A large group of parents wrote a letter of complaint to Eva Moskowitz about the harsh discipline at their Success Academy school in her new space, which appears to attract a white, middle-class enrollment. They objected to the no-excuses code, which they say broke their children’s spirit.
Here is the parents’ letter.
https://nycpublicschoolparents.blogspot.com/2017/10/hudson-yards-success-charter-parents-to.html
Anthony Cody writes here about the political power of teachers and how it should be used.
Cody reports on a discussion between Barbara Madeloni of the Massachusetts Teachers Association and Eric Heins of the California Teachers Association at the Network for Public Education Conference last week in Oakland.
Barbara Madeloni believes in the importance of building a movement. It was that movement, working closely with parents that defeated a referendum to expand charter schools in the state last fall.
In California, the powerful California Teachers Association just gave its endorsement for governor to Gavin Newsom, even though he refused to take a position as between the charter lobby and public schools and couldn’t say whether he was for or against teachers.
This is what Newsom said some weeks earlier, in a public appearance:
“I’m not interested in the stale and raging debate about which side, which camp you’re on – are you with the charter people, are you anti-charter, are you with the teachers, are you anti-teacher. I’ve been hearing that damn debate for ten damn years. With all due respect, I got four kids. I have an eight year old, second grade. I have a five, three and a one year old. I’m not gonna wait around until they’ve all graduated to resolve whether Eli Broad was right or whether or not the CTA was wrong. I’m not interested in that debate. I’m interested in shaping a different conversation around a 21st century education system that brings people together, that could shape public opinion, not just here in the state, but could shape an agenda more broadly across the country, particularly in a time of Betsy DeVos and Donald Trump. We need that kind of leadership.”
With views like these, will Newsom remember that he was endorsed by the CTA? Will he care? Is he unsure whether he is for or against teachers? How can anyone who cares about education be against teachers? How can they be bored and indifferent to galloping privatization? It is views like these that laid the groundwork for Betsy DeVos.
This post is a real tour de force. That means that Mercedes Schneider has managed to say something truly original, which I hope you will read in full.
Betsy DeVos is constantly saying how much she wants the best for every child, how urgent it is to let parents have charter schools, voucher schools, for-profit schools, cybercharters, almost anything but public schools. Despite her protestations, she is contemptuous of public schools and has spent many millions through her American Federation for Children to advance privatization.
So zmercedes uses her post to tell you what Betsy would say if she spoke her mind, without covering up any of her thoughts.
She begins like this.
“First of all, I’d like to thank all of you for coming because I appreciate yet another opportunity to campaign in a manner that ultimately promotes my favorite minority, the one to which I belong: America’s elite among elite, those possessing the top .1% in American net worth.
“One way to understand my elitist motivations is to study the history and positions of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC). Of course, I would have preferred that ALEC be kept from public awareness, which it was for almost four decades. However, the unfortunate truth is that those without the interests of corporate America in mind destroyed that beautiful ALEC secrecy in 2012.
“The ALEC end game is to supplant federal control over states with corporate control. We prefer to promote this idea as federalism, or state control. The reality is states are ripe for control, and that control might as well come from moneyed interests– the .1%– rather than the federal government.
“The beauty in promoting “state control” is that those outside of the top .1% (or, let’s be generous, outside of the top 1%) hear the term “state control” and equate it with “local control.” Though I occasionally mention local control, I do not ultimately advocate for local control. You will not hear me give a speech in which I advocate replacing state control with local control. Local control is too close to you people, and, as such, corporate interests become more difficult to serve because it is the state legislators (and therefore, statehouses) that ALEC corporations control, not usually the local politicians.
“Besides, we lose the ability to hide our ALEC intentions behind federal scapegoating if we do not center our pseudo-local arguments on state control, and the best way to fool the public is to divert attention from the corporate control we desire by actively campaigning for federal control over states as the ultimate problem.”
Keep reading.
Meet the real Betsy.
Unvarnished.
The Network for Public Education just held its fourth annual conference in Oakland, California, on October 14-15.
It was a fabulous conference, with great speakers, roundtables, panels, and camaraderie.
I opened the conference on October 14. I introduced our wonderful board and staff (we have 1.5 staff members and hundreds of amazing volunteers).
I described what we are for and what we oppose.
If you agree with us, please join, donate whatever you can, and help us continue our grassroots efforts to strengthen and support public education.
In the days ahead, I will post all the keynote addresses. They were fantastic.
If you knew how inspiring these two days were, you will want to join us next year. I can’t give the location yet, but we will meet in the Midwest.
The arch-conservative billionaire Koch Brothers have unleashed campaign ads against Lt. Governor Ralph Northam in the Virginia governor’s race.
The Washington Post reported that the Koch Brothers have spent nearly $3 Million Against Northam.
“Americans for Prosperity, the heart of the billionaire Koch Brothers’ conservative political network, plans to ramp up its campaign against Ralph Northam, the Democrat in Virginia’s governor’s race.
“The conservative group announced Friday that it would spend at least $1 million on mailers and digital ads targeting Northam’s record on taxes, education and economic development.
“It follows at least $1.8 million in anti-Northam television commercials and mailers to date, according to data collected by the nonpartisan Virginia Public Access Project. The group also says it has contacted hundreds of thousands of Virginia voters through its phone-banking and canvassing efforts…
“Americans for Prosperity is also launching a digital video featuring a charter school administrator criticizing Northam for voting against a bill to establish “educational savings accounts” that allow parents who remove children from public schools to receive 90 percent of the state funding that would have been spent on their child. They would be able to use the funds for private-school tuition, tutoring, books and other educational costs. Critics say such accounts are similar to vouchers in that they drain resources from public schools.”
The Koch Brothers despise public education and are eager to elect a governor who will promote the DeVos agenda of school privatization via charters and vouchers.
If you live in Virginia and you love your local public school, get active in the campaign for Ralph Northam.
A couple of days ago, Bill Gates said he has a new plan to reform education. As I pointed out in a post, Bill Gates is batting 0 for 3. He dropped $2 Billion into breaking up large high schools and turning them into small schools. He started in 2000, didn’t see a big jump in test scores, and backed out in 2008. Then, having decided that the answer to high test scores was to punish teachers whose student scores didn’t go up, he pushed value-added Assessment, partnering with Arne Duncan and Race to the Top. Thousands of educators were fired and many schools were closed based on Gates’s fancy. That lasted from 2008 until now, and it has been written into state law in many states, although it has distorted the purpose of education and created massive demoralization among teachers and a national teacher shortage. Then he funded the Common Core, in its entirety. It is his pedagogical Frankenstein, his personal belief that education should be completely standardized, from standards to curriculum to teacher education to teacher evaluation. Speaking to the National Board for Certified Teachers a few years ago, he praised standardization and talked about the beauty of standard electrical plugs. No matter where you live, you can plug in an appliance and it works! Clearly, that was his metaphor for education. What did he spend on the creation and promotion of the Common Core? No one knows for sure, but estimates range from $200 Million to $2 Billion.
There is one other massive Gates failure that I forgot to mention: inBloom. This was a $100million investment in data mining of students’ personally identifiable data. Several states and districts agreed to turn their data over to inBloom, which wipould use the data as its owners chose. Parents got wind of this and launched a campaign to stop in loom. Led by Leonie Haimson of New York and Rachel Stickland of Colorado, parents besieged their legislators, and one by one, the state’s and districts pulled out. InBloom collapsed.
We don’t know how much money Gates has poured into charter schools, but we imagine he must be disappointed that on average they don’t produce higher scores than the public schools he disdains. He bundled millions for a referendum in Washington State to allow charter schools, the fourth such referendum. Despite Gates’ swamping the election with money, the motion barely passed. Then the State’s highest court denied public funding to charter schools, declaring that they are not public schools because they are not governed by elected school boards. Gates and his friends tried to oust the Chief Judge when she ran for re-election, but she coasted to victory.
As you see, he is actually 0 for 5 in his determination to “reform” the nation’s public schools.
But he is not deterred by failure!
So what is the latest Gates’ idea?
Laura Chapman explains here:
“At the Meeting of the Council for Great City Schools October 19, 2017, Gates said:
“Today, I’d like to share what we have learned over the last 17 years and how those insights will change what we focus on over the next five years.”
“I think that Gates has learned very little about education in the last 17 years. He is still fixated on “the lagging performance” of our students on what he regards as “the key metrics of a quality education – math scores, English scores, international comparisons, and college completion.
“Gates wants his narrow definition of “quality education” to be accepted as if the proper doctrine for improving schools and also ensuring the “economic future and competitiveness of the United States.”
“Gates wants faster progress in raising test scores, and high school graduation rates. He seems to think that “constraints and other demands on state and local budget” actually justify his plans to “ increase high school graduation and college-readiness rates.”
“Gates takes credit for funding for the deeply flawed + Measures of Effective Teaching project (MET), claiming that it showed educators ”how to gather feedback from students on their engagement and classroom learning experiences . . . and about observing teachers at their craft, assessing their performance fairly, and providing actionable feedback.” The $64 million project in 2007 tried to make it legitimate for teachers to be judged by “multiple measures” including the discredited VAM, and dubious Danielson teacher observation protocol http://nepc.colorado.edu/newsletter/2013/01/review-MET-final-2013 Gates learned nothing from that micromanaging effort.
“Gates funded and promoted the Common Core. He says: “Teachers need better curricula and professional development aligned with the Common Core.”He remains committed to the ideas that “teacher evaluations and ratings” are useful ways “to improve instruction,” He thinks “data-driven continuous learning and evidence-based interventions,” will improve student achievement. This jargon is meaningless.
“Gates said: Overall, we expect to invest close to $1.7 billion in US public education over the next five years.“…“We anticipate that about 60 percent of this will eventually support the development of new curricula and networks of schools that work together to identify local problems and solutions . . . and use data to drive continuous improvement.
“Don’t be deceived by the “public education” comment. Gates wants to control public schools by dismantling their governance by and for the public. By “networks of schools” Gates means “innovation districts” where persons employed by private interests can control educational policy under the banner of “collaboration” or “partnership.”
“Gates offers several examples of networks. One is CORE, a so-called “partnership” of eight large urban school districts in California: Fresno, Garden Grove, Long Beach, Los Angeles, Oakland, Sacramento, San Francisco and Santa Ana,
“CORE stands for “California Office for Reform in Education CORE a non-governmental organization, based in San Francisco, funded by the Stuart Foundation, William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, S. D. Bechtel, Jr. Foundation (Stephen Bechtel Fund); and Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Here are some other things you should know about CORE.
“CORE was created in order to bypass the California State Board of Education and Race to the Top accountability, by marketing its new “School Quality Improvement Index.” This index includes social-emotional learning and school climate indicators in addition to California requirements—test scores, graduation rates, and the like.
Participating CORE Districts are bound to the terms of a memorandum of understanding, signed only by each district superintendent. This MOU specifies that the district will use: CORE-approved school improvement ratings based on existing and new indicators, a CORE-approved teacher and principal evaluation process with professional development plans, CORE-specific teacher and principal hiring and retention policies with cross-district sharing data—including results from teacher/student/parent surveys of school climate and student self-assessments of their social-emotional skills.
“The final rating for each school in a CORE district is a complex web of weightings and transformations of scores into performance and growth measures: 40% of the overall rating for school climate/social emotional indicators and 60% for academics.
“An autonomous “School Quality Oversight Panel” nullifies oversight of these districts by the State Board of Education. This “oversight” panel has CORE supporters recruited from The Association of California School Administrators, and California School Boards Association, California State PTA. The main monitors/promoters of this scheme are actually two panel members: Ed Trust West and the Policy Analysis for California Education. Bot of these organizations are sustained in large measure by private funding.
“Ed Trust West is funded by the Bloomberg Philanthropies, State Farm Companies, and these foundations: Bill & Melinda Gates, Joyce, Kresge, Lumina, Wallace Foundation, and the Walton Family. The Policy Analysis for California Education (PACE) is based at Stanford University, with participation by the University of California – Berkeley, and the University of Southern California. PACE is a conduit for grants from USDE and from the David and Lucille Packard Foundation; Evelyn and Walter Haas, Jr. Fund; S. D. Bechtel Jr. Foundation; Walter and Elise Haas Fund; and The Walter S. Johnson Foundation.
“School ratings developed by the CORE Districts flow directly to GreatSchools.org —a marketing site for schools and education products. GreatSchools.org is funded by the Gates, Walton, Robertson, and Arnold Foundations. Add the Friedman Foundation for Educational Choice, the Bradley Foundation, Goldman Sachs Gives, New Schools Venture Fund. and 15 other foundations.“GreatSchools.org in a non-profit in name only. GreatSchools.org sells data from all states and districts. For a fee, it will push users of the website to particular schools. Buyers of the data include Zillow and Scholastic.
“I think that the CORE District model illustrates how the private takeover of education is happening. Policy formation and favored school practices are being determined by the wealth and the peculiar visions non governmental groups with deep pockets. In the CORE Districts, this work is aided and abetted by superintendents who are eager for the money and the illusion of prestige that comes from permitting private funders to determine educational policies and practices.
“Gates’ speech to members of the Council of the Great City Schools also includes the example of Tennessee’s LIFT Education as a “network” that is worth replicating.
“LIFT Education enlists educators from 12 rural and urban districts across the state to promote the Common Core agenda and Teach for America practices. Participants in LIFT Education are convened by the State Collaborative on Reforming Education —SCORE. The SCORE website says participants in LIFT have spent the last year and a half collaborating on high-quality early literacy instruction, focusing on building knowledge and vocabulary by piloting knowledge-rich read-alouds in early grades.
“The LIFT/SCORE alliance provides a governance structure for insisting that teachers follow the Gates-funded Common Core. Teachers are given an instructional practice guide that is also a teacher evaluation rubric from Student Achievement Partner, authors of the Common Core. https://lifteducationtn.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/LIFT-Instructional-Practice-Guide-K-5-Literacy.pdf
“This LIFT/SCORE non-governmental network is the result of private wealth channeled to superintendents who have outsourced the “coaching” and compliance monitoring for the Common Core literacy project to the Brooklyn-based The New Teachers Project (TNTP). In effect, TFA coaching and systems of data-gathering are present in all of the LIFT/SCORE districts.
“SCORE, the State Collaborative on Reforming Education has been funded since 2010 by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, so far $10,623,497 including multiple years for operating support. Add a 2012 grant to SCORE as sponsor of a Chiefs for Change Policy Forum for district leaders so they would be “ambassadors for education reform.” The bait for the LIFT/SCORE network thus came from Chiefs for Change–Jeb Bush’s baby, unfriendly to public education.
“Gates says: “Over the next several years, we will support about 30 of these networks (e.g.., CORE, LIFT) and will start initially with high needs schools and districts in 6 to 8 states. Each network will be backed by a team of education experts skilled in continuous improvement, coaching, and data collection and analysis.””
“Our goal is to work with the field to ensure that five years from now, teachers at every grade level in secondary schools have access to high-quality, aligned curriculum choices in English and math, as well as science curricula based on the Next Generation Science Standards.”
“What else is in the works from the many who would be king of American education?
“We expect that about 25 percent of our funding in the next five years will focus on big bets – innovations with the potential to change the trajectory of public education over the next 10 to 15 years.” What does Gates means by “big bets?” He expects to command the expertise and R&D to change the “trajectory” of education. He will fund translations of “developments in neuroscience, cognitive psychology, and behavioral economics” in addition to “technology-enabled” approaches in education.
“There is money left for more.
“We anticipate that the final 15 percent of our funding in the next five years will go to the charter sector. We will continue to help high-performing charters expand to serve more students. But our emphasis will be on efforts that improve outcomes for special needs students — especially kids with mild-to-moderate learning and behavioral disabilities.”
“This proposal sounds like Gates wants to cherry pick the students with “mild to moderate learning and behavioral disabilities,” send them to Gates-funded charter schools to bring their scores up, then claim success where everyone else has failed. This same strategy is being used in “pay-for performance” preschools. Gates sounds like he expects to have a free-hand in ignoring the Individual with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA). Evidently he wants the “flexibility” to ignore IDEA that he believes to be present in charter schools.
“Bill Gates is still fixated on the idea that his money and clout can and will attract other foundations and private investors. He still holds on to the mistaken idea that “what works” in one community or state can be “scaled up,” and REPLICATED, elsewhere. He is ignorant of the history of education and efforts to replicate programs. He is trapped in an industrial one-size-fits-all model of education.
“Gates ends with this: “Our role is to serve as a catalyst of good ideas, driven by the same guiding principle we started with: all students – but especially low-income students and students of color – must have equal access to a great public education that prepares them for adulthood. We will not stop until this has been achieved, and we look forward to continued partnership with you in this work in the years to come.”
“Beware of billionaires who want to partner with you.
“Gates still seems to think that students, especially low income students, can and will be successful if they have “ equal access to a great public education.” He remains ignorant of the abundant research that shows schools alone are not responsible for, or solutions to, institutionalized segregation and poverty–the main causes of serious disadvantage among low-income students and students of color.
“Gates has grandiose plans. All are focused on privatizing education and selling that snake oil as if it is authentic support for public education.“
Stephen Dyer is a Senior Fellow at Innovation Ohio and a former legislator. He has scrutinized state data exhaustively and reported that district schools outperform charter schools by every measure: test scores, graduation rates, achievement gaps. The Thomas B. Fordham Institute didn’t agree with his conclusions. Although it claims to be a think tank, it is in fact an advocacy group for school choice.
The Thomas B. Fordham Institute, which is technically based in Dayton (where the late Mr. Fordham lived) is actually based in D.C., is an authorizer of charter schools in Ohio. Authorizers are paid a commission on every student who enrol in charter schools so it is a lucrative role. I was a board member at TBF and an original founder. I opposed the decision to become an authorizer because I thought that it conflicted with the role of a think tank, which should be free to critique or praise anyone without fear or favor. I was outvoted.
In this post, Stephen Dyer responds to TBF criticism.
He explains that every public school in Ohio receives less money so charters can be funded.
“According to the final state payment made to school districts from June, there were 1.7 million students in Ohio set to receive $7.95 billion in total state aid. That’s works out to $4,657 (I’m rounding here) for every student in local public school districts.
“Then come charter schools.
“According to the report, $898 million left school districts last year for charters (a district-by-district breakdown I received from the Ohio Department of Education puts that tally at $935 million, so there’s that). Leaving with that funding were 113,613 students.
“So, after losing the funding and students to charter schools, the remaining 1.59 million children in Ohio school districts were set to receive $7.05 billion in state revenue, or $4,425 each.
“That means that the charter deduction costs every kid in Ohio school districts, on average, $231.51.
“This is why I compare charter school performance with school district performance. Because charter schools affect every kid in a school district. Profoundly. How profoundly? Let’s look at Columbus.
“Prior to the charter school deduction, every kid in Columbus City Schools is set to receive $4,559 in state funding. However, once the $145.65 million and 18,541 students are transferred to charter schools, the remaining 53,532 students who attend Columbus City School buildings receive $3,418 per pupil. That is a difference of $1,141.62. So charter schools cost students who are in Columbus City Schools about 1/4 of their state revenue. That’s every student in Columbus, regardless of wealth, race, or disability, Jamie.
“Every.
“Single.
“Student.
“So if this profound a change in state funding is going to happen for the 75 percent of children who remain in Columbus City Schools, or the 93 percent of children who remain in Ohio’s local public school districts, we’d better be damn sure it’s worth it. Is it worth removing $1,141.62 from kids in the best performing school in Columbus so thousands of kids can go to ECOT, for example (ECOT is the largest recipient of charter school transfer funding from Columbus)?
“I would say that’s a big, “No.”
“Now my friends at Fordham often complain that charters don’t get local revenue. And while that’s true, I fail to see how that justifies removing millions of state dollars from kids in local school districts. If the legislature believes in school choice so strongly, then set aside $260 million or so to make up for the lack of local revenue.
“Stop taking it from the 1.59 million kids who aren’t in charters.“
Most of the time, scandals come and go and no one remembers them after a day or two. But sometimes scandals cause a seismic reaction. Think Harvey Weinstein. Powerful men have sexually assaulted women in their employ and hoping to be in their employ or just in their proximity for as long as anyone can remember. Despite a number of high profile scandals, the larger phenomenon is ignored. Many people assumed Trump’s gloating about his sexual assaults would doom his campaign but it didn’t. Bill O’Reilly had to leave FOX news, but that passed. The Harvey story has gotten more attention and more outrage than any of the others.
Could the Ref Rodriguez corruption scandal awaken the public to the systemic problem of giving public money to private corporations and individuals without regular oversight and accountability? Could this be the Big One that tarnishes the privatization movement?
Nonprofit Quarterly writes:
“Something is rotten in the world of Los Angeles school board politics.
“Partnerships to Uplift Communities (PUC) charter school network founder and L.A. Unified School District Board member (and, until recently, board president) Refugio Rodriguez faces three felony charges, 25 misdemeanor charges, and conflict-of-interest allegations for laundering money in his school board campaigns in 2014 and 2015. Charges were filed last month by the city’s ethics commission.
“It might seem unusual that a charter school founder (and recent employee) would head the school board for a major city’s public K-12 system, but this was no accident. Rodriguez was part of a slate, “one of four board members who came into power with the strong backing of charter school supporters and who now make up a majority of the seven-member body.” As Rachel Cohen writes for The Intercept, Rodriguez “was backed by the well-heeled charter school movement, which spent more than $2 million to help elect him. This past spring, education reform advocates won three more seats, giving the board a slim pro-charter majority for the first time ever. Rodriguez was then elected board president in July.” After the ethics charges were filed, Rodriguez stepped down as board president, but remains a school board member.
“Then this past Monday, the other shoe dropped and a second investigation was launched. As another Los Angeles Times article explains, “Officials at PUC Schools, a local charter school network, have filed a complaint with the state Fair Political Practices Commission.”
The filing alleges that Rodriguez, who co-founded PUC, ordered the transfer of about $265,000 from PUC to a nonprofit that appeared to be under his control. An additional $20,000 went to a private company in which he might have owned a stake.
““PUC”, according to the Los Angeles Times, “operates 17 schools in Los Angeles and one in Rochester, N.Y. It is a nonprofit that operates under its own board, with L.A. Unified authorizing its local schools individually.”
“Last Friday, PUC accepted the resignation of Rodriguez’s cousin “senior manager Elizabeth Tinajero Melendrez. In PUC records reviewed by the Times, Melendrez is listed as the person who requested eight of the checks Rodriguez authorized, adding up to nearly $188,000.”
“As NPQ has reported previously, conflicts of interest, or even the appearances of them, put the entire organization at risk of losing its credibility. Jacqueline Elliott, the cofounder of PUC, has distanced herself from the scandal in the media, perhaps hoping to maintain the reputation of the charter network with funders. (Elliott is not under any investigation.)
“A large and complicated web of money and influence has been woven under the feet of Los Angeles’ education leaders. Untangling it will certainly cost the district time and credibility, especially since, as noted above, the balance of the school board recently shifted toward charter school supporters, who strongly supported Rodriguez and who now occupy four of the seven board seats.“
NPQ ends hopefully on the note that “Big money and scandal are not, obviously, necessary or even frequent companions to large charter networks.“
As we have seen time and again, “big money” is indeed a necessary and frequent companion of large charter networks. Whether scandal follows depends on the extent to which there is public oversight of public money.
Given the fact that the charter industry controls the school board in Los Angeles, don’t expect LAUSD to clean its own house. Expect it to join the coverup, even if Ref is thrown off the island as a necessary sacrifice.
Will the public wake up to the waste of their tax dollars? Will this scandal be the one that ignites outrage? Should the public pay $1 Million a year for visas for Turkish teachers? Should the public pay charter CEOs over half s Million a year? Should the public pay for executives at virtual charters who collect millions a year in compensation? Should the public turn a blind eye to the millions from hedge fund managers and other financiers and rightwing foundations that want to privatize public education?
When the editorial boards of the nation’s most powerful newspapers—the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times— consistently defend private and unaccountable charters and support privatization, it makes you wonder how big a scandal is necessary before they wake up and defend the public interest? Do they know they are supporting the agenda of ALEC and Betsy DeVos? Do they care?
After two high-profile failures that he acknowledges, and one high-profile failure that he does not acknowledge, Bill Gates is ready to start reforming the schools of America again.
Valerie Strauss reports on his announcement here.
He jumped into school reform in 2000 with his plan to break up the nation’s high schools into small schools. He promised dramatic test score gains. It wasn’t a terrible idea, but it did not get the score gains he wanted, and he gathered the creme de la creme to his digs in Seattle in 2008 to announce that he was abandoning small schools. Valerie says he dumped $650 Million into that, but my own Research says it was $2 Billion.
His next obsession was evaluating teachers by the test scores of their teachers. He partnered with Arne Duncan on that; Arne made it a condition of Race to the Top funding. The ratings were criticized by the American Statistical Association, the National Academy of Education, AERA, and many individual scholars. But Duncan and Gates plowed ahead. The Los Angeles Times and the New York Post published the ratings of individual teachers. Duncan congratulated them for doing so. A teacher in Los Angeles committed suicide after his ratings were published. Gates gave out hundreds of millions to districts that adopted his evaluations. Hillsborough County, Florida, won $100 Million to apply Gates’ ideas about teaching, and the district exhausted its reserves and abandoned the plan. Gates paid up only $80 Million, and the district was left holding the bag.
Now Gates has given up on that idea, although many states are still sticking with it. Thousands of teachers and principals have been fired based on the ideas sold by Gates and Duncan, but that’s not of any interest to him.
The failure that Gates does not yet admit is the Common Core. He paid hundreds of millions for its development and promotion, and he still loves the idea of standardizing education. He refuses to accept that it’s dead man walking.
So what’s his new idea? I’m not really sure, so I will quote Valerie. My hunch is that he is still pushing Common Core, but it is not clear.
He said 85% of the money will go to public schools and the rest to charter schools. Knowing that Gates is a charter zealot, one must wonder what medicine (or poison) he is offering.
“He said most of the new money — about 60 percent — will be used to develop new curriculums and “networks of schools” that work together to identify local problems and solutions, using data to drive “continuous improvement.” He said that over the next several years, about 30 such networks would be supported, though he didn’t describe exactly what they are. The first grants will go to high-needs schools and districts in six to eight states, which went unnamed.
“Though there wasn’t a lot of detail on exactly how the money would be spent, Gates, a believer in using big data to solve problems, repeatedly said foundation grants given to schools as part of this new effort would be driven by data. “Each [school] network will be backed by a team of education experts skilled in continuous improvement, coaching and data collection and analysis,” he said, an emphasis that is bound to worry critics already concerned about the amount of student data already collected and the way it is used for high-stakes decisions.”
What is he up to? Big data? Common Core? Data mining?
I have often said and written that if he really wanted to help children, he would open health clinics in their schools. He would provide doctors to supply good maternal care to pregnant women. He would not tell teachers how to teach or get involved in evaluating teachers or writing curriculum. He would stop pretending he knows how to reform education and do something that is actually needed.
After 17 years of failure, has he learned nothing?
On August 28, 2017, Governor Chris Christie proudly cut the ribbon with an over-sized scissors to mark the opening of the M.E.T.S. Charter School in Newark. He told the students that they would get every opportunity to succeed, and now it was up to them to decide how hard they wanted to work in school.
During Christie’s two terms in office, he has doubled the number of charter schools to 89.
Well, change that to 88.
Mercedes Schneider reports that the brand new charter school, not even two months old, has announced its plans to close by the end of the school year. Starting immediately, it is sending its students in 9th and 10th grades back to the much-maligned Newark Public Schools.
She writes:
“On October 19, 2017, M.E.T.S. sent the parents of its 9th and 10th graders this “special message” that their so-called school-choice “empowerment” was being immediately overridden by the vague determination of M.E.T.S. to immediately send all 9th and 10th graders back to the Newark Public Schools.
Of course, this profound, “special announcement” jolt– delivered by an “interim lead administrator”– is being framed as responsible, caring, and smooth.”
Then follows the text of the “special announcement.”
A story on a New Jersey website provides a few horrifying details about the shabby treatment of the children of Newark, bounced from one charter to another by “reformers:”
“Almost half of the students at the charter school have already been displaced once.
“District officials said 110 of the 140 students in grades 10-12 came from three closed charter schools — Newark Prep Charter School, Paulo Freire Charter School or Merit Prep Charter School — which were shut down by the state last school year for academic problems.“
Hey, Mark Zuckerberg, is this what your $100 million paid for? Constant disruption of children’s lives.
Diane Ravitch's blog 