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The Death of a Great High School

By dianeravitch
November 13, 2016 //
5

Jelani Cobb graduated from Jamaica High School, as did many other distinguished Americans. In a powerful story that appeared in The New Yorker, Cobb tells the history of Jamaica High School as a paradigm for the clash between race and reform. Jamaica High School was long considered one of the best high schools in New York City in the 1980s. As the city adopted reform after reform, the school went from an integrated model to a highly segregated school; it enrolled growing numbers of students who were learning English or had disabilities. Other schools lured away top-achieving students. When the Bloomberg-Klein regime took over, Jamaica’s days were numbered. The staff and the local community fought for the survival of the school, but Bloomberg-Klein gloried in closing large high schools and stuffing them with multiple small schools with multiple principals. The school that once enrolled over 3,000 students held its last graduation ceremony in 2014, with a graduating class of only 24 students. This is a very sad story about the abandonment of schools that suffered from the reformer conceit that low scores=bad schools. Jamaica in its final years was serving the neediest of the city’s students; it was put to death by the authorities.

Cobb writes:

Underscoring the indignities that attended the school’s last days was a difficult irony: for much of its time, Jamaica was a gemstone of the city’s public-education system. In 1981, the schools chancellor, Frank Macchiarola, decided to take on the additional role of an interim high-school principal, in order to better appreciate the daily demands of school administration. He chose Jamaica, and was roundly criticized for picking such an easy school to lead. Four years later, the U.S. Department of Education named it one of the most outstanding public secondary schools in the nation. Alumni include Stephen Jay Gould, Attorney General John Mitchell, Representative Sheila Jackson Lee, Walter O’Malley, Paul Bowles, and three winners of the Pulitzer Prize: Gunther Schuller, Art Buchwald, and Alan Dugan. Bob Beamon, who set a world record for the long jump in the 1968 Olympics, graduated with the class of ’65. The school’s closure felt less like the shuttering of a perennial emblem of stagnation than like the erasure of a once great institution that had somehow ceased to be so.

Jamaica had become an institution of the type that has vexed city policymakers and educators: one charged with serving a majority-minority student body, most of whose members qualified as poor, and whose record was defined by chronic underachievement and academic failure. Even so, word of the school’s closure angered students and their families, the community, and alumni. I was among them—I graduated with the class of ’87—and for me, as for many former students, the school was a figment of recollection, frozen in its academic glory. George Vecsey, the former Times sports columnist and a member of the class of ’56, accused Joel Klein, Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s schools chancellor, of “cooking the books,” to make schools slated for closure appear worse than they were, and compared the Department of Education’s closure policies to the nihilism of Pol Pot. Vecsey later apologized for having slighted the suffering of Cambodia, but he held to his contention that Klein ruled by dictatorial fiat. He wrote, in a blog, “The city destroyed a piece of history because of its own failure.”

Categories Accountability, Closing schools, Corporate Reform, High School Graduation, Klein, Joel, New York City

Ladd and Fiske Assess England’s Radical Experiment in School Autonomy

By dianeravitch
November 11, 2016 //
3

Helen Ladd, Professor of Public Policy and Economics at Duke University, and her husband Edward Fiske, former education editor of the New York Times, have written a comprehensive review of England’s radical experiment in school autonomy. The United Kingdom has been thrashing around in search of a managerial solution to school problems. It introduced a national curriculum for Schools in England, Wales, Northern Ireland in 1988, defining what every student should know in every grade, soon followed by national tests. (Wales soon delinked from the national curriculum.) Dissatisfied by the results, England is now embarking rapidly on radical decentralization of its schools.

What began as a limited program under a Labor government seeking “third way” reforms to encourage wealthy investors to take charge of some secondary schools has mushroomed under a Conservative government into a full-blown effort to devolve governmental responsibility for most of the nation’s state-run schools.

In their study released by the National Center for the Study of Privatization in Education at Teachers College, Ladd and Fiske assess the prospects and downsides of this approach.

“While the growth of charter schools from two in Minnesota in 1992 to nearly 7,000 across the country today has been stunning, this transformation of the educational landscape in the United States pales in comparison to what has happened in nearly half the time in England.

“Authorized by legislation in 2000 and officially launched in 2002, academies are England’s answer to charter schools. They are former state schools funded by the central government and granted significant operational autonomy. There are now 5,302 academies. Free schools, introduced in 2010, are academies by another name, created by teachers, charities, parents, or religious groups. There are now 304 free schools. The former Conservative prime minister David Cameron and his education secretary, Michael Gove, pledged in March 2016 to make all of England’s 20,000 government-funded schools into academies or free schools to give parents more choice and school administrators more freedom. Their target date for this complete transformation was 2022. Cameron’s successor, Theresa May, and her education secretary, Justine Greening, have so far stood behind this pledge.

“England’s academies and free schools stand out for not only their rapid growth but also their substantial autonomy. While oversubscribed charter schools in the United States must employ lotteries for admission, academies and free schools have control over whom they admit. The result, according to an analysis summarized by The Guardian, has been significant segregation of students by class as well as academic achievement.

“In “England Confronts the Limits of School Autonomy,” Helen F. Ladd and Edward B. Fiske provide a detailed analysis of the evolution of school choice in England and address the obstacles in the way of full implementation of Conservative Party ambitions as well as its likely drawbacks. Ladd, a professor of economics and public policy at Duke University, and Fiske, a former education editor at The New York Times, ground their working paper in interviews conducted last spring in London with 24 government officials, school leaders, and researchers; and in numerous government reports and academic studies. The result is a rich depiction of dramatic change and a cautionary statement about the impact of full school independence on community input and student interests.”

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corporate Reform, Corporate Reformers, Inequality, International, Privatization, Testing

Emily Talmadge: Reform’s New Buzzword: “Social Emotional Learning”

By dianeravitch
November 9, 2016 //
16

Whenever you listen to the rhetoric of “reformers,” you must always bear in mind that what they mean is actually the opposite of what they say. “Reform,” for example, does not mean that they want to improve public schools; it means “privatization” and the elimination of public schools.

Emily Talmade, teacher-blogger in Maine, says that we must be wary of the new reform focus on “social emotional learning.” They do not mean that teachers and parents should pay attention to children’s ability to work and play well with others, or to their feelings of adequacy and self-worth.

Behind the new buzzwords is a renewed effort to push competency based education (CBE) and computer-based teaching and assessment. The leaders of the new reform movement hail from the tech sector–Gates, Zuckerberg, Reed Hastings, Pearson, and more–and they see a future of computer-driven education, teaching and testing at all times, measuring and ranking students.

Can they be stopped? Emily doesn’t say how, but the answer lies with local school boards who are informed and who refuse to jump on their bandwagon. Maybe that is why ALEC is so determined to strip power from local school boards and transfer it to governors and state control. After all, it is easier to buy 50 governors than to persuade nearly 15,000 local school boards. The answer also lies with informed parents. Be aware of what your state is doing; refuse to allow your child to be subject to data mining and CBE. Opt out. Send a message: Not with my child.

Categories Competency Based Education, Corporate Reform, Gates Foundation, Bill Gates, Online Education

Connecticut: Malloy Administration Approves Phony “Relay Graduate School of Education”

By dianeravitch
November 3, 2016 //
10

The Relay “Graduate School of Education” is a hoax, as the article below argues. It is not a graduate school at all. Its location is a post office box. It has no scholars, no researchers, no faculty other than charter teachers. It is a trade school for teaching tricks of test-taking and how to control black and brown children and teach them to obey orders without questioning.

Despite the opposition of legitimate teacher education professionals, the Malloy administration in Connecticut has approved the Relay “Graduate School of Education” to offer faux degrees. This undermines the teaching profession and demeans legitimate degrees and certification.

Before the decision was announced by the Malloy administration, Jonathan Pelto cited a recent article by Professor Lauren Anderson, chair of the Education Department at the prestigious Connecticut College.

Anderson warns the public and state officials not to approve the “Relay Graduate School of Education,” which is a program that trains teachers how to raise test scores and maintain no-excuses discipline. Its Bible is Doug Lemov’s “Teach Like a Champion.” Relay is selling itself as an answer to the shortage of well-prepared teachers of color, but its rigid and limited methods do not deliver on that promise, nor do they produce well-prepared teachers of any color.

She wrote that the Relay proposal

is being framed as a solution to minority teacher recruitment and an engine for ameliorating educational inequities. In fact, Relay is no panacea for our pipeline problems, and instead represents the tip of an approaching iceberg that threatens the education of the state’s most under-served students and sells short the very teachers to whom we owe the best preparation, support, working conditions, and compensation available.

WHAT IS RELAY GRADUATE SCHOOL OF EDUCATION?

First, it is not a graduate school in any recognizable sense. It is a charter-style network of independent teacher preparation programs created by the leaders of three prominent charter school chains (Uncommon Schools, KIPP, and Achievement First), primarily as a means to bypass traditional teacher education. Relay has recently set up shop in New Haven, where it has reportedly enrolled a cohort of candidates who will finish its one-year program this academic year, despite the fact that it has not received approval as a preparation provider.

Its “campus” address is a PO Box; its offices are co-located in a partner charter school; its faculty are unnamed and not required to hold degrees comparable to teacher educators elsewhere; and its nationwide curriculum has been critiqued for emphasizing methods that are reductive and control-oriented, rather than research-based and conducive to critical thinking.

In short, Relay would lower the bar for teacher preparation in Connecticut, increasing the likelihood that students in districts such as Hartford, Bridgeport, and New Haven would receive teachers who have not met the same standards of preparation as those in more affluent districts.

WHAT IS THE HARM IN APPROVING RELAY?

For candidates in targeted districts, the harm would come from providing a program that doesn’t honor their potential as professionals and would not be deemed acceptable preparation for those certified and employed elsewhere in the state.

For students in targeted districts, the harm would come from providing their teachers with preparation that is based on a reductive, behaviorist view of teaching and learning, and that emphasizes the kind of techniques shown to narrow the curriculum and adversely affect students’ socio-emotional development. For targeted districts and the communities they serve, the harm would come from partnering with a provider that has no credible research base to support its claims to effectiveness or to indicate that it will improve minority teachers’ retention in urban schools. For the public, the harm would come from establishing a pathway into teaching that is not accountable to the profession or state in ways that most other programs are.

To call Relay a “graduate school of education” is an insult to legitimate graduate schools of education. It is a hoax. It has no campus; it has no research; it has no scholars; it has no library. Its methods are behaviorist and limited. It should be sold as a trade school for future charter teachers, not a “graduate school of education.” It undermines the education profession by giving fake credentials to ill-trained “teachers” and sending them to high-needs schools where children deserve well-qualified, well-prepared teachers.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Connecticut, Corporate Reform, Education Industry, Equity, Hoax, Teacher Education

Big Money Assault in San Diego School Board Elections

By dianeravitch
November 2, 2016 //
10

I hope you are not tiring of these stories about the intrusion of big money from corporate giants and billionaires into local school board races. Their goal is always the same: privatization and charter schools.

Here is the latest, from San Diego:

Who’s Behind the Big Money Takeover of San Diego County Schools?

It is the same story everywhere: The subversion of democracy as titans pour hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars into local contests. In the past, a citizen who wanted to serve on the local board could spend $10,000, $15,000, and run a respectable campaign.

But when billionaires like the Waltons, Bloomberg, Hastings, Arnold, Gates, etc, make your election their priority, they steal our democracy.

We need campaign finance laws that limit how much can be spent to foil the billionaires and DFER.

Categories Billionaires, California, Charter Schools, Corporate Reform

New Study: Chicago Public Schools Outperform Charter Schools

By dianeravitch
November 2, 2016 //
20

A new study demonstrates that charter schools in Chicago get worse results than Chicago’s much-maligned public schools. Here is the abstract of the study by Myron Orfield and Thomas Luce:

“Charter schools have become the cornerstone of school reform in Chicago and in many other large cities. Enrollments in Chicago charters increased by more than ten times between 2000 and 2014 and, with strong support from the current mayor and his administration, the system continues to grow. Indeed, although state law limits charter schools in Chicago to 75 schools, proponents have used a loophole that allows multiple campuses for some charters to bypass the limit and there are now more than 140 individual charter campuses in Chicago. This study uses comprehensive data for the 2012-13 and 2013-14 school years to show that, after controlling for the mix of students and challenges faced by individual schools, Chicago’s charter schools underperform their traditional counterparts in most measurable ways. Reading and math pass rates, reading and math growth rates, graduation rates, and average ACT scores (in one of the two years) are lower in charters all else equal, than in traditional neighborhood schools. The results for the two years also imply that the gap between charters and traditionals widened in the second year for most of the measures. The findings are strengthened by the fact that self-selection by parents and students into the charter system biases the results in favor of charter schools.”

Categories Charter Schools, Chicago, Corporate Reform, Failure

Georgia: Signs that State Takeover Amendment is in Trouble

By dianeravitch
October 22, 2016 //
1

Maureen Downey of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution writes that there are signs that Governor Nathan Deal’s attempt to change the state constitution to allow state takeovers of low-scoring schools and turn them over to charter corporations is running into a groundswell of unexpected opposition.

The public is waking up.

The ALEC privatization crowd thought they could dupe the people of Georgia into giving up local control of their schools. The amendment is deceptively worded as a way to “improve” schools when it is a bald-faced power grab by the charter industry. It is one of the ironies of our peculiar time that conservatives and rightwingers now fight to eliminate democracy and life cal control. This makes it easier to turn public money over to corporate charter chains.

This is the deceptive language of the amendment:

“Shall the Constitution of Georgia be amended to allow the state to intervene in chronically failing public schools in order to improve student performance?

( ) Yes

( ) No”

Deal calls it the “Opportunity School District,” when he really means the State Takeover District. It is modeled on Tennessee’s failed Achievement School District. There is zero evidence that a state takeover district improves test scores (“student performance”).

As Downey explains, the popular resistance is increasingly visible.

Here are one of the four signs that Downey identifies:

“This morning former Atlanta Mayor Andy Young and baseball legend Hank Aaron held a press event urging Georgians to reject the OSD. “We have to defeat this, we have to vote ‘no’ on Amendment 1,” said Aaron. Young took issue with Deal’s description of schools and students as failing. “Self-esteem is the basis of good education,” said Young. “To take that self-esteem away from families, teachers, principals and boards of education locally and turn it over to a corporate-oriented state structure is a sin and a shame and we cannot allow it.”

A great statement by an icon of the civil rights movement.

Categories Charter Schools, Civil Rights, Corporate Reform, Democracy, Fraud, Georgia

A Graphic Explanation of Why Schools Can’t Operate Like Businesses

By dianeravitch
October 15, 2016 //
24

Thanks to Michael Paul Goldenberg for sending this nifty graphic explanation of why schools cant operate like businesses, opening and closing, fighting for competitive advantage, and celebrating the few that survive competition.

No one mourns when the local shoe store fails and relocates or goes into a different line of work. But think of the disruption and anguish when the doors to the local school are closed, and it is replaced by a corporate charter school.

Categories Closing schools, Corporate Reform, Education Industry, Privatization

What Pasi Sahlberg Said in Birmingham, Alabama, Last Night

By dianeravitch
October 12, 2016 //
13

Pasi Sahlberg, the great Finnish educator, was in Birmingham, Alabama, last night, where he patiently explained how to make schools great. There is a summary of his advice here.

Thursday night (tomorrow), he will speak at Wellesley College at Alumnae Hall at 7:30 pm.

He will be introduced by Howard Gardner.

I will be there too because I endowed the lecture series to make sure there was one great campus that sought out the best minds in education and presented them each year in a public event. The series is called the Diane Silvers Ravitch 1960 Lecture on Education and the Common Good.

Come early, as parking will be limited. Chelsea Clinton is conducting a rally for her mother (class of 1969) from 3-5. I wish she would stay to hear Pasi’s lecture. She would learn a lot.

Categories Alabama, Charter Schools, Corporate Reform, International, Massachusetts

Laura Chapman: Why You Should Opt Out of PARCC

By dianeravitch
October 11, 2016 //
13

Laura Chapman, retired arts educator and researcher, offers reasons why you should opt out of PARCC:

“Here is one more reason to be a very serious and unrelenting critic of PARCC.

It has “teamed up” with greatschools.org, a website that rates schools and leases data for commercial exploitation (about which I have commented before).

MONDAY, DECEMBER 7, 2015 ( from http://www.parcconline.org/news-and-video/382-greatschools-parcc-launch-new-parent-tool)

“PARCC states have partnered with GreatSchools to launch the GreatKids Test Guide for Parents, a new resource to assist parents in helping their children prepare academically for college and careers, and for the next grade level. “…”The Guide gives … information about what a child needs to know at each grade level and how parents can help their children succeed academically, based on how their child performed on the PARCC assessment.”

“About GreatSchools. Founded in 1998, GreatSchools is a national nonpartisan nonprofit helping millions of parents find quality schools, support great learning and guide their kids to great futures. GreatSchools offers thousands of articles, videos and worksheets to help parents support their children’s learning. Last year, more than 59 million unique visitors accessed the GreatSchools website including more than half of all US families with school-age children. Headquartered in Oakland, California, GreatSchools partners with cities and states across the country.“
Do not be deceived by sweet talk about “partnerships.” This non-profit is a sophisticated and well-funded system for gathering test scores and other information reported by schools, converting this information into ratings, and selling the data and ratings. The website literally sells ads and licenses for access to test scores and other data on schools—public, private, and charter—with expansions planned for pre-school and daycare-centers.

This national data hog is funded by billionaire foundations unfriendly to public schools. The logos of the Gates, Walton, Robertson, and Arnold Foundations are prominently displayed. A list of 19 other supporters includes the Friedman Foundation for Educational Choice, Bradley Foundation, Goldman Sachs Gives, New Schools Venture Fund among others. All of these supporters want to make public schools an artifact from the past.

“Here is what GreatSchools does with the test scores, now including PARCC scores.

“The overall GreatSchools Rating is an average of how well students at a given school do on each grade and subject test. For each test, ratings are assigned based on how well students perform relative to all other students in the state, and these ratings are averaged into an overall rating of 1 to 10.”

“The distribution of the GreatSchools Rating in a given state looks like a bell curve, with higher numbers of schools getting ratings in the “average” category, and fewer schools getting ratings in the “above average” or “below average” categories.”

The ratings are based on the manipulation of data classified in one of three ways: As a proficiency measure, a growth measure (including discredited VAM), and a rating for “how well schools are preparing students for success in college and beyond” (high school graduation rate, SAT, ACT scores). The system is rigged so most schools are rated average or below.

Click to access New_Ratings_Methodology_Report.pdf

The fraudulent rating system gives the notoriously test-driven Success Academy in NY the highest possible rating here

http://www.greatschools.org/about/ratings.page

This non-profit is the front for a mega for-profit operation serving big box stores, and multiple industries— financial, real estate, charter expansions, testing and text publishers. It is designed to capture the interest of media outlets and merchandizers as “partners,” co-opt entire school districts and federal agencies into “partnerships.” The gigantic “partner” basket includes Walmart, Target, Yale Center for Social Emotional Intelligence, Survey Monkey, Forbes, US Department of Housing and Urban Development, Dunn & Bradstreet, US Department of Education, Goldman Sachs, and more

JUST A SAMPLING:

CONTENT 321 Fast Draw; Algonquin Books; Ashoka Foundation; Bay Citizen; California Watch; College Board; Common Sense Media; DK Publishing; Film Sight Productions; IDEO; Learning Ally; Learning and Leadership Center; Mind/Shift; National Center for Learning Disabilities; Parenting.com; Reading Rockets; Scholastic; Treasure Bay, Inc.; UCLA Department of Psychology; US Department of Education; Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence.

COMMUNITY AND FAMILY ENGAGEMENT Families Empowered; Hillsborough County Public Schools, Iridescent Learning; KIPP; Magnet Schools of America; Miami Dade County Public Schools; Rocketship Education; Stand Up for Students; Step Up for Students; US Department of Housing and Urban Development

RESEARCH Gallup Education; SurveyMonkey (see also Licensees); SRI; Rockman Et Al.

MARKETING & OUTBOUND MEDIA Care2.com; Common Sense Media; Forbes; NBC News Education; The Bully Project; Univision.

LICENSEES Apartments.com, Brain Pop; Digital Map Products; Dunn & Bradstreet; Fannie Mae; Maponics; Michael & Susan Dell Foundation; Military Child Education Coalition; Move Sales, Inc.; National Association of Charter School Authorizers; National Housing Trust; Onboard Informatics; Policy Map; Realtors Property Resource; SurveyMonkey; Target, US Department of Housing and Urban Development; Walmart; WolfNet; Zillow.

What do these “partners get” for signing on? At minimum, it is the opportunity to become an advertiser or license holder who can gain access to your student’s test scores—for a fee. You can find some of the ad rates here. https://selfserve.rubiconproject.com/advertise3/products/29619

At the bottom of the rate page you can see that these “packages” are offered via the Rubicon Project. Click on Rubicon Project to see what this “project “is. The Rubicon Project is the name for a company that scoops all of greatschool’s data and ratings and comments from users and puts them in Rubicon’s “Advertising Automation Cloud.”

This data warehousing operation “brings buyers and sellers closer together on a robust advertising technology platform. One of the largest cloud and Big Data computing systems in the world, the Automation Cloud leverages over 50,000 algorithms and analyzes billions of data points in real-time to deliver the best results for sellers and buyers,” with 300 real-time data-driven decisions per transaction.”

Follow the money. The billionaire foundations gather the test scores and other information about schools. They are notoriously in favor of market-based education. The scores are translated into a their dubious but “custom” rating scheme with direct links to the great red-lining guru, Zillow (who has paid for a high end license). The data and ratings migrate out from the greatschools website to Rubicon. For a fee, Rubicon facilitates rapid and custom access to the data and ratings from their “cloud,” (a data warehouse), promising their clients they can “Efficiently find your target audience;” “build brand awareness,” “acquire new customers, and re-engage existing customers.”

https://selfserve.rubiconproject.com/advertise3/products/29619

I hope that this information gives parents another reason to opt out of the tests and especially PARCC. Greatschools has test data from every state, has a map of district boundaries searchable by zipcodes, and it is seeking data well beyond that required by state or federal regulation such as such as schools safety, cleanliness, and parent involvement. Next up: Scores for school climate and social-emotional learning, and “customer satisfaction surveys.”

Remember, taxpayers made PARCC possible. Time to say bye, bye and good riddance.

Categories Corporate Reform, Data and Data Mining, Education Industry, Testing
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