Supreme Court if it doesn’t reach its end in the lower courts, and justices are set to hear a Montana case over state aid given to religious schools in January. 

This is one of the cases that will be decided by the courts:

Houston ISD vs. Texas Education Agency

Details of the case: An announcement in November by Texas education officials cited Houston ISD’s “inability to address long-standing academic deficiencies” and the elected school board’s “breakdown in governance” as reasons for a state takeover just days after voters elected new school board members, who were unable to take their seats and were booted alongside the superintendent under the takeover. 

In response, the Houston Federation of Teachers filed a lawsuit saying the Texas Education Agency and education commissioner “seek to disenfranchise the largely minority population of HISD and prevent it from being served by its elected school board members.”

Plaintiffs are suing the state agency for violating the Texas and U. S. constitutions, as well as the Voting Rights Act of 1965, claiming the takeover decision violated Houston residents’ voting rights based on race and national origin. 

Why it’s significant: The union is calling the takeover a “power grab” and says it believes the state’s goal is to turn the district into privately operated charter schools, while the state points to the chronically failing Wheatley High School as one of the primary reasons for its decision.

The lawsuit is a last-ditch effort to save the largest school district in Texas (and one of the largest in the nation) from a takeover, which would be unprecedented in size if it proceeds. 

Where it is now: The lawsuit was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas in Austin last month. Houston ISD’s request for a temporary injunction was heard on Dec. 5.

Texas American Federation of Teachers says it expects a ruling on the injunction, which would hold off the takeover if passed, by U.S. District Judge Lee Yeakel in the next few days. “After that, it could be a lengthy process,” Rob D’Amico, a spokesperson for the union, said. 

My view: What is bizarre about this case is that the state is throwing out the elected school board and taking over the Houston public schools based on the low test scores of one school, Wheatley High School. Houston did well on the urban NAEP. It is the only urban school district to win Eli Broad’s award as the most improved urban district (will Broad revoke his prizes?). This seems to be one of those cases where a majority white state government decided to teach a lesson to a majority-nonwhite urban district by removing control from its elected school board. Is rightwing governor Greg Abbott and his non educator State Commissioner Mike Morath taking this opportunity to open more charter schools in Houston? Morath served on the board of education in Dallas (where he promoted charter schools); he is a software developer and an investor. The takeover is a hoax, but who knows what the courts will rule? The only qualification to be state commissioner of education in Texas is that one must be a U.S. citizen. No expertise or knowledge needed.

Categories Accountability

Happy Birthday, Lucretia Mott!

By dianeravitch
January 3, 2020 //
11

A gem from Garrison Keillor’s daily website “A Writer’s Almanac”:

 

Today is the birthday of women’s rights reformer Lucretia (Coffin) Mott, born in Nantucket, Massachusetts, in 1793. She went to public school in Boston for two years, and then, when she was 13, she enrolled in a Quaker boarding school near Poughkeepsie, New York. After two years there, she was hired on as an assistant, and then a teacher. She quit when she found out that she was being paid less than half of what the male teachers all made, simply because she was a woman; the experience sparked her first interest in women’s rights. In 1811, she married fellow teacher James Mott, and the newlyweds moved to Philadelphia. Ten years later, she became a minister in the Society of Friends, as the Quaker church was called, and she was a popular public speaker on matters of religion and social reform.

She was active in the abolitionist movement when she met Elizabeth Cady Stanton on a ship to London; both were on their way to the World’s Anti-Slavery Convention in 1840. They were attending as delegates, but found that the convention would not let them speak because they were women; they were even seated in a separate area, behind a curtain. The two women resolved then and there to organize a convention for women’s rights as soon as they returned home. It took eight years, but eventually they did: the Seneca Falls (New York) Convention of 1848.

Mott wrote, “The world has never yet seen a truly great and virtuous nation, because in the degradation of women, the very fountains of life are poisoned at their source.”

Categories Civil Rights, Equity

Angie Sullivan Tells Every Nevada Legislator to Read SLAYING GOLIATH

By dianeravitch
January 3, 2020 //
9

Angie Sullivan teaches in a Title 1 elementary school in Carson County, Nevada. She teaches the children who were left behind.

She sent this post to every legislator in Nevada:

A small group of vocal teachers, parents, and activists have been publicly concerned about national public school privatization for two decades.  
 
Diane Ravitch is the leader of that pack.  
 
Her new book is coming out soon.  
 
Her last books included characters who are national culprits in destroying American Public Schools.  Some have come from my state of Nevada.  
 
Reform was meant to change a system of education that needed to change.  Still needs change. Admittedly we need to improve.  No one argues against that.  Teachers have always been willing to improve.  
 
This reform was not ever meant to improve.  
 
Change came.   The wrong kind.  
 
Big bad horrific and public school destroying change came.   
 
It was bad change bought by corporations who do not love children, will not love children, and seek money even if harm comes to children. 
 
Wrecking ball.  
 
National level well funded and crushing. 
 
Reformers will not use the data – they supposedly worshipped – to admit – they were wrong. 
 
Devastatingly wrong. 
 
Wrong in ways that were really destructive over two generations.   Destroying the central fabric of America – attacking our local public schools.  Kids were warehoused in experiments.  Kids without teachers.   Kids hooked up to innovations that made money but did not educated.  
Billions spent on reforms:  disruption, return on investment, testing, take over, turnaround, triggering, attacking teachers, standardization, score chasing has barely moved American Students on the NAEP Assessments.  
 
The data is back. 
Business reformers failed.   Return on investment was zero.  
 
Reform has been successful at systematically privatizing huge amounts of education cash.  It has segregated.  It has devastated.  It has destroyed public school communities.  And disenfranchised students are further behind than ever before. 
 
The teachers were crushed and millions left. 
 
This expensive business-type reform did not improve education.  
 
Unfortunately, the folks driving reform were not teachers – nor were they interested in authentic education.   Billionaires who were successful in business took over.  They bought the top levels of government and spread cash from the top down.  Both parties.   Anyone with power.   And policy makers and leadership sold out hard. Money taken from public schools to be spent on scams and fads. 
Billions wasted.   
 
Money and people who chase dollars should never be in charge of education policy.  Neoliberals and corporations who hide from liability will never create the synergy, caring, and community building that teachers can do in a school building. 
 
Now the billionaires know – public school teachers will fight.  Activists will engage.  Those who love children will activate. 
 
Take that Goliath.
 
A band of loud people who care – will fight with any small stone we can find. 
We are not scared – because we are right.  
 
Time for policy makers and leadership to buy a book.  
 
O God hear the words of my mouth – hold us in Your Hand because we are small against those seeking to harm kids.  
 
The Teacher,
Angie Sullivan. 

 

Categories Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Billionaires, Budget Cuts, Charter Schools, Common Core, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Education Reform, Failure, For-Profit, Nevada, Privatization, Testing, Vouchers

The Most Important School Case Before the U.S. Supreme Court This Session

By dianeravitch
January 3, 2020 //
21

The U.S. Supreme Court will hear a case called Espinoza v. Montana Department of Revenue that will determine whether the United States–or any state–may still respect a separation of church and state.

In the wake of Donald Trump’s choice of two far-right Justices to the Supreme Court, this case might well be decided in a way that removes all prohibitions on the use of public funds for religious schools.

The facts of the case are these: Like many states, Montana’s state constitution forbids the funding of religious schools. The Montana legislature passed a tax credit program that funds vouchers for religious schools. The Montana Supreme Court ruled that the law violated the state constitution. Now, the case is before the U.S. Supreme Court.

Many states have such prohibitions (and in some of them, like Indiana and Florida, the state courts decided to ignore the explicit language of the state constitution and allow vouchers for religious schools on the claim that the money goes to the family not the religious school that actually gets the public money). The typical attack on state bans on funding religious schools is that such prohibitions are “Blaine amendments,” adopted in the late 19th century at the height of anti-Catholic bigotry; because they were passed in a spirit of bigotry, the argument goes, they should be struck down.

In Montana, the prohibition on funding religious schools is not a Blaine amendment. It was the product of a Montana state constitutional convention in 1972.

Advocates of vouchers will nonetheless make the same argument, ignoring the facts.

Will the Supreme Court care? Or will it placate demands for religious “freedom” by preventing states from keeping public money only in public schools?

If the Espinoza case is decided against Montana, we can anticipate public funding of evangelical Christian schools, Catholic schools, Yeshivas, and Madrassas, as well as the schools of every imaginable sect and religious group.

Somehow this does not seem to be what the Founders had in mind when they created this nation more than 200 years ago. They were not anti-religion, but they did not want religious tests for office or any religious establishment of religion with public funds.

Here is an amicus brief in the Espinoza case written by “Public Funds Public Schools,” a collaboration of legal organizations that support civil rights and civil liberties, the Education Law Center, the Southern Poverty Law Center, the SPLC Action Fund, and Munger, Tolles, and Olson LLP.

Categories Civil Rights, Education Reform, Religion, Separation of church and state, Trump

Carol Burris Cites DeVos to Prove Failure of Federal Charter School Program

By dianeravitch
January 3, 2020 //
17

The Network for Public Education has issued two reports documenting waste, fraud, and lack of oversight in the federal Charter Schools Program. The CSP was created by the Clinton administration in 1994 at a time when there were few charters; it was intended to give aid to start-ups. Over the years it has evolved into a slush fund for rapacious corporate charter chains and for the advocacy groups that lobby for more charter funding.

In response to the NPE reports, the charter industry attacked them as cherry-picking, inaccurate, and union-funded, none of which is true.

Recently Betsy DeVos attacked NPE and its critique of the $440 million CSP program that is in her sole control.

NPE executive director Carol Burris responded to the critics by using the data offered by DeVos herself. DeVos’s numbers demonstrate that the NPE reports underestimated the number of charter schools that never opened (“ghost schools”) or that closed not long after opening.

She further showed that the charter lobby (which has received millions from the CSP program) has an obvious self-interest in keeping their federal money flowing and that their critiques of the NPE reports are inaccurate and riddled with error.

The worst thing that the industry and DeVos can say about NPE is that we support American public education and oppose privatization. This is true. We do. That doesn’t make NPE “biased.” It makes us good citizens.

Burris’s response is brilliant and well worth your time to read as an example of clear thinking and clear writing, supported by the evidence provided by DeVos herself.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Education Reform, Privatization, U.S. Department of Education

Jennifer Berkshire: The Democratic Candidates and Their School Choice Problem

By dianeravitch
January 3, 2020 //
24

Jennifer Berkshire writes in The Nation about the quandary of Democratic candidates. For years, charter schools had bipartisan support. Clinton and Obama both supported charter schools, and joined with Republicans to expand the federal Charter Schools Program, which is now the single biggest source of funding for charter schools at $440 million annually (the second biggest source is the Walton Family Foundation).

Then came the Trump administration and Betsy DeVos, with their full-throated advocacy for school choice, including vouchers. In red states like Ohio, voucher programs are exploding, and Democrats are pushing back against school choice. They are also pushing back against charter schools, as we saw in Kentucky and Virginia, where pro-public education governors were elected.

Meanwhile, the current crop of Democratic candidates are weaving and bobbing. Sanders and Warren have come out against charter schools and privatization. Other candidates are trying to thread the needle, not fully rejecting charter schools, but opposing “for-profit” charter schools (which are legal only in Arizona, but are found in almost every state with charters that are managed by for-profit EMO managers).

Berkshire begins:

When seven of the Democratic presidential candidates descended on Pittsburgh recently for a day-long forum on public education, one of Pennsylvania’s unlikeliest new political stars was on hand to greet them. Working Families Party candidate Kendra Brooks, a black single mom from North Philly, won an at-large seat on the Philadelphia City Council this fall, stunning the political establishment. At the heart of Brooks’s insurgent campaign was her resistance to Philadelphia’s two-decade-long experiment with school privatization, including the explosion of charter schools and the mass closure of neighborhood schools. “If we as community members don’t commit to this public institution that we fought so hard for generations ago, we’re going to lose control of it,” says Brooks.

Her message resonated with Philly’s voters, and thrilled the audience of teachers and activists who were on hand in Pittsburgh to hear a long list of presidential hopefuls weigh in on the future of the country’s schools. But just outside of the convention center, on a rain-slicked plaza, the resistance to the Democrats’ leftward swing on education was on vivid display. Over 100 charter school parents, part of the same school choice network that disrupted an Elizabeth Warren campaign event last month, came armed with a message of their own: Black Democrats support charter schools.

Welcome to the Democrats’ school choice wars. For the last three decades, charter schools have attracted bipartisan love, amassing an unlikely—and unwieldy—amalgam of supporters along the way: GOP free marketeers, civil rights advocates, ‘third way’ Democrats, and hedge fund billionaires. But in an era of fierce political partisanship, that coalition is now unraveling.

Progressive Democrats recognize that charters are a step towards vouchers and are fully a part of the DeVos crusade to eliminate public schools. We will watch to see what happens to the other candidates.

And we will also watch as DeVos hands out yet another $440 million to corporate charter chains, charter advocacy organizations, and even to states that don’t want the money (see New Hampshire and Michigan, both of which said they did not want more money for charter schools).

We now know that the core constituency for charters and vouchers are Wall Street financiers, hedge fund managers, billionaires, libertarians, right-wingers, ALEC, and the far-right. Where do Democrats fit into this coalition?

 

Categories Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Billionaires, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Privatization, Trump, Unions, Vouchers, Walton Foundation

Harold Meyerson: Bloomberg as “the Manchurian Candidate”

By dianeravitch
January 2, 2020 //
10

Harold Meyerson adds a few reasons to believe that Michael Bloomberg is not the right candidate to beat Trump:

ON TAP Today from the American Prospect

January 2, 2020

Meyerson on TAP

Bloomberg: The Manchurian Candidate. If there’s anyone out there who believes Michael Bloomberg would be a strong candidate to unseat Donald Trump, a very well-documented story in today’s Washington Post should tank any such delusions. Some of the particular weaknesses that Post reporter Michael Kranish documents have been in plain view for some time, while others are getting their first exposure, but no one has assembled them into a coherent narrative comparable to Kranish’s.

In case you didn’t know, Bloomberg is up to his neck in business relations with China and the Chinese government. His company has had offices in Beijing for the past 25 years and has made a tidy sum selling its computers and financial information to the nation’s multitude of capitalists and to its Leninist-capitalist government. Two years ago, the Bloomberg Barclays Global Aggregate Bond Index elected to include Chinese government bonds in its listings, enabling Western investors to fund the Chinese government’s myriad endeavors. Kranish reports that financial experts believe that $150 billion in such investments will flow to China in the next couple of years.

 

Also in 2018, Bloomberg initiated the Bloomberg New Economy Forum, his very own Asian-oriented Davos, which held its meeting that year in Singapore, and its 2019 confab in Beijing.

 

Not surprisingly, seldom is heard a discouraging word from Bloomberg about the Chinese government. One searches in vain for his criticisms of the government’s mass incarceration of the Uighurs or its threats to Hong Kong. On the contrary, he told a television audience that Chinese President Xi Jinping “is not a dictator.”

In short, Bloomberg is the man who opened the door to major American investments in the Chinese government. Can I see the hands of those who think this will help him if (as, happily, will not happen) he’s the designated Democrat to take on Trump? ~ HAROLD MEYERSON
Categories Accountability, Billionaires, Bloomberg, Michael

John Merrow Cancels His Congratulations to You

By dianeravitch
January 2, 2020 //
4

Last week, John Merrow posted his congratulations to readers for matching up with an algorithm that selected them to make a substantial contribution to a worthy organization.

In this post, he cancels his congratulations and explains why he was in error–or just kidding around.

Categories Funding, Goodness, Network for Public Education

Houston: Community Members and Students Speak Out Against State Takeover of HISD

By dianeravitch
January 2, 2020 //
7

The following statement was released on New Year’s Day by Community Voices for Public Education, a coalition of parents and students in Houston. As their statement demonstrates, the state takeover is a fraud intended to strip the school district of its elected school board and to replace it with a hand-picked governing board selected by a non-educator who wants to privatize public education.

 

It is New Years’ Day and public education is on our minds.

Will you make a commitment to fight the immoral, unAmerican and racist takeover of HISD?  Call your elected officials and then bring five friends with you to the January 9 rally opposing this takeover. 

Recently, the Houston Chronicle editorial board used misleading facts and misrepresentation to misinform its readers. The Chronicle seems mission-driven to legitimize the state takeover of HISD no matter the cost to its journalistic integrity or actual facts.

When they do this over three editorials, it is no longer an accident; it is propaganda. 

Here are some examples from the most recent editorials.

HISD at a crossroads: Looming State Takeover: The editorial compared HISD’s 81% graduation rate to Dallas’ 88% and Fort Worth’s 87% leaving the reader with the impression that they were better school districts.  The reality is Fort Worth has a TEA 2019 Accountability Rating of “C”(79) and only 53% of their graduates are college, career or military ready versus HISD’s “B”(88) and 63% graduate readiness. Dallas ISD has a “B” (86) rating and only 57% of their graduates are college, career or military ready. By the TEA’s own standards HISD is the better district. How did the Houston Chronicle and Mr. Morath manage to come to a completely different conclusion? Didn’t any of them bother to check the Texas Schools website? https://txschools.gov 

HISD must learn from others and our own past:  This editorial starts with the statistic of 56% of HISD students not meeting grade level expectations as measured by the STAAR test but it never mentions that Dallas ISD has the exact same STAAR performance rating as HISD. Once again, the Chronicle incorrectly leaves readers with the impression that Dallas is a better school district. (Source https://txschools.gov) 

HISD needs improvement, but where to start? How could the Chron fail to mention the Superintendent? The person who actually runs the district. The person who hires and places the all important principals. The person who would have to actually implement the LBB recommendations. This piece misleads the reader into thinking the Board of Trustees run the district. They don’t! They are a governing body elected by us and accountable to us. If the state takeover proceeds, our democratically elected school board members, four just elected, will be replaced with a board of managers serving at the pleasure of the governor and the TEA.

A call to all Houstonians to participate: In its final editorial in the series, the Chronicle asks us to put blind faith in TEA Commissioner Mike Morath as our unelected torchbearer. His educational experience is one term as Dallas ISD Trustee in which he unsuccessfully tried to turn Dallas ISD into a “home rule” giant charter using the same tactics he is now employing in Houston ISD. Truly, his resume is thinner than most substitute teachers. 

Throughout the series, the Houston Chronicle disregards overwhelming evidence that state takeovers harm students and communities. They also turn a blind eye to the fact that takeovers have been used disproportionately against school districts of color. Furthermore, they have ignored a preponderance of evidence that high stakes testing is a flawed method for evaluating students, teachers and schools. 

And the series pays the barest lip service to poverty/inequity and the effect on children and families. When seven children share one mattress, they do not need a state takeover to do better in school; they need six more mattresses.

If the Editorial Board wanted to facilitate meaningful change in HISD, their editorials should have been grounded in complete facts and they should have used data to inform, not obfuscate. There is no such thing as problem solving through propaganda.

Community Voices for Public Education
http://www.houstoncvpe.org/

 

Categories Accountability, Fake News, Fraud, Hoax, Houston, Lies, Texas
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