Archives for the month of: March, 2020
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Why Didn’t Elizabeth Warren Make It to the End?

By dianeravitch
March 5, 2020 //
86

Paul Waldman of the Washington Post chalks it up to sexism, although it’s possible that there was not enough space for two progressives in the race. I met Senator Warren about five years ago and we spent half an hour talking. She listened, which is rare. I thought she was the smartest elected official I had ever met.

He writes:

Is it enough, as a presidential candidate, to have smarts and charisma, to have a clear and concise message, to even be the best debater, and most of all to be the best prepared to do the job effectively?

No, it is not. Which is why so often during this primary campaign, we’ve heard supporters of Elizabeth Warren ask plaintively, “Hey, what if we got behind the person who’d actually be the best president? Why not do that?”

They asked because the number of voters willing to do that was not what it might have been, which is why Warren has announced that she’s ending her bid for the White House.

There is a temptation to say the presidential primary process is brutal and unsparing but ultimately fair. It tests you in the way no other campaign can. If you don’t win, it’s because you didn’t have what it takes. Lots of it may be out of your control, but if you were a once-in-a-generation talent like Bill Clinton or Barack Obama, you could have overcome any obstacle cast before you. Nobody deserves the nomination; either you win it or you don’t.

Which is true as far as it goes. But we can’t consider Warren’s candidacy without seeing sexism, both in fact and in perception, for the hindrance it was for her.

To be clear, sexism isn’t the only reason Warren will not be the Democratic nominee. There are many reasons. She had a few stumbles along the way, as every campaign does. There were some decisions she could have made differently.

But her campaign and the particular way it failed tell us a lot about how gender operates in presidential politics.

Let’s consider that Joe Biden is the likeliest candidate to be the Democratic nominee, despite the fact that he has run an absolutely abysmal campaign and is so erratic that sympathetic Democrats regularly tell one another, “I saw Biden give an interview, and he was completely coherent!” as though they were praising a toddler. Biden won a sweeping victory on Super Tuesday even in states where he did not campaign for a single day or have an organization. There has never in my lifetime been a winning presidential campaign that was so weak on so many dimensions.

And yet Biden is cruising toward the nomination. Why?

Because of a collective decision among a significant portion of the Democratic electorate that he is “electable,” i.e., that other people will find him inoffensive enough to vote for. As Michelle Cottle noted, one poll last year asked Democrats who they were supporting, and Biden was in the lead; when they asked who they’d rather see as president if they could wave a magic wand, Warren was in front.

You’ve probably heard that again and again: Voters saying Warren is the one they liked the best, but because they didn’t think she was electable, they were supporting someone else, most often Biden.

That perception didn’t just come of nowhere. Yes, people might be thinking of their sexist uncle or their “traditional” parents, but they also heard it again and again from the media, creating a self-reinforcing loop.

Sure, Warren can put policy issues into terms people can understand like no other candidate; sure, she has thought more seriously about the powers of the government than anyone else; sure, her anti-corruption message resonates with all kinds of voters. But she just can’t win.

Then there are all the people who said they didn’t like Warren but couldn’t quite put their finger on why. Maybe it was her voice, or that she seemed too aggressive, or that she wasn’t “authentic” enough. Not because she’s a woman, though! I’d support a woman, I would! Just not her.

He has more to say about why Warren didn’t make it. But the point is clear. This country may someday elect a woman as president. But not yet.

Categories Education Reform

Peter Greene: From High Expectations to Ridiculous Expectations

By dianeravitch
March 5, 2020 //
33

Back in 2000, when George W. Bush was running for President, he tales up the (nonexistent) Texas Miracle and said there was a simple answer to solving the problems of Educatuon, raising test scores and graduation rates, and closing achievement gaps. Easy-Peasy. Test every child every years from grades 3-8. Publish the scores. Reward schools that raise scores. Humiliate those that don’t. The secre: High expectations! So No Child Left Behind mandated that every child would be proficient by 2014. An absurd goal, and district or state met it. Probably every school in the nation should have closed.

Peter Greene writes here about appropriate and inappropriate uses of expectations.

Setting impossible goals is actually demotivating.

Categories Accountability, Education Reform, NCLB (No Child Left Behind), Race to the Top

North Carolina: Educator Jen Mangrum Wins Democratic Primary for State Superintendent

By dianeravitch
March 5, 2020 //
4

Educator Jen Mangrum won the Democratic primary for State Superintendent of Education. She had the support of the state’s biggest teacher associations, and she won the endorsement of the Network for Public Education Action.

Jen is a native of North Carolina whose parents were public school teachers. After graduating college, she taught second and third graders and specialized in early childhood education for 15 years. She earned graduate degrees and became a teacher educator.

Distraught with the General Assembly’s disrespect for the state’s teachers, she launched a long shot campaign against the most powerful politician in the state in 2018. She didn’t win but she persisted in fighting to restore respect and dignity to the state’s educators. North Carolina has moreNational Board Certified teachers proportionally than any other state.

Her Republican opponent, Catherine Truitt, was an advisor to Governor McCrory, who led the attacks on teachers and introduced charters and vouchers. She is now leader of an online university.

NPE Action is proud to have endorsed Jen and wish her well in her November race. We hope every public school parent and teacher will help her. She can lead the charge to revive the Tarheel State’s reputation for educational leadership.

Categories Administrators, superintendents, Education Reform, North Carolina

Keith E. Benson: What Reformers Are Really Doing in Camden and Other Urban Districts

By dianeravitch
March 5, 2020 //
5

Keith E. Benson is president of the Camden (New Jersey) Education Association. In his view, the underlying goal of the charter industry is gentrification, and he worries about its long-term implications for his community and its families.

He writes:

Admittedly [my] fight for Camden’s public schools is personal. Both my grandmothers were teachers, numerous aunts, and two of my uncles were employees of the District where I, myself, taught before becoming president of the city’s teacher union in 2017. My daughter goes to school here and has since she was three. My wife went to school here until her freshman year of high school, and she grew up here. We all live here now. Because of such deep and intimate connections I have with this public school district and city, anything that threatens the sustainability is triggering.

The planned dismantling of our public-school system coupled with a massive redevelopment effort dubbed “Camden Rising”, reduces merely existing here in the future to a tenuous proposition for many working class and poor residents. For generations of Camden’s current residents, and new arrivals here from Latin America, this city is one of the last affordable places in New Jersey folks can reside. Redevelopment after all, is not singularly about buildings and urban spaces, but also demographics. Municipal redevelopment always has a human cost; and those often left footing the bill through rising rents and displacement are typically those who can least afford it.

The deliberate dismantling of urban school districts as witnessed in Chicago, Philadelphia , Atlanta, Newark, NYC and other urban localities is central to remaking cities and courting new potential residents. As covered in Education Reform and Gentrification in the Age of #CamdenRising, what is taking place in Camden now, is no different than what we’ve seen unfold across America. If places that were once affordable for the impoverished and working class, cease to be affordable, what happens to them? Where do they go? How do they fare? As such I have developed a disdain for anything that threatens the tenuous sense of tranquility and order those at the margins may have – with residential housing, and the right to exist in their domicile being central to that sense of order. As such, I recognize the dismantling of urban school systems as more than simply a takeover of buildings and upending of staff, but as central to neoliberal cities’ efforts to separate from vulnerable populations they deem undesirable.

Which brings me to Reason Number 1 as to the Problems I have with the Education Reform Community: Their Committed Ignorance that Urban Education Reform aka “School Choice”, through Dismantling Public Schools is More Subversive than Simply Improving Educational Trajectories for Students of Color.

To be clear, I am making a distinction between parents who send their children to charter schools, and the platformed (Black) Education Reform Proponents. I recognize that parents in many cases are trying to do what they believe is best aligned with their living situation, and for their child. This critique is NOT for them. (In fact, to be clear, it is my position that it is a parent’s responsibility to do what they deem best for their child, including deciding what school is a good fit for them.)

The Education Reform establishment however, refuses speak to, and remains unconcerned about, the connection between low income housing, rental rates and the dismantling of urban public schools low income housing, rental rates and the dismantling of urban public schools. Worse yet, while occupying ample space on the internet, social media, and in top newspaper’s Op/Ed columns, they also never make such connections known to the largely ignorant (and trusting) public while advocating for the destruction of urban schools; never mention the connection between real estate prices and the establishing of charter schools; and never mention how the existence of urban schools labeled “failing” frustrates development in keeping rent and taxes low, while keeping potential gentrifiers out. In Reformers’ advocacy, urban schools have no connection to neighborhood affordability worth mentioning, future availability of affordable housing for students and their parents. As such, they have actively chosen to keep their focus on the “quality schools” talking point. They are willfully deceptive, or negligently myopic in focusing solely on schools as if students’ output is not impacted by the housing uncertainty which initiates greater student mobility, family transience, and increasing student homelessness. increasing student homelessness.

It is my contention that if Education Reformers really cared about school quality, they’d recognize that schools are indicators of larger urban policy priorities. Schools are building charged with educating observant children who arrive with experiences and awareness that may not prioritize learning content as their first concern. Afterall, what is more fundamental to anyone’s sense of security and normalcy than their right to a secure space to sleep and call “home”? My suspicion is not that allies of the reform movement aren’t aware of this, it’s that they don’t care because all along, it was never really about the kids and their learning in the first place.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Education Reform, Hoax, New Jersey, Privatization

Nancy Bailey: There Can Be No “Science of Reading” When Libraries and Librarians Are Disappearing

By dianeravitch
March 5, 2020 //
71

In the past few months, there have been a number of articles about “the science of reading,” all touting the importance of phonics. I don’t know that there is a “science of mathematics” or a “science of history,” or a science of teaching any other subject. Although I have a long record in support of teaching phonics, I have long recognized that many children read without the help of phonics, many learn by being read to by their parents, many start reading because the grown ups in their lives make it important to them.

Nancy Bailey points out a central problem with the “science of reading.” The disappearance of libraries and librarians. The ed-tech industry has jumped on the “science of reading” bandwagon because it believes that a computer can teach sounds and symbols as well as a human teacher, maybe better, through repetitive exercises.

Nancy, as usual, says “hold on” and throws some common sense and experience into the discussion.

She writes:

The loss of libraries and qualified librarians in the poorest schools has reached a critical mass. Yet those who promote a Science of Reading (SoR), often supporting online reading programs, never mention the loss of school libraries or qualified librarians.

Ignoring the importance of school libraries and certified librarians delegitimizes any SoR. Children need books, reading material, and real librarians in public schools. If reading instruction doesn’t lead to reading and learning from books, what’s the point? Why should children care about decoding words if there’s no school library where they can browse and choose reading material that matters?

How do school districts prioritize reading when they shutter the only access some students have to books? Who will assist students when qualified school librarians are dismissed?

Across the country, as noted below, public school districts have chaotically closed school libraries and fired librarians. They have done this despite the fact that school libraries and qualified librarians are proven positive factors in raising reading scores in children.

When recent NAEP scores appeared low, no one questioned how the loss of school libraries and librarians in America’s poorest schools could have accounted for lower scores. Instead, they obsessed over rising scores in Mississippi, likely due to holding third graders back.

The SoR fans criticize teachers, university education schools, and reading programs. Most are not classroom teachers and they appear to be taking children down a path towards all-tech reading programs.

Unlike the abundance of research showing the benefit of libraries and librarians, there’s no proven research that online reading programs will help children read better, especially if they have a reading disability.

The Research

We’ve known for years, that schools with quality school libraries and school librarians have students who obtain better test scores. Numerous research studies support the importance of libraries and librarians….

A Few of the Many Places that Have Lost School Libraries and Librarians:

New York City: A 2015 Education Week report, “Number of Libraries Dwindles in N.Y.C. Schools” notes that the number of N.Y.C. school libraries plummeted from nearly 1,500 in 2005 to fewer than 700 in 2014. The biggest drops happened in the three years before this time. Michael Bloomberg was mayor. Libraries were severely understaffed.

Philadelphia: This city has seen a drastic reduction of school libraries. The situation is dire. The Philadelphia Enquirer 2020 report, “You Should Be Outraged by the State of Philly Public School Libraries,” shows that, like other school districts, Philadelphia has had to resort to raising funds through donations to save its school libraries. Many schools have no library.

Michigan: Michigan has a known literacy crisis, but policymakers don’t put two-and-two together. Between 2000 and 2016, Michigan saw a 73% decline in school librarians. In 2019, they began retaining third graders with reading difficulties threatening children to “learn or else,” a reform with research stacked against it. Schools turned libraries into media centers and makerspaces. None of this is working out well.

California: California is one of the worst states for a lack of school libraries and qualified librarians. (Ahlfeld). In 2013-14, 4,273 California schools completed a survey representing 43 percent of schools. Of those responding to the survey, 84 percent have a place designated as the library, although staffing, collections, and programs range from exemplary to substandard. Sixteen percent of the schools didn’t have a library. Librarians were mostly found in high schools. Few schools in California have a certified school librarian. Some schools only open the library one day a week. Many elementary schools don’t have library services.

Oakland: In Oakland they’ve lost libraries, or they exist but they have old, outdated books. Signs on the wall tell students they are not allowed to check out books, and 30% of the original 80 school libraries have closed. Fourteen of the 18 high school libraries are gone. Sometimes the PTA provides volunteers for students to check out books.

Virginia: Some states permit schools to staff school libraries with volunteers, a common way to replace certified librarians. Teachers might help students check out books, or they have books for students to check out in their classrooms. Virginia avoided school library chaos in 2018 when the Virginia Association of School Librarians and the Virginia Library Association lobbied the state senate’s education committee helping to narrowly defeat a bill that would have removed regulations for qualified librarians at the middle and high school level. The Virginia House Education Committee defeated Senate Bill 261 in a 12-10 vote.

Chicago: In 2013, then Mayor Rahm Emanuel had the press take a picture of him in a school library discussing a funding increase to the school. The librarian had just lost their job! At that time it was reported that Chicago had 200 schools without a library, or the libraries were staffed by volunteers. The situation is still dire The recent teachers strike brought necessary change, but librarians worry they weren’t on the receiving end. About 80% of the 514 district-run schools are still without a librarian. There are only 108 full-time working librarians in the district, down from 454 librarians in the 2012–2013 school year, the year of the last Chicago teachers strike. But the recent strike did bring needed recognition to loss of school librarians and school libraries.

Arizona: Like so many places, Arizona has children who face poverty and don’t have access to reading material and literacy opportunities. But with only 140 certified school librarians, 57 book titles available for 100 students, and an average library budget of $960, Arizona school libraries are treading water.

New Jersey: In 2012, officials in New Jersey pondered whether librarians were necessary to help students when all students had to do was look up information online. But librarians are still critical to student success in elementary, middle, and high schools. In 2016, they reported a 20% drop in the number of school library media specialists or teacher-librarians in the state since 2007-2008. The New Jersey Library Association began a campaign Unlock Student Potential to address this serious problem. If you are concerned about the state of school libraries and librarians, this provides reports about the problems facing New Jersey.

Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools: In 2015, The Charlotte Observer published “Are School Librarians Going Way of the Milkman?” by Ann Doss Helms over concern about the loss of librarians and media specialists. School administrators used the excuse that teachers could offer books in their classrooms and get students library cards to the public library. This weakens the school structure, and paves the way to school privatization.

Denver: As more students entered the Denver school system, in 2019, they saw a 60% drop in their school librarians despite a previous 2012 study showing that Schools that either maintained or gained an endorsed librarian between 2005 and 2011 tended to have more students scoring advanced in reading in 2011 and to have increased their performance more than schools that either lost their librarians or never had one. How could they ignore what worked?

Florida: In 2015, The Florida Times-Union reported “Media specialists (librarians) almost endangered species in Duval schools.”Librarians are called media specialists there, but 110 media specialists had dropped to 70, leaving only 68 librarians in elementary schools, one at a high school, and one left at a middle school. In 2018, the number of librarians lost included 73 in Duval County, 206 in Dade County, 78 positions in Pasco County, and 47 librarians lost in Polk County (Sparks & Harwin).

Houston: The loss of school librarians began around 2008-2009 school year and got so bad many put bumper stickers that said “Houston We Have a Librarian Problem.” Houston started with 168 librarians. By 2013, it had dropped to 97 serving 282 K-12 schools. In 2019, the Houston Chronicle told about children coming home without books to read in their backpacks. Their 320 student school didn’t have a well-stocked library or full-time librarian.

Ohio: In 2015, it was reported that Ohio had lost more than 700 librarian positions over a decade. In that same year, the School Library Journal posted this report, “OH Department of Education Will Vote to Purge School Librarian Requirement.”

It appears that an emphasis on decoding, without addressing the loss of school libraries and qualified librarians, is intentionally incomplete for a reason. We know the importance of a school library and qualified librarians to a well-functioning school. Blaming teachers and their education schools for poor student reading scores, while ignoring this loss, indicates that forces are at work to end public education and replace teachers with screens. The SoR focus looks to be about this, and should be seen for it’s real agenda.

Nancy then offers a list of sources to prove her claim that libraries in schools are crucial for cultivating a love of reading. Access to books matters.

There is a difference between reading and literacy. Reading can be low-level or it can be a tool for gaining knowledge and knowing how to absorb it.

Open her post and read it.

She makes her case.

Categories Accountability, Librarians, Libraries, Literacy, Technology

Los Angeles: Pro-Public Education Candidates Lead in School Board Races

By dianeravitch
March 4, 2020 //
5

Voters favored candidates endorsed by the United Teachers of Los Angeles for all four contested seats on the Los Angeles Unified School District board.

Two of the UTLA candidates, both incumbents–Jackie Goldberg and George McKenna–won outright with a majority.

Two are leading their races but heading for a run-off.

To read the latest results, go to this website and scroll to the bottom for school board races.

George McKenna (pro-public education) ran unopposed and received 100% of the vote.

Jackie Goldberg (pro-public education) was the target of hate mail sent to voters in her district but she forcefully rebutted them and was leading with 55.62% of the vote.

Scott Schmerelson (pro-public education) was the target of vicious anti-Semitic flyers, was leading with 42.13%, compared to the runner-up with 20.258%. There will be a runoff.

Patricia Castellanos (pro-public education) held 26.21% of the vote, followed by Tanya Ortiz Franklin with 23.83% of the vote. There will be a runoff. There were three other candidates running for the seat in this district.

The final vote will not be released until all the absentee and mail-in ballots have been counted.

The pro-public education slate has a good chance of retaining a 4-3 majority on the board if they win the runoffs, despite the millions of dollars and hundreds of thousands of scurrilous flyers distributed by the charter industry. The biggest spender in the election was billionaire Bill Bloomfield, who lives in Manhattan Beach, not Los Angeles, and has frequently donated to Republican candidates.

Here is UTLA’s reaction:

Huge night for UTLA: Goldberg & McKenna win; Schmerelson & Castellanos in first place, advance to runoffs

LOS ANGELES — Facing outsized spending by the charter lobby and billionaire privatizers, UTLA educators and parents scored big wins in the LAUSD School Board races by early Wednesday morning. Jackie Goldberg and George McKenna easily won reelection to their seats, and Scott Schmerelson and Patricia Castellanos placed first and fought off demeaning smear campaigns to advance to the November 2020 runoffs.

UTLA ran the most robust ground game in our history, proving the power of people versus money. While the charter lobby put hate ads in the mail, we put people in the streets, walking and talking to voters. Hundreds of UTLA members worked more than 1,000 neighborhood and precinct walks alongside our parent and community allies, reaching more than 20,000 voters. On average, when we talked to a voter, 8 out of 10 times they committed to supporting our candidates. Our member texting campaign reached an additional 100,000 people who vote by absentee ballot.

“We ran an impressive and positive ground game, fueled by the passion and enthusiasm of teachers and parents who believe in public education,” UTLA President Alex Caputo-Pearl said. “The charter lobby’s hateful, vitriolic attack ads can’t match the impact of a teacher at the door, talking one-on-one to a voter. Since our strike and through this election, our communities are waking up to the billionaire attacks on our democracy and our public schools.”

Fries Elementary parent Alicia Baltazar spent multiple weekends walking precincts and phone banking for Patricia Castellanos.

“Like with the strike, I felt the support of the community and I had great conversations with voters,” Baltazar said. “But it was really disturbing to watch the charter lobby and a few wealthy individuals spend millions to fight the candidates supported by teachers and parents. Why couldn’t they send that money to our schools instead?”

The California Charter Schools Association and billionaires like Bill Bloomfield funneled more than $6.2 million into the race against UTLA’s endorsed candidates, making it the most expensive primary school board race in US history. That money funded an aggressive mail campaign that hit new lows, including a series of racist, sexist, and ageist ads.

The charter industry came hard in this election because they suffered a series of losses in the aftermath of our strike, including increased public criticism of unregulated charter expansion and notable policy losses, such as our contract win on co-location and AB 1505, the first serious charter regulation in decades.

In the Democratic U.S. Presidential race, Bernie Sanders won the California primary. UTLA was an early supporter of his campaign, and this week Bernie weighed in on our School Board fight, tweeting support to his 10 million followers and endorsing Patricia Castellanos.

Now, the work continues to secure a general election win for Castellanos and Schmerelson in November. We will double down on the positive work from this campaign for the next election and beyond. The school board wins give us momentum in current reopener contract bargaining and propel us onto the next steps of our three-year path: protecting healthcare in bargaining to begin this fall and winning the School Board runoffs and the Schools & Communities First funding measure in November 2020.

“We continue our fight not just to reject the billionaire agenda — the politics of fear, hate and oppression — but to build a massive movement to reinvest in public education for the schools our students deserve, said UTLA President-Elect Cecily Myart-Cruz.”

###

UTLA, the nation’s second-largest teachers’ union local, is proud to represent more than 35,000 teachers and health & human services professionals in district and charter schools in LAUSD.

Categories Accountability, Billionaires, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Lies, Los Angeles, Privatization

Thomas Ultican on The City Fund and Its Determination to Disrupt and Destroy Public Schools and Democracy

By dianeravitch
March 4, 2020 //
8

Thomas Ultican is a retired teacher of physics and advanced mathematics who has developed a passionate interest in the inner workings of the Privatization and Disruption Movement (also known as the Destroy Public Education Movement).

This is his account of the new and very well-funded plaything of the Billionaire Boys (and Girls) Club: the City Fund.

It sees itself as part of a movement, but it is not. It is merely a hobby for those who have so much money that they can”t find useful things to do with it, like feed the hungry, fight for a higher minimum wage, create health clinics for children and families, or even restore the arts and libraries in schools that have lost them to budget cuts.

There are a few things you need to know about this “movement.” It is a movement of the elite, the super-rich, the powerful. It has no troops, just well-paid minions. As long as the money keeps flowing, there will be takers, ready to sign on to the job of destroying democratically governed public schools and replacing them with privately managed schools. There is so much money available to them from billionaires like Reed Hastings and John Arnold that they can flood local school board elections with more cash than any of the other candidates and put anti-public school candidates on the board of the district.

The City Fund uses billionaire cash to undermine democracy. It does nothing to alleviate poverty or reduce segregation. Such things are not important to them, other than dreaming that changes in the ownership of schools from public to private will someday, somehow reduce poverty.

Here is the other interesting fact about the staff of the City Fund. Nothing they have done has ever improved education. All of their endeavors have failed. They exist to disrupt and destroy communities and their attachment to their local public schools. As one surveys the disaster of the Tennessee “Achievement School District,” the pathetic results of the New Orleans all-charter district (where nearly half the charters are failing schools), one wonders why the billionaires pay them to sow more chaos. The billionaires sit back and watch the fun from afar.

Ultican has created a sociogram of the main actors. None of them can point to a district that has “closed the achievement gap.” None of them can point to a success story that vaulted an entire district to the peak of excellence. Yet there they are, sitting on hundreds of millions of dollars, primed to impose their will on the people and deprive them of their right to elect their representatives.

How long will the billionaires continue to fund failure?

There is something in the City Fund that is strangely detached from the lives of children and families, something completely indifferent to the importance of communities, something soulless in the work they do to rearrange the lives of other people. It as though they are looking at cities where they never lived from a height of 30,000 feet, deciding the fate of people they never met, people who are not on the payroll of billionaires.

They exist in a luxurious, air-conditioned bubble, remote from the cares of families who worry about feeding their children, paying their rent or mortgage, having a decent job, planning for the future.

They are the outsiders who land in a community to tear it apart, then exit to do the same to another community.

Strange what some people will do for money, a lot of money. Power is intoxicating. So is money.

Categories Accountability, Billionaires, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Education Reform, Portfolio District, Poverty, Privatization

Mercedes Schneider Has Written a New Book!

By dianeravitch
March 4, 2020 //
3

As every reader of this blog knows, Mercedes Schneider is a relentless, dogged, and accurate researcher. She has the skills to dig through IRS reports and other online data that connect the dots and reveal how big money and Dark Money are controlling organizations and elections, thus endangering our democracy. In addition to teaching high school English in Louisiana, she has a doctorate in research methods and statistics. She’s good at taking a complicated subject and teaching it.

In 2018, Mercedes was invited to do a workshop at the annual conference of the Network for Public Education in Indianapolis with Andrea Gabor and Darcie Cimarusti about digging for data. The session was packed.

So many people wanted to learn more that Mercedes decided to write a book sharing her knowledge.

This is the book, published by Garn Press.

Mercedes announced the book.

My latest book, A Practical Guide to Digital Research: Getting the Facts and Rejecting the Lies, is now available for purchase on Amazon.

Garn Press will have the book available for purchase on March 03, 2020.

About the book:

In A Practical Guide to Digital Research, Schneider draws on her years of experience as an educational researcher to offer an easy-to-read, easy-to-digest, concise tutorial for equipping both novice and more experienced researchers in navigating numerous research sources. These include nonprofit tax form search engines, newspaper archives, social media sites, internet archives, campaign filings/ethics disclosures, teaching credential search engines, and legal filings. Also covered are tips on conducting both email and in-person interviews, filing public records requests, and conducting pointed, fruitful Google searches.This powerful, practical text is built upon a foundation of actual examples from Schneider’s own research in education—examples that she dissects and explains as a means of teaching her readers how to effectively make these valuable lessons their own. Though Schneider’s own research is chiefly in the education reform arena, the resources, skills and techniques offered in A Practical Guide to Digital Research transcend any single research field and are indispensable for confronting a variety of research queries. Useful as a classroom text or for independent research study, the book provides foundational learning for those new to research investigation as well as surprising, valuable lessons for more experienced researchers challenging themselves to learn even more.

For those interested, Amazon allows readers to view the book, including its table of contents.

The the idea for this book stems from a presentation I participated in with colleagues Andres Gabor and Darcie Cimarusti on tracking the funding related to the promotion of market-based education reform titled, “Where Did All This Money Come From??: Locating and Following the Dark Money Trail” at the 2018 Network for Public Education (NPE) conference in Indianapolis.

I know you will love this book. I predict that Bill Gates, John Arnold, Betsy DeVos and Charles Koch will not.

And a reminder: there are still a few openings at the 2020 annual conference of the Network for Public Education in Philadelphia on March 28-29. It will be at the Doubletree Hilton.It is a great opportunity to meet your allies from a rossthe nation. Please register now!

Categories Billionaires, Dark Money, Data, Education Reform, Network for Public Education, Philanthropy, Research

The City Fund, Created by Billionaires to Disrupt Public Schools and Abolish Elected Boards

By dianeravitch
March 4, 2020 //
6

A relatively new corporate reform group—the City Fund—acts as a pass-through for billionaires Reed Hastings (Netflix) and John Arnold (ex-Enron). The staff consists of six or seven (or more) veterans of the privatization movement. It opened its operations with $200 million in pledges from its billionaire funders. It has staff but no members. Its mission is to push the “portfolio district” (i.e., more charter schools) in designated cities. In short, the City Fund was designed to advance the goals of its billionaire funders, who have no relationship to the cities whose schools they want to disrupt. Grassroots groups in every city and state can only dream about what they could do if they had even $1 million in the bank.

One of the staff, Chris Barbic, started a charter chain in Houston (YES Prep), then became leader of the disastrous Achievement School District in Tennessee; he promised to lift the state’s lowest performing schools into the ranks of its highest performing in only five years by handing them over to charter operators. The ASD burned through $100 million in Race to the Top and failed to turn any of its takeover schools into a high-performing school. If anything, it proved that turning low-performing schools over to charter operators doesn’t produce change.

Another staffer, Neerav Kingsland, is a law school graduate and a Broadie who was CEO of New Schools for New Orleans. After Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans eliminated the teachers’ union and eventually eliminated every public school. The 2019 state report card rated 49% of the schools as D or F schools. The students in the lowest performing schools are almost all black. Hardly a success story.

Matt Barnum writes in Chalkbeat that the City Fund has dispensed over $100 million to help achieve its funders’ goal of detaching schools from elected school boards.

The newest major player in school reform has already issued more than $110 million in grants to support the growth of charter and charter-like schools across the U.S.

The City Fund’s spending, detailed on a new website, means the organization has quickly become one of the country’s largest K-12 education grantmakers. The money has gone to organizations in more than a dozen cities, including Atlanta, Baton Rouge, Denver, Memphis, and Oakland.

The spending is evidence that The City Fund’s brand of school reform continues to attract major financial support — and may foretell more battles over education politics in those cities…

The City Fund’s strategy is to grow the number of schools, including charters, run by nonprofits rather than traditional school boards. Advocates say that shift will help low-income students of color, pointing to academic improvements in virtually all-charter New Orleans as one example. Critics argue that strategy undermines teachers unions, democratically elected school boards, and existing public schools.

Overall, The City Fund says it has raised $225 million, largely from Netflix founder Reed Hastings and Texas philanthropist John Arnold. (Chalkbeat is funded by Arnold Ventures.) The organization has also created a political arm, Public School Allies, which has raised $15 million from Hastings and Arnold to support officials vying for state and local office.

The funders of the City Fund think that democratically elected school boards are the biggest obstacle to school reform. They like charter schools and stake takeovers. The fact that they have zero evidence that their strategies improve education doesn’t stop them, as long as the money keeps flowing. Unless you are impressed by a district, New Orleans, where half the schools are rated D or F.

Categories Billionaires, Charter Schools, Corporate Reform, Democracy, Disruption, Education Reform, New Orleans, Tennessee

John Thompson: How the Billionaire Boys (and Girls) Club Ravaged America’s Public Schools

By dianeravitch
March 4, 2020 //
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John Thompson is a historian and a retired teacher in Oklahoma. This article appeared originally in the Oklahoma Observer.

How the Billionaire Boys Club Ravaged America’s Public Schools

SLAYING GOLIATH The Passionate Resistance To Privatization And The Right to Save America’s Public Schools

Diane Ravitch started writing Slaying Goliath: The Passionate Resistance to Privatization and the Fight to Save America’s Public Schools in 2018 as teachers strikes erupted across the nation. These walkouts began in Red states where conservative legislatures drastically cut funding to under-resourced schools. Even in the places with the lowest salaries, like Oklahoma, educators were motivated by terrible working conditions that meant awful learning environments for students.

It wasn’t just the lack of money, and the resulting damage done by huge class sizes, a lack of textbooks, and neglected buildings, that motivated teachers. They also were resisting the disruption caused by corporate school reform, and the damage it had done to their kids. Teachers were sick of teach-to-the-test malpractice, reward and punish cultures and mandates that produce in-one-ear-out-the-other skin-deep instruction. The joy of teaching and learning was being undermined by the privatization of education. Many or most of these teachers put up with “reform” as long as they could before joining the “Resistance.”

Slaying Goliath is the third transformative book written by Ravitch after changing her mind on education policy. Although her academic histories of education had always been more balanced than progressives acknowledged, Ravitch had worked in the Education Department of President George H. W. Bush, and she had served on the board of the conservative Fordham Foundation. In 1992, she went to a briefing with David Kearns, the former Xerox CEO, where the Sandia Report’s findings were explained. Kearns and other reformers were outraged that scholars challenged the alarmism of “A Nation at Risk,” the infamous Reagan-sponsored indictment of public education. They refused to release the report which explained that American schools weren’t failing.

Ravitch recalls the way that education scholars were vilified for revealing that the so-called “crisis in education” was a “politically inspired hoax,” and a “manufactured crisis.” In a passage which exemplifies Ravitch’s candor, she writes about the late Gerald Bracey, “a prolific and outspoken education researcher” who challenged the conventional wisdom that she was then defending. Ravitch then writes, “I personally apologize to him.”

As the No Child Left Behind Act of 2002 started to undermine schooling, Ravitch joined progressive educator Deborah Meier in a dialogue which changed Ravitch and the struggle against data-driven, competition-driven reforms. In 2010, she released the Death and Life of the Great American School System and three years later, she published Reign of Error. Ravitch “renounced” her old views and exposed the “smear campaign” which she presciently described as “privatization.” They funded so-called “transformative” change, designed to drive “bad teachers,” protected by “bad unions,” out of schools.

Ravitch’s talent with words may have been as important as her evidence-based evaluation of the inherent flaws of the technocratic micromanaging known as “reform.” The initial political successes of the reformers where driven by the huge bank accounts funding savage attacks on teachers and school systems. During the height of corporate reform a decade ago, Ravitch’s ability to coin a phrase seemed to be educators’ only means of self-defense. She nailed the issue by identifying “the Billionaires Boys Club” as the sponsors of “corporate reform;” now Ravitch dubs their movement “Goliath.” Her use of the term “privatization” helped us understand that the neoliberal attack, funded by Silicon Valley and Hedge Fund elites, was interrelated with the overall privatization movement which intimidated so many Democrats into retreating from the War on Poverty and other social justice campaigns. (In doing so, she paved the way for excellent work such a OU’s Associate Dean Lawrence Baines’ Privatization of America’s Institutions.)

Now, Ravitch renames both sides of the education wars. The Billionaires tried to claim the word reform, but they never deserved that title. They are “Disrupters.” We who fought them off are the “Resistance.”

Slaying Goliath reviews the failure of NCLB, and how 1990s improvements in student performance as measured by the reliable NAEP assessment slowed and then stopped. Then, Obama era reforms put NCLB’s high stakes testing, cultures of competition, and corruption of test scores and education values on steroids. But most of the book describes the emergence, the struggles and victories of the grassroots Resistance.

During the first decade of the 21st century, the Disrupters won nearly all of their political battles as their micromanaging failed to improve schools. Their testing often turned modern classrooms into sped-up Model T assembly lines, as their behaviorism turned charter schools into weapons for undermining teacher autonomy, due process, and professionalism. During the last decade, Disrupters suffered political and educational defeats as they learned that it is easier to kick down a barn than rebuild it.

However, Ravitch reminds us that the Disrupters are still threatening. She compares today’s danger to that which faced a man who decapitated a rattlesnake but who nearly died after being bitten by the detached head.

Oklahomans should take special interest in the narratives where the snake’s head is still a threat to our schools.

Today, many or most of Goliath’s coalition have become disenchanted with standardized testing, but their Disruption model can’t function without it. Oklahomans should heed the wisdom of reform-minded Paymon Rouhanifard, the former Camden superintendent, who abolished report cards after listening to complaints, and eventually denounced standardized testing.

Rhode Island, where their state superintendent Deborah Gist tried to fire all of the teachers in Central Falls, was an example of students rising up. They staged a “Zombie March, “ and created “Take the Test” for 50 elected officials, architects, scientists, engineers, college professors, reporters, directors of nonprofit organizations, and reporters.” Even with such educated test takers, 60% didn’t score high enough to earn a diploma.

Gist called their protest “deeply irresponsible on the part of the adults” for sending the message that tests don’t matter.

Since philanthropists who still support Gist have also funded “portfolio management,” Oklahomans should read the evidence about that kinder and gentler-sounding recipe for permanent teach-to-the-test and conflict.

Oklahoma philanthropists seem to believe the spin claiming that the New Orleans portfolio model was a success, but even the researchers who support that all-charter district’s prohibitively expensive approach admit that its school quality peaked in 2013.

As Ravitch explains, “A portfolio district is one where the local board (or some entity operating in its stead) acts like a stockbrokerage, holding onto winners (schools with high test scores) and getting rid of losers (schools with low test scores), replacing them with charters.”

As she further explains, these failures are linked to the Disrupters’ infatuation with mass closures of schools. To take one example, Chicago, Ravitch explains how the Chicago Consortium on School Research (CCSR) found “few gains” due to closing schools but “a profound sense of loss: lost schools, lost communities, lost relationships. These were losses that the Disrupters never understood. Test scores were all that mattered to them.” Chicago lost over 200,000 black residents between 2000 and 2016. And the CCSR further explained how they “caused large disruptions without clear benefits for students.”

Whether in Chicago, Tulsa, or Oklahoma City, closures may produce little or no gains, but they will lead to a “period of mourning.” This is one of the many ways reason why Oklahomans should move on from the presumption that disruptive and transformative change made sense. That mindset is another legacy of not seeing “value in bonds among schools, families, and community.”

Whether you call it transformative change or disruption, this mentality was committed to “blind adherence” to the corporate demand for “outputs” that “don’t work for schools for the same reasons they don’t work for families, churches, and other institutions that function primarily on the basis of human interactions, not profits and losses.”

Categories Accountability, Billionaires, Charter Schools, Common Core, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Education Reform, Privatization, Testing
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