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Steve Nelson: New York Charters Should Not Be Allowed to Self-Certify Their Teachers

By dianeravitch
September 11, 2017 //
13

Steve Nelson recently retired as headmaster of the Calhoun School, a progressive independent school in Manhattan. He joined the board of the Network for Public Education, to lend his aid to our fight for better public education for all.

Today, he read an article in the New York Times by a charter school teacher, arguing that charter teachers need not be certified. His argument boils down to this: charter teachers do not need certification like public school teachers. Charter teachers are “gtreat” just because they are.

This is Steve Nelson’s response:

“The New York Times is at it again. Today they printed an Op-Ed by Willy Gould, a teacher at Democracy Prep in NYC.

“Willy waxes whiny about having to go through NYS certification, a process he found a great burden. His piece, as you might expect, ultimately argued for charter self-certification. Willy is hardly an innocent victim of bureaucracy. I suspect he is a very willing propagandist, in that his life partner is a director of recruitment for Teach for America.

“Perhaps the NYS certification process is arcane, but charters self-certifying teachers is like having drunk Uncle Fred certify himself as a heart surgeon.

“The “training” provided in most charter schools, most particularly places like Democracy Prep, prepares “teachers” to do unconscionable things to children. They “teach” by call and response. Their disciplinary practices are abusive. I have written about this at length in my book and have documentation directly from a former Democracy Prep teacher, whose heart was broken by their policies and practices.

“Look to Success Academies for another example. I’ve visited and found the pedagogy rote and formulaic. They too use canned gestures and phrases. They too abuse children, as has been well exposed. They are training children, not educating them.

“These charters want to “self-certify” so that they can drill their teachers in these methods, which constitute educational malpractice. They also believe that 2 ½ weeks of training ought to be sufficient, given the rote practices and manuals involved in this kind of teaching. I would be remiss if I failed to note that these young teachers are cheap and easily replaceable, just like all the other cogs in the charter machine: Industrial education with a 21st century technological patina.

“They are hell-bent on the destruction of public education and the creation of an unaccountable patchwork of militaristic training academies, many run for excessive profit.

“I wish the Times would expose this threat to our democratic republic, rather than print propaganda like this.”

Categories Charter Schools, New York, Teachers

Arthur Goldstein: The Myth of NYC’s “Bad Teachers” CORRECTED!

By dianeravitch
September 9, 2017 //
47

Arthur Goldstein is a veteran New York City high school teacher and blogger.

He went slightly ballistic when he read an op-ed article in The New York Times by Marc Steinberg, who became an instant principal during the Bloomberg-Klein regime and left to join the rightwing billionaire Walton Family Foundation, as director of its K-12 program. The Waltons despise public education and spend hundreds of millions backing charters, vouchers, and other modes of privatization. The WFF claims credit for funding one of every four charter schools in the nation. The Waltons individually spend millions on political campaigns to support privatization and undermine the teaching profession. They are avowed enemies of public education, the teaching profession, and collective bargaining.

Sternberg was a golden boy in the Bloomberg-Klein era. He graduated Princeton in 1995, joined Teach for America, picked up an MBA and MA in education at Harvard. Only nine years after finishing college, he was a principal in New York City. He quickly became a Klein favorite and moved up to become Deputy Chancellor in a few short years.

Now, at the pinnacle of rightwing power, with hundreds of millions to dispense every year, what really annoys him is that Mayor de Blasio plans to place hundreds of displaced teachers into classrooms. These are the teachers known as the “Absent Teacher Reserve,” where teachers are assigned when they have been accused of misconduct but are still awaiting a hearing or where they have been placed because their school was closed and they haven’t found a new job. Why haven’t they found a new job? If they are experienced, their salaries are at the high end of the salary scale, and principals don’t want to hire a permanent teacher whose salary is $90,000 instead of two young teachers for $45,000 each.

[ADDITION: Arthur Goldstein wrote at the end of the day to tell me I had confused “the rubber room” and the “Absent Teacher Reserve.” He explained:

[ATR teachers are not rubber room teachers. Rubber room teachers are those who are awaiting hearings. They don’t have rubber rooms anymore, so those teachers are placed in offices or schools. We had one in our school last year. He was given a job running our tutoring room.

[Teachers facing charges are generally not allowed to teach….ATR teachers are often displaced from schools. Some of them have been through hearings. They may have been found guilty on minor charges and fined. None of them have been found unfit. Had they been found unfit they would have been fired.]

As it happens, a friend of mine lost his job when the large school where he taught was closed and replaced by five or six small schools. He has a Ph.D. in history, but that didn’t help him find a new job. This highly educated, highly experienced teacher involuntarily became a permanent substitute, assigned to the Absent Teacher Reserve (ATR), bounced from school to school in a humiliating fashion. Marc Sternberg considers him a “bad teacher,” although he was never given a bad rating as a teacher. Mayor de Blasio wants him to get a permanent job. Sternberg thinks he should be fired.

Arthur Goldstein responds here to Marc Sternberg:

“I’ve never been in the Absent Teacher Reserve (ATR), so I can’t speak from experience here. My experience is limited to being an occasional substitute teacher, not one of my favorite things. I was in my school a few times this summer, and one day a secretary asked me to cover a class. I thought I’d maybe help out, so I asked, “Which class?”

“She told me she needed a teacher for a day, and that there were three classes, two hours each. I told her thanks but no thanks. Six hours is a long time to work as a substitute teacher. It’s far different teaching students you don’t know. A classroom culture takes time to build, but goes a long way.

“Now imagine that you’re an ATR teacher, and your stock in trade has been showing up and teaching whatever to whomever. Physics today, Chinese tomorrow. And then there are the principals, quoted in the press, who say how awful ATR teachers are. I’d only hire 5% of them, maybe, they say. And there are two issues with that.

“Issue number one, of course, is if I were teaching Chinese or physics, I’d be totally incompetent. I know virtually nothing about either. Even if a teacher were to leave me lessons all I could do would be follow instructions, watch the kids, and hope for the best. On this astral plane, I get lessons for subbing well less than half the time I do it. Sometimes I hear that ATRs should simply give lessons in their own subject areas. Mine is ESL, so it would be ludicrous to give such a lesson to native speakers. But even if I were to give one in ELA, imagine the reaction of a group of teenagers when a sub they will likely never see again gives a lesson on a different subject. And even if it’s the same subject, it’s ridiculous to compare the class culture of a regular teacher to one of a sub.

“Issue number two is that administrators, already overworked, now have to do at three to six observations for most teachers. If I were a principal, it would not be a high priority to observe teachers who were just passing through. I’m chapter leader of the most overcrowded and largest school in Queens. My job is nuts (and believe it or not, I’m not complaining). The principal’s job is crazier than mine. There is no time to fairly assess teachers who aren’t around very long. Frankly, I question where principals who cavalierly toss out percentages even find the time to look.

“I wonder if any writers who attack ATRs ever had or saw a substitute teacher. To compare a classroom with a culture, developed over time, with one led by a total stranger the students expect to never see again is preposterous. Watching hedge funded “Families for Excellent Schools” organize a dozen parents to protest the ATR is beyond the pale.

“This year things will be different for a lot of ATR teachers. The new plan is to place a whole lot of them, provisionally at least, in schools. You’d think that the people who bemoaned the cost of the ATR would be jumping for joy. By making teachers, you know, teach, they’re no longer throwing away all that city money they claimed to be so concerned about.

“To the contrary, they’re complaining. What if they’re no good? A parent wrote an op-ed in the Daily News saying she didn’t want her kid taught by them. Some guy on the Walmart payroll wrote virtually the same nonsense in the NY Times. You read in Chalkbeat about principals threatening to observe newly place ATRs to death. What ever happened to innocent until proven guilty, or incompetent, or at least something that merited a conversation?

“Let’s be frank here—it seems that ATR detractors simply want all of them fired without due process. That’s a slippery slope. We are all ATR teachers. It’s just a matter of being in the wrong place at the right time.

“Here’s something you won’t read in the papers—with the help of UFT and my administration, we’ve placed at least four ATR teachers permanently at Francis Lewis High School. Three are in my department, and one is an English teacher working mostly with ELLs. 100% of them are doing fine.

“ATRs need a chance, and Lord knows NYC kids need teachers. Yesterday, I counted 248 oversized classes in my school alone. It’s time for ATR critics to shut up until and unless they discover something worth talking about.”

Wouldn’t it be amazing if the Walton Family Foundation stopped acting as an echo chamber for Donald Trump and Betsy DeVos and began to use its billions to address the real problems of students and schools?

Categories Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, New York City, Privatization, Teachers, Walton Foundation

John Merrow Reviews Laurene P. Jobs’ Timid TV Bash of Our High Schools

By dianeravitch
September 9, 2017 //
7

John Merrow watched the show funded by billionaire Laurene Powell Jobs and presented, monopoly-style, on four major channels simultaneously (NBC, ABC, CBS, and FOX). Why no CNN? Why no MSNBC? Why no QVC? Why no cooking channels? Just asking.

Merrow concluded that the show was lacking any reference to history, e perience, or knowledge (other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, what did you think of the play?)

An excerpt of what might have been:

“As I see it, the program wanted to look bold without criticizing the ‘school reform’ crowd that still controls most of what happens in schools. It could have been bold. It could–and should–have said “Most high schools treat kids like numbers, their scores on standardized tests. That has to change…and here’s how it can happen, how it is happening.” But in order to do that, the narrative would have had to renounce and reject not just Republican education policies of “No Child Left Behind” but also those of the Obama Administration’s “Race to the Top,” widely supported by Democrats for Education Reform and other traditional ‘school reformers.’ Given that Obama’s Education Secretary Arne Duncan now works for Powell Jobs’ Emerson Collective, that wasn’t going to happen.

“Last night’s program was high energy and cute without being daring. For example, it had a clever ‘red carpet’ segment but with teachers as the stars. Lots of cheering, but that was it. That’s sadly timid. Imagine if Melissa Rivers, the host on the red carpet, had asked teachers the question she always asks the Hollywood stars: “You look marvelous. What are you wearing tonight?’

“And picture a male teacher responding: “These old things? I bought these khakis 12 or 13 years ago. I was going to buy a new pair for tonight, but I just spent $380 on basic supplies for my classroom. Oh, and would it be rude of me to ask how much your outfit cost?”

“Imagine a female teacher responding, “What am I wearing? Actually, I’d rather talk about tomorrow’s field trip….I’m taking my kids to the Getty Museum, where they will….. see provocative art and meet contemporary artists. And the next day my students will be on Skype, talking with students in a high school in Paris about climate change. We’ve been measuring the air quality here and sharing the data with them for purposes of comparison and analysis. But I have to charge the kids for the bus to the Museum and I had to ask some wealthy parents to pay for the scientific equipment because the school district has been cutting our instructional budget.”

“And another teacher could have said, “To be honest, I’m happy for this attention, but I can’t help but thinking about the fact that you make 17 or 18 times more money per year than I do.”

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Disruption, Duncan, Arne, Education Industry, Education Reform, Funding, Media, Privatization, Propaganda, Testing

Viola Davis: Don’t Forget the Teachers and Public School That Changed Your Life

By dianeravitch
September 9, 2017 //
13

Viola Davis is one of the most gifted actors of our time. She has won the Tony Award, the Academy Award, and many other awards. She has never forgotten her humble origins and those who helped her rise to the top.

When she received the Tony award in 2010, she gave a powerful speech. She thanked God, her parents, and her teachers at Central Falls High School in Central Falls, Rhode Island. In that order.

I recall leaping to my feet when I heard her speak in 2010, because that was the very time when the city of Central Falls and the state of Rhode Island threatened to fire the entire staff of the High School that Viola Davis attended. To fire them en masse, from the principal to the lunch room staff. Arne Duncan congratulated the state officials for having the “courage” to fire everyone, and President Obama echoed Arne’s insult.

It was also the year of “Waiting for Superman,” and the corporate assault on the public schools went into high gear.

But then there was Viola Davis, thanking her teachers. I learned later that her own sister was a teacher at Central Falls HS.

But…but…but…then, Viola Davis took a leading role in the film “Won’t Back Down,” funded and produced by arch-evangelical billionaire Philip Anschutz (one of the “Superman” funders). “Won’t Back Down” celebrates the parent trigger, telling the fictional story of a parent and a teacher who were so disgusted with their public school that they gathered signatures and flipped the school over to a charter operator. I didn’t get to see the movie because it opened in 2,500 theatres (Anschutz owns the Regal theatre chain) and its receipts were so bad that it closed within a month and disappeared.

Last night, Viol Davis moderated Laurene Powell Jobs’ XQ extravaganza, which asserted that high schools are obsolete and need to be reinvented.

Viola Davis, please watch the speech you gave at the Oscars at 2010.

We need a real champion for public schools.

Trump and DeVos want to eliminate the schools that made you who you are today. Our public schools need your help. They are far from perfect. They need real reform, not a wrecking ball and disruption.

Viola Davis, help us. Join the millions of parents and educators who want better public schools.

The billionaires don’t need your help. We do. They are using you.

Join the Network for Public Education. Help the children and teachers whom the billionaires despise.

Categories Betsy DeVos, Billionaires, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Education Reform, Network for Public Education, Parent trigger, Parents, Privatization, Propaganda, Rhode Island, Students

Stephen Singer Reviews Mrs. Jobs’ Extravaganza on Fixing Schools

By dianeravitch
September 9, 2017 //
16

If you are not yet totally bored by reading about a billionaire’s vision for redesigning the high schools of America, you will enjoy reading veteran teacher Stephen Singer’s take on the vacuous production. Mrs. Jobs must have spent millions to buy an hour on four networks. What could your school have done with that money? Arts classes? Instruments for the school band? A school nurse? Free meals? Reopened the library and hired a librarian?

Instead she produced a vanity show.

Singer decided it was an exercise in desperation. The Reform brand is now owned by Trump and DeVos. Jobs had to find a way to claim that HER reform is different from THEIR reform, although it is not.

“So now that it’s over, what have we learned?

“1) Corporate education reformers are THAT desperate to distance themselves from Donald Trump.

“His wholehearted endorsement of their agenda has done them serious life threatening damage. He has exposed their racist, privileged, corporatist policies for exactly what they are. No amount of celebrities will replace that in the public consciousness.

“2) Rich people cannot set education policy.

“Steve Jobs widow may be a very nice lady. But she has no freaking clue about public education. Nor is she honest enough to engage actual classroom teachers in the discussion to find out.

“Instead of relying on the billionaires of the world, we should tax them. Then we can afford to fully fund our schools and let the people actually in the classroom decide what’s best for the students in their care. Let parents decide. Let school boards decide. Not a privileged tech philanthrocapitalist.

“3) Celebrities will do anything for money.

“The things these Hollywood elite prostitutes did last night to sell snake oil would make porn stars blush. I will never look at any of these people the same. Some of them I knew were true believers because of other projects. Heck! As much as I love Common’s new album, he does rap about Corey Booker – so warning there. Viola Davis is an amazing actress but she was in the parent trigger propaganda film “Won’t Back Down.”

“Being famous doesn’t mean you know a damn thing. We recognize their faces. We associate them with past roles and characters we loved. We think their political stands are authentic when they are often just a pose. We’ve got to stop respecting these people just because they’re celebrities.

“What will the long-term effect of last night’s propaganda be?

“I don’t know.

“I seriously doubt anyone really bought that. But you know what they say – no one ever went broke betting on the stupidity of the public.

“And that’s what this was – a high stakes wager on American gullibility.”

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Education Reform, Privatization

How Can Charters Be Losing Public Support When They Are Allegedly Successful?

By dianeravitch
September 9, 2017 //
51

Jonathan Chait is a long-time charter supporter. He is unhappy that charters are “losing the narrative,” because he is certain that they are a great success.

By “losing the narrative,” I assume he means that the NAACP called for accountability for all charters, and that the pro-choice EdNext poll showed that public support for charters has slipped sharply in only one year, from 51% to 39%.

How could this be if they are a great success? He doesn’t explain.

He is especially upset that the New York Times featured a story about Michigan claiming that Michigan’s charters have been a big disappointment. This followed upon a front-page story in the New York Times describing the chaos of charters in Michigan, where students have many choices but education results (test scores) are down. He calls the Michigan story an example of “anecdotes” lacking factual data.

Michigan seems to be a good place to look at charters because it is Betsy DeVos’s state, the one that has gone overboard for charters and choice, one that has had a quarter-century of charters. She is Secretary of Education and it seems reasonable to assume that she would like to do to the nation what she has done to Michigan, where her money directs education policy.

Well, the most recent Times story points out that charters began in 1994 in Michigan. Michigan was hell-bent on competition and choice as the remedy for inequality. But Michigan schools today are underfunded, and the results have been dismal. In fact, as a report in 2016 by the charter-friendly Education Trust-West showed, the state’s scores on national tests have plummeted:

Michigan’s K-12 system is among the weakest in the country and getting worse. In little more than a decade, Michigan has gone from being a fairly average state in elementary reading and math achievement to the bottom 10 states. It’s a devastating fall. Indeed, new national assessment data suggest Michigan is witnessing systemic decline across the K-12 spectrum. White, black, brown, higher-income, low-income — it doesn’t matter who they are or where they live. …

That seems factual enough.

An article about charters in Arizona would show massive conflicts of interest, nepotism, and self-dealing. An article about Ohio would show pay-for-play charters where the owners give big contributions to Republican officials and get lucrative charter contracts. An article about Florida would show that charter operators are members of the legislature and pad their pockets by passing legislation that takes money from public schools and gives it to their charters. An article about Nevada would show that charters dominate the list of the state’s lowest performing schools. An article about California charters would have to include the state’s long history of scandals and frauds.

There are charter schools that get good test scores. But most of them are known for high attrition rates and excluding students with disabilities, students who don’t speak English, and students who don’t conform.

The issue that Chait never considers is whether it makes sense long term to fund two separate school systems: one that is free to accept the students it wants and free to exclude the ones it doesn’t want, and the other required to accept all students.

We went through a long history of having two separate-and-unequal school systems.

That is what DeVos and Trump want. That is what ALEC wants. That is what every red-state governor wants. That is what many blue-state governors, reliant on campaign contributions from charter-loving financiers, want. That is what the Koch brothers want.

Suppose that the data show that test scores are higher in a racially segregated system. Suppose the data show that test scores are higher when you exclude kids with disabilities, kids who don’t speak English, and students who are slow learners. Suppose the data show that test scores go up when you kick out the kids with low scores or never admit them.

Is that a model for public education. I say it is not. Where will the excluded children go?

It would be wrong for our society no matter what the test scores are. It would be wrong for our nation and for our children.

Sometimes principles matter more than data. And the public is catching on.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Education Reform, Privatization

Missouri: New Push to Expand Charters Despite Lack of Success

By dianeravitch
September 8, 2017 //
10

Missouri legislators are gearing up for a renewed battle to expand charters, despite a lackluster record of existing charters.

http://www.stltoday.com/news/local/govt-and-politics/missouri-lawmakers-prepare-to-spar-again-over-charter-school-expansion/article_6ae01784-c517-5a65-b5ed-8736671d31c9.html?utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter&utm_campaign=user-share

When there was a Democratic governor, charter expansion went nowhere.

Now with a Republican governor, the pro-charter forces are ready to push for more.

One of the major out-of-state lobbying groups is Betsy DeVos’s American Federatiob for Children, which has hired a herd of lobbyists to replace public schools with charters and tax credits for vouchers.

Categories Betsy DeVos, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Failure, Missouri, Privatization

National Education Policy Center: CREDO Overstates Charter Findings and Rankings

By dianeravitch
September 7, 2017 //
9

The National Education Policy Center reviewed CREDO’s latest report on ranking charter organizations and found it wanting.

CREDO Report Fails to Build Upon Prior Research in Creating Charter School Classification System

Key Review Takeaway: Report overstates its findings, ignores relevant literature, and fails to address known methodological issues, suggesting an agenda other than sound policymaking.

NEPC Review: http://nepc.colorado.edu/thinktank/review-CMOs

Report Reviewed: https://credo.stanford.edu/pdfs/CMO FINAL.pdf

Contact:
William J. Mathis: (802) 383-0058, wmathis@sover.net
Gary Miron: (269) 599-7965, gary.miron@wmich.edu

Learn More:

NEPC Resources on Charter Management Organizations

BOULDER, CO (September 7, 2017) – Charter Management Organizations 2017, written by James Woodworth, Margaret Raymond, Chunping Han, Yohannes Negassi, W. Payton Richardson, and Will Snow, and released by Center for Research on Education Outcomes (CREDO), assessed the impact of different types of charter school-operating organizations on student outcomes in 24 states, plus New York City and Washington, D.C. The study finds that students in charter schools display slightly greater gains in performance than their peers in traditional public schools, especially students in charter schools operated by certain types of organizations.

Gary Miron and Christopher Shank of Western Michigan University reviewed the report and found CREDO’s distinctions between organization types to be arbitrary and unsupported by other research in the field. This raises concerns about the practical utility of the CREDO findings.

In addition, Miron and Shank contend that CREDO researchers made several dubious methodological decisions that threaten the validity of the study. A number of these problems have been raised in reviews of prior CREDO studies. Specifically, CREDO studies have been criticized for:

Over-interpreting small effect sizes;

Failing to justify the statistical assumptions underlying the group comparisons made;

Not taking into account or acknowledging the large body of charter school research beyond CREDO’s own work;

Ignoring the limitations inherent in the research approach they have taken, or at least failing to clearly communicate limitations to readers.

These problems have not only gone unaddressed in Charter Management Organizations 2017, but have been compounded by the CREDO researchers’ confusing and illogical charter organization classification system. As a result, the reviewers conclude that the report is of limited value. Policymakers should interpret the report’s general findings about charter school effectiveness with extreme caution, but might find CREDO’s work useful as a tool to understand how specific charter school management organizations perform relative to their peers.

Find the review, by Gary Miron and Christopher Shank, at:
http://nepc.colorado.edu/thinktank/review-CMOs

Find Charter Management Organizations 2017, by James Woodworth, Margaret Raymond, Chunping Han, Yohannes Negassi, W. Payton Richardson, and Will Snow, published by CREDO, at:
https://credo.stanford.edu/pdfs/CMO FINAL.pdf

The National Education Policy Center (NEPC) Think Twice Think Tank Review Project (http://thinktankreview.org) provides the public, policymakers, and the press with timely, academically sound reviews of selected publications. The project is made possible in part by support provided by the Great Lakes Center for Education Research and Practice:

Home

The National Education Policy Center (NEPC), housed at the University of Colorado Boulder School of Education, produces and disseminates high-quality, peer-reviewed research to inform education policy discussions. Visit us at: http://nepc.colorado.edu

Categories Charter Schools, Research

St. Louis: a One-Great School District and the Vultures Who Destroyed It

By dianeravitch
September 7, 2017 //
43

Jeff Bryant of the Education Opportunity Network reports here on the sad story of what happened to public education in St. Louis, once a mecca of public education. The city has elegant public school buildings that were designed for eternity, but now stand shuttered and desolate.

What happened?

Racism. Segregation. White flight. Civic abandonment. Economic decline.

Remedies? The Broad Foundation and the Koch brothers to the rescue (not). Politicians committed to privatization. Business management. School closings, almost entirely in African-American neighborhoods. Incompetent business leadership. Some charter schools with high test scores, most with lower scores than the public schools. Charter scams and scandals. Profiteering. Loss of accreditation. State takeover. A new superintendent, determined to revive public education. Improved scores and graduation rates. Accreditation restored. New public schools with selective admissions, competing with charter schools.

Bryant visits some of the beautiful, abandoned schools and draws lessons from them.

“Many of these schools, like Cleveland High, are grand structures, built a hundred years ago or more, in a style that features intricate brick and stone exteriors with turrets and arches and spacious interiors with vaulted ceilings and sunlit classrooms.

“But the story of St. Louis’s schools is about so much more than the buildings themselves. It’s a story about an American ideal and what and who gutted that ideal.

“It’s also a story that merits important attention today as prominent education policy leaders, such as U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos, contend conversations about education should not even include the subjects of buildings and systems.

“Today’s current thinking that learning can “occur anyplace, anytime” prompts entrepreneurs to create networks of online schools and charter school operators to open schools in retail storefronts and abandoned warehouses.

“But the grand schools St. Louis built for its children caution that the permanency of schools as buildings and institutions is worth defending.

“More than a century ago, St. Louis embarked on a revolution in education that made the city’s schools the jewel of the Midwest and a model for urban school districts around the nation.

“I was recently standing in at one of the places where the revolution started: Elliot School at 4242 Grove St. It was padlocked with a graffiti-covered “For Sale” sign out front. The district closed the school in 2004.”

Footnote: Missouri legislation now debating expansion of charter schools to other districts.

Categories Broad Foundation, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Failure, Privatization, Racism, Segregation, St. Louis

Laura Chapman on the Merger of Two Failing Corporate Reform Groups

By dianeravitch
September 7, 2017 //
6

Laura Chapman writes:

Clayton Christensen’s ideas as interpreted by others for K-12 education are not original but part of the ritual promotion of tech as always better than human judgment and teacher collective bargaining as collaboration gone wrong.

Here is an example of actual disruption, mislabeled “Partnership for Educational Justice.” Begin quote from Politico.

By Caitlin Emma | 09/06/2017 10:00 AM EDT With help from Kimberly Hefling, Mel Leonor and Benjamin Wermund

EXCLUSIVE: GROUPS TEAM UP TO MAKE BIGGER MARK: Two reform groups are teaming up to drive change in state education policy by using the courts. The nonprofit 50CAN is joining forces with the Partnership for Educational Justice, a nonprofit founded by former CNN anchor Campbell Brown, which is known for lawsuits targeting state policies the group says allow ineffective teachers to remain in the classroom. The partnership will allow 50CAN to get involved in litigation for the first time. And it will allow the Partnership’s small staff to draw on 50CAN’s policy expertise to better determine where lawsuits might be successful.

The Partnership for Educational Justice will retain its name and pro bono legal help, but 50CAN will serve as PEJ’s fiduciary board. Both organizations will continue their push against teacher tenure laws in three states – Minnesota, New Jersey and New York – and may look at litigation on other issues, like school funding.

“50CAN has never done any impact litigation work, so we see an opportunity to provide the backend support for their work in a way that helps them go further,” said 50CAN CEO Marc Porter Magee. “I really think the next set of successes in education reform are going to come from these kinds of collaborations.” Ralia Polechronis, executive director of the Partnership for Educational Justice, said “the beauty of a partnership like this is that PEJ can take advantage of the policy expertise that 50CAN has at a very local level.”

The Partnership for Educational Justice has yet to prevail in lawsuits aimed at ending teacher tenure policies in Minnesota, New Jersey or New York. And the organization suffered a setback Monday when the Minnesota Court of Appeals upheld a dismissal of its lawsuit, The Star Tribune reports. Porter Magee said the lawsuits aren’t intended to bring about quick change, but are “long-term commitments.” End Quote.

So there it is, plain as day. “Successes in education reform” is defined as getting rid of teacher tenure laws. All wonderful things in education flow from this “long term commitment” to end collective bargaining among teachers.

Drive down the cost of labor by marketing tech for de-personalized learning, pay the least possible for human teachers. Teachers who will just have to get used to working at low pay without continuing contracts and erratic “on call” schedules.

Notice that teaching is also a profession dominated by women and that this effort, launched by a woman of great privilege, is marketing the legal challenges to teacher unions paid for by the “Partnership for Educational Justice.” So far, the only measure of educational justice is that the anti-union, anti-teacher have failed in the courts.

Campbell Brown and her 50Can friends are supporters of injustice for teachers. Why not just sue every union, including those for first responders, for firefighters, for police officers, for nurses, for all of the workers in civil service positions? Perhaps they will.

For the time being 50CAN will work for union-busting only for teachers.

IN case you did not know, 50CAN is an umbrella organization that enlists state and local foundations to campaign for privately managed charter schools and to close “failing” public schools so charter schools can expand.

In 2016, 50CAN merged with Michelle Rhee’s StudentsFirst to push for charter schools, and the five week wonder “Teach for America” temps passed off as if well prepared teachers, and other schemes to demolish public schools and teacher unions…not merely disrupt them. So these three groups– StudentsFirst, 50Can, and The Partnership for Educational Justice are now working in concert, as partners, to destroy public education and treat teachers as disposable temps as if this agenda is a matter of securing “educational justice.” Let’s call it a good example of Trumpianism with alt-fact labeling of the whole “partnership” effort.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Education Reform, Privatization, Teachers and Teaching
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