Archives for category: Accountability
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Tom Ultican: School Choice is a Costly Fraud

By dianeravitch
September 11, 2020 //
41

Tom Ultican, retired teacher of physics and advanced mathematics in California, writes frequently about school “reform,” aka school choice, as a substitute for adequate funding.

In this post, he explains the fraud of school choice and why billionaires and rightwing zealots promote it. To read it in full,as well as his kinks, open the full post.

He begins:

Birthed in the bowels of the 1950’s segregationist south, school choice has never been about improving education. It is about white supremacy, profiting off taxpayers, cutting taxes, selling market based solutions and financing religion. School choice ideology has a long dark history of dealing significant harm to public education.

Market Based Ideology

Milton Friedman first recommended school vouchers in a 1955 essay. In 2006, he was asked by a conservative group of legislators what he envisioned back then. PRWatch reports that he said, “It had nothing whatsoever to do with helping ‘indigent’ children; no, he explained to thunderous applause, vouchers were all about ‘abolishing the public school system.”’ [Emphasis added]

Market based ideologues are convinced that business is the superior model for school management. Starting with the infamous Regan era polemic, “A Nation at Risk,” the claim that “private business management is superior” has been a consistent theory of education reform promoted by corporate leaders like IBM’s Louis Gerstner, Microsoft’s Bill Gates, Wal-Mart’s Walton family, Bloomberg LP’s founder, Michael Bloomberg and SunAmerica’s Eli Broad. It is a central tenet of both neoliberal and libertarian philosophy.

Charles Koch and his late brother David have spent lavishly promoting their libertarian beliefs. Inspired by Friedman’s doyen, Austrian Economist Friedrich Hayek, the brothers agreed that public education must be abolished.

To this and other ends like defeating climate change legislation, the Kochs created the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC). This lobbying organization has contributing members from throughout corporate America. ALEC writes model legislation and financially supports state politicians who promote their libertarian principles.

Like the Walton family and Betsy DeVos, Charles Koch promotes private school vouchers.

Categories Accountability, ALEC, Betsy DeVos, Billionaires, Fraud, Privatization, Religion, School Choice, Separation of church and state, Shame, Vouchers

Steven Singer: Why Does Trump Hate COVID Testing But Love Standardized Testing?

By dianeravitch
September 10, 2020 //
10

Steven Singer, teacher in Pennsylvania, cannot understand why Trump hates COVID testing–which is necessary–but loves standardized testing which is not. Consider that America became a great and powerful nation long before the reign of standardized testing. When people think about the “Greatest Generation,” they are remembering a generation that never took a standardized test that had any impact on their lives. Now Trump, DeVos, and the Democratic neoliberal establishment in think tanks and Congress can’t imagine a world without standardized testing.

Singer writes:

When it comes to COVID-19, Donald Trump sure hates testing.

But when it comes to public schools, his administration simply adores standardized testing.

Why the discrepancy?

Why is testing for a virus during a global pandemic bad, but giving students a multiple choice test during the chaos caused by that pandemic somehow good?

When it comes to the Coronavirus, Trump has made his position clear.

In a June 15 tweet, Trump wrote that testing “makes us look bad.”

Five days later at his infamous campaign rally in Tulsa, he said he had asked his “people” to “slow the testing down, please.”

At one of his White House press briefings, he said, “When you test, you create cases.”

In his infamous Fox News interview with Chris Wallace, he seemed to be saying that the U.S. had just as many new cases now as it did in May. However, since there were fewer tests done in May and more are being done now, it only appears that the infection is spreading when it actually is not.

It’s pure bullshit.

How would he know how many cases existed in May other than through testing?

He is simply trying to gas light the nation into believing that his abysmal job as Commander-in-Chief has nothing to do with the pandemic raging out of control on our shores.

He is trying to distract us from the fact that the US has only 4 percent of the world population but more than 25% of all COVID-19 cases. He wants us to forget that more Americans have died of COVID-19 than in any war other than WWII – 200,000 and counting.

So that, at least, is clear.

Trump hates COVID testing because – as he puts it – it makes him look bad.

So why is his administration pushing for more standardized testing in public schools as those same institutions struggle to reopen during the pandemic?

Education Secretary Betsy DeVos – everyone’s favorite billionaire heiress turned public servant – sent a letter to state education leaders on Thursday saying high stakes testing probably would be required this school year.

They should not expect the Education Department to again waive federal testing requirements as it did last spring while schools were suddenly closing due to the outbreak.

The reason?

DeVos wrote:

“If we fail to assess students, it will have a lasting effect for years to come. Not only will vulnerable students fall behind, but we will be abandoning the important, bipartisan reforms of the past two decades at a critical moment.”

However, this is a rather strange thing to say if you think about it.

Standardized tests are just one of many kinds of assessments students take every year. At best they represent a snapshot of how kids are doing on a given day or week.

But since students are tested all year long by their teachers, they earn end of the year marks, pass on to the next grade or are held back, graduate or not – there are a multitude of measures of student learning – measures that take in an entire year of academic progress in context.

Categories Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Standardized Testing, Trump

Nancy Bailey: Who Should Be the Next Secretary of Education?

By dianeravitch
September 10, 2020 //
49

Veteran educator Nancy Bailey has some very clear ideas about the next Secretary of Education. All her proposals are premised on Trump’s defeat, since billionaire Betsy DeVos would want to hang on and finish the job of destroying public schools and enriching religious and private schools.

Let’s hope that the next Secretary of Education has the wisdom and vision to liberate children and teachers from the iron grip of No Child Left Behind, Race to the Top, Every Student Succeeds Act, High-stakes testing, privatization, and a generation of failed federal policies.

Bailey begins:

During this critical time in American history, that individual should be a black or brown woman, who has been a teacher of young children, and who understands child development. She should hold an education degree and have an additional leadership degree and experience that will help her run the U.S. Department of Education.

Children deserve to see more teachers who look like they do, who will inspire them to go on and become teachers themselves. A black female education secretary will bring more diverse individuals to the field and set an example. This will benefit all students.

Many individuals, including accomplished black men, have brilliant minds, and understand what we need in the way of democratic public education. Leadership roles should await them in the U.S. Department of Education, in schools, universities, or states and local education departments.

But with the fight for Black Lives to Matter and for an end to gender inequality, a knowledgeable black woman with a large heart to embrace these times should take this spot. The majority of teachers have always been women, and while men are critical to being role models for children and teens, it is time for a black woman to lead.

We have had eleven education secretaries, and only three of them have been women, including Shirley Hufstedler, Margaret Spellings, and Betsy DeVos. None of these women were educators or had experience in the classroom. Only two African American men have been in this role, and neither of them could be considered authentic teachers and educators. Both had the goal to undermine public schools.

The time is now for a black female education secretary who will set a positive example and be the face of the future for children from all gender and cultural backgrounds.

Categories Accountability, Administrators, superintendents, Betsy DeVos, Biden, Courage, Creativity, Duncan, Arne, Education Industry, Education Reform, Every Student Succeeds Act, NCLB (No Child Left Behind), Privatization, Standardized Testing, U.S. Department of Education

Mike Rose Offers Advice to Biden and Harris

By dianeravitch
September 9, 2020 //
17

Mike Rose blogs once every few weeks. One day I will copy his excellent model. But this season it is hard to cut back, in view of the pandemic, the uncertainty about keeping our students and staff safe, and the most consequential national election of many, many years. Those who know Mike Rose’s work usually become Mike Rose Fan Boys or Fan Girls 

I am grateful that he shared his latest post, in which he offers advice to Joe Biden and Kemala Harris. 

In this post, Mike captures the anxiety that so many of us feel about the polls. Biden is leading in all of them but we remember what happened in 2016. Trump is like a monster who lurks behind every door and in every dark alley, ready to spring at a moment’s notice to swallow our democracy.

Rose is worried about the so-called “enthusiasm gap.” Trump supporters remain fervently loyal. Biden-Harris voters express a commitment that is rational but not as intense. Will that matter on November 3?

Rose offers advice:

Be more than “not-Trump.”

Educate the public, starting with what Trump wants to do to health care. He is a consummate liar and many of his own followers have no understanding of his malign plans for the future.

Get out and meet with large crowds, safely.

When you visit towns and cities, highlight the good work happening in those places.

He adds:

You are both skilled retail politicians, a talent constrained by COVID, because, unlike Trump, you believe in the basics of public health. There is a great challenge before you, and I hope all the bright campaign people around you are focused on it: How to integrate the potency of human encounters on the campaign trail with the communication possibilities of virtual technology. Unfortunately, you have to solve this problem while the campaign is in high gear, steer the boat while building it. But if you can do it, you will make history – and reclaim what remains of our democracy.

 

Categories Accountability, Biden, Citizenship, Democrats, Lies, Trump

Mercedes Schneider: Standardized Testing Is Indispensable to Those Who Are Not Subjected to It

By dianeravitch
September 9, 2020 //
11

Mercedes Schneider has written an indispensable post about standardized testing: She noticed that the annual testing mandated by the federal government is beloved by those who are farthest from the classroom and have nothing to do with teaching and learning.

Perhaps she is responding to the recent report that Betsy DeVos will not allow waivers from the mandated testing next year, since the tests are so vital, and her announcement was cheered by the Center for American Progress (a neoliberal think tank), Education Trust (led by former Secretary of Education John King), the Council of Chief State School Officers, Senator Patty Murray (ranking Democrat on the Senate HELP Committee), and Rep. Bobby Scott (chair of the House Education Committee).

Schneider writes:

This is what standardized testing has been in public schools across America ever since No Child Left Behind (NCLB):

It’s like some president-backed, bipartisan Congress decided that we need to measure student physical health based on student weight. Of course, student physical health is by far too complex a concept to be captured by student weight, but let’s just put that reality aside in favor of the appearance of being able to pack a huge, complex package into a matchbox by getting those kids on the scale and putting the onus on teachers and schools to make students weight what the state (answering to the federal government in exchange for funding) decides those students should weigh.

Now, it is ridiculous on its face to hold teachers and schools responsible for student weight– which is why no bathroom scale company will guarantee that their scales are meant to be used to determine anything beyond the weight of the person standing on the scale. However, that president-backed, bipartisan Congress has decided that schools and teachers must ensure that their students achieve some predetermined optimal weight.

So. Weight-prep programs are instituted for students at risk of not achieving their state-determined optimal weights, the point of which is to drill students in scale-optimizing strategies (i.e., where to stand on the scale in order to make the weight appear higher or lower; how to push down on the scale to “weigh more”). In order to make time in the school day for these at-risk weighers to be drilled and redrilled, they must miss lunch, group sports, and playtime, but what is important to the school and to the teacher is achieving the optimal weight number so that we can tout that number, tag the student as physically healthy, keep our jobs, and collect federal dollars.

Surely we also congratulate the hungry and lethargic student for achieving that state-determined weight number. And if anyone points out that the student is hungry and lethargic, supporters of the process ignore the child and tout the number.

Be it noted that the annual standardized testing mandated by NCLB has led to cheating scandals, narrowing of the curriculum, and teaching to the test. For the past decade, there has been no change in NAEP scores.

NCLB failed. Why not admit it and move forward? Why continue to inhale the stale fumes of past policies that failed?

Why won’t prominent Democrats stop embracing NCLB and develop a vision of their own that actually helps students and teachers?

Categories Accountability, Democrats, Education Reform, Failure, Standardized Testing

Dana Milbank: How to Raise Money for the Financially Strapped Trump Campaign

By dianeravitch
September 8, 2020 //
62

Dana Milbank, regular columnist for the Washington Post, has some fundraising tips for the Trump campaign.
Well, this is embarrassing.

Seems President Trump has run his reelection campaign into financial distress, a status that will not surprise those familiar with the Trump Taj Mahal, the Trump Castle, the Trump Plaza Atlantic City, the Trump Plaza New York, Trump Hotels and Casino Resorts, Trump Entertainment Resorts, the Trump Tower Tampa, the Trump Shuttle, Trump: The Game, Trump magazine, Trump Mortgage, Trump Steaks, Trump mattresses, Trump pillows, Trump perfume, Trump shirts, Trump underwear, Trump shoes, Trump eyeglasses, Trump University, Trump Vodka, the Trump Foundation and the U.S. Treasury.

The New York Times’s Shane Goldmacher and Maggie Haberman report that Trump and the Republican National Committee squandered their $200 million cash advantage, spent $800 million of the $1.1 billion raised and now face the possibility of a “cash crunch.” The culprit: “profligate habits” such as a car and driver for the now-former campaign manager, payments to Trump businesses, and a “vanity splurge” on Super Bowl ads.

Now, the cash-strapped campaign has had to abandon a $3 million plan to put the Trump name on a NASCAR race car. Sad!

Bloomberg News reports that Trump might pump $100 million of his own money into his campaign. But this raises another disturbing matter: Does he have any money? The president is still fighting to keep his tax returns hidden, and he has been using his official powers to direct commerce and tax breaks to his struggling properties.

Happily, there is a solution at hand to save the billionaire’s campaign from financial ruin! TMZ reports that a Bible signed by Trump is being sold through a memorabilia company, Moments In Time, for $37,500. In the photo on the merchant’s website, Trump’s Sharpie signature is scrawled generously across the title page, where the author’s name might go, right below “HOLY BIBLE/KING JAMES VERSION.”

TMZ reports that the Bible was signed at the White House during the first week of June, “just a couple of days after he’d ordered federal law enforcement to fire pepper spray and rubber bullets at peaceful George Floyd protesters” for his Bible photo op at St. John’s Episcopal Church. The photo-op Bible is not the one for sale.
But what if it were?

If an ordinary Trump-signed Bible can fetch $40k, surely the photo-op Bible would bring in a cool six figures for Trump’s struggling campaign from a wealthy Trump sucker supporter. (I’m looking at you, Postmaster General Louis DeJoy and MyPillow guy Mike Lindell.)

Heck, Scott Pruitt, then-head of the Environmental Protection Agency, once sent an aide to buy a used Trump Hotel mattress to curry favor with the boss.

And if Trump is good at anything, it is getting people to pay money for his name — whether it’s on their condos or, in one failed-to-launch scheme, Trump-branded urine tests. In 2016, people paid $49 each just to be listed on a wall in Trump Tower.

There was also that time Trump got a “fake bidder” to pay $60,000 in a 2013 auction for a life-size portrait of Trump. According to former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen, Trump’s charitable foundation then reimbursed the fake bidder, a pharmaceutical billionaire.

Imagine the millions Trump could raise for his campaign by selling articles from historic moments of his presidency. It wouldn’t be legal, strictly speaking, but when has that mattered?

Trump could autograph rolls of the “beautiful, soft” paper towels he tossed at Puerto Ricans struggling to recover from a hurricane.

He could inscribe chunks of the border wall, built by a group affiliated with Steve Bannon (who is now under indictment for improperly profiting from the scheme). The shoddily built wall is at risk of crumbling into the Rio Grande.

He could sign the National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration weather map he doctored with a Sharpie to show a hurricane heading toward Alabama.

He could auction off autographed pill bottles with the 63 million surplus doses of hydroxychloroquine the federal government ordered.

He could even sell, with autographed plaques affixed, the cages he used to detain migrant children after separating them from their parents.

Categories Accountability, Trump

David Dayen: The Rise and Possible Prosecution of the Postmaster General

By dianeravitch
September 8, 2020 //
23

David Dayen covers the daily news, usually related to the coronavirus crisis. This post is about political corruption, or the giant swamp surrounding Trump. As usual, open the post to read the links.
Dayen writes:

Straw Postman

Let’s check in on our favorite Postmaster General, Louis DeJoy. When we last left our hero, he was implementing policy changes at the post office that were demonstrably slowing down the mail. It was just as clear that this was a political influence operation to seek long-desired privatization goals, which just happened to align with a presidential election dependent on mail-in voting amid the pandemic.

Donald Trump has shut up about the post office now that his plot was discovered, but the House is continuing to investigate. And they were fed a gem about DeJoy’s origins as a postmaster fixer. According to the Washington Post, DeJoy engaged in a straw donor operation. He would force employees to give to Republicans and then reimburse them with bonuses later. This led to his rise in standing within the party as a donor, and his appointment to USPS to degrade its functions. Straw donor schemes are a felony; the former head of the school board in Los Angeles [Ref Rodriguez] had to step down over something similar, and pleaded out to avoid jail time.

The denouement of this saga comes with Trump saying he’d support an investigation into DeJoy’s actions. Loyalty is a one-way street for Trump, so no surprise there. The speed with which DeJoy went from unassuming appointee, to architect of one of the fulcrum points of the election, to persona non grata, however, is bracing.

Categories Accountability, Corruption, Trump

NYC: Parents at Success Academy Worry about Stress of All-Remote “No Excuses” Discipline

By dianeravitch
September 8, 2020 //
35

New York City’s vaunted Success Academy, which boasts the highest test scores in the state, the highest teacher turnover rate, and very likely the highest student attrition rate (unsure because unreleased by city authorities), has announced that it will be all-remote until at least January.

Success Academy is famed for its strict no-excuses policy and its readiness to eject any student who does not comply.

Problems, as the New York Daily News reports.

Under the plan, kids as young as 5 have to log on by 8:50 a.m. wearing their checkered orange and blue uniforms, and sit still with their hands clasped for nearly seven hours of live video instruction.

They also have to ask permission to use the bathroom — and can get a virtual boot and be suspended if they act up, which would turn off their cameras and microphones for a day or more.

“I don’t think it’s right for a 6-year-old … they have to sit there like a robot with their hands folded,” said one mom of a Success first-grader in Far Rockaway, Queens, who asked to remain anonymous because she fears retaliation from the school.

“Every day she cries and says she doesn’t want to go to school,” the frustrated mom told The News.

The article includes the news that Fabiola St. Hilaire, a teacher at Success Academy who sparked a controversy over racism at Success Academy last year, has resigned, saying she could no longer be complicit.

“Working for this organization has truly showed me that as long as I stand with the inaction and blatant disregard for child morality and healthy development it in turn will make me complicit, which I will never be,” she wrote in her resignation letter, a copy of which was reviewed by The News.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Discipline, Education Industry, Harlem Success Academy, New York City, Privatization, Racism

Join #ScholarStrike in Solidarity Protest Against Racial Injustice

By dianeravitch
September 8, 2020 //
8

The National Education Policy Center posted this notification about #ScholarStrike, inviting higher education professionals to speak out together against racial violence and injustice. I joined. Will you?

Today and tomorrow, scholars at colleges across America will follow in the footsteps of the NBA, Major League Baseball and celebrities in speaking out against racial violence and unjust policing in the wake of the police shooting of Jacob Blake, an unarmed Black man, in Kenosha, Wisconsin.

The effort, which is to include actions such as devoting class time to discussions of racial injustice, was started by a tweet from Anthea Butler, a professor of religious and Africana studies at the University of Pennsylvania.

“I would be down as a professor to follow the NBA and Strike for a few days to protest police violence in America,” Professor Butler wrote in her initial tweet.

The movement has since spread, via social media, to a diverse array of institutions and academic fields, including education. Although in-person demonstrations may occur, they may be impractical due to the pervasiveness of online learning.

The subjects of policing and race are particularly relevant to education scholars, given that the discriminatory law enforcement practices experienced by communities of color typically start in childhood and even occur within schools. “Systemic violence and disparate school discipline policies hinder equitable, just, and safe schooling,” according to Law and Order in School, an NEPC brief published in 2017 and authored by professors Janelle Scott, Michele Moses, Kara Finnigan, Tina Trujillo, and Darrell Jackson. “Research demonstrates that Black and Latinx students experience police violence and school discipline unequally,” the authors write. “Punitive educational and criminal justice policies disproportionately affect students, families, and communities of color, as well as the teachers and schools that serve them.”

Anticipating the current movement, the 2017 brief suggests addressing racially disparate school policing and discipline with such actions as redirecting funds for school police officers to expenditures such as guidance counseling, advanced and enrichment courses and other practices shown to “improve student engagement and social connectivity.”

For more information on #ScholarStrike, go to Butler’s Twitter profile.

NEPC resources on equity and social justice.

Categories Accountability, Inequity, Injustice, Racism, Resistance

Gayle Greene: EdTech Cashes in on the Pandemic

By dianeravitch
September 8, 2020 //
11

One lesson learned since March is that remote learning is a very inferior way to conduct school. Students are bored, and teachers are frustrated. Distance learning may be necessary but it’s a poor substitute for in-person learning.

Gayle Greene writes in The American Prospect about the bonanza struck by EdTech due to the pandemic.

As she shows, EdTech has a shabby history in the classroom but now we are in a period that it’s needed, no matter how shabby it may be. She reviews recent EdTech disasters and notes that none of them have sunk the hope that EdTech is “innovative” and “cutting edge,” rather than a disaster that undercuts the vital human-to-human interaction that makes dc learning come to life.

She writes:

The transition to online teaching made everyone aware of the value of person-to-person communication. The human signals that tell a teacher how a class is reacting—the sighs, groans, snorts, giggles, eye rolls, glances, body language—are stripped away online. The teacher can’t even tell if she’s being heard. Warmth is difficult to express; rapport, trust, bonding almost impossible to build. “Kids can be hard to motivate under the best of circumstances,” says teacher blogger Steven Singer, “but try doing it through a screen.” Students say so, too: “I can’t get myself to care … I just feel really disconnected from everything.”

Ed tech companies lost no time moving in. “When the pandemic hit, right away we got a list of all these technology companies that make education software that were offering free access to their products for the duration of the coronavirus crisis,” said Gordon Lafer, political economist at the University of Oregon and a member of his local school board. “They pitch these offerings as stepping up to help out the country in a moment of crisis. But it’s also like coke dealers handing out free samples.” Marketing has become so aggressive that a school superintendent near Seattle tweeted a heartfelt appeal to vendors: “Please stop. Just stop … my superintendent colleagues and I … need to focus on our communities. Let us do our jobs.” Her plea hit a nerve, prompting a survey by the National Superintendents Roundtable that revealed “a deep vein of irritation and discontent” at the barrage of texts, emails, and phone calls, “a distraction and nuisance” when they’re trying to deal with the COVID-19 crisis. Comments on this survey ranged from “negative in the extreme” to “scathing,” and expressed concerns that these products “have not been validated” and that “free” offers conceal contracts for long-term pay.

For the past two decades, ed tech has been pushing into public schools, convincing districts to invest in tablets, software, online programs, assessment tools. Many superintendents have allowed these incursions, directing funding to technology that might have been better spent on human resources, teachers, counselors, nurses, librarians (up to $5.6 billion of school technology purchased sits unused, according to a 2019 analysis in EdWeek Market Brief). Now the pandemic has provided ed tech a “golden opportunity,” a “tailwind” (these are the terms we hear): Michael Moe, head of the venture capitalist group Global Silicon Valley, says: “We see the education industry today as the health care industry of 30 years ago.” Not a happy thought.

Read the whole article. You will be glad you did.

Categories Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Failure, Technology
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