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NonProfit Quarterly: The Gates Foundation Has Not Learned from Its Failures

By dianeravitch
June 1, 2016 //
25

Martin Levine, writing in NonProfit Quarterly, reviews the latest statement by the President of the Gates Foundation, Sue Desmond-Hellman, and concludes that the foundation is unwilling to learn from its mistakes.

 

After Bill Gates had invested hundreds of millions of dollars in creating small schools, he abruptly abandoned that idea and moved on, with little reflection.

 

“The foundation’s lessons learned from this experience did not result in any questioning of their core belief that the answer to building a more equitable society would be found within our public schools. They just shifted their focus to increasing the number of charter schools, creating test-based teacher evaluation systems, improving school and student data management, and setting universal standards through the common core curriculum. Each has struggled, and none appear to have been effective.

 

“In 2014, the BMGF supported InBloom, an effort to create a national educational data management system, shut down after parents protested the collection and storage in the cloud of data on their children. Various states withdrew their support, and NPQ reported last September on the failure of one of these Gates-funded initiatives, Empowering Effective Teachers.

 

“Desmond-Hellman has led the foundation as it has invested heavily in the effort to create a national set of learning standards, the Common Core Curriculum. Despite over $300 million in foundation funding, alliances with other large foundations, and strong support from the U.S. Department of Education, the effort has drawn bitter opposition and decreasing support. The strong push that the DoE gave states to implement the Common Core was seen as an unwanted intrusion of federal power into local schools. The use of Common Core to build a testing regimen for students and teachers was seen as disruptive and ineffective. Test data show little impact on bridging the inequity gap in states using Common Core.

 

“Would not an organization that seeks to be a learning organization want to step back and consider whether their core assumptions are on target in light of their difficult experiences? Perhaps, but not the Gates Foundation. Desmond-Hellmann remains “optimistic that all students can thrive when they are held to high standards. And when educators have clear and consistent expectations of what students should be able to do at the end of each year, the bridge to opportunity opens. The Common Core State Standards help set those expectations.” Not a word about the impact of poverty, or the trauma of community violence, or systemic racism as even small considerations.”

 

In a display of smugness, the Gates Foundation blames public resistance to the Common Core on the critics, not on their assumptions about school reform.

 

What the Gates Foundation has thus far demonstrated is the inability to say, “We were wrong.”

 

 

 

Categories Civil Rights, Common Core, Corporate Reform, Education Reform, Equity, Funding, Gates Foundation, Bill Gates, Poverty, Segregation

Jamaal Bowman: The Mis-Education of Shavar Jeffries and DFER

By dianeravitch
May 12, 2016 //
8

 

Jamaal A. Bowman is principal of a middle school in the Bronx in New York City. He knows the needs of his students, and he knows that none of their needs is addressed by annual testing. Thus he takes issue with Shavar Jeffries, the executive director of the pro-charter, pro-testing group called Democrats for Education Reform (DFER) and Education Reform Now (ERN).

 

Bowman notes that Jeffries is sure about what to do to reform education but he never taught school.

 

“What is most damaging about our test and punish system and why Jefferies’ support is baffling, is our continued overemphasis on English Language Arts and Mathematics. As a result, Science, the arts, project based learning, and Montessori classrooms have all been reduced or removed from the public school curriculum. Consequently, aesthetic learning, and other essential skills needed to truly compete in a “21st century global economy” have been greatly compromised.

 

“Again, Mr. Jeffries has never taught a day in his life. If he had he might argue for the importance of early childhood programs in low-income communities. He would know that proficiency on standardized tests in grades 3-8 does not contribute to nor correlate with college success. He might also argue for portfolio-based assessments that facilitate deeper learning and better align with the collaboration, communication, creativity, and critical thinking skills required for college and career success. In the future, I would encourage Mr. Jeffries to speak with real educators on the ground in district public schools. We work with children every day. We can tell him what needs to be done for our children and communities. Annual testing is not even on the list.

 

“We must have real conversations about the most important factor to learning in our schools —teachers and teaching. Let us design a school system anchored in multiple intelligences that nurture the innate brilliance and joy for learning in every child. Let us work together to advocate for a truly individualized, Whole Child approach to schooling. Our goal must be to ensure the health, prosperity, and happiness of every single child, so that we can fulfill the promise of our democracy. Mr. Jefferies and his colleagues at DFER, if they truly want what’s best for our public schools, must expand their thinking about life, learning, and most of all, children.”

Categories Civil Rights, Democrats for Education Reform, Education Reform, Testing

Rev. Barber Threatens Mass Action Unless HB2 Is Repealed

By dianeravitch
April 14, 2016 //
5

Reverend William Barber, who will keynote the Network for Public Education annual conference this weekend in Raleigh, has promised to lead a mass protest unless the despicable HB2 law enacted by the North Carolina legislature. HB2 was hastily passed by the Tea Party-dominated legislature to permit discrimination against LBGT persons.

 

“N.C. NAACP president William Barber says his group will hold a “mass sit-in” at the legislature if a controversial LGBT law isn’t repealed by April 21.

 

“Barber, whose Forward Together Moral Movement has organized numerous Moral Monday protests and acts of civil disobedience, plans to announce more details about the event at a news conference Saturday morning.

 

“We cannot be silent in the face of this race-based, class-based, homophobic and transphobic attack on wage earners, civil rights, and the LGBTQ community,” Barber said in a news release. “Together with our many allies, we will coordinate a campaign of nonviolent direct action along with other forms of nonviolent protest that will instruct our legislators with respect to the rights of all people.”

 

 

Read more here: http://www.thestate.com/news/politics-government/article70765957.html#storylink=cpy

Categories Civil Rights, Education Reform, Network for Public Education

Georgia Governor Vetoes Anti-Gay Bill

By dianeravitch
March 28, 2016 //
16

Governor Nathan Deal responded to corporate threats to pull out of Georgia by vetoing a far-reaching bill that would have made discrimination against gays legal.

 

The bill would have given legal protection to anyone who refused service to a gay couple, and government officials who refused to issue marriage licenses would have been protected. The theory of the bill was that it was intended to protect the religious liberty of people who do not approve of gay marriage or of gays in general. Public services could be withheld, based on religious convictions.

 

Companies such as Disney, Salesforce, and athletic organizations had threatened to withdraw their businesses from Georgia to protect their gay employees. If Apple had any business in Georgia, it would surely have left too, since its CEO Tim Cook is gay. There were even concerns that the Super Bowl might be shifted away from Atlanta. Corporations don’t join these protests because they have gay executives, but because they want to be able to hire the talent they need.

 

There is the additional problem that if states can pass laws saying that people can refuse to serve customers or clients based on their religious principles, then some might choose to discriminate against Catholics, against Jews, against Muslims, or against any group that offends them. Such laws cannot stand and are best not passed, or if passed, quickly vetoed. They will not be upheld by federal courts in any event.

 

 

 

 

Categories Civil Rights, Education Reform, Georgia

Laura Chapman: Who Fights to Keep Testing?

By dianeravitch
March 5, 2016 //
49

Laura Chapman explains the political force that fights to keep high-stakes standardized testing in place. It is puzzling that so many civil rights groups have demanded the retention of high-stakes standardized tests, because it is the children they represent who are labeled, ranked, and rated by tests that are normed on a bell curve and that invariably favor the most advantaged students. If ever there was a socially constructed instrument that does not advance equity or civil rights, it is the standardized test. I wrote about the history of standardized testing in my book Left Back. It is a story in which certain racial and ethnic groups were labeled as “inferior” based on IQ tests; those tests were the direct forerunner of today’s SAT. In fact, the first SAT was created by one of the pioneers of IQ testing, Carl C. Brigham, who was notorious for writing a book about racial differences that were revealed by IQ testing. The most constant correlation found with all standardized tests is between scores and family income: the higher the family income, the higher the test scores are likely to be.

 

 

Chapman writes:

 

This is one reason why the testing absurdities continue and who is supporting them.

 

Well before ESSA was passed, civil rights groups demanded the continuation of NCLB testing requirement. Several letters, with a changing number of signatories, were sent to Congress advocating the retention of NCLB tests.

 

Here are excerpts from the most recent The Advocacy Letter, dated after the passage of ESSA (01/21/16). It comes from The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights. It is addressed to the U.S. Department of Education

 

“ In direct response to the request for information regarding regulations to implement programs under Title I of ESSA, as discussed in more detail below, we encourage the Department to propose regulations regarding (the topics of) accountability, assessment, supplement not supplant, educator equity, data reporting, and inter-district resource equity.”

 

“State Accountability Systems
…in order for disaggregated data to be meaningful, “n-sizes” must be kept low so as not to hide student performance, as had been a practice in the past. It will be important to ensure that regulations reinforce the statutory requirements of identification and intervention in schools in each of the three categories identified in the law—the bottom 5 percent, schools with grad rates below 67 percent and schools with consistently low performing groups of students….

 

Assessments
Regulations to implement the assessment provisions of the law should ensure that the 95 percent participation requirement is enforced so that the performance of all students is taken into account. It must be affirmed that the 1 percent cap on the alternate assessment applies to student participation in the assessment by subject….( and that) in order for disaggregated data to be meaningful, “n-sizes” must be kept low so as not to hide student performance, as had been a practice in the past.” ….”it will be imperative to ensure that assessments meet the highest standards of validity, reliability and comparability and that students with disabilities and English learners are fully included in the assessments with appropriate accommodations. These assessments should not be an excuse to provide vulnerable students with lower quality assessments or obscure disparities in student outcomes.” (last sentence was in bold face type).

 

This letter was signed by The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights (a group with over 200 members) with slightly more than 30 explicitly signing on.

 

Here is the list. Alliance for Excellent Education, American Association of University Women (AAUW), American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC) ,Association of University Centers on Disabilities, Children’s Defense Fund, Council of Parent , Attorneys and Advocates, Disability Rights Education & Defense Fund, Easter Seals, Education Law Center – PA, The Education Trust, Judge David L. Bazelon Center for Mental Health Law, Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, League of United Latin American Citizens, MALDEF, NAACP, NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc., National Association of Councils on Developmental Disabilities, National Center for Learning Disabilities, The National Center for Special Education in Charter Schools, National Council of La Raza ,National Disability Rights Network, National Down Syndrome Congress, National Indian Education Association, National Urban League, National Women’s Law Center, New Leaders, Partners for Each and Every Child, PolicyLink, Southeast Asia Resource Action Center, Stand for Children, TASH, Teach For America, Teach Plus, TNTP, UNCF, United Way Worldwide.

 

It is no small irony that the list includes many charter school supporters and that many charters schools work hard to exclude who have disabilities. It also well known that the Gates and other foundations provide operating and “advocacy” support for some of the groups so they will advance the policy preferences of Billionaires.

Categories Civil Rights, Education Reform, Standardized Testing

Steven Singer: High-Stakes Testing is not a Civil Right

By dianeravitch
January 18, 2016 //
6

Steven Singer, a teacher and blogger in Pennsylvania, takes on the myth that high-stakes testing is a civil rights issue. It is curious that this myth gained any traction, because civil rights groups used to sue to block high-stakes tests because they violated the rights of black children. They argued that the tests were biased and unfair. They argued that it was wrong to label children with such tests.

He writes:

“Standardized testing has never been shown to adequately gauge what students know, especially if the skills being assessed are complex. The only correlation that has been demonstrated consistently is between high test scores and parental wealth. In general, rich kids score well on standardized tests. Poor kids do not.

“Therefore, it is absurd to demand high stakes standardized testing as a means of ensuring students’ civil rights.

“Judging kids based on these sorts of assessments is not the utopia of which Dr. King dreamed. We are not judging them by the content of their character. We’re judging them by the contents of their parents bank accounts.

“There are real things we could be doing to realize racial and economic equality. We could do something about crippling generational poverty that grips more than half of public school students throughout the country. We could be taking steps to stop the worsening segregation of our schools that allows the effects of test-based accountability to disproportionately strike schools serving mostly students of color. We could invest in our neediest children (many of whom are minorities) to provide nutrition, tutoring, counseling, wrap around services, smaller class sizes, and a diverse curriculum including arts and humanities.”

Categories Civil Rights, Race, Testing

Yohuru Williams: Dr. King Believed in Unions

By dianeravitch
January 18, 2016 //
25

On the birthday of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., many politicians will praise his legacy even as they act in ways that betray his ideals.

Yohuru Williams, a professor of history at Fairfield University in Connecticut, reminds us that Dr. King was a strong advocate of labor unions because he understood that they protect the rights of working people by demanding fair pay and safe working conditions.

I was a small speck in the crowd when Dr. King gave his famous “I Have a Dream” speech at the March on Washington in 1963. Most of the chartered buses that brought hundreds of thousands of supporters to hear Dr. King that day were sponsored by labor unions. The theme of the day was “Jobs and Justice.”

Williams writes:

“Teachers, then and now, invoked the legacy of the Civil Rights Movement and the words of Martin Luther King to support a deeper investment in America’s public schools including more robust budgets for instruction, greater interventions for English language learners, and fair compensation. Their appeals for politicians to live up to the spirit of the movement fail to move political leaders like Rahm Emmanuel and Michigan Governor Rick Snyder whose positions on high stakes testing, teachers unions, and insistence on school closures represent the most egregious form of historical amnesia concerning the continuing relevance of Dr. King’s message.”

As the U.S. Supreme Court prepares to decide a case intended to cripple labor unions, we know that Dr. King’s prophetic warnings will be weighed too. Will working people have a chance to get middle-class jobs, or will they be stripped of any job protections, left to work at the whim of faceless corporations and heartless politicians?

Let it not be forgotten why Dr. King was in Memphis when he was murdered. He was there to advocate for the right of sanitation workers to form a union.

Categories Civil Rights, Democracy, Equity, Race, Unions

Jersey Jazzman: John King is the King of Suspensions

By dianeravitch
October 6, 2015 //
13

Jersey Jazzman has dubbed John King, our new Secretary of Education, “the King of Suspensions.”

John King shaped the disciplinary policies at Roxbury Prep in Boston. It has the second highest suspension rate in the state of Massachusetts.

“This isn’t at all a surprise; as the Boston Globe reported in 2014, Roxbury Prep had previously held the top spot with a suspension rate in 2012-13 of nearly 60 percent.

“Later on, Roxbury moved under the umbrella of Uncommon Schools, a charter management organization with schools in New York and New Jersey as well as Massachusetts. John King, consequently, rose to become Managing Director for the entire Uncommon chain. Soon, the high suspension rates that were a hallmark of Roxbury Prep became common in all of Uncommon’s schools…..

“Uncommon Schools, the charter chain John King used to manage, has some of the highest student suspension rates compared to its neighboring schools in three different states.

“High suspension rates are not good for students. You know who says so? The very USDOE John King is now going to lead.”

JJ quotes at length from USDOE policy statements explaining why suspension is harmful to students.

The USDOE is opposed to suspensions.

JJ says, too bad there will be no hearings on King’s appointment because it would be interesting to learn whether King agrees with department policy on suspensions.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Civil Rights, Equity, U.S. Department of Education

Hispanic Group in Texas Disagrees with National Organization About Standardized Testing

By dianeravitch
July 28, 2015 //
5

In recent weeks, as Congress debated different issues in the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, a dozen or more of the national civil rights organizations issued statements supporting annual testing and opposing opting out of the tests.

But some city and state locals disagree with their national representatives. In Seattle, the NAACP local took issue with the pro-testing statement and issued its own strongly critical statement about the damage done by standardized testing. The Seattle chapter opposes high-stakes testing and supports opting out.

In Texas, the largest group affiliated with LULAC, the Latino organization, opposed the national organization’s stance.

The national League of United Latin American Citizens supports high-stakes testing, but their Texas chapter does not.

“LULAC began in Texas, and Texas LULAC has consistently been against high-stakes testing,” says University of Texas professor Angela Valenzuela. “The national organizations do not at all reflect the studied opinion of LULAC in our state.”

Valenzuela is a former education committee chair for the group’s Texas chapter and was also part of the Latino-led resistance to standardized testing in the 1990s, when the state first began denying high school diplomas to students for failing state tests. That policy prompted a lawsuit from Dr. Hector P. Garcia’s American GI Forum on behalf of poor students of color almost 20 years before affluent Anglo parents rallied state lawmakers to their cause.

Valenzuela’s own children opted out of tests in the early 2000s, and she knows of other Latino students who avoided the tests out of protest, without a large movement behind them, and graduated anyway. But challenging schools and facing threats from officials is a lot to ask of parents who may be poor or don’t speak English.

Anecdotally, opt-out activists say their growing movement is getting less white, but it will always be easier for affluent parents to take part.

[Ruth] Kravetz, who helped organize this year’s opt-out drive in Houston, says black or Latino parents account for about 70 percent of those she knows opted out this year. It’s “crazy talk,” she says, to call the testing in Houston’s schools today a civil right; she expects next year’s opt-out effort will draw even more working-class parents as more people realize it’s their best chance at change.

In June, Community Voices for Public Education joined dozens of civil rights and education groups in a letter highlighting the broad local support for opting out. “High-stakes standardized tests, rather than reducing the opportunity gap, have been used to rank, sort, label, and punish Black and Latino students, and recent immigrants to this country,” they wrote.

“Had you talked to me three years ago, I would’ve said there’s no way that opting out is something that can make things better. I would say we have to change minds and change laws. But at this point, it looks like they’re going to be over-testing our children until all our schools are closed,” Kravetz says. “You can’t operate like testing people is going to make them not be poor.”

Categories Civil Rights, Standardized Testing, Texas

Barbara Madeloni: A Bittersweet Victory on Accountability

By dianeravitch
July 19, 2015 //
39

Barbara Madeloni, the president of the Massachusetts Teachers Association, comments here about the “bittersweet victory” associated with Senate passage of the Every Child Achieves Act.

She writes:

“The bill continues yearly testing in grades three through eight and once in high school, but leaves it to states to determine how to use those tests for school accountability. It removes the authority of the federal government to demand that teacher evaluations be connected to student test scores and gives more authority to states to determine specific standards and curriculum.

“In giving more authority to states, the bill loosens constraints on how funds will be spent, though fortunately the Senate rejected a voucher amendment. The Senate measure now goes to a conference committee, where senators and members of the House will mesh their bills and develop a final piece of legislation. If approved, that bill will have to be signed or vetoed by President Barack Obama. If Obama vetoes it, Congress would have to override the veto for the bill to become law.

“It is a bittersweet victory to applaud the power of school accountability going back to the states, should this bill become law. While it would allow us to organize locally and make the demands we want for our students and our schools, others have noted that it would mean we have 50 battles to fight instead of one – and that some states are especially weak in their readiness to fight.” 

Unfortunately the bill does nothing to alleviate poverty and racism, which are the root causes of low test scores. Instead, many of the senators wanted to push some of the most punitive aspects of testing that were embedded in George W. Bush’s failed No Child Left Behind act. The most outspoken proponents of the Bush accountability, unfortunately, were Democrats, who have bought into the fiction that closing schools and firing teachers will help poor children.

That was not the vision of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act when it was passed in 1965. At that time, President Lyndon Johnson and the Congress recognized that poverty hurts children and gets in the way of academic success. Today’s Democrats think that testing and accountability are necessary to combat poverty; they have bought the NCLB rationale hook, line, and sinker.

Madeloni continues:

“Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren co-sponsored an amendment that 41 Democrats supported to essentially continue the most punitive aspects of No Child Left Behind, as the current version of the ESEA is known. The amendment proposed a change in what student test scores are used for accountability, from all students to subgroups, but retained the use of test scores as a basis for labeling and punishing schools. In my conversation with Warren, her concern for traditionally underserved students, which is noble, was distorted by a seeming unwillingness to accept what so many teachers and parents are saying: that the use of testing for accountability is narrow-minded, undermines meaningful teaching and learning, and shifts the focus from the real issues our students and communities face.

“The amendment failed and was not included in the final bill, but Senator Warren’s vote against the final bill was based in large measure on her concerns for what assurances there would be that funds would go where they are most needed. Fellow Massachusetts Senator Edward Markey joined Warren in supporting the amendment, but voted in favor of the final bill. In the end, Warren was one of only three Democrats to vote against the ECAA.

“Now that the Senate has passed the ECAA, we need to talk about resources and about the larger issues of race and class. But we need to acknowledge that our efforts must focus on Democrats as well as Republicans. Indeed, some of the worst excesses of corporate “reform” have been supported by elected officials who call themselves our allies.”

Categories Civil Rights, Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), NCLB (No Child Left Behind), Standardized Testing
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