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Leonie Haimson: The Other Side of New York State Commissioner Elia’s Resignation

By dianeravitch
July 16, 2019 //
5

Leonie Haimson expresses her view of the tenure of New York Commissioner MaryEllen Elia. 

Her conclusion: The state needs a fresh start with a commissioner who is willing to listen to parents and who is not in love with testing and Big Tech.

I attended the meeting with Elia that she describes, held a few weeks after she arrived in New York. When members of NYSAPE expressed their opposition to the state’s Common Core tests, Elia responded that the day would come when there was no more annual testing because the tests would be online and students would be continuously assessed, every hour,  every day, whenever they logged on.

That was not a comforting thought!

Categories Accountability, Administrators, superintendents, New York, Technology, Testing

NYSAPE Calls for a Commissioner Who Puts the Needs of Students First

By dianeravitch
July 16, 2019 //
9

NYSAPE-New York State Allies for Public Education-is the leading voice for parents and educators who want a forward-looking education agenda, not one that slavishly promotes No Child Left Behind-style policies of test-and-punish. It has led the state’s successful opt-out movement. NYSAPE consists of 70 groups of parents and educators from every part of the state.

NYSAPE was delighted to learn that Commissioner MaryEllen Elia was resigning.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: July 16, 2019
More information contact:
Lisa Rudley (917) 414-9190; nys.allies@gmail.com
Jeanette Deutermann (516) 902-9228; nys.allies@gmail.com
NYS Allies for Public Education – NYSAPE

As New York Closes the Door on Commissioner Elia’s Corporate Reform Agenda, NYSAPE Urges the Board of Regents to Include All Stakeholders When Choosing Our Next Commissioner

MaryEllen Elia was the wrong choice for NY in 2015 when she was appointed as Commissioner by the Board of Regents and former Regent Chancellor Merryl Tisch. The Commissioner continued to demonstrate throughout her tenure an unwillingness to move beyond her corporate reform agenda, resulting in NYSAPE’s repeated call for her resignation. The children of NY deserve a state education leader who will put their well-being at the forefront of all education policies.

“In 2015, NYSAPE sounded the alarms when Commissioner Elia was recruited by national and local education leaders to run NY’s education department as she did in Florida, with privatizing, common core, and high stakes testing, as her main priorities.  As the new leadership and education philosophy of the Board of Regents shifted towards child-centered learning, Commissioner Elia was focused on creating a culture of fear, misinformation, and intimidation throughout NYS school districts,” said Jeanette Deutermann, co-founder of NYSAPE and founder of Long Island Opt Out.

“Under Commissioner Elia’s direction, our children and schools continued to endure abusive, excessive testing, developmentally inappropriate state standards and data privacy breaches.  At every turn, Elia circumvented the Board of Regents and failed to steer public education policies in the right direction,” said Lisa Rudley, Westchester public school parent, Executive Director and co-founder of NYSAPE.

“The student privacy regulations just released by the State Education Department were the last straw,” said Leonie Haimson, Executive Director of Class Size Matters and co-chair of the Parent Coalition for Student Privacy.  “After waiting five years for NY Education § 2-d  to be enforced, state officials just proposed regulations that would allow contractors to sell and use personal student data for marketing purposes, in direct violation of the language of the law. And she has failed to deliver any of the annual reports required since 2014 that would detail the progress in following up on data breaches and parental privacy complaints.”

“We urge the Board of Regents to work with parents, advocates and other stakeholder groups in appointing the next Commissioner. Our children deserve a Commissioner who will move past the current test-and-punish regime, and towards a whole-child education and project-based learning,” said Chris Cerrone, a Western NY school board member, teacher and a co-founder of NYSAPE.

“The New York State Education Department under Commissioner Elia was never straight with parents regarding the state’s high-stakes testing program. Rather than present neutral information, the department engaged in deceptive practices, including creating PR “toolkits” designed to persuade families of the legitimacy of the tests, even though a growing number of respected educators and researchers have questioned their effectiveness. I hope her successor will be more focused on equity and partnering with schools rather than punishing them,” Kemala Karmen, co-founder of NYC Opt Out.

Elia repeatedly feigned inclusivity, exaggerating stakeholder input, such as the role of teachers in creating standardized exams, the ESSA implementation workshops where a popular Opportunity Dashboard was stealthily removed, and the “public” comments on teacher evaluations which were never made public. Elia also never responded to requests asking for the research showing the scientific validity of standardized testing, nor would she make public the invisible scoring formulas which make the results unverifiable,” said public school parent and NYC educator Jake Jacobs.

New York must get it right this time. The children of New York and our public schools can’t afford to wait any longer for the education leadership they deserve.

​
NYSAPE is a grassroots coalition with over 70 parent and educator groups across the state.

###

 

Categories Administrators, superintendents, Education Reform, New York

New York: Time for the Regents to Chart a New Course

By dianeravitch
July 16, 2019 //
4

Note to the Regents: Parents and teachers have had it. They are sick of the same old, same old, test-and-punish, top-down mandates. Isn’t it time to pick a leader who is not in love with high-stakes testing and lockstep policies?

John Ogozalek, teacher and thinker, speaks for many others when he wrote this morning:

Maybe at this point someone in charge should apologize to the children, parents, teachers and taxpayers of New York State for 8 years of chaos and waste and harm.

But I’m not holding my breath waiting for that.

I’m going to go water the garden.

Enjoy this beautiful, summer day all!

I agree that the state owes everyone an apology. But I don’t agree that we should sit back and wait to see what happens. Speak up, contact your Regent if you live in New York, demand a new approach that respects the intelligence of parents, teachers, students, and taxpayers. All over the country, parents and educators are starting to demand fresh thinking, free of the shackles created by No Child Left Behind and Race to the Top. New York should lead, not follow, in breaking free of the status quo.

Categories Accountability, Administrators, superintendents, Education Reform, New York

Boston: New Superintendent Is a Win for Parents and Community Groups

By dianeravitch
May 4, 2019 //
29

 

Christine Langhoff, retired teacher and education activist, welcomes Brenda Cassellius, Boston’s new Superintendent of Schools. She is not a Broadie, and she is not a Walton stooge. She’s experienced and she arrives ready to lead, untethered to the disruption agenda. That’s good news.

Langhoff writes:

The screening process was secretive and deeply flawed. Three candidates were selected for presentation to the school community. None met all the requirements laid out for the position.

https://www.bosedequity.org/blog/boston-coalition-for-education-equity-weighs-in-on-bps-superintendent-search

One, Oscar Santos, was the hometown boy, with limited experience, having run a small town school system in a nearby suburb. Randolph has about 2600 students, to Boston’s 55,000. He was the protégé of Michael Contompasis, former Assistant Superintendent and Superintendent, as well as longtime Headmaster of Boston Latin School. Santos, president of a Catholic high school, was also a member of the Gates-inspired Boston Compact, featuring a unified enrollment system and cooperation among charter, Catholic and private schools – a favored initiative of the mayor. He received no votes.

The second, Marie Izquierdo from Miami-Dade, was a Broadie supernintendo and a Jeb! Chief for Change alumna. The school committee’s two Latina members voted for her, citing a need for an experienced bilingual leader in a city where 46% of the population is Latinx. In the few days after the announcement of finalists and before the vote by the mayorally-appointed school committee, the Boston Globe published two stories in her support. In the first: “Supporters say ‘next logical move’ for Marie Izquierdo is BPS” … Amanda Fernández, MA BESE member endorsed her. Fernández’, organization, Latinos for Education, is funded by the the Waltons.

https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2019/04/27/marie-izquierdo-rose-through-ranks-miami/VbyzWCSXFKwmpMuhiWdVGN/story.html

The second, by the senior editorial writer, published just before the vote, scolded Mayor Walsh for playing it safe and choosing Cassellius. That Izquierdo did not get the Boston position is also a rebuke to the state board’s other two Walton connected members, Margaret McKenna and Martin F. West and to Governor Charlie Baker as well. The Pioneer Institute, where Baker was Executive Director, and which is funded by the Walton and the Kochs, has so desperately wanted a Walton takeover of the state’s largest school system.

https://www2.bostonglobe.com/opinion/2019/05/01/playing-safe-with-new-bps-superintendent/Y5UT8pUd2JEFngiYkGg6PK/story.html

Brenda Cassellius quickly became the consensus candidate of the many parent and community activists. She spoke of being a Head Start student herself, of her failed attempt to slash required SPED paperwork in Minnesota, said she will begin her term with a listening tour of parents, teachers and community advocates. She’s not a big fan of standardized testing and called for the scrapping of Massachusetts’ required exit exam, the MCAS. That last has many folks’ panties in a bunch, as if the MCAS were a sacred right of passage.

https://commonwealthmagazine.org/education/with-cassellius-boston-taps-high-stakes-testing-opponent/

“’I believe in a standards-based education; I just don’t believe in test-based accountability. We have had test-based accountability since No Child Left Behind, and it has not worked,’” said former Minnesota Education Commissioner Brenda Cassellius, in the first of her four public interviews today. Standardized tests can help guide large-scale policy, she said, but ‘I don’t think that tests ought to be used for individual high-stakes decisions ever.’ ”

https://schoolyardnews.com/brenda-cassellius-of-minnesota-second-superintendent-finalist-would-limit-standardized-testing-f28f4de74130

Might there have been a better candidate for superintendent of Boston’s schools? We’ll never know (unless Bob Mueller is looking for a job). But for the first time in more than 15 years, I’m not worried that the person running our schools is incompetent, a privatizer or a saboteur. I don’t think parents and advocates will be strewing rose petals along Brenda Cassellius’ path to her new office, but this one is a win for now, and we’ll take it.

Categories Administrators, superintendents, Boston

Nancy Bailey: What Is an “Educator”?

By dianeravitch
April 8, 2019 //
64

Nancy E. Bailey asks an important question at a time when all sorts of people who have never been in a classroom since they were students call themselves “educators.” What is an educator? 

She writes:

Define educator for America’s schools. It’s critical to nail this down during a teacher shortage and when there are attempts to privatize public schools. We don’t want people with inappropriate or no credentials teaching America’s children and directing their public schools.

Ensuring that teachers and administrators are qualified used to be required. Since NCLB, alternative routes to teaching and educational leadership have blurred the lines and deregulated the profession. Tampering with education credentials lessens their importance. This is a trick of those who want school privatization.

It’s no accident that there’s a teacher shortage at the same time teaching requirements have weakened. With a worsening problem to keep teachers in the classroom, some states relax teaching requirements!

If teacher preparation continues to be diminished by ill-defined teacher preparation and credentialing programs, children will get teachers who don’t understand what they teach, or how children learn.

For example, recent reports referred to Beta O’Rourke’s wife, Amy, as an educator. Mrs. O’Rourke taught kindergarten in Guatemala, but she has a degree in psychology. She is not an educator.

It isn’t clear what kind of credentials O’Rourke needed to teach in Guatemala, or what progress the children made under her instruction. When she returned to El Paso in 2004, she worked with Centro de Salud Familiar La Fe a health clinic, and helped create a K-8 charter school focused on dual-language. She became superintendent of the school without any educational administrative credentials. According to Deutsch29, O’Rourke’s school dropped two grade levels.

Now she is the “Choose to Excel” director at CREEED a foundation designed to raise money for charter schools. She is still not an educator.

Is Arne Duncan an educator? He was superintendent of schools in Chicago, but he never taught or led a school, and he never earned a degree in the subject where he claims expertise.

Is Austin Beutner of Los Angeles an educator? No.

Bailey writes:

The problem isn’t only with teachers. In state education departments and local school districts, we have a glut of administrators in key positions who have minimal education training, usually little experience working with children, who determine school policy. These individuals are groomed to privatize public schools.

Betsy DeVos is a good example. Arne Duncan was another. Neither had experience working with children or university education degrees. Duncan had been superintendent of Chicago’s public schools, but he was just as unqualified for that position. Both have been all about increasing charter schools and creating a privatized educational system.

Maybe educators who have earned the title should be flattered. But it is not flattering when people who have no expertise steal your title for their own purposes.

And it is certainly not flattering when state legislatures lower standards so that almost anyone can claim to be a teacher.

Bailey remembers the days when teachers had to earn credentials to teach or administer. Now state education departments and local districts are filled with non-educators making decisions about education. Some have fancy corporate titles, like “chief human resources officer,” or “chief knowledge officer,” but that’s just a way of evading the necessity of hiring trained professionals.

Make no mistake.

The current drift is to deprofessionalize teaching and education so anyone at all–like Duncan, Beutner, and DeVos–can claim to be an “educator.” They are not.

That demeans the profession.

Categories Accountability, Administrators, superintendents, Education Reform, Teachers

Arkansas: Who’s Who in the Charter Movement (Hint: Everyone Is Owned by the Waltons)

By dianeravitch
March 12, 2019 //
11

I can’t tell you how angry this post made me. I felt outraged and frustrated. It is not just about privatization. It is about the purchase of an entire state by one family. How can anyone teach civics in Arkansas when one family owns everything?

This post will make your head spin. Public schools in communities of color are taken over by the state, and charter schools open. One high-powered chain. spreads it’s tentacles across the state, scooping up the best students. A rotating cast of characters plays musical chairs at the state board, the state education department, and superintendencies.

The schools targeted for closure and privatization are schools that enroll mostly children of color. Everyone feels powerless to stop the Walton train.

Behind it all: ALEC, the Koch brothers, and the Walton Family. The Walton Family owns everything and every body.

Schools? Education? An afterthought.

This saga reads like a gangster tale. The mob always wins.

I was contacted by a minister in Little Rock who asked, what can we do? My advice: civil disobedience. Mass protests. Marches. Demonstrations. Chain yourselves to the schoolhouse doors. Nothing else will work. The greatest enemy is complacency, apathy, hopelessness. Faced with the unlimited power of a family that owns the state government, it is easy to feel hopelessness. But resistance is the only path. The other way, the status quo, is servitude.

Categories Administrators, superintendents, ALEC, Arkansas, Billionaires, Charter Schools, Corruption, Education Reform, Koch Brothers, Walton Foundation

Los Angeles: School Board Demands that Beutner Share His Plans and Reports from Consultants

By dianeravitch
February 21, 2019 //
9

Austin Beutner, the superintendent of the Los Angeles Unified School District, has a long history in business and apparently thought he could run the school system with the same secrecy that he ran his businesses. He thought he was the boss, and the boss was in charge and could do as he pleased. But no, the board told him, he can’t. He is their employee, not their master.

Even board members who were supposedly his supporters, the ones who voted to appoint an unqualified person to run the nation’s second largest school district, pressured Beutner to explain what he was doing, whom he was paying, and what he learned from his high-priced consultants.

The board, in short, told him they expected transparency, not secrecy.

Howard Blume writes in the Los Angeles Times:

L.A. schools Supt. Austin Beutner works for the Board of Education, but some board members say they need to know more about where he intends to take the nation’s second-largest school system.

Board member Scott Schmerelson put his concerns on the table at Tuesday’s meeting in a resolution that ultimately led the board to informally rebuke the schools chief for his lack of transparency.

Beutner took his medicine, pledging “100%” cooperation in providing the board with information in the future. He said Schmerelson could expect to see reports from district consultants paid to work on a reform effort within days.

In other action Tuesday, the board rejected a proposal to give schools full control over which teachers they hire. And a board majority chose to name a school after a veteran administrator whose long meritorious service was marred by his role in allowing an employee accused of sexual misconduct to return to an L.A. Unified campus.

Schmerelson took Beutner to task for not providing the contracts and the work done by consultants who have been advising him on the plan he is developing to restructure the district.

Beutner has said that his overarching goal is to bring decision-making and resources closer to schools to better serve students and cut costs. But so far he has shied away publicly from specifics.

The Times in November obtained information, that Beutner was considering a plan to divide the school system into about 32 networks of schools that would have substantial independence but that also would be held accountable for improving student achievement.

Beutner has been getting advice on his plan from an assortment of outside consultants paid by private donations managed by the California Community Foundation. Because of that arrangement, his staff initially did not provide The Times either the consultants’ contracts or the work they’ve produced.

Schmerelson first asked for that information in early October — and Beutner pledged at a Nov. 13 board meeting that he would provide the materials. But he did not follow through.

Ultimately, Schmerelson put a resolution on Tuesday’s agenda to require Beutner to supply the documents. On Thursday, the district gave more than 100 pages of contracts to board members and The Times.

These documents lay out proposals for an annual school rating system and for networks of schools that choose which services to purchase from the central office. They do not make clear to what extent the networks could go outside the district to shop for key services such as food, student transportation and hiring.

On Tuesday, Schmerelson thanked Beutner for providing the contracts but reiterated his demand to see the consultants’ work.

“The secrecy has got to stop,” Schmerelson said. “It’s an affront to me and to the constituents I represent.

“I remain incredulous,” he added, “that it took four months and a formal resolution to get you to disclose these documents.”

 

Categories Accountability, Administrators, superintendents, Los Angeles

Indiana: Just How Corrupt Are Our Elected Officials?

By dianeravitch
February 18, 2019 //
17

 

John Stoffel, a teacher in Indiana, is disgusted with the politicians who are intent on undermining public schools in his state. He wanted you to know how bad things are.

 

“Just how corrupt is Indiana’s Republican-controlled state leadership? Look to the position of State Superintendent of Education this decade for the answer.

“In 2012, Republican State Superintendent Tony Bennett is ousted despite millions of dollars of out-of-state edu-business support, becoming the only Republican to lose this statewide office in 40 years.

“In order to circumvent Glenda Ritz, the new Democrat superintendent, Indiana Republicans create a duplicitous education department and change the leadership structure of the state board of education to remove her as leader.

“In 2016, Republican Jennifer McCormick is elected. Republicans in Indiana pass a law to make the position appointed in 2024. When McCormick cites she will not run for re-election due to being “naive”, thinking she could help kids in this state, Republicans move quickly to make the position appointed in 2020.

“McCormick,a Republican, blasts Indiana Republican lawmakers by saying they aren’t about helping kids or schools, they’re about making deals with edu-businesses at the expense of our children.

“A Republican in the driver’s seat of education is bearing witness to the corruption in Indiana’s education system. Hopefully voters will listen.

“The Republican party in Indiana is no longer about “small government”   or “family values,” they are about backroom deals and crony capitalism.”

John Stoffel

Elementary Teacher
Huntington, IN

http://via.cbs4indy.com/a37Hb?fbclid=IwAR2wYQ5X_pEzM6fJY-UhKCk0PDxQA9W71UKuLjrdvHXAVUWws4sgCreU730

http://www.journalgazette.net/article/20181001/WEB/181009999

https://www.chicagotribune.com/suburbs/post-tribune/news/ct-ptb-education-teacher-strikes-pay-st-20180413-story.html?fbclid=IwAR0SCMcXsk7m2aXZaelz8dDf7kHHnri6nnVo2i_dCWWYH4x5y2mcQnrsucE
Categories Administrators, superintendents, Corruption, Indiana

Two Los Angeles Teachers: Time for Beutner to Resign!

By dianeravitch
February 18, 2019 //
4

 

Two Los  Angeles teachers write with pride about the accomplishments of the recent strike. They note that the strike proved two things: one, the teachers’ demands were just and had overwhelming support from stakeholders: students, parent, and teachers; two, Superintendent Austin Beutner is out of his depth and lac is the trust of those he serves: he should go.

Beutner’s problem, they say, is that he has spent his career serving shareholders, not stakeholders. His prior business experience leaves him ill-equipped to lead the nation’s second biggest school district. 

He came to disrupt thedistrict but demonstrated his lack of readiness for the job he holds.

 

Categories Accountability, Administrators, superintendents, Corporate Reformers, Disruption, Failure, Los Angeles, Union

Los Angeles: Austin Beutner and Cronyism

By dianeravitch
February 8, 2019 //
14

 

Carl J. Petersen, a watchdog in Los Angeles, has untangled a web of cronyism surrounding Superintendent Austin Beutner.

He begins:

Instead of meeting with United Teachers Los Angeles (UTLA) in the days leading up to the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) strike, Superintendent Austin Beutner and Board President Monica Garciawere in Sacramento in an effort to “drum up lawmaker opposition to the teachers strike.” They were accompanied on this trip by Sebastian Ridley-Thomas (SRT), the son of “powerful L.A. County Supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas (MRT)”. While not publicly disclosed at the time, SRT was there as a paid lobbyist for the District.

As if a District pleading poverty while paying a lobbyist during labor negotiations was not bad enough, the choice of SRT is particularly bewildering. It appears that, under Government Code §87406, the former Assemblyman was legally prohibited from lobbying his former colleagues “for one year after the end of the term to which” he was elected, a waiting period that he had not met. The younger Ridley-Thomas resigned from his elected office on December 27, 2017, citing “health reasons.” He “was the subject of two sexual harassment complaints at the time he stepped down”.

SRT was then hired as a professor of social work and public policy by USC despite his not having a graduate degree. Shortly afterward, MRT “made a $100,000 donation from his campaign coffers to the social work school. The school dean, Marilyn Flynn, then sent the money to Policy Research and Practice Initiative, a start-up think tank that was unaffiliated with the university and controlled by Sebastian Ridley-Thomas.” After an internal investigation, the University ended SRT’s employment and told the U.S. Attorney’s office in Los Angeles that “it had concerns” about the donation.

Petersen then details a timeline showing Beutner’s close relationship with the Ridley-Thomases and other political figures.

At least one Angeleno wonders whether Beutner’s lack of an ethical compass will be his downfall.

Shouldn’t the superintendent of schools in the nation’s second largest school district have an ethical compass?

Categories Administrators, superintendents, Ethics, Los Angeles
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