My website is dianeravitch.com. I write about two interconnected topics: education and democracy. I am a historian of education.
Diane Ravitch’s Blog by Diane Ravitch is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
Based on a work at dianeravitch.net.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
How’d this man ever get the position?! Colorado Education Commissioner resigns after four months. Read the article to see his qualifications coming in. http://www.coloradoindependent.com/159375/why-colorados-education-commissioner-quit
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Hi Diane, I don’t know if you have seen this, but after all the hype and money spent, Apple has essentially admitted that it’s iPad for education programs have been a failure. In Maine, which went 1:1 across the entire state with iPads five years ago is being allowed to trade them in for Macbook Air laptops. Teachers and students both hated the iPads. http://fortune.com/2016/05/23/maine-schools-ipad-macbook-air/
Nice that Apple is trading in Maine’s for free, but I wonder about the districts elsewhere that invested in this glorified toy….
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Back to searching for analogies. Maybe someone would want to discuss education from this angle:
http://scissorsandglue.net/2016/05/27/leh-go-eggo/
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Public high school in Red Lion, Pennsylvania for sale on Craigslist in hilarious senior prank:
http://york.craigslist.org/reo/5606251232.html
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Too bad the autocratic, dictatorial, gulag style corporate rank-and -unish testocracy movement wasn’t a prank.
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Teachers say Miami-Dade has stiffed them $30 million in pay
http://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/education/article77466692.html
Miami Teachers Look to Sue District Over Merit Pay Raises
http://mobile.edweek.org/c.jsp?cid=25920011&item=http%3A%2F%2Fapi.edweek.org%2Fv1%2Fblog%2F62%2F%3Fuuid%3D58514&cmp=eml-enl-eu-news3
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A thought about current teaching culture:
One more observation about the culture that has been created in public schools due to Race to the Top.
Even as recently as yesterday when receiving feedback with an M-Class report I heard “but I know that’s not really what he’s capable of; but I’m not allowed to help him.” Not allowed to help him. Not allowed to help him. Who creates a teaching culture where teachers are not allowed to help? School is where we develop the soundtrack for life. You hear the helping phrases of coaching teachers in your mind’s ear once you are out in the world. We are presenting a scenario to children in which they are already completely on their own and it is WRONG! It’s cruel. And all for data. Data and money. They say to impact teaching; but I doubt that.
We are creating a culture of scared citizens. Even the folks in education who do not say anything against the test and punish culture are contributing—particularly if they collect a paycheck for complying.
I am thankful for teachers who can offer an M-Class report with caveats. But really, why are we doing that? For equity? Making up for lost time and disenfranchised populations?
I think our current education approaches lack wisdom.
However, our family is not headed for the door. Not yet, anyway. We want public schools to work. But RttT policies are deplorable.
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The Highly Questionable Blueprint for Charter School Takeover in Your City or Region. (Great read)
http://www.alternet.org/education/oakland-charter-school-expansion-plan?
akid=14316.1073613.THi5nI&rd=1&src=newsletter1057551&t=14
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YOur post on the Civil rights leader has been removed.
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Thanks for letting me know
I fixed it
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I am reasonably proud of this…..I do not know if anyone would be interested in the details……but I documented an 8 or 9 thousand mistake in reporting the number of Children in the St. Louis public schools…..they repeated the error…and possibly even worked it into a guest editorial by a Missouri supreme court judge…not sure…..maybe he made the mistake himself…..
Since I have repeatedly asked for the PD to provide a forum for education (things posted on current affairs, quickly disappear because of the number of subjects–I added this as an afterthought on the forum dedicated to the st. Louis cardinals. “Despite 2 home runs by Matt Adams, Cardinals lose,,,4-1” The point being….if he hit two home runs, they could not have lost 4-1. The only response I got was a photo of a guy sitting on a toilet……I drew 275 views….far more than the views of mistakes about thousands of slps students.
the documentation about the mistakes (originally posted by conservative charter advocates Nina Rhees and the former superintendent and voucher advocate from Milwaukee) I made more than a week ago, and flippantly recommended a former supreme court judge David Wolffe as a much more reliable source….I was surprised to see his information appear on their editorial page yesterday…..
anyway…..here is a link…..http://interact.stltoday.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1178036 Judge Mike Wolffe–what did the PD do to your article??????
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The basic error….It had been reported that slps has 8000 out of 25000 in charters. So all of a sudden…there are 11,000 in charters, which is also reported as 30% of the enrollment……so…..if they want to report 11,000…then report it as 44% of the school enrollement, not 30%…….or…….claim that the student enrollment, quietly climbed from 22,000 in 2012 to more than 35,000 at present…..slps was increased from non accredited to conditionally accredited in the fall of 2012…..if they are now at 35,000…how many teachers were hired? Still waiting for a correction.
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After nine days, I found, buried in a 16 page pdf from the annual report on the slps website…..a congratulatory sentence from the three person appointed board, (same members for nine years now)…to the superintendent and the 27,000 children enrolled…30 percent sounds right for that figure…..8100 in charters. In fairness–I have to admit….I misspelled Rees. It cannot be both Rhees and Rees…it has to be one or the other.
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in NC
http://www.wral.com/house-approves-limited-charter-company-takeovers-of-public-schools/15747361/
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I’m looking for a film to screen this summer on public schools and corporate “education reform.” A few of the more promising documentaries mentioned in previous posts seem to have not made it through full production. Anyone have any updated recommendations of films that are available now?
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Alice,
Here are some recommendations for good films about corporate reforms. All were screened at the NPE annual conference in April, and I recommend them.
Good Morning Mission Hill, Tom and Amy Valens
Healing Our Schools, by Laurie Gabriel
Killing Ed, Mark Hall
Hop!, by Vincent Precht
GO PUBLIC! by Dawn and Jim O’Keeffe
Beyond Measure, by Vicki Abeles
Education Inc, Brian Malone
Defies Measurement, Shannon Puckett
A Backpack Full of Cash, Sarah Mondale http://backpackfullofcash.com/ (this film is not yet finished but you should see the clip anyway)
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P.S. I think you can find them on the web. Some are available from the creators. Others you may have to pay a small fee.
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I will check out your suggestions, Diane. Thank you!!!
(Your personal and prompt replies are a truly beautiful thing in this crazy world of public education…)
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Thanks, Alice. Many of those films are online and free.
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Hi Diana — After unveiling the key points of their new budget, the NC Senate apparently went behind closed doors (In their usual, clandestine manner) and added an abundance of amendments. Skimming through it, I came across something that nearly made my head explode. On page 48…just above a passage on lessees of crop land and forest land (??) is Section 11.6 — the creation of “laboratory s schools”, to be created in low-performing districts, and run by all UNC system universities which offer teacher preparation programs! I won’t list all of the offensive points — there is plenty to hate here. A couple of the more interesting, however, are:
— publicly funded (naturally) with funds that WOULD have gone to that districts traditional schools.
–only 50% of the faculty must be licensed (very charter-like…) and teachers are hired by contract only
— lab schools are established for a period of 5 years. If they do not perform at least as well as the other schools, they are granted ANOTHER 5 years!
— lab schools will be reviewed by the UNC Bd. of Governors, all of whom are appointed by the General Assembly.
Have you heard ANYTHING about these “laboratory schools” — either in NC or elsewhere?? I haven’t seen a thing about this anywhere, and luckily stumbled upon it by accident! I’m certain they are hoping it WONT be noticed until AFTER it passes I can only assume that the education DEformers in our GA are 1) trying to “encourage” our universities to put an end to their teacher education programs, 2) that they are trying yet another scheme to suck so much money from traditional schools that they cannot succeed, or 3) BOTH. (My money is on both…).
Oh, as if that wasn’t enough…they also took Senate Bill 862 and stuck it right in the budget — this increases funding for private school vouchers by $10 million per year, every year, until funding reaches $144 MILLION a year. The measures to which they will go to dismantle public ed never cease to amaze me!
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Jennifer,
Anything coming from the NC General Assembly is bad news for public schools and teachers
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Diane,
Corruption in charter schools is well known, yet it continues. A CA charter, Clayton Valley Charter High, has recently been exposed:
https://www.facebook.com/Clayton-Valley-Truth-245731685769853/
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Dear Diane Ravitch,
I am a Brazilian Phd candidate; researching educational systems and education political economy. In my dissertation, the first chapter is about the current American educational landscape.
I got a little bit confused in reading your “Reign of Error”, at Chapter 5. It reports that there has been at least steady performance by American students in NAEP tests (and even some gains) from 1992 through 2011.
My doubt is: If it is so, has not NCLB contributed to those good results, as its policy started being put in action in 2002, and went through 2015?
Here in Brazil we suffer a lack of good research sources, so I would be extremely thankful if you could help me clarify this doubt.
Yours truly,
Remo Moreira Brito Bastos
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Remo Bastos,
The biggest gains on the NAEP occurred before the implementation of NCLB. With so much money and time spent on testing, it would be very surprising if there were no test score gains. There were. NCLB was implemented in 2003, and scores did rise. But they stopped rising abruptly in 2015. If the theory of NCLB was correct, they should have gone up and up and up. But the theory was not correct.
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Remo Basto,
Schools cannot be judged solely by test scores. They are a measure, not the goal of education. When love of learning is sacrificed in the pursuit of higher scores, the price is too high.
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China Test Prep
We’re becoming more and more like them every day.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-06-03/china-s-national-college-admissions-exams-are-a-massive-headache
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Diane,
Do you have any idea of who is behind Guidepost Montessori? Supposedly, this organization will be taking over schools that would otherwise close in several cities across the U.S. Here’s what I found from the homepage of their site:
Here at Guidepost Montessori, we bring the power of Montessori to a broad audience. Each Guidepost school is marker on the path toward widespread education reform.
I’d appreciate any light you can shed on the topic as I live in one of the ‘target’ areas.
Keep up the excellent work!
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Will Trump and Charter Schools Be Another Scam? Just Look at Pal Carl Icahn’s Lucrative School ‘Charity’
http://www.alternet.org/right-wing/carl-icahn-used-charity-profit-massive-tax-savings
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So I got a little fired up reading about the Stanford rape case this week. I’m teaching my high school students about it next year.
Here’s why:
http://striving2thrive365.blogspot.com/
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Retired Aug.2014 to received buy out, no payout
No arbitration, not nothing
would like legal advice to take action
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*** DCPS Teacher Recruitment Study. Why it’s on the NY Fed website is beyond me? ***
Look at table 3 Grit Index
Click to access jrtlr_teach_dc_23_feb_2015.pdf
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How’s that working for you Kansas? Apparently not good, even after citizens in your state elected Sam twice. This CEO is furious with Gov. Sam Brownback, and pens a letter telling us exactly *what* is the matter with Kansas and *why* his growing company is getting the hell outta there. Here he is, Jeff Blackwood, CEO of Pathfinder Health Innovations.
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Hi Diane,
I wanted to call your attention to an excellent talk given by Michael Fordham, which he posted to his blog, entitled “Genericism and the Crisis of Curriculum.” I think it squares well with what you have written in the past on the skills movements, etc. https://clioetcetera.com/2016/06/18/genericism-and-the-crisis-of-curriculum/
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OK, is it just me, or does this seem counter-productive in terms of wanting to build a strong public school system: http://www.dpi.state.nc.us/newsroom/news/2015-16/20160613-01
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Please comment on the ESSA regulations. Go to: https://www2.ed.gov/policy/elsec/leg/essa/nprmaccountabilitystateplans52016.pdf
Don’t be intimidated with 200 pages. This site is easier to read than the Federal Register, published on May 28th.
We should ask for an extension of time since they released the document at the end of the school year – a time when schools, districts and the state are completing the budgeting for next school year and closing out this school year. This isn’t an accident. Send a postcard. I’m doing that today!
The Federal eRulemaking Portal is: http://www.regulations.gov, but it is easier to write a letter to Meredith Miller, US Department of Education, 400 Maryland Ave. SW, Room 3C106, Washington, DC 20202-2800. They are not accepting email or fax. The deadline is August 1, 2016
Pick out one item that you can speak to. What are the consequences of these rules in your school, district or state? Or, how do these rules affect you personally? Students should write why they opted out or suffered from the testing requirements.
These regs do not reflect the intent of our Senator Murray when she wrote this law. There should be petitions from unions and school districts opposing these rules and calling them for what they are. My first question is, “Where’s the federal money to pay for these requirements?”
OSPI is holding Regional Forums throughout the state. I’m wondering what the cost is for all these committees and hearings and where the money is coming from. I’ve been reading some of their meeting notes. A nightmare of bureaucracy! Go to http://www.k12.wa.us/essa Attend a forum if you live in Washington State.
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This New York Times article on privatization (private equity) of public services like emergency medicine and fire fighting is directly comparable to what is happening with public education: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/26/business/dealbook/when-you-dial-911-and-wall-street-answers.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=second-column-region®ion=top-news&WT.nav=top-news&_r=0
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Dr. Ravitch,
Could you speak to how best to use data in education? Most teachers I consider good teachers do like the data. What is the balance? Certainly not data walls. I’d like to read thoughtful dialogue on the subject.
My dream scenario is that data is also collected on community involvement with public schools, because to me that is how schools thrive.
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Involved Mom,
Data should be used to track trends, as in other fields. What is the enrollment? How many babies were born this year in this region, which is a way of predicting future needs in public schools. How many children are LEP and need extra services? How many children are Special ed and need extra services? Are the services needed provided? Do schools offer a full and balanced curriculum? How many schools provide daily physical education? How many arts teachers on staff? How often do children take classes with qualified arts teachers every week? How many schools have a school nurse, a school psychologist, a librarian, a guidance counselor? What is the class size (the real class size, not the one that averages in classes for high-needs children)? I am sure you could multiply the possibilities.
Data should never be used to publicly shame teachers or children. Public postings of grades is wrong.
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What about the research that shows that most reading deficiencies can be identified and reversed if found as early as Kindergarten, and therefore every aspect to acquiring reading skills must be tracked and benchmarked to hone in on those problems before they compound themselves. Data for benchmarking.
Would an achievement gap exist if we quit looking at score data? Is that the solution? If we quit gathering the data, there’d be no gap. Because isn’t it a pointless exercise to eradicate it since the bell curve will always exist? (and I’m not being flippant in this response; I’m just offering up the rationale for what is now seemingly considered best practices in education. . .data data data).
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Involved Mon,
The bell curve never closes
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Privatization for profit is the longtime dream of “conservatives” and “conservative” libertarians. I put “conservative” in quotation marks because all these alleged “conservatives” want to conserve is selfishness, greed, and profits at the expense of people’s lives. True conservatives would be fighting to conserve a society that works effectively for everyone, and a sustainable planet, instead of privatizing socially necessary services and denying the Climate Crisis threatening our future.
The utter selfishness, narrow vision, and anti-societal delusion of these “conservatives” and “conservative libertarians” is epitomized by Margaret Thatcher’s infamous nonsense that, “And, you know, there is no such thing as society. There are individual men and women, and there are families. And no government can do anything except through people, and people must look to themselves first.”
This is denial of the highest and most destructive order, dismissing thousands of years of human history as well as the clear evidence of FDR’s New Deal government spending.
When applied to education, this neoliberal ideology results in what we now see: for-profit charter schools doing a terrible job; billionaires who know nothing about education trying to cash in on “reforms” unsupported by experience and evidence; attacks on public school teachers and their unions, including hard-won benefits; and destruction of the public school system.
Neoliberalism, the ideology of BOTH Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, all of the Republican Party and most of the Democratic Party, is the most pernicious and failed economic-political system since Soviet Communism, and most of the common people here as well as in the U.K. have realized that inconvenient truth, as shown by support for Bernie Sanders, misguided support for Trump, and the recent vote to exit the E.U. by most voters in the U.K.
But the so-called “elite”, the 1% Parasite Class, will ignore the demand by most of us ordinary people that a new economic-political system is direly needed not only to salvage the best of what is society, but also a sustainable planet and a livable future. They will ignore these essential goods because their greed and wealth are paramount, and they do not give a damn about the rest of us.
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I kind of wonder if the assumption by religious conservatives who like the idea of for profit ed think that God will be on their side if they teach a religiously pure (whatever that means) and sound religious education and therefore they’ll make the most profits and do the best for society. It must surely be part of the thought process. That blessings will abound for those who share a direct message of God’s love (kind of like Mary Kay Ashe, who made millions with that message—even though I do like her positivity, her business ambition and her skincare product). 🙂 But really, it’s not the kind of reasoning my dedicated Sunday School attendance growing up pointed to, but it seems to be the clear way they must be thinking.
I wonder if true breakthroughs in the debate about schooling could come if we actually talked to them and with them about what aspects lead them to conclude that for profit schools are the best idea. Instead of just lumping them together as “the Christian right,” maybe we should unpack the scriptures with them and see how they reached those conclusions.
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I like this and think that it merits a separate post entitled: “The Proper Uses of Data in Education”
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I’m hoping for same. Thanks, Mike. 🙂
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Thanks, Mike.
I will put that on my to-do list
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We agree. We also read your books(including the revised new one). As educators in NYC for over 45 years we are thankful for what you are advocating. Please share our thanks with Mr. Bloomberg.We met you years ago at PS 3 in District 13 in Brooklyn.
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The profit motive might be a factor, but a more important factor to extremist Christains is to control what children are taught so all children grow up to become extremist Christians.
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Lloyd, you stated,
“The profit motive might be a factor, but a more important factor to extremist Christians is to control what children are taught so all children grow up to become extremist Christians.”
That sounds like such a blanketed, prejudicial statement. You make a statement that has no basis. In NY state, the parochial and public schools are mandated to follow the same curriculum; consequently, the same textbooks are used- except for religion books.
The major difference between people sending their children to a parochial school verses a public school is the religion class and the atmosphere – students are motivated by their same beliefs and values. Any parent who has children want to pass on their beliefs and values- keep the Commandents and live the prayer of St. Francis:
“Lord, make me an instrument of Thy peace;
Where there is hatred, let me sow love;
Where there is injury, pardon;
Where there is error, the truth;
Where there is doubt, the faith;
Where there is despair, hope;
Where there is darkness, light;
And where there is sadness, joy.
O Divine Master,
Grant that I may not so much seek
To be consoled, as to console;
To be understood, as to understand;
To be loved as to love.
For it is in giving that we receive;
It is in pardoning that we are pardoned;
And it is in dying that we are born to eternal life. Amen. “
What is so extreme about that?
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A 60 Minutes worth Watching. A school that is the opposite of Success Academy and KIPP Charters in unique ways. The children/students are in charge.
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/60-minutes-newark-school-st-benedicts-scott-pelley-2/
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Michigan governor signs Detroit Public Schools dissolution measures
http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2016/06/27/dpst-j27.html
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Pennsylvania school district prepares to end public education past the eighth grade:
http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2016/06/14/erie-j14.html
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New York Times have Colorado’s Michael Johnston as a young Democrat to watch: http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/06/24/opinion/sunday/14-young-democrats-to-watch.html?ref=opinion&_r=0
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Michael Johnston is a DFER, TFA know it all who wrote one of my he worst teacher evaluation laws in the nation. Be sure to watch out for him. He is no friend to public schools or educators unless they are tfa
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He’s truly amazing at self-promotion, Diane.
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So when one reads a state budget and sees money specifically allocated to “improve academic outcomes,” could that phrase be replaced with “defying the bell curve” because we norm our academic outcomes to said curve?
Have those phrases become ignorantly interchangeable?
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still hoping to understand the relationship of the bell curve to the achievement gap. Can anyone please help with that question? I’ve tweeted everyone I can think of
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The bell curve never closes. There is always a top half and a bottom half. Period.
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involved mom: the key to understanding how standardize tests are validated, is that they are designed and field-tested, deliberately, have at least half of the students score at the mid-point or above, and half score below the mid-point, thus creating the proper bell curve. They are not like, say, a spelling test (an example of a criterion-based test) whereby all the students could correctly spell all the word.
With standardized tests, questions are designed so that a bell curve is created. Or as Debbie Meier once said :’Designed so that the right people get the right answer, and the right people get the wrong answer.”
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so we are chasing our tail if we use bell curve normed tests and then say we want to close the achievement gap, yes?
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Involved Mom,
The bell curve never closes
If we awarded driver’s licenses on the bell curve, nearly half would never get one
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Diane: Please read this from James Harvey and the Superintendent’s Roundtable. I find it very interesting…. Thoughts?
PISA: Junk Science?
When independent psychometricians take a disinterested look at the research methodologies underlying the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) they’re not always impressed. A recent analysis published in the journal of the American Education Research Association seems to confirm the conclusions reached by the Roundtable’s Iceberg Effect report: These comparisons between nations are very questionable.
In careful language calling for a “more measured approach to reporting and interpreting PISA results,” Leslie and David Rutkowski at the University of Oslo in Norway urge caution in interpreting PISA findings. You can find a full PDF of their analysis, here.
Here are some of their key concerns: •in 8 educational systems, exclusion rates (of schools and students) exceed the 5% maximum OECD cites as a standard;
•PISA samples 15-year-olds in school, not in the population;
•fewer than 80% of all 15-year-olds are captured in 16 of 65 participating systems;
•the Rasch model estimation procedures assume that test items are equally understandable and difficult across populations (e.g., U.S., Kazakhstan, and Shanghai);
•filling in missing data with “multiple-imputation” procedures is likely to introduce error, especially when relying on self-reported student data; and
•trend data reports are unreliable, in part due to the fact that each administration of PISA emphasizes a different domain (math, reading, or science).
They may be good enough for rough estimates, but judging by the Rutkowskis’ observations, PISA results are little better than educated guesses about the quality of education in 65 jurisdictions around the world.
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Hello – my wife and I are both educators in Florida. Upon failing the writing portion of the FELE test, my wife recently requested a Score Verification. We finally received the response from the Florida Department of Education…and it is literally a two-sentence reply with no explanation or reason. We intend to keep fighting…but we’re not sure how.
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I am a teacher enjoying a restful summer day. I visited the TED site. Isn’t it wonderful that Ken Robinson’s TED Talk: Do Schools Kill Creativity? received 39,869,840
views. On the other hand, Bill Gates’ TED Talk: Teachers Need Real Feedback got 1,950,325. This tells me that many literate people who enjoy thinking are more interested in putting creativity back in schools than they are in Bill Gates opinions about what teachers need.
Here’s what I wish: I wish that Bill and Melinda Gates would use their billions of dollars to make sure that every public school pre-K through High School in the United States (or the world) had a wonderful outdoor nature play space so that children can overcome nature deficiency. If there is any money left over, they should provide a healthy breakfast using organic foods. Simple.
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That’s a great talk by Sir Ken. Yes, schools do kill creativity. Before NCLB, RTTT, ALEC, CommonCore, Bill Gates, Arne Duncan, and the rest of the business gurus infiltrated education, this was true. One could even say this is part of -some- “reformers” motives to “reform,” and much of the public’s eagerness to adopt the narrative of “reform.”
I don’t think we can count on Bill Gates to help us fix this problem. I would also be surprised if his foundation suddenly gave millions more, only to say, “let the children play more.” Bill Gates money clearly comes with some beloved strings attached.
Let us never forget how many kids hated school in the 20th century. If you loved school, and had mostly good experiences, you will have to look beyond your own bubble. Check the education literature, review pop media of the time, ask your peers. No school system will work that marginalizes so many students.
Acknowledging our weak points is a strength, not a weakness. It will win over more people when we start to say “public schools need to be better,” not simply that they need to exist.
1. Education is a right.
2. Schools must be improved.
These points must co-exist, or I believe we will fail to defend public education. Charter schools, even if they were made better somehow, would violate principle #1. Obviously, private schools would not serve everyone. There is no option but to improve public schools.
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I live in Connecticut where, for the most part, we have good schools. The state adopted Common Core and I think it is a positive thrust for what we are doing here. I do not see Common core to be a national curriculum; this was introduced by the State of Connecticut in response to specific requests to universities here in this state as well as businesses looking for graduating seniors—again, in this state. We have local control of schools and, I believe, our control is TOO local, we have almost no regionalization of schools, no country governments and no (or almost no) school “districts” that extend beyond the borders of our towns in Connecticut.
You say that you are against national curriculum and I have two comments about that. Since the Board of Education in the state of Texas is the largest in the nation, they tend to create a “national curriculum” by ordering textbooks. They were recently cited in the news for having “dumbed down” both science (allowing the teaching of Creationism as if though it was science) and Social Studies to take Jefferson out as a Founding Father of our country because they did not like his stance against religion and offering suggestions that the United States was set up as a “christian” republic when it was not.
And, if I am a graduating senior from High School, applying to universities across the United States, and there is no national standard of any kind, how can a university expect to understand my qualifications based on a transcript that shows good grades in all subjects? My SAT score shows my performance on one day, not my performance throughout a school year (which my transcript tends to show).
We have “Magnet” schools, called CREC, for Capitol Region Education Council in the Hartford area. These schools are not answerable to the parents of the children in these schools, as there are no elected local school boards or boards of education that serve to control them. They claim that they are “tuition-free” but student tuition comes out of the overall school budget of the districts in the area on a “per-child” basis. The CREC schools just hiked that tuition by 3% for the upcoming 2016-17 school budget. This serves to bleed public schools white if they attract lots of students from any particular district (and the districts that suffer the most because of this system are the Hartford and New Britain school districts, which have issues). These CREC schools are currently scoring lower on the standardized testing than in my own school district.
I am troubled by the siphoning off of local resources by these CREC schools, though they serve to challenge our local school system to create a standard of excellence so that they may woo back local parents who have taken their children out of our school system (over 100 have returned in the last two years).
I deplore the practice of blaming teachers and teachers’ unions for the 2008 economic crisis and, indeed, for all ills we are experiencing as a country, state and civilization. I have found that the teachers at our local schools are incredibly professional and live to educate our children.
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Mark,
The Common Core is not supposed to be a national curriculum. It is almost completely devoted to skills in reading and math.
How can colleges figure out how to admit? They do figure it out, and nearly 1,000 of them are no longer requiring either the SAT or the ACT.
Many studies show that high school grade point average is a better predictor of college success than standardized tests.
Learn more about the creation of Common Core by non-educators, largely from testing companies.
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I am familiar with how my state put together the Common Core standards. They were not invented by testing companies, though we do test in a particularly stupid way.
If you give a math test, say in Algebra, you are looking for two things: Did the student practice what was assigned until they knew how to solve that type of a problem? And, over the entire class, did you, the teacher, effectively teach. When you give a test on Tuesday, grade it Wednesday and get it back to the students by Thursday, everyone knows what is going on. You can change your teaching behaviors if the class did not understand the lesson, perhaps you can review and assign more practice. For the individual student, they can ask for help, they can ask for more practice or they can understand that they did not internalize the concept you tested on.
There are testing techniques, too, that can prepare for the future; my daughter’s last math teacher made EVERY test a timed test (because the SAT and ACT are and her Final Exam was). At home, we worked with the concepts until our daughter had a handle on the basics and then we worked to teach her the fastest way to solve (because, with math, there are usually several ways to solve the same type of problem, one being faster).
But the school-wide tests are comprehensive for each subject, including language, math, science, citizenship, etc. We generally get the results of these tests back in SIX MONTHS.
These tests are purposeless. You cannot change your behavior, you cannot do a review, you cannot address, in real time, what is happening with the student. These tests were introduced with Bush’s NCLB and the ONLY purpose of these tests is to close schools, lay off teachers and to start private schools with public funding where the teachers are not allowed to join a union and where the curriculum can include religion and the schools can re-introduce segregation.
Connecticut sued over these tests, as Connecticut has their own Mastery tests where the NCLB testing was duplicated. The state did get a waiver from the Obama DOE. But I really see no purpose in a test, the results of which are revealed 6 months after the test. In six months, you have a completely different child.
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mhollis, if you did some more research, you would learn that the Common Core standards were written by a small group of people, not including anyone who was currently a teacher. The largest number of people on the drafting committee were from testing companies like ETS and ACT.
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Mark Hollis,
1st, state standards in Texas (or any state) do not equal national standards imposed on the nation by the federal department of education.
2nd, you asked, “And, if I am a graduating senior from High School, applying to universities across the United States, and there is no national standard of any kind, how can a university expect to understand my qualifications based on a transcript that shows good grades in all subjects?”
Ah, they have been doing this for decades and what they have been doing without any national standards of any kind imposed on them from the U.S. Department of Education has worked out just fine. If you doubt this, then consider that the U.S. was listed the 4th most education country in the world. Last year it was listed 5th, and that rank is based on the number of high school and college degrees earned by U.S. citizens. Currently there are almost three college grads in the U.S. for every job that requires a college degree. If college grads are unemployed or underemployed, then it isn’t the fault of the schools, it is the number of jobs that require a college degree. Three applicants cannot all work at the same one job. That means two will end up unemployed or underemployed.
In addition, most if not all colleges do not use the SAT score alone to determine the students they accept. That SAT/ACT scores are only one element. GPA (grade point average) had proven repeatedly to be the most important factor that determines who is going to be successful in college and GPA represents a students entire K-12 experience.
For instance, our daughter was accepted to Stanford, but her SAT scores were below average. She was accepted because of her GPA, her essay and her extra curricular actives (both athletic and academic) while in high school. She graduated from high school as a scholar athletes with a 4.65 GPA and graduated with a BA from Stanford in June 2014.
The reason Stanford uses multiple elements to determine what students they accept is because most of the students that apply to Stanford have great grades. National standards and the scores on dubious high stakes tests that profit a corporation like Pearson are not going to change the fact that Stanford only accepts about 6 percent of those who apply as undergraduates just out of high school.
The U.S. does not need national standards, because it already has had a working system, and if that system works for Stanford — a university that is ranked in the top five annually against every college in the world — it will continue to work for every college in the U.S. without the need of national standards or ven expensive SAT and ACT tests that profit autocratic often lying corporation
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Looking for suggestions…
If you had the opportunity to ask John King a question in response to a lecture he was giving in your class on “Federal Education Policy at a Crossroads,” what one question would you want to ask?
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Dr. King,
In the past, you sent your own children to a progressive private school that was not subject to the Common Core or to mandated testing. If that is the right decision for your children, why isn’t it the right decision for all children?
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I wanted to report back about my experience with Mr./Dr./Secretary King. He did actually come to a class I was taking recently.
After mulling over all the things I could possibly ask/say, I decided to actually not say anything, so as not to bring undue distress to my gracious hosts. There was much pomp and circumstance around the visiting dignitary, and when he finally arrived, I have to tell you that he held the room (me included) in rapt attention for almost two hours.
I will admit that I was completely awed by Dr. King’s presentation – he actually brought me to tears at one point. He spoke with passion, intelligence, conviction, and noble purpose. He made me want to work with him to support whatever actions he saw fit to implement in the public school sphere. In short, I sublimated all that I knew about the destructive power of his choices made as Commissioner of Education in New York State, to the seductive power of his words.
(Just as an aside – the speaker I saw before me in this class in no way resembled the person I had personally testified in front of at a public forum, nor was he the person seen in C-Span videos of Congressional hearings. The man I heard last week was a far cry from the aloof, dismissive, and arrogant person I’ve seen in public settings.)
But now that I’ve returned to my “real life” and remembered and reread what I’d previously known about him, I’m saddened and confused by the extreme cognitive dissonance Dr. King’s presentation has caused me.
Much cannot be ignored nor sublimated – Dr. King’s real life actions, affiliations, and his choices in how to implement change in education have been extremely questionable. He’s been in many positions of power with the awesome privilege to enact fundamental change for the benefit of all public school children. But for some reason, his decisions have led to great failings and real harm.
I am left completely distressed.
How could Dr. King’s presentation to an audience seeking to become advocates for our country’s school children be so awe-inspiring on its face while the substance below the surface tells a very different story? I know the short answer may be “this is what a great politician looks and sounds like.”
But I feel there has to be more to the story. Is it possible he really does believe that his decisions are in the best interest of children, and that if we who see things differently would just step out of the way, real progress could be made? Is it possible it’s just the twisted machinery of politics and policy making that contorts great ideas as they make their way to our classrooms? Or did I merely witness a man with great political prowess and the power to make great and profound changes, give an awesome speech that he knows is far from the truth of his actual intended actions?
I’m sure the answer is as complex as the questions. And I wish I could uncover the true reasons for this confounding and contradictory story.
~confused and ever more distressed,
Alice
PS While I didn’t raise my hand to ask any questions, Dr. King actually cold-called me after asking if anyone had ideas on how to improve our schools. I was stunned and then took a deep breath so as not to say anything that might embarrass. And then I told him what i had previously written to him in letters and said in public forums when he was State Commissioner – “The only adult at the direct intersection between education policy and the student the policy is intended for, is the classroom teacher. It is imperative that the teacher’s voice be heard in the conversation about how to address the needs of our nation’s school children.”
And by all accounts, it looked like, at least for that moment in time, that he had heard me.
(But I’m not so naive…)
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Beautiful!
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You allege I have no basis to say what I did about extremist Christians wanting to control what our children are taught.
As the Religious Right Forces the Gospel Into Public Schools. Some Parents Are Opting to Home-school. After their kids experienced “religious bullying,” these parents felt they had no choice but to take their kids out of public school.
https://www.thenation.com/article/as-the-religious-right-forces-its-gospel-into-public-schools-some-secular-parents-are-opting-to-homeschool/
Texas Fundamentalists Pushing Public Schools to Teach That Garden of Eden Is Science
http://www.alternet.org/belief/texas-fundamentalists-pushing-public-schools-teach-garden-eden-science
When asked what they thought about public schools and religion, in 2005, 60 percent of respondents to the annual PDK/Gallup poll on education said there was “too little of a presence”.
http://www.gallup.com/poll/1612/education.aspx
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If you qualified your statements it would be more acceptable. Furthermore, you need to define what you mean by “extremist Christians.” What is the percentage of “extremists” bullying and the other bullying that occurs daily in schools. No type of bullying can out weigh the abusive bullying imposed on students via the aligned CC standardized tests.
I agree, that religion should not be taught in public schools but that doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t invoke God’s name in songs, the pledge, and on money as some “extremists” want to go.
In countries where religion is taught in the public school there appears to be just as much crime as countries that force people to go underground. Religion can’t be imposed; it has to be requested.
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Mary, I’m sorry, but I believe you are engaging in rhetorical sophistry. To paraphrase Justice Stewart’s definition of obscenity, we know extremist “Christians” when we see them. I am a non-Catholic graduate of an all-boys Catholic high school (where bigotry and hypocrisy reigned) and a Jesuit university (which valued everything my high school did not). I agree that the study of religious history is appropriate, but count me out on the invocation of God in the Pledge. That is a Cold War relic that has nothing to do with the Pledge or love of country. It has everything to do with imposing a narrow-minded agenda on our nation.
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Dallas Police Chief, David Brown, notes changing societal view on the role of our police: http://www.dallasnews.com/news/crime/headlines/20160711-david-brown-is-absolutely-right-in-dallas-we-re-asking-cops-to-do-too-much.ece#commentsOuterWrapper
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Being forced to say the pledge of allegiance in a classroom does not create patriots.
Hollywood does a much better job of creating patriots for cannon fodder for one of America’s Bush Wars based on lies. When I was a kid, we had to stand and place our hand over our heart and say the pledge of allegiance but that didn’t make me a patriot.
Watching John Wayne movies worked for me and many other young Americans, and that’s why I joined the U.S. Marines right out of high school and ended up fighting in Vietnam. Another war that was justified by lies from another American president.
And being forced to pray in public schools doesn’t not make devout Christians.
As for how many fundamentalist Christians there are in the US. I suggest you read this report from the PewResearchCenter to find out.
http://www.pewforum.org/2015/05/12/americas-changing-religious-landscape/
In addition to how many idiots think the world was created 10,000 years ago in one day by God while ignoring all the science and data that Earth and evolution took place over billions of years.
Gallup reports that 42 percent in the US believe creationist view of human origins. That is a lot of people, and that is where we find most if not all of our fundamentalist Christian extremists.
http://www.gallup.com/poll/170822/believe-creationist-view-human-origins.aspx
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Greg B, you stated,
“Mary, I’m sorry, but I believe you are engaging in rhetorical sophistry. To paraphrase Justice Stewart’s definition of obscenity, we know extremist “Christians” when we see them. I am a non-Catholic graduate of an all-boys Catholic high school (where bigotry and hypocrisy reigned) and a Jesuit university (which valued everything my high school did not). I agree that the study of religious history is appropriate, but count me out on the invocation of God in the Pledge. That is a Cold War relic that has nothing to do with the Pledge or love of country. It has everything to do with imposing a narrow-minded agenda on our nation. ”
For heaven sake why did you ever attend a Catholic high school and then go on to a Catholic university?! That doesn’t make sense.
If you did a little research about the phrase “one nation under God” and how it became part the pledge you might find it interesting.
“In February 2015 New Jersey Superior Court Judge David F. Bauman dismissed a lawsuit, ruling that “…the Pledge of Allegiance does not violate the rights of those who don’t believe in God and does not have to be removed from the patriotic message.”[57] The case against the Matawan-Aberdeen Regional School District had been brought by a student of the district and the American Humanist Association that argued that the phrase “under God” in the pledge created a climate of discrimination because it promoted religion, making non-believers “second-class citizens.” In a twenty-one page decision, Bauman wrote, “Under (the association members’) reasoning, the very constitution under which (the members) seek redress for perceived atheistic marginalization could itself be deem unconstitutional, an absurd proposition which (association members) do not and cannot advance here.”[57] Bauman said the student could skip the pledge, but upheld a New Jersey law that says pupils must recite the pledge unless they have “conscientious scruples” that do not allow it.[58][59] He noted; “As a matter of historical tradition, the words ‘under God’ can no more be expunged from the national consciousness than the words ‘In God We Trust’ from every coin in the land, than the words ‘so help me God’ from every presidential oath since 1789, or than the prayer that has opened every congressional session of legislative business since 1787.”
Congress passed The Pledge Protection Act of 2004 to affirm a commitment to keeping God in the pledge:
“Whereas the Pledge of Allegiance is not a prayer or a religious practice, the recitation of the pledge is not a religious exercise; Whereas the Pledge of Allegiance is the verbal expression of support for the United States of America, and its effect is to instill support for the United States of America; Whereas the United States Congress recognizes the right of those who do not share the beliefs expressed in the Pledge to refrain from its recitation,” the act said.
I hope you never find yourself in a “fox hole.”
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Please take this entry down. It was accidently submitted twice. Thank you.
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Oregon passed a bill to audit high stakes standardized test in 2015. We call it the Audit the SBAC bill. Parents Across America Oregon was invited to contribute to the process. Here is the list of “costs” we submitted. http://www.paaoregon.org/#!Audit-the-SBAC-Parent-Voices/se4y8/575e33740cf2b2ec5185d167
Although the comment period has closed, others may want to add to it. We’ll add them to our blog. The results of the committee’s findings are due September 15, 2016.
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Out of nowhere (though a new state superintendent, who has never taught, is a self-proclaimed lover of data), Ohio is requiring (all?) juniors to take either the ACT or the SAT beginning next year.
http://education.ohio.gov/Topics/Testing/State-Test-Updates/July-2016/Schools-must-administer-state-funded-SAT-or-ACT-ne
Also making changes to graduation requirements. Building the plane as it’s being flown.
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Psychopaths are like that. “This Charming Psychopath”
https://www.psychologytoday.com/articles/199401/charming-psychopath
How to Tell a Sociopath from a Psychopath
“Psychopaths are very manipulative and can easily gain people’s trust. They learn to mimic emotions, despite their inability to actually feel them, and will appear normal to unsuspecting people. Psychopaths are often well educated and hold steady jobs. Some are so good at manipulation and mimicry that they have families and other long-term relationships without those around them ever suspecting their true nature.
“When committing crimes, psychopaths carefully plan out every detail in advance and often have contingency plans in place. Unlike their sociopathic counterparts, psychopathic criminals are cool, calm, and meticulous. Their crimes, whether violent or non-violent, will be highly organized and generally offer few clues for authorities to pursue. Intelligent psychopaths make excellent white-collar criminals and ‘con artists’ due to their calm and charismatic natures. …
“Psychopathy is the most dangerous of all antisocial personality disorders because of the way psychopaths dissociate emotionally from their actions, regardless of how terrible those actions may be.”
https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/wicked-deeds/201401/how-tell-sociopath-psychopath
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Diane- I wrote a letter to John King Jr. asking to meet with me to discuss his poor policy decisions. My hope is that he takes me up on it.
http://www.greaterpatchogue.com/2016/07/12297-opinion-an-appeal-to-the-u-s-department-of-education-secretary/
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Dr. Hynes,
I met John King last week in a class I was taking and had a chance to briefly share my own thoughts with him. (see my post above.)
He spoke passionately and intelligently. Everything he said made sense. His stated goals were admirable. (I wanted to go to work for him…) Nothing about him seemed obviously political nor deceptive. Our hosts were his former teachers and mentors who believe he is a great man with great ideas, (and they are each exceedingly intelligent and accomplished people who have worked their lives for the benefit of school children.)
When Dr. King called on me in the class and I shared my thoughts about teacher involvement, he seemed like he was genuinely listening.
For a rare moment, I felt heard.
But rather than reassure me or excite me as I was initially left feeling, last week’s experience has caused me an out-sized case of cognitive dissonance. I can’t reconcile who I saw and heard last week with the man whose decisions wreaked (and continue to wreak) havoc on the students and teachers of the State of New York.
If you had the chance to meet with him, what would you say?
Could you think of a way to uncover and communicate with the man I saw last week who was a listener and seemed genuinely interested in engaging in two-way dialog, rather than the man we knew as NYS Commissioner of Education – an autocrat who bullied his agenda through to classrooms where both kids and teachers suffer(ed) mightily?
Because I really do feel like there must be two different people inhabiting his body.
~alice
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“If you had the chance to meet with him, what would you say?”
Diane gave you the perfect question. You missed your chance to ask it and report his answer back to us. I find your comments incredibly frustrating. What you saw was a political figure who knew how to talk to an audience that wanted to hear what it wanted to hear. He’s got a record that argues against everything that awed you. I think this is a fundamental failure of civic engagement.
Take five minutes to watch the Hatefest taking place in Cleveland and ask yourself if you would accept any of the claims being made without rebuttal. You wouldn’t. Or at least, I hope you wouldn’t.
The fact is that both parties have done all they can to kill public education. But you wouldn’t know if it you just listened to their rhetoric. Look at what they do.
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I love Diane’s question. The hypocrisy with King and other SED leaders where they think it’s okay for other kids but not their own to be exposed to junk standards and tests…its just not okay. At all.
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Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper makes the VP short list. This article is glowing, despite the fact he decimated K-12 funding and overhauled education during a recession. He’s been very ineffective. http://www.chalkbeat.org/posts/co/2016/07/18/5-things-to-know-about-where-colorado-gov-john-hickenlooper-stands-on-education/#.V44N6_ROKnM
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Dear Dr. Ravitch, Possibly this post is not in the right place — I wanted to send an email but couldn’t see how. I saw your NYT column from 7/24/2016, and firstly want to express my respect for someone who thought critically and walked away from various dogmas. Secondly, I want to follow up on your column. You make the case that standardized tests will have outcomes that reflect family income, the implication being that they are not helpful. But I am wrestling with that question myself, and wonder what you think of the following.
I teach mechanical engineering at the college level, and I see and sense that students who have taken the ‘statics’ course (and have mostly received an A) really have almost no grasp or facility with the subject or its basic methods. [Pondering how that can be, I partly blame grade inflation, and I also believe that professors tune the tests to what they thought they taught, and even ‘leak’ the questions ahead of time to reduce student anxiety.] I am speculating that a standard test could usefully help keep faculty from that ‘tuning’ and ‘signaling’, and would encourage them to cover and their students to master the needed tools.
Returning to your column, could you agree that a standard test could have a role in clarifying the learning goals, and preventing faculty from assigning high grades for weak results? I don’t for a second dispute that sociological factors play a major role, but wouldn’t abandoning standardized tests result in hiding the problems? Interested in your thoughts on the matter — thank you. JMP
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My concern in the article was K-12 schooling. Standardized tests have been around for nearly a century. There has recently been a concerted effort by the federal government to promote national standardized tests, claiming that this would have great results. It has not had great results, and it has reduced the status of teachers, who are limited by the demands of standardized tests.
Teachers are evaluated based on their students’ test scores. Do you think you as a professor should be rated based on the scores of your students?
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Hello, and thank you so very much for replying! I can see that there is a trend toward more and more testing, which seems like a really poor use of time. But as to whether it is right or wrong tests to be ‘nationally standard’: while ignorant of most issues I would probably gravitate toward a nationally uniform evaluation — why not?
Jumping for now to your final question (should I be rated based on scores), of course there are many ways to use that to hurt people. Like selecting which students go to which professor (even by setting up the professor with an early class time, and overcrowded classroom). But I’d hope for a nuanced way to use my students’ scores — if I have a random selection of students in my school, and if they usually do markedly poorer than students taught by my colleagues, then I would think I wasn’t properly doing my job and needed coaching. (Maybe I am de-motivating them, for example.) So, a qualified ‘yes’ to your question! (Also a little humility, because I haven’t tried it and maybe there are unforeseen ways it could go wrong.)
I re-read your column because I had fixated early on the standardized test issue. I have no argument with the idea that family situation and disability strongly affect scores, and that it is insane to punish schools affected by these. I totally take your point about the false promises of a national curriculum or the use of technology, and more importantly what to do about the real problems like poverty. But that doesn’t relate so much to my issues (which have to do with the weak learning of well-off college students).
I hadn’t seen your note about NAEP, so looking it up I can see that it might serve as an absolute yardstick in its realm. That is roughly what I am looking for — a way for me to know, and maybe for my students to know, whether they have learned the basics. I harbor a feeling that maybe students should have their transcript grade affected by what they really learned (as opposed to a curve with 25% A, 50% B, 25% C, or whatever). And that at some level, my colleagues and I should embrace some kind of accountability for enduring substantially poorer outcomes.
I am extremely interested in your insights about this concept, but want to make clear that I am not thinking about the world of K-12 public schools (important, but not my current job). In my thinking, it is harmful not to use some kind of yardstick (as opposed to each professor’s own tests) to see how we are doing. But I admit to considerable naivete in my nascent philosophy of evaluation! Sincerely yours, JMP
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Jim, for someone so thoughtful and already aware of some of the complications in teacher evaluation by test, you are surprisingly accepting of a method that has an incredible (but predictable) number of unintended consequences. Nothing is making teaching more unattractive for potential teachers or creating more fear in classrooms as well as schools than the misuse of testing in this way. The shortsightedness is astounding. Doesn’t mean there couldn’t be a way forward where some standardization could help us improve but the current leap of faith by people (including yourself) who don’t have anything to lose when things go wrong has further undermined the confidence our nation’s teachers have that the Reformist driven testing movement will be repelled.
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Hello, Algebra Teacher. I wanted input, and I guess I am getting it, thank you! I can see there’s a lot of passion about the issues, and names for things I know nothing about (Reformist?)
Various countries have national exams for their college subjects, so I start with a presumption that this COULD be OK, and was thinking about potential advantages. I think you are warning me of the need for caution, is there any way to try this without necessarily leading to disaster?
Sincerely yours JMP
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BikeNGR,
We have national exams for college subjects. They are the SAT and ACT. To make those exams a graduation requirement would deny graduation to a large number of students who do not plan to go to college.
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Before responding, I want to restate my appreciation for your respectful tone and open mind.
Your question about could there be circumstances where evaluating teachers by testing “could be okay” is tricky. It’s impossible to say “no,” right? Diane made a point over the weekend about Senator Kaine that in spending so much money and effort driving out the small minority of bad teachers, we are causing more good teachers to leave the profession and losing more would-be good teachers to other occupations. Those who implemented evaluation by test did so with Facebook’s “Break things” mantra. They knew there’d be blowback. They knew they’d make mistakes. They didn’t care, and they’ve attempted to convert their lack of caring into a feature (see Donald Trump Jr.’s speech from last week). Meanwhile, those of us who teach — many of us who saw through the Reform Movement from the moment No Child Left Behind was passed with near unanimous Congressional approval — are fighting to continue improving in a culture that makes things increasingly difficult. It’s hard to imagine a way evaluation by test can be used in a positive manner in the current environment.
This isn’t to say we can’t improve as teachers or our educational system as a whole. But there are no simple solutions, and it’s frustrating to see that the people who think that they are have so much power with so little accountability. We need to acknowledge the difficulty, quit the finger-pointing/scapegoating of teachers (though I am fully on board with those fighting back against The Reform Movement!), and work together in finding ways we can get better.
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Hi, I wonder if I am being misunderstood. I am not thinking about entrance exams, but graduation (from college) exams. Maybe a very different world from the K-12 arena you mostly live in.
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Bike,
Colleges set their own requirements for entry and exit. That is not the role of the government in this country.
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Could you do some digging into Ascend Charter Schools? Their CEO claims they are “truly public” in this outlandish article: http://www.ascendlearning.org/blog/mean-truly-public/
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No charter school under private management is public
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An interesting read regarding Livermore Valley Charter Prep, Livermore, California in danger of losing its accreditation, causing chaos and uncertainty for the future of the school. Quite a cast of characters, plus the usual graft, greed, lack of transparency…
http://www.eastbaytimes.com/breaking-news/ci_30171973/livermore-charter-high-school-battles-accreditation-woes-students
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Dear Sir / Madame,
A charter school in Harlem, New York, just turned away a well-established speaker who travelled from overseas to give a free speech to the students of the school. And they cancelled him on the night just before the event! Why? Apparently, it’s because of the reason that the speaker supports Donald Trump! Have schools become politically discriminating entities these days?
Dan Peña, a successful Hispanic-American businessman, is a great minority story left untold. His mother and grandmother risked their lives, swimming the Rio Grand River many years ago (1920’s) to become Americans. He was the son of an LAPD minority cop who served in 2 wars fighting for the US, and later became a veteran himself, serving 39 months active duty – entering a private and leaving a first lieutenant! Being a minority and spending his adolescent years in the barrio of East Los Angeles, toughened him up as he grew older. He has been known by many names, a few of which are – the Financial Magician, Man with the Midas Touch, and recently, The 50 Billion Dollar Man for creating through his mentees & devotees over $50 billion in value/equity, as a hi performance mentor & coach. He has countless achievements over the years, one of the most well-known is turning $820 into $450 million dollars in a collapsing oil market. Now at 70 years of age, he has continuously been giving back to the community by sponsoring scholarships in east LA, supporting orphanages & charities around the world.
And as mentioned above, he was recently asked to share his life experiences to aspiring students of the Opportunity Charter School in Harlem, who reminded him of his humble beginnings, and therefore wants to encourage them to strive for a better life. He believes they can achieve success with hard work and determination – just as he did! Yet he was cancelled by school officials at the very last minute (the night before the supposed event), apparently when they found out that he was endorsing Trump. This proved to be a grave mistake. A couple of weeks later, he was invited to speak at the campus of Oxford University, wherein the students and other attendees gave a standing ovation at the end of his 90 min talk. The differences of political opinion cost the charter school’s students a rare chance to hear valuable and free life advice from The 50 Billion Dollar Man himself – one of their own!
We believe that your readers/listeners in New York would feel the same regrets of losing the opportunity for the kids of the school to learn from the best hi performance business coach/mentor on the planet.
I appreciate your time and consideration for what I have to offer. If you’re interested in learning more, please email katherine@guthriecastle.com.
Here are links to better illustrate the events that took place:
Letter sent to the school after the event was cancelled –> http://bit.ly/2ak967d
The speaker’s thoughts about recent events –> http://bit.ly/29S1Htu
Respectfully,
Katherine Kay
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Read this this A.M. and thought you might find it interesting: https://www.socialeurope.eu/2016/08/u-s-behind-fethullah-gulen/
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Re-unification of the Recovery School District and Orleans Parish School Board. Public Schools? http://uptownmessenger.com/2016/08/kleban-wins-open-school-board-seat-after-opponent-withdraws/
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This story has a real stench about it.
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I taught in one of Apple’s original Apple Classrooms of Tomorrow in the mid 1980’s. Research was done on our classrooms for several years by UCLA. UCLA and Apple had us document what we as educators saw as the most effective use of educational technology in our technology rich classrooms. Seymour Papert’s logo program was an integral part of our problem solving curriculum. Students were challenged by it and visitors were amazed at what students were able to create. I didn’t realize that he worked with Jean Piaget in Switzerland until I read the following article, but when he visited our classrooms his interactions with fifth graders were enlightening. http://news.mit.edu/2016/seymour-papert-pioneer-of-constructionist-learning-dies-0801
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Diane – Don’t know if you’ve seen this Harvard Business Review published article about “How to Turn Around a Failing School”.
I’m not enthusiastic about it all the way through. But I was surprised that it’s no reformers dream. Somehow I expected HBR to toe the reform line.
It’s based on analyzing British attempts to create turn-around schools via their Academy model. (Is that equivalent to our charter schools? I don’t know.)
https://hbr.org/2016/08/how-to-turn-around-a-failing-school
Just bringing it to your attention in case you want to pass it along.
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Thanks, Doug, the British academies are akin to charter schools. The government allows corporations to open or buy a government school if hey put up a large sum. It used to be $1.5 million, could be more now.
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Doug,
The key to successful turnaround is to exclude behavior problems. Pay other schools to take them. I doubt the courts in this country would allow this. Or should.
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Thanks, Diane. Was interesting to find the article but it sounded a bit trite in tone. Appreciate the thoughts – and I concur with you.
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Doug,
I will be posting that article soon. The linchpin of their success is kicking out students they don’t want.
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If anyone is interested in how to turn around a school that is not performing well, I suggest looking at Shanghai where the schools have been modeled on what Chinese scholars learned from America’s public schools in 1999. There’s even changes in the wind to downplay high stakes tests in China and get rid of the one at the end of middle school.
In 2012, Shanghai’s 15 year old students ranked #1 on the International PISA test with impressive scores in every area tested. Of course the story is more complicated than that because Shanghai’s public education system is not a copy cat of what the U.S. had in 1999, but many of the methods teachers use in China came from what U.S. public schools were doing before NCLB, RTTT, the Common Core Crap and the latest education garbage out of Washington D.C.
In Shanghai, schools that are not performing well are not called failing schools, and they are not closed. Instead, Shanghai sends teams of administrators and teachers from the highest performing schools in Shanghai to help the lowest performing schools to improve. No teachers are ranked and fired or schools closed They are helped, explaining why Shanghai was #1 on the 2012 PISA test.
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Bailey,
Please contact me offline before I post your comment.
Dr19@nyu.edu
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ratings for hospitals – same problem as with schools: https://www.statnews.com/2016/08/02/hospital-ratings-skepticism/
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Diane,
MD teachers on Friday, August 5th, have been referred to as “Union Thugs” by our right wing corporate governor, Larry Hogan. The Washington Post comments section regarding their article on this are filled with hate-filled statements in support of Hogan for putting these “thug teachers in their place. MD is accelerating in its pace diving deep into this neoliberal/right wing morass.
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I have to wonder if I got my history wrong, that it was the teacher unions that caused the 2008 Great Recession and not the investment banks.
Firstly timothyD, teachers need to go local and fast. They need to demonstrate to the actual parents what they are doing and they need to educate the parents about the fact that THEY make up the union—the union is not some alien race that landed somewhere nearby and is messing things up.
They need to demonstrate what they are doing for the children. They need to exemplify the professionalism that they have demonstrated for some years now. And they need to show how little they are truly paid. If they do this, they will win hearts and minds.
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Anyone who refers to teachers as “Union Thugs” should have their mouths washed out with soap until they apologize.
I have run into several teachers wearing T-shirts emblazoned “Union Thug.”
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That made me laugh. A Donald Trump clone must have said “teachers are union thugs”.
Really!
“On 2011–12, some 76 percent of public school teachers were female, 44 percent were under age 40, and 56 percent had a master’s or higher degree. Compared with public school teachers, a lower percentage of private school teachers had a master’s or higher degree (43 percent).”
An army of women with college degrees, a high empathy rating, who work with most of the nation’s children. Even if teachers wanted to be union thugs, the average teacher works almost 60 hours a week and doesn’t have time to go stand on street corners flipping union thug signs at passing cars to intimidate anyone.
The autocratic, often fraudulent and inferior, opaque, publicity funded, private sector corporate education industry that worships greed is where we’ll find the thugs and liars.
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Lloyd,
Teachers are the contemporary version of Reagan’s “welfare queens.” You know, those uppity women in their Hondas and Fords and Toyotas. Those men and women with master’s degrees that pull in a cool $55,000 a year for a job with long vacations and short hours. Why is there a teacher shortage in so many states when the job is so appealing?
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Diane,
I am a teacher from the UK and I aspire to live and teach in New York City. It sounds like there is a teacher shortage, or a developing teacher shortage, at least. Might NYC be open to the idea of employing more international teachers sometime soon?
By any chance, do you have any advice or information that might help a British teacher like me?
Kind regards,
Martin
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The reason for that demonizing stereotype of teachers is because of decades of propaganda funded by the Waltons, Koch brothers, Gates, Broad, etc. They keep repeating the same damn lies just like the Nazi’s did before and during World War II to do the same thing to the Jews and a few other groups.
But I worked outside of public education for 15 years and served in the Marines for some of those years and none of those jobs, even the Marines and fighting in Vietnam, came even close to the challenges, hardship, and long hours that comes with teaching.
I’ve been angry and tired of hearing these lies for decades. That’s why I kept a brutally honest daily journal in 1994-95 documenting what went on in my classroom (and inside my head), and then more than twenty years later turned that journal into a memoir showing how hard teaching is.
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Congratualtions, Lloyd!
Just today I was lamenting the teachers’ situation with my husband.
People who are not in education don’t understand that there is a great joy in teaching – if one is allowed to be creative and innovative. Teachers are molding tomorrow’s citizens.
What greater work can one do than help make a better tomorrow? How exciting to see children’s creative and imaginative powers unfold via writing, art work or drama; their ability to solve problems and intuit. My children remember well their creative, knowledgeable loving teachers. They sparked a love of learning to the point where one daughter has three masters and is ready to defend her dissertation not to mention her background in theater and directing and a year in law school. That would never have happened under the yoke of CC.
How sad to read about the abuse the children are subjected to under the stress of the
CC. Direct teaching, constant drilling, and testing squelches the desire to learn. The desire to learn is sparked by varying ones approach everyday in teaching and reinforcing concepts-varing the technology used, along with the tools: chalkboard, white board, overhead with the umpteen graphic organizers and countless activities it provides.
Varing the manipulatives from homemade to purchase. Varing activities for reinforcing – dramatizing, choral reading, pair reading, recording, illustrating… building in movement which children need for learn. Yes, children need structure but within that structure varying the type of activities make learning fun and exciting.
How sad to read about drab classroom environments. The classroom needs living things around to observe: live plants, flowers, fish tank, bird in a cage… The walls/bulletin
boards need colorful backgrounds to mount charts, illustrations, children’s work…
Yes, a lot of time and hard work goes into teaching if the children are the motivators but the reward is so fulfilling.
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Lloyd, is your book available only on Kindle?
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Must read article in NYTimes re: cloaked lobbying with think tanks like Brookings. Think Aspen Institute
http://mobile.nytimes.com/2016/08/08/us/politics/think-tanks-research-and-corporate-lobbying.html
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Thank you for asking.
No, it’s available from many other retailers including Barnes & Noble, the iTunes Apple bookstore, and Kobo. Click the following link to find the links to those other retailers.
http://crazynormal.com/
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In China, Some Schools Are Playing With More Creativity, Less Cramming:
http://www.npr.org/sections/parallels/2016/08/08/488581846/in-china-some-schools-are-playing-with-more-creativity-less-cramming
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Hi Diane:
I am an avid reader of your blog, and really appreciate your fight for public education. I live in PA, where our recent change of governor has not brought about more equitable funding many of us had hoped for. There was a recent story in about a former PA Secretary of Ed and Budget Secretary under 3 different PA governors who has been accused of abusing his wife (http://www.pennlive.com/news/2016/08/charles_zogby_assault_wife.html). While the story is upsetting and sad, it led me to do a little more research about the accused, Charles Zogby. I remembered him from former Governor Corbett’s administration, as Zogby was largely responsible for massive cuts to PA’s education budget. These cuts largely impacted the Philadelphia School District, and there was a great deal of talk in 2011 of whether the PSD would be able to open on time. Eventually it did, but I’m sure you are aware of the bare bones budget that they operate under, and the many sacrifices their teachers and administrators make every day. In addition, Governor Corbett helped to reintroduce vouchers, and deceptively named them Educational Opportunity Scholarships (http://www.delcotimes.com/article/DC/20120119/NEWS/301199978).
While Zogby has already demonstrated himself as an enemy of public education, I may have found some of the reasons why he was so against public schools. Apparently after serving as Secretary of Education under former Governor Ridge in the late 90s and early 2000s, Zogby went to work for k12 (http://harrisburgu.edu/faculty/charles-zogby/). It’s interesting since Governor Ridge’s regime would probably coincide with the introduction of charter schools in PA, or at least their eventual proliferation. Also, PA, as I’m sure you know, has some of the worst cyber charters in the country. In one of the most embarrassing moments for cyber education in PA, the Agora Cyber Charter School, PA’s second largest, had to lay off more than 100 teachers in Feb. 2016 due to the budget impasse from 2015 (http://articles.philly.com/2016-02-17/news/70673796_1_agora-cyber-charter-agora-board-state-budget-impasse). Agora is managed by k12.
Although I’m not trying to attack Charles Zogby the husband who is accused of domestic violence (he’s innocent until proven guilty), his ethical blindness or moral ambiguity has severely affected his ability to ensure PA’s students received free and appropriate education. The double dipping reminded me of the articles recently published in the NY Times (and your commentary) about think tanks and corporate sponsorship. However, I feel like this case is much more nefarious since Zogby’s influence was his ability to enact education policy, not only as Secretary of Education, but also as the Budget Secretary. And sadly, his decisions are still affecting students, the schools they attend, and the teachers and administrators who work there.
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AICUP Halts Relay GSE Incursion into Pennsylvania to Grant New York MAT Degrees . . .
For the Time Being
On February 28, 2014 Relay Graduate School of Education (Relay GSE), based in New York, applied to establish a physical presence in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania to operate an education enterprise which would grant Masters of Arts degree pursuant. These would be MAT degrees for Pennsylvania-certified teachers, but granted under the authority of New York State, containing no references or content relating to Pennsylvania standards and, in addition, failing to comply with Pennsylvania Department of Education (PDE) regulations.
From May 14, 2014 to August 18, 2014, PDE staff returned Relay GSE’s application multiple times, advising Relay GSE of deficiencies in its application. Among others, PDE noted that Relay’s proposed MAT program contained no research component, uncertain faculty qualifications, and an absence of plans to recruit faculty with credentials appropriate to masters-level faculty. On August 29, Relay GSE submitted a new application. Throughout October and November 2014, PDE again noted the same deficiencies in the new application, as well as concerns about administrative capacity at its proposed Pennsylvania headquarters and issues with Relay’s Advisory Committee. However, finally, on January 24, 2015, PDE published notice of Relay GSE’s application in the Pennsylvania Bulletin.
The Association of Independent Colleges and Universities (AICUP), with support from member institutions and the Southeast Pennsylvania Consortium for Higher Education (SEPCHE), timely filed a protest, a request for a hearing on Relay’s application, and on February 26, 2015, a petition to intervene. AICUP hired Kathleen Conn, Ph.D., J.D. LL.M. as its legal representative during the intervention. Conn was a former K-12 teacher, Central Office administrator, and elementary principal, as well as a faculty member in the Graduate Education program at Neumann University, Aston, Pennsylvania. Conn’s legal specialty is education law, and she is currently Of Counsel at King, Spry, Herman, Freund & Faul, LLC, in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania.
AICUP and Relay GSE representatives exchanged pre-hearing statements, responses to their respective submissions, and proposed questions to be asked at a future informational hearing before PDE. In Conn’s submissions on AICUP’s behalf, AICUP raised many of the same deficiencies with Relay’s program that PDE had been noting for months. In addition, AICUP argued forcefully that Relay failed to comply with numerous Pennsylvania regulations pertinent to awarding graduate degrees. After the February 29, 2016 informational hearing at PDE in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, PDE’s appointed Hearing Officer Christine Hawk issued her Findings of Fact on July 29, 2016. Relay GSE’s application to operate an education enterprise in the Commonwealth was denied.
Ms. Hawk’s Findings of Fact detail nine independent categories of deficiencies in Relay GSE’s proposed program, all of which were noted by AICUP in its pre- and post-hearing document exchanges. Ms. Hawk concluded that (1) Relay has not demonstrated an adequate number of appropriately qualified administrators to oversee the Pennsylvania enterprise; (2) Relay’s program does not contain an adequate research component for a graduate degree as required in the Pennsylvania School Code, a point stressed repeatedly by AICUP; (3) the faculty and faculty job descriptions listed in the application do not show faculty appropriately qualified to provide Master’s level instruction and/or to guide thesis study; (4) the actual Relay GSE curriculum included in the application was centrally designed and produced, but with no curriculum development input from Pennsylvania faculty; (5) Relay’s MAT program admission criteria are not adequate to ensure that potential students are appropriately prepared to succeed, ignoring another regulatory requirement for Pennsylvania graduate programs; (6) Relay students’ library resources are almost exclusively digitized holdings, and there is no showing of library resources on research methods or statistical analysis of results; (7) the Pennsylvania Advisory Committee identified in Relay’s application for its planned Philadelphia headquarters is not appropriately qualified to guide the enterprise and played no role in designing the initiative or approving it; (8) Relay failed to adequately explain how its enterprise would benefit Philadelphia and other Pennsylvania students who already have access to numerous quality institutions offering MAT degrees in the city and surrounding region, and finally; (9) the program described in Relay GSE’s written pre- and post-hearing submissions, and described verbally by Relay representatives at the informational hearing, does not correspond to the program delivery and content described in Relay’s application to operate an education enterprise in the Commonwealth.
Ms. Hawk’s Findings of Fact were comprehensive, and one may observe, quite damning. PDE has confirmed, in earlier communications during the process of written submissions by both parties, that Relay cannot change the content and specifics of its January 2015 application. The January 24, 2015 application described in the Pennsylvania Bulletin and submitted to PDE at that time must be judged on its merits. The appointed Hearing Officer Ms. Hawk did that, and found the application deficient. Despite Ms. Hawk’s report, Relay GSE has petitioned the Commonwealth Secretary of Education, Pedro Rivera, to extend the 30-day deadline for filing exceptions to Ms. Hawk’s report so that Relay may prepare its appeal of the denial. AICUP may likely extend the courtesy of not objecting to the extension. However, since the January 2015 application cannot be changed retroactively, what can Relay GSE argue in an appeal? Relay did not meet the standards for graduate programs set by the Commonwealth and accepted as general practice by accredited Pennsylvania institutions. To allow Relay GSE to enter the Commonwealth and effectively cheat students of an appropriate and research-based graduate degree would offend fundamental fairness and substantive due process. If Relay GSE is to enter the Commonwealth, Relay must abide by the same standards established for all institutions of graduate education in the Commonwealth. Ms. Hawk’s Findings of Fact demonstrate that Relay GSE falls short of the mark.
(For more information, contact Kathleen Conn at kconn@kingspry.com)
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The Colorado Independent reports that Douglas County School Board has diverted $5.6 million from schools to fund their own education software to drive their reforms. It’s supposed to “reinvent American education well beyond its boundaries.” beyondhttp://www.coloradoindependent.com/160648/douglas-county-school-district-is-selling-software-for-profit-reinvent-american-education-inspired
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Sorry!
http://www.coloradoindependent.com/160648/douglas-county-school-district-is-selling-software-for-profit-reinvent-american-education-inspired
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Hello Diane, thanks for creating this blog! I stumbled across it today and wanted to share my experience working for a very popular charter school district in Houston, Texas. The experience was so outrageous, I wrote a book about it. I hope you have an opportunity to review it. Thanks!
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send me a copy of your book.
POB 1288
Southold, NY 11971
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Sure, I will send it in the morning. It’s a really fast read. Hope you enjoy it!
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Hello Diane! Did you get the book?
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Yes, Dikombe, and I wrote about it.
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Hi Diane…I am sure you are familiar with what is happening in Chicago right now with more public school teachers laid off (1,000 right before school to purposefully add instability) and continued spending on high end condos with tax dollars that should go to schools (TIF funds) as well as horrific waste with contracts…our schools are dirty and we have a bully for a mayor who, with his appointed CEO Forrest think teachers can take an even greater hit in terms of salary and job positions. We have a situation where there are 30% of the schools with high lead content and no plan on behalf of CPS to even change that.
What is unthinkable to me is that Hillary Clinton claims to be an advocate for children and has nothing to say about the fact that a “Democrat” Rahm Emanuel is single-handedly ruining the public education system in a key city. She’s way ahead in the polls…it’s time she showed some integrity and was a true alternative. It’s so disappointing that she won’t speak up on this….the friends she keeps say worlds about the type of candidate she is.
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http://bustedpencils.com/2016/08/children-eat-breakfast-hallway-floor-school/
Diane,
Have you seen this? I think this needs national (even international) attention/exposure. I am speechless. I remember a time not so very long ago that a teacher would be reprimanded for such a thing. SMH
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Chur,
It is in the queue. It will be posted.
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Diane, how do you feel about outdoor learning/education in an age of technology, yet growing worries about child obesity and inactivity? I think there’s plentiful research showing the health benefits (mental and physical) of outdoor activity. Wondering your stance on that for children.
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Danny,
I think outdoor learning is great! When I a child, I used to climb my favorite tree and escape from the world to read in peace.
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I just found this poem in a tattered copy book kept by my grandmother, who was born in Sweden in 1887 and came to the US as an infant. It appears after a few pages of Swedish lessons an outline of US history and geography, grammar rules, and music notation, among other patriotic poems.
Given that public schools are currently under siege, reading this appreciation from over 100 years ago reminded me of all that they have meant to so many generations of American citizens.
OUR PUBLIC SCHOOL
1.
When Freedom flung her banner high
In triumph o’re the land
‘Twas like a rainbow in the sky
A pledge by heroes planned:
Fair Wisdom’s form came then in view
That all might learn in lessons true
The creed of Liberty
Hail, hail, hail our fortress strong
Hail, hail, hail the foe of wrong.
Bright, bright, bright beam thy beacon light
God bless the public school.
2.
The tyrant’s power melt away
When Truth and Right appear
No more Ignorance obey
The dictates of her fear
For knowledge elevates mankind
Makes clear the golden rule
And gives the blessings that we find
Within the public school.
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Dear Diane,
Thank you for all the information you share on this site. I’m guessing you already have these details and I look forward to reading your about them!
Clinton-Kaine Transition Project Announces Senior Leadership Team
Former Interior Secretary Salazar To Serve as Chair; Donilon, Granholm, Tanden and Williams To Serve as Co-Chairs
Two weeks after paperwork was filed to formally establish the Clinton-Kaine Transition Project, John Podesta – the Chair of Hillary for America and the President of the Transition project – announced several top officials who will lead the transition planning over the coming months. This senior leadership team will oversee a Washington-based operation that is dedicated to preparing for a potential Clinton-Kaine administration, enabling the Brooklyn-based campaign organization to stay exclusively focused on the task of electing Hillary Clinton as the nation’s 45th President of the United States. Ken Salazar, former Secretary of the Interior and United States senator from Colorado, will serve as Chair of the Clinton-Kaine Transition Project.
Salazar will serve alongside four co-chairs – former National Security Adviser Tom Donilon, former Michigan Governor Jennifer Granholm, President of the Center for American Progress Neera Tanden, and Maggie Williams, Director of the Institute of Politics, Harvard University. Ed Meier and Ann O’Leary, two top campaign policy advisers, will shift full-time to the Transition team to serve as co-executive directors and manage the project’s day-to-day operations. Heather Boushey, the Executive Director of the Washington Center for Equitable Growth, will serve as Chief Economist.
“We are extremely pleased that such an accomplished group of public servants has agreed to lead the transition planning for a potential Clinton-Kaine administration,” Podesta said. “While our campaign remains focused on the task at hand of winning in November, Hillary Clinton wants to be able to get to work right away as President-elect on building an economy that works for everyone, not just those at the top. These individuals, who bring a deep level of experience in the work of presidential transitions, will help us build a team that is ready to govern after the general election.”
“Once Hillary Clinton makes history by being elected as the nation’s first woman President, we want to have a turnkey operation in place so she can hit the ground running right away,” Salazar said. “A Clinton-Kaine administration will build on the progress we’ve made under President Obama, and tackle a new set of challenges both at home and abroad. This transition team will undertake the preparations necessary to ensure our next President has the resources and staff to carry out this all-important work.”
The Clinton-Kaine Transition Project is a 501(c)(4) organization. It was officially established through the filing of paperwork two weeks ago in the District of Columbia, with Podesta named as the entity’s President and Hillary for America senior adviser Minyon Moore as Secretary.
A 2010 law, known as the Pre-Election Transition Act, formalized the process for the transfer of powers from one administration to the next, and provided new resources to both party nominees so they each could take steps ahead of the general election to ensure a seamless transition. In keeping with the law, the Obama administration will host initial, transition planning meetings with representatives of both the Trump and Clinton campaigns. After the two parties’ conventions, White House chief of staff Denis McDonough phoned both campaigns to indicate that, among other steps, workspace administered by the General Services Administration in Washington, D.C., was officially available to both campaigns to use for their respective transition planning.
Biographies for the leadership of the Clinton-Kaine Transition Project appear below.
Ken Salazar, Chair of the Clinton-Kaine Transition Project, served under President Obama as the 50th Secretary of the Interior from 2009-2013. Prior to that, he was U.S. Senator from Colorado from 2005-2009. From 1999 until his election to the U.S. Senate, Salazar served as Attorney General for Colorado. He currently works as a partner at the international law firm WilmerHale.
Tom Donilon, Co-Chair of the Clinton-Kaine Transition Project, served as National Security Advisor to President Obama from 2010-2013. Donilon had leadership roles in the State Department and NSC transitions in 2008. He served as Deputy National Security Advisor before becoming President Obama’s top national security aide. Donilon served during the Clinton Administration as Chief of Staff at the Department of State. Donilon is currently Vice Chair at the law firm of O’Melveny & Myers. Jennifer Granholm, Co-Chair of the Clinton-Kaine Transition Project, was the 47th Governor of the State of Michigan. Prior to her two terms as Governor, she served as Michigan’s Attorney General from 1999-2003. She was the first woman in state history to be elected to either position. During her tenure as Governor, she led Michigan through a severe economic downturn by diversifying the state’s economy, strengthening its automotive industry and investing in new sectors such as clean energy. After leaving office, Granholm served as an advisor to Pew Charitable Trusts’ Clean Energy Program. She is also a Senior Research Fellow with the Berkeley Energy and Climate Institute.
Neera Tanden, Co-Chair of the Clinton-Kaine Transition Project, currently serves as President of the Center for American Progress. Prior to that, she served as a senior adviser for health reform at the Department of Health and Human Services, working to help enact President Obama’s landmark health reform law. During the 2008 campaign, Tanden served as policy director for the Hillary Clinton presidential campaign, then became the director of domestic policy for the Obama-Biden campaign during the general election. Earlier in her career, she was Legislative Director for Clinton in her Senate office, and deputy campaign manager on Clinton’s 2000 Senate campaign.
Maggie Williams, Co-Chair of the Clinton-Kaine Transition Project, is the Director of the Institute of Politics (IOP) at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. She is the former Communications Director for the Children’s Defense Fund; served as the 1992 transition director for First Lady Hillary Clinton, and as Assistant to the President and Chief of Staff to First Lady Hillary Clinton. Maggie is founding partner of management consulting firm, Griffin Williams CPM, from which she took a leave of absence in 2008 to manage the presidential primary campaign of then-Senator Clinton. Maggie is Vice Chair of the Trustee Board of the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) and serves on the Board of the Scholastic Corporation.
Ed Meier, Co-Executive Director of the Clinton-Kaine Transition Project, most recently served as the Director of Policy Outreach at Hillary for America. Prior to his work on the campaign, Meier served as Senior Adviser to the Deputy Secretary of State during Clinton’s tenure at the State Department. In addition to his service in government, Meier has worked as a management consultant at McKinsey & Company and served as Chief Operating Officer at Big Thought, an education nonprofit in Dallas.
Ann O’Leary, Co-Executive Director of the Clinton-Kaine Transition Project, most recently served as Senior Policy Adviser at Hillary for America, handling issues including college affordability, health care and family economic security. Prior to joining the campaign, O’Leary was senior vice president and director of the Children and Families Program at Next Generation. O’Leary was also founding executive director of the University of California, Berkeley, Law School’s Center on Health, Economic & Family Security, and a Deputy City Attorney for the City of San Francisco. She held a number of roles during the Clinton administration, including policy adviser to the First Lady and assistant to the President on the Domestic Policy Council. She was also Legislative Director in Clinton’s Senate office from 2001-2003.
Heather Boushey, Chief Economist of the Clinton-Kaine Transition Project, is the Executive Director and Chief Economist at the Washington Center for Equitable Growth and a Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress. Dr. Boushy previously served as as an economist for the Joint Economic Committee of the U.S. Congress, the Center for Economic and Policy Research, and the Economic Policy Institute. She is a leading researcher on the issue of income inequality and author of “Finding Time: The Economics of Work-Life Conflict” from Harvard University Press.
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Obama announces $17 million in loans and grants to for-profit companies, including indirectly General Electric for coding classes.
http://www.wsj.com/articles/obama-administration-to-fund-nontraditional-training-for-students-1471341782
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Hello! Our school district is getting involved with the AVID program (Advancement Via Individual Determination). It seems as if college readiness is the focus. I am a reading teacher at the elementary level, and I noticed on AVID’s website that there is prescribed methodology for teaching reading. No details were given. Do you, or any of your readers know anything about AVID? Thanks for your blog!
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Gladpoet,
I don’t know anything specific about AVID’s recommended reading methodologies, but I do know AVID; I was an AVID site coordinator and teacher for 2.5 years at a MS in Salinas, CA, and did several trainings of theirs. I believe strongly that it is an outstanding program; it’s 30+ years show amazing results in terms of aincreased student achievement in MS and HS, significantly increased college acceptance & enrollment rates, and significantly, increased completion rates of 2-year and 4-year college degree programs. Their study habits, not taking and writing curricula are outstanding (and so I assume their reading strategies are also very good, but again, I don’t know this firsthand). Their model of tutorials with college student volunteer tutors is also a great thing for secondary students. I hear they’ve now moved into 6th and 5th grades, maybe even younger, and I assume that’s a good thing too.
Hope this is helpful,
Ted
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I’ve been retired since 2005. The high school where I taught the last 16 of 30 years in public education had and still has an AVID program. Here’s a link to that HS’s AVID page.
When I retired, AVID was a voluntary program. Students were not forced to join.
I see that you can send an e-mail to the AVID Coordinator and English 9 Honors Teacher at that HS. I think she could answer your questions. Her name is not familiar to me so she must have joined the staff after I left.
http://www.nogaleshs.org/apps/pages/index.jsp?uREC_ID=426370&type=d&pREC_ID=staff
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Hi Diane–saw this in today’s Philly Inquirer and thought you’d be interested: “Report: Charter Administration Costs Double Those of Other Public Schools” http://www.philly.com/philly/education/20160819_Report__Charter_adminstration_costs_double_that_of_other_public_schools.html
Also see here for an excellent graphic comparing charters to other public schools: http://www.philly.com/philly/infographics/Graphic_Charter_School_vs_School_District_Spending.html
This is a report made by the Pennsylvania School Boards Association and reviewed the costs associated with the 173 charter schools operating in the state. From the article:
“Focused largely on how money flows out of school districts and into charter schools, the report highlighted the disparities in spending between the types of schools – including special-education costs. It found that charter schools were overpaid for special education by nearly $100 million in 2014-15.
“The report also called for a greater level of oversight by the Pennsylvania Department of Education.
“‘Charter schools are public schools,’ the report stated. ‘However, charter schools are not held to the same standards as other stewards of public tax dollars when it comes to transparency in operational and financial decisions.'”
The full report can be fund here: https://www.psba.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Charter-School-RtK-08172016.pdf
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Thanks, David, that report is on my radar. And will be posted.
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http://teachertomsblog.blogspot.com/2016/08/vacant-ruins-on-main-street.html
Hello Diane – You may already be aware of Teacher Tom’s post yesterday about charters. He is another hero of education in my opinion. Your name and book are cited in his post as evidence of his position which is strongly critical of charters.
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https://youtu.be/l_htSPGAY7I. John Oliver did a lengthy piece on charter schools. He seems to focus on the right stuff about the lack of oversight with charters opening and closing.
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Diane, I’m not sure if you know about this already or not, but if you haven’t yet seen it then you really should:
As he did with standardized testing, John Oliver skewers charter schools in a hilariously informative segment. This was just amazing to hear — he even talks about White Hat in Ohio! Great job, John!
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Diane,
Can you please help us out in Louisiana. Many of our educators have lost everything. Many have been displaced because the schools and classrooms have been flooded and cannot be used at this time. The Louisiana Association of Educators, the NEA affiliate in Louisiana has established on its webpage http://www.lae.org, the 2016 Louisiana Flood Relief Fund. A small amount of $5 or $10 will help our educators.
Thank you
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Dear Ms. Ravitch: I would like to invite you to my Facebook page entitled “Not Just a Substitute”. I write about my experiences as a per dime teacher for the NYCDOE for 14 years. At the present time, I am awaiting a decision from a principal whether or not my per dime license to continue teaching. It’s a mess, but I think you will enjoy reading my FB blog and read a differnt perspective from a visiting teacher (formerly known as “substitute teacher)
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http://saveourpublicschoolsma.com/mayors-city-officials-call-question-2-tv-ad-misleading/
Hi Ms. Ravitch,
A fellow teacher friend in NC suggested I send you this article regarding a current ad running in MA about charter school funding and it ‘will actually bring more funding to public schools’. Please see the link above!
Sincerely,
Carla Jackson
Bridgewater, MA
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Hi Ms. Ravitch. Love your blog! I am a public school teacher in Bridgeport, CT. Forgive me if you’ve already seen this article. Published in Hartford, Courant called, ‘No Excuses’ Amistad School Teaches Joyless Compliance, by Julia Fisher. Originally written for the Washington Post. Link: http://www.courant.com/opinion/op-ed/hc-op-amistad-school-problems-20160812-story.html
Please keep up your great work!
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Steven,
I posted this when it appeared in Wash Post
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More coverage in the media on Question # 2 to lift the charter cap in Massachusetts.
In response to the previous article about “dark money” coming from out of state for the referendum, The Globe published a letter to the editor protesting that Strategic Grant Partners is only trying to be “philanthropic” when it throws its weight behind removing limits on charters.
http://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/letters/2016/08/26/area-philanthropists-efforts-should-not-tarnished-debate-over-education-policy/fsDb015H3Um2zZRrD5UByJ/story.html?event=event25#comments
It’s evident that people are aware of the issues in the comments, where Nat Morton (aka Gnat), who was recently heard buzzing around Diane’s blog, makes an appearance.
A sample of the pushback:
“jshore08/28/16 04:35 AM
Joanna Jacobson wrote, ‘Our partners, solely out of basic decency, seek to provide a leg up to others who have not had the same opportunities.’
Get me a shovel! ‘Nonprofit’ does not mean charity. Strategic Grant Partners is tied to ‘dark money.’ It is a vulture ‘venture philanthropy’fund backed by hedge fund money with a charter school focus. The only thing that is ‘outrageous’ is Joanna Jacobson trying to convince us it isn’t! A couple of years ago, Strategic Grant Partners gave the pro charter group FES (Families for Excellent Schools) $800,000. to expand into Boston.
Strategic Grant Partners funded ‘Great Schools!’ whose ‘president’ Jon Clark, is also the ‘codirector of operations’ of the Brooke Charter School network! In an amendment to the Brooke Charter School this past spring it was noted that the Brooke Foundation has opened up another LLC to sell New Market Tax Credits!”
Boston Magazine has published their back to school edition,(with their usual obnoxious rating of “the best schools”) including profiles of both parents from charter schools:
http://www.bostonmagazine.com/news/article/2016/08/28/why-i-love-my-charter-school/
and public school parents:
http://www.bostonmagazine.com/news/article/2016/08/28/why-i-love-my-traditional-public-high-school/
as well as a long form article detailling both sides of the battle:
http://www.bostonmagazine.com/news/article/2016/08/28/charter-schools-debate/
There was statewide canvassing yesterday and Twitter was alive with photos from opponents of the charter question. It was also Caribbean Festival Day in Boston, so many of the photos give the lie to the notion that minority parents want more charters. Check out hashtags #keepthecap and #NoOn2. Predictably, Dmitri Melhorne and Jeanne Allen weighted in.
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Hi Diane,
I just herd you on KPFK in Los Angeles. I am not from LA but I live here and work with many people who went to high school here but did not graduate. I want to get involved. Public Education is the only solution to create a better America. There is so much to be said about it but I just really want to help!
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Sinead,
Please get involved! There are many groups working together to save public schools in LA. Start by contacting Carol Burris of the Network for Public Education and she will connect you with local activists
Burriscarrol@gmail.com
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This was a question on my child’s math homework tonight:
This chart shows the number of votes for two people.
[Chart: Mrs. Brown 34,109 ::Mr. Smith 27, 598]
How many votes did Mrs. Brown receive?
[The student is to select an answer from choices written in WORD form.]
F. Thirty-four hundred, one hundred nine
G. Three hundred, four thousand, one hundred nine
H. Thirty-four thousand, one hundred ninety
J. Thirty-four thousand, one hundred nine
Are my husband and I BOTH crazy or is the answer both F and J?
This is from a STAAR (Texas assessment) practice booklet. If these folks aren’t taking care to avoid errors like these in practice, what is my assurance that the same type of errors aren’t on the actual test? Granted, this is not a copy of an actual practice test and I am unable to tell what company published it, but how are kids supposed to feel competent in their abilities when the practice materials have clearly been designed by incompetent people? And I would not make such a big deal out of this if it were the only error on the page, but there is actually another mistake in the next question.
There are only five questions on the page, so even with the best intentions two questions are still wrong possibly.
In only the second week of school, I am already writing that spring testing opt-out letter in my head.
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Thanks everyone! I posted in haste! I realize now that F makes absolutely no sense, so J must be the answer but the question is for a THIRD GRADER. I claim my error ( I was an English major, afterall) but I still think this is a poorly written question. #STILLoptingout
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Thirty-four hundred = 3,400, so thirty-four hundred, one hundred and nine doesn’t make any sense. If I had to make sense of it, I’d add it: 3,400 + 109 = 3509.
What grade is this? I’m just curious.
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The answer is J. Thirty-four hundred would be 3,400. (30 hundreds = 3,000 + four hundred). It is tricky, indeed.
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Priceless.
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As background to these posts see two book discussions with author, Jan Mayer, about the influence of “dark money” (Koch brothers and others) on C-SPAN’s book TV series.
(1) AUGUST 30, 2016 Book Discussion on “Dark Money”
Jane Mayer talked about her book “Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right, in which she investigates the wealth and influence of billionaires”.
(2) APRIL 17, 2016
In Depth with Jane Mayer
Mayer is the author of two books: Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right and The Dark Side: The Inside Story of How the War on Terror Turned into a War on American Ideals.
https://www.c-span.org/search/?searchtype=All&query=Dark+Money
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I don’t know if you saw this court case in the Philadelphia suburbs yesterday but this could be a huge problem for school funding in PA, especially if the precedent that public education deserves only the minimum required by law holds. http://www.philly.com/philly/news/20160831_Montco_judge_orders_Lower_Merion_schools_to_cut_tax_rate.html
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Dear Diane,
I thought I’d share this piece that points to hypocrisies in our testing culture. Keep up the good work. http://www.wbur.org/edify/2016/09/02/guest-commentary-a-modest-proposal-to-test-our-forgotten-students
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The artcile on making private school students take the MCAS cracked me up. My husband taught at one of the top private schools in the Boston area; my daughter went to one of the top private high schools. I teach at community college (now in NYS, formerly in Boston). The courses in those private high schools went so far beyond the work in the community colleges it was unbelievable. One of my husband’s best students spent his first two years at Harvard coasting and recovering from h.s.–making honors, of course. So yes, absolutely! Let’s level the playing field here and make them take tests instead of doing legal research in Lexus-Nexus so they can construct a Supreme Court case in their US Constitution classes!
And the comment on “fees” is absolutely right on. The MA legislature sets tuition, and it’s very low to make college seem affordable. The colleges set their fees. Where I taught, 1/4 of the cost of attendance was tuition–the rest was fees.
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Tim Parker, NEA-Alaska President, sent this out. Thought you might want to share with your readers!
“DEED Assessment RFI
During my trip to Kotzebue for the Northwest Arctic Borough School District in-service, I was fortunate enough to spend a good deal of time with Commissioner Johnson. We talked about several education issues, but the most important was his decision to move forward with releasing a Request for Information for a vendor who can provide a new statewide summative assessment for Alaska. Read more here.
This new RFI calls for a single summative assessment. According to the commissioner, it would be a three-day assessment similar to the old TerraNova test of the past. The commissioner said that he believes testing by the state should be done only for three limited reasons: 1) To inform the public about how schools are doing; 2) To provide data so schools can perform improvement efforts; and 3) To address issues of equity. I asked him specifically whether he believed tests can/should be used as part of the teacher evaluation process, and he said he does not believe that is a proper use. We’re taking him at his word on this, and keeping an eye on the process. The testing component is part of ESSA, but it is only one part of the law. The bigger issues around accountability are still on the table. As educators, we want input on all aspects of this process, and we will continue to insist on that. The new law calls for it, and the commissioner appears willing to include us very closely with his decisions. I believe this is a good place for our organization to be at this point. However, I welcome your feedback and counsel.”
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Listen to a local resident’s defense of testing-US News and World Report rankings and higher property values. Our local school district recently eliminated testing for 11th grade students and allow other students to opt out.
http://kpcw.org/post/pc-resident-says-not-having-11th-graders-participate-sage-testing-has-huge-consequences
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I assume many have heard the all things considered interview of John King. His response to the softball question on charters was general and warranted real scrutiny.
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More about the Detroit Public Schools from Time Magazine. I grew up in Michigan and always felt our public schools were outstanding. My grandmother was a teacher. My mother was a teacher. I was a teacher, although not in Michigan. This article breaks my heart. And after reading the piece about the DeVos family’s influence over the destruction of public schools in favor of charters, I am not only deeply saddened but infuriated by the goings on in my once proud state.
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http://time.com/4390000/detroit-public-schools-charters-debt/?xid=newsletter-brief
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Diane,
Happy 2016-17 School Year! I wrote this article about Icahn charter schools. They have a very nurturing atmosphere, Core Knowledge, really concerned with the kids’ futures–not just test scores. I wonder if this is the sort of charter you could support?
http://educationnext.org/the-bronx-is-learning-content-rich-icahn-charter/
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I rarely watch the campaign news today but happened to catch Donald Drumpf being interviewed by retired Gen. Flynn today. Later today I saw an excerpt of the part that flabbergasted me and decided to transcribe it. As a former teacher, I made me yearn for the creativity of my students who tried to baffle their way through a test when they didn’t read or study the material. They would have received much higher marks than Drumpf.
Flynn: To start on ISIS, you have described, at times, different components of a strategy: military, cyber, financial and ideological…
Drumpf: Cyber is becoming so big today. It’s becoming something that a number of years ago, a short number of years ago, wasn’t even a word and now the cyber is so big. And, you know, you look at what they’re doing with the internet, how they’re taking recruiting people through the internet, and part of is the psychology, because so many people think they are winning and, uhh, you know there’s a whole big thing. Even today’s psychology where CNN came out with a big poll, that big poll came out today that Trump is winning. It’s good psychology…
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From Thomas Friedman’s NYT column today:
recent editions of the Oxford Junior Dictionary (aimed at 7-year-olds) dropped certain “nature words” that its editors deemed less relevant to the lives of modern children. These included “acorn,” “dandelion,” “fern,” “nectar,” “otter,” “pasture” and “willow.” The terms introduced in their place, he noted, included “broadband,” “blog,” “cut-and-paste,” “MP3 player” and “voice-mail.”
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Oh, dear. Won’t children and adults need to know those words when they read anything written before 1960?
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Washington State Supreme Court today:
High court weighs whether to sanction state further over school funding
Chief Justice Barbara Madsen asked the state’s lawyer, deputy solicitor general Alan Copsey, to clarify when he thinks the deadline is for the state to fully fund public schools.
She compared the conversation to a child who promises to clean his or her room “in a little while.”
“I want to know when a little while is,” Madsen said.
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