Archives for category: Bush, Jeb
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OECD: Technology in Schools Associated with Lower Test Scores

By dianeravitch
September 24, 2015 //
49

No state has invested so much in technology as Florida. Jeb Bush has made educational technology his signature issue, and his Foundation for Educational Excellence has received generous support from the technology industry. Jeb has encouraged states to require students to take online courses as a graduation requirement.

But the Organization for Economic Co-Operation and Development reports that use of technology is associated with lower test scores.

This story, from Florida’s NPR state Impact describes 5 things we learned from the OECD report.

This research matters in Florida, writes John O’Connor, because:

“State law requires schools spend half of the instructional budget on digital lessons. School districts have spent the past few years adding Internet bandwidth, improving networks and adding high-tech teaching tools.

“Here’s five things we learned from their study:

“The more technology, the worse the performance on tests — This was the big conclusion. The students who spent the most time using computers or on the Internet in school did worse than expected on international tests.

“The students who ranked in the middle for technology use — what the OECD called moderate use — did the best on international tests.

“That’s pretty sobering for us,” said Andreas Schleicher, who leads the OECD’s education efforts. “We all hope that integrating more and more technology in school is going to help us actually to enhance learning environments. Make learning more interactive…but it doesn’t seem to be working like this.”

“The OECD noted that east Asian nations, such as China and Singapore, intentionally limited students use of technology. They also used more traditional techniques teaching math — and have the best-performing students on math exams.

“Basically, you can say the less computers are used in mathematics lessons,” Schleicher said, “the better students perform.”

“The OECD couldn’t pinpoint why students who use technology more didn’t do as well on tests, but suggested a number of explanations: Reading online is a different skill than reading on paper; technology can be a distraction; and schools aren’t making the best use of technology.

“Teachers who use technology get better results — The OECD found that nations that emphasized training teachers to use technology performed better on tests. That meant allowing teachers to connect by video conferencing, observing other teachers, sharing lessons and ideas and just chatting with other teachers.

“Again, it was east Asian nations which encouraged teachers to connect via technology that also had the best-performing students on exams.

“For the most part, Florida policy has focused on connecting students to technology. Plenty of teachers are advocates of high-tech lessons, but the OECD study suggests the state and districts might want to consider emphasizing training for teachers to get the most out of all the new gadgets in classrooms.

“Slow down and get it right — Right now, the way schools are using technology isn’t working for students. Schleicher said schools might want to take a step back, look at what’s working and focus on those areas.

“In Florida, schools are moving ahead with the state’s digital instruction mandate and lawmakers are considering setting aside money in the state budget each year for new technology….

“Digital skills are important — Right now, students aren’t getting good results from technology in schools. But Schleicher said computer and Internet skills are important job skills.

“And other research shows that most workers never use Algebra 2, Caluculus or other high-level math courses in their work — but most jobs require some digital skills. Teaching students how to use computers and the Internet is still time well-spent.”

Categories Bush, Jeb, Florida, Standardized Testing, Teachers and Teaching

Florida Parents Start a Facebook Page About Jeb’s Failures as Governor

By dianeravitch
September 18, 2015 //
10

Read this Facebook page, created by Florida parents, and you will never believe another of Jeb Bush’s boasts about what he accomplished as governor.

When he boasts about job creation in Florida, think about this: Jeb’s “Jobs” – low-paid service industry jobs that left many Floridians without health insurance and scrambling for affordable housing amid a real estate boom that helped fuel business-friendly tax breaks.”

If he boasts about higher education, remember that he raised tuition by 48%.

This Facebook page will grow as parents add more entries.

Categories Bush, Jeb, Florida

Mercedes Tries to Explain Common Core to Washington Post, in Vain

By dianeravitch
September 1, 2015 //
8

The Washington Post recently wrote an editorial defending Common Core and excusing Jeb Bush’s sudden change of tactics. Mercedes Schneider sent in an op-ed piece to explain what the Post got wrong. Her article was shunted over to “letters to the editor,” where it was rejected. She posted her response here.

Were the Common Core standards really developed by the states? Did the federal government have nothing to do with them? Does Jeb Bush really believe in state-created standards? Mercedes explains to those who care to know.

Categories Bush, Jeb, Common Core

From Jeb Bush to Condoleeza Rice: The Privatization Movement Marches On

By dianeravitch
August 25, 2015 //
25

When he began to run for the Republican nomination for President, Jeb Bush stepped down as chairman of the Foundation for Excellence in Education (FEE), which he founded to spread the gospel of high-stakes testing, tough accountability, charters, and vouchers. The new chairperson is Condoleeza Rice, who shares Jeb’s views on corporate reform. FEE will hold its “national summit” in Denver on October 22-23. You might want to plan to attend to learn about the campaign to privatize public education. Be sure to check out the sponsors. I can promise that you will not learn anything about the financial scandals that have plagued the charter industry or the disappointing results of vouchers at this conference.

Categories Bush, Jeb, Privatization, Virtual Charter Schools, Vouchers

Delaware Commissioner Mark Murphy Resigning

By dianeravitch
August 18, 2015 //
7

Delaware State Commissioner Mark Murphy is stepping down.

“Many legislators, the teachers, administrators, and parents had lost confidence in Secretary Murphy, but he had the confidence of the man who mattered, Jack Markell. The DSEA [Delaware State Education Association] voted no confidence in his leadership. Legislators complained about the strong arm tactics to force through Common Core. Parents rallied and protested the Smarter Balanced Assessment. He had been called out of touch, but he claimed his efforts led to significant achievements.”

Murphy was a strong proponent of Common Core and Race to the Top. He was one of the few remaining members of Jeb Bush’s shrinking “Chiefs for Change.”

Until recently, the Chiefs included Gerard Robinson (FL), Tony Bennett (IN, FL) , Chris Cerf (NJ), Mike Miles (Dallas), Deborah Gist (switching from RI to Tulsa)), Janet Barresi (OK), Kevin Huffman (TN), Stephen Bowen (ME), and Chris Barbic (Tenn). All are gone, although Gist is still a “Chief” as district superintendent in Tulsa.

The only two original members left are John White and Hannah Skandera, neither of whom is popular with educators or parents.

The original Chiefs for Change was funded by Jeb Bush’s Foundation for Educational Excellence.

Categories Bush, Jeb, Chiefs for Change, Common Core, Delaware

Mercedes Schneider: Jeb Bush Doesn’t Remember What Common Core Is

By dianeravitch
August 18, 2015 //
18

Mercedes Schneider wrote a book about Common Core (“The Common Core Dilemma: Who Owns Our Schools?), and she knows its history as well as anyone. One thing she knows is that Jeb Bush was one of the biggest supporters of the Common Core. When the criticism started, he defended Common Core. When the criticism intensified, he said he would not cut and run from Common Core. He stood on principle in their defense. He saw the Common Core standards as the answer to closing achievement gaps and doing all sorts of important and good things.

But now that he is in a hotly contested primary campaign, he forgot what the Common Core standards are. He doesn’t remember supporting them. He just likes high standards. He wants to get as far away from the Common Core brand as possible. It has become “poisonous,” he said recently.

Categories Bush, Jeb, Common Core

Jeff Bryant: Jeb’s Florida Miracle is Phony

By dianeravitch
August 11, 2015 //
6

Jeff Bryant has written an excellent in-depth investigative report on Jeb Bush’s boasts about the “Florida miracle.”

The alleged miracle is pure hogwash. The biggest beneficiaries are the profiteers and entrepreneurs who have opened 600 charter schools across the state.

As Jeff writes, Jeb got into the charter business to polish up his image after losing the 1994 race for governor. A defining moment occurred when asked in a debate what he would do for blacks, if he were elected. He answered, “Probably nothing.” When he learned about charter schools, he found the perfect vehicle to burnish his credentials in education and civil rights.

He worked hard to pass charter legislation, then opened the state’s first charter school in impoverished Liberty City in 1996. He still boasts about the school but forgets to add that it closed in 2008.

Bryant interviewed Florida State Senator Dwight Bullard, who represents the section of Miami that includes Liberty City.

Bullard denounced Bush’s A-F grading law “that perpetually traps schools serving the most struggling students with an “F” label, and opening up communities to unproven charter schools that compete with neighborhood schools for funding….

“According to Bullard, charter school expansion did more harm than good in Liberty City. As charter schools chipped away student population from the neighborhood schools, the local elementary school struggled to keep its enrollment up, and the middle school eventually closed as lower student populations drained the schools’ resources.

“In Bullard’s view, charter schools also help create an unhealthy revolving door, where kids cycle from public schools to charters, and then back into the public schools when charters close down. As schools open and close, the better-prepared students tend to find spots in other new charters, while the lowest performing kids get kicked back into struggling, underfunded public schools.”

Today, major charter chains dominate the Florida landscape, and most operate for profit.

“One person who has paid close attention to the spread of charter schools in Florida is Sue Legg. As a public school teacher, college professor and an administrator of state school assessment contracts at the University of Florida for over 30 years, Legg has had a ringside seat to the Florida charter school circus. In a series of reports produced for the Florida chapter of the League of Women Voters, Legg revealed the many ways charter schools in Florida spread political corruption and financial opportunism while doing little to improve the academic performance of their students.

“Her year-long 2014 study, conducted in 28 Florida counties, found a 20 percent closure rate for charters due to financial problems or poor academic performance — a closure rate that has now increased to over 40 percent. The charter schools studied generally did not perform better than public schools, and tended to be more racially segregated. A significant number of these charters operated for-profit and operated in church related facilities.

“In a phone conversation with Legg, she described how charter school expansions are being driven by a state legislature with numerous connections to the charter school industry. “States get around local control by using a statewide contract for charters,” she explained. And whenever a local board rejects a new charter school or threatens a charter school with closure, the school can appeal to the state. “The appeals process overturns about half of district denials of charter operation,” Legg contends.

“The conflicts of interest among charter schools and Florida state legislators was raised to national prominence by an article in Esquire written by Charlie Pierce. Pierce quoted from a 2013 Florida newspaper article:

“A growing number of lawmakers have personal ties to charter schools. Sen. John Legg [no relation to Sue Legg], who chairs the Senate Education Committee, is co-founder and business administrator of Dayspring Academy in Port Richey. Anne Corcoran, wife of future House Speaker Richard Corcoran, plans to open a classics-themed charter school in Pasco County. House Budget Chairman Seth McKeel is on the board of the McKeel Academy Schools in Polk County. In addition, the brother-in-law of House Education Appropriations Chairman Erik Fresen runs the state’s largest charter management firm, Academica Corp. And Sen. Anitere Flores, also of Miami, is the president of an Academica-managed charter college in Doral.”

Florida mainstream media have paid attention to the financial scandals and corruption in the charter sector. The Miami Herald’s Kathleen McGrory wrote an excellent series called “Cashing in on Kids.”

The Sun Sentinel has exposed scandal after scandal.

“In a more recent series of investigative articles, from 2014, the Sun Sentinel found, “Unchecked charter-school operators are exploiting South Florida’s public school system, collecting taxpayer dollars for schools that quickly shut down … virtually anyone can open or run a charter school and spend public education money with near impunity.”

“Examples cited in the series include a man who received $450,000 in tax dollars to open two new charter schools just months after his first one collapsed. The schools closed in seven weeks. Another example: A man with “a history of foreclosures, court-ordered payments, and bankruptcy received $100,000 to start a charter school.” It closed in two months.”

The charter industry in Florida is a textbook example of the squandering of taxpayer dollars to undermine public schools and satisfy private greed. It’s not about kids.

It is about privatization and profit. Don’t be hoaxed.

Categories Bush, Jeb, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Florida, For-Profit, Scandals Fraud and Hoaxes

What Jeb Bush Did Not Tell the Urban League

By dianeravitch
August 5, 2015 //
16

Jeb Bush went before the convention of the National Urban League and touted his credentials as a reformer. He started a charter school in 1996 in high-poverty Liberty City.

Politico reports:

“Jeb Bush spoke about his time founding Florida’s first charter school and boasted about his track record on education as Florida governor in a speech to the National Urban League. The experience of starting a school “still shapes the way I see the deep-seated challenges facing people in urban communities today,” Bush said. “So many people could do so much better in life if we could come together and get even a few big things right in government. I acted on that belief as governor of Florida. It’s a record I’ll gladly compare with anyone else in the field.”

But Jeb didn’t tell the whole story. He didn’t say that the school developed financial problems, and he lost interest in it. He didn’t say that the school closed its doors in 2008.

He didn’t tell the whole truth. He didn’t talk about the kids who were stranded when the school closed. He didn’t mention that Florida has become a rich playground for for-profit charter entrepreneurs. He didn’t share his knowledge about the perils of charters that open and close with frequency.

Categories Bush, Jeb, Charter Schools, Florida

Who Funded Jeb’s “Foundation for Educational Excellence”?

By dianeravitch
July 7, 2015 //
20

Jeb Bush created the “Foundation for Educational Excellence” with two goals in mind. First, to burnish his credentials as a “reformer.” Second, to serve as a vehicle for advocating vouchers, charters, online learning, and high-stakes accountability.

Peter Greene writes that we now know who contributed large sums to Jeb’s FEE. We may safely assume that they shared Jeb’s policy goals.

He writes:

It is not an exact list in that donors are organized by ranges. So we know that Bloomberg donated somewhere between $1.2 million and $2.4 million, which is quite a margin of error. But it’s still a chunk of change, either way.

Joining Bloomberg Philanthropies in the Over a Cool Million Club are these folks, a completely unsurprising list:

Walton Family Foundation (between $3.5 mill and over $6 mill)
B&M Gates (between $3 mill and over $5 mill)
Charles and Helen Schwab Foundation (between $1.6 mill and $3.25 mill)
News Corporation (between $1.5 mill and $3 mill)
GE Foundation (between $2.5 mill and over $3 mill)
Helmsley Trust (at least $2 mill)

The Might Have Hit a Million Club includes

The Broad Foundation
Jacqueline Hume Foundation
Robertson Foundation
Carnegie Corporation of New York
Kovner Foundation
The Arnold Foundation

Beyond those, we find Florida businesses and a fair sampling of folks who have a stake in the FEE mission, like McGraw Hill and Renaissance Learning.

For the most part, it is a familiar list of billionaires and mere multimillionaires. What Greene notes is that there is no evidence of a grassroots base for Jeb’s activities. It is the same old, same old super-rich people–the 1%, if you will–fattening one of their favorites spokesmen.

Or, as he writes:

The truth about FEE is a reminder– for the gazillionth time– that we have yet to see an actual hard-core full-on grass roots movement in support of reformster policies. It’s also a reminder that if education issues were being decided on merit, or if all the Rich Person money just dried up tomorrow, we wouldn’t be having this conversation.

Ed reform is a big delicate rosebush in the middle of the desert, and money is the water that keeps it alive. Shut off the water, and it’s done.

Since there have been no positive results for any of the billionaires’ favorite Big Ideas, there is always the chance they will get bored. Never underestimate the power of boredom among the glitterati.

Categories Bush, Jeb, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, On-Line Education, Virtual Charter Schools, Vouchers

How Jeb Bush Dumbed Down Education in Florida

By dianeravitch
June 27, 2015 //
17

Dan Gelber, a former state senator in Florida, offers a devastating overview of Jeb Bush’s education policies while he was governor of Florida.

Gelber says that Bush was indeed passionate about education, but his passion was tied to ideas that dumbed down the quality of education.

“He force-fed unprecedented testing into public schools, did all he could to neuter the teaching unions and unapologetically pushed private-school alternatives to public education. As he runs for higher office, Bush now relies on his “education revolution” to make his case….

“In 1998 when a newly elected Gov. Bush and a compliant Legislature started Florida’s “education revolution,” our graduation rate was among the lowest in the nation. After Bush’s two terms in office, Florida’s graduation rate was dead last and remains near the bottom.”

With so much emphasis on testing and test prep, the scores went up in the early grades, but the gains were short-lived. The gains might have been the result of a constitutional amendment forcing class-size reduction on the early grades, which Bush opposed.

Gelber says Florida should not be a national model. It is “an example of the perils of combining excessive testing with inadequate funding….

“As schools began teaching to the test and neglecting anything not measured, Florida’s floor of minimal competence became our ceiling. This distortion became especially acute because, while money alone isn’t a solution, money does matter. Under Bush, Florida had one of the lowest per-pupil funding levels in the nation, so principals and administrators did what any overwhelmed emergency-room doctor does. The state began to triage its curriculum and programs in order to devote scarce resources to what was tested.

“Art “carts” replaced art classrooms, physical education was deemed nonessential. Foreign languages, gifted programs, music, higher-level math and English, civics and science all were among courses that were deemphasized or sometimes even abandoned because they were not measured by the FCAT.

“My eldest daughter’s accelerated algebra class didn’t complete its course work one year because the school stopped teaching it to devote time to relearning FCAT math from years earlier. My youngest daughter’s school cut its exciting science lab program. Not taught on the FCAT!

“Talk about a mad dash to mediocrity….

Florida’s incredibly low education spending is, sadly, in sync with its dismal graduation rate, and nearly last in the nation SAT and ACT scores….

“The debate of accountability vs. funding marginalizes the importance of both. Money has to be adequate, and testing has to be thoughtful or you end up with a dumbed-down and narrow curriculum that fails too many kids.”

Categories Bush, Jeb, Florida, School Choice, Standardized Testing
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