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Just Published! A Revised Edition of “The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education”

By dianeravitch
June 6, 2016 //
17

I am very pleased to let you know about the publication of a newly revised edition of The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education.

Perhaps you read it when it was first released in 2010. It was big news at the time, because I broke ranks with the conservative think tanks and policymakers who had once been my allies. I spoke out against the misuse of testing and the dangers of privatization. This was unexpected from someone who had been an Assistant Secretary of Education in the administration of President George H. W. Bush, who served as part of three conservative think tanks, and who had written many articles about the “crisis” in American education.

I thought I had made a clean break with the Bush-Obama agenda. But in time I realized that I had not completely escaped the old, failed way of thinking (like a state, tinkering with people’s lives from afar). The book continued my longstanding support for a national curriculum and predicted that it would be smooth sailing now that the culture wars were over. I was wrong again!

In this new revision of the book, I have removed any endorsement for a national curriculum or national standards or national tests, and I explain why. The controversy over the Common Core standards taught me that the U.S. will never have a national curriculum, and furthermore, should never have one.

I also explain why a national curriculum and national examinations will not reduce the achievement gap among different racial and ethnic groups and will not reduce poverty. The advocacy for them–from the same people who support privatization–continues to be an excuse for avoiding the issue of poverty. And I rewrote the chapter on “A Nation at Risk,” showing how it dodged the most important issues in our society, which were economic and social, not educational.

Yes, there is a “crisis” in education, but it is not a crisis of test scores or failing schools. The crisis is caused by policymakers, federal officials, foundations, and business leaders who are imposing failed ideas on the schools. These impositions are hurting students, teachers, principals, communities, and public education itself. They have failed and failed, again and again, but those who support the Bush-Obama agenda of competition, choice, testing, and accountability refuse to re-examine their assumptions. Their inability to recognize their own failure has created disruption (which they admire), turmoil, and massive demoralization among educators.

I hope you will consider reading the book. I think that D&L continues to speak with passion to the terrible and real crisis in American education, a crisis caused by non-educators who want to turn our schools into job-training units, who want to emphasize standardized testing to the detriment of students, educators, and public schools, and who foolishly think that privatization will improve education.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Common Core, Corporate Reform, Curriculum, Education Industry, Privatization, School Choice, Standardized Testing

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

Jonathan Chait: “Michelle Rhee’s Policies Worked”

By dianeravitch
May 31, 2016 //
31

Politico reported this morning on a continuing debate about the “test/and-punish” policies of Michelle Rhee, whose ideas about testing, school closings, and teacher evaluation were reflected in the iniatives of the Obama administration’s Race to the Top: 

“EDU-PINION: Pundits are once again debating the legacy of Michelle Rhee, the controversial former D.C. public schools chancellor who became a national figure in the education reform movement. Citing recent commentary questioning whether Hillary Clinton should embrace Rhee-style reform to the same extent as Obama did, Jonathan Chait of New York magazine pushes back. “Rhee’s policies have worked,” he writes. “If you believe education policy should be designed to increase learning and economic opportunity for low-income children, then Washington, D.C., is a model that should be emulated.” More: http://nym.ag/1sooTbc”

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corporate Reform, District of Columbia, Education Reform

California: The Charter Game is Rigged

By dianeravitch
May 30, 2016 //
63

This article provides an inside view of the charter racket in California.

 

If local districts oppose charter schools, it doesn’t matter. No matter what they say or how well the community organizes, the die is cast. State officials will approve the charter application, regardless of its flaws.

 

Rocketship charter chain wanted to move into the Mt. Diablo district. It had a federal grant to expand, and the chain wouldn’t let community opposition stand in its way. The district did not want Rocketship’s computer-based approach. It did not want a corporate chain whose headquarters was sixty miles away. Neither did the county board of education, which rejected Rocketship.

 

“This is the opposite of local control,” said Nellie Meyer, the superintendent of the Mt. Diablo Unified School District, who called the proposal deeply flawed and was followed by MDUSD’s general counsel, Deborah Cooksey, who said Rocketship had collected its petition signatures “under false pretenses,” by telling people—including parents who were non-English speakers—their kids could get kicked out of school if they didn’t sign.

 

“This is going to be something that will divide our community,” said Gloria Rios, who has lived in the Monument Corridor near the northeastern Bay Area city of Concord for 20 years and has three children in the district’s public schools. “Our children will suffer the consequences, and these funds can be used for the schools we already have.”

 

Rejected by the local community and the county board of education, Rocketship went to the State Board of Education.

 

Slam dunk.

 

“The first indication that the proceedings were tilted to Rocketship came when Cindy Chan, who oversees the California Education Department’s charter school program, summarized Rocketship’s petition and, using the same legal terms that the Mt. Diablo and Contra Costa County Boards used to reject Rocketship, concluded the opposite. Rocketship’s prograns were “sound” and they “will implement it,” she said.

 

“Rocketship’s Cheye Calvo, its chief growth and county engagement officer, then led the board through a powerpoint presentation filled with all the buzzwords of the charter school movement. He talked of closing the “achievement gap.” He said that most “Rocketeers” learn more than one year’s worth of studies every school year. He said the school collected 1,100 petition signatures from district residents. He said the computer labs were “personalized learning,” saying they were “no substitute” for instruction. He called their teachers “purposeful, focused.” He said they rely on data to “assess students” and focus on the “whole child.” He acknowledged that Rocketship has high turnover—losing 20 percent of its faculty annually, but said their “teachers are performance-driven professionals who strive to achieve gap-closing” results. Finally, he put up graphs that compared the test scores from Rocketship’s San Jose schools with students in the Mt. Diablo district, saying they can do better than the traditional public schools.

 

“The opponents, led by the Mt. Diablo School District superintendent and local school board president, said Rocketship’s persistence was an affront to local control. They recounted the major flaws in its curriculum, especially its shallow approach to teaching English to students who did not speak it at home or as a first language. The district’s programs, especially in the Monument Corridor, were appropriately bilingual and award-winning, they said, adding their approach was seen by Rocketship as a liability. They said that Rocketship was not invited by parents to come into the community, but was lured by local real estate developers.

 

“But mostly, the critique was aimed at Rocketship’s overreliance on its test-centered curriculum and its lack of attention to the needs of what was working in a low-income, bilingual community, and one where special education also was a challenge.

 

“We are outraged at Rocketship’s lack of information on special education,” said Cheryl Hansen, president of the Mt. Diablo School District Board. “This is not Rocketship’s first school. Rocketship has not been able to answer special education questions at the school board and county board level.” And returning to their English language instruction, Hansen said, “More than 75 percent of their charter schools show declining achievement in the last four years.”

 

Nothing the district said mattered. Diablo will get a Rocketship charter, despite its poor performance elsewhere, despite its rejection by the local community.

 

This process is a rejection of local control and a rejection of democracy. It serves corporate interests, not children.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Categories California, Charter Schools, Corporate Reform, Democracy, Education Industry, Education Reform

Carol Burris Tries to Correct Campbell Brown, Without Success

By dianeravitch
May 24, 2016 //
26

Carol Burris wrote a post for Valerie Strauss’s “Answer Sheet” blog at the Washington Post, in which she reported the numerous Twitter exchanges among herself, Tom Loveless, and Campbell Brown. Burris and Loveless fruitlessly tried to persuade Brown to retract her inaccurate statement that 2/3 of America’s eighth graders score below grade level.

 

Given an opportunity to respond by Valerie Strauss, Brown made an incomprehensible statement about how she should have referred to grade-level proficiency instead of grade level. Then everything would be okay. Instead of correcting her error, Brown insisted she was under personal attack.

 

Please read the last two sentences of her comments, which are hilarious. Especially the reference to “the age of Donald Trump and Diane Ravitch” (Sic)!! And then there is her laughable claim that those who disagree with her negative comments are profiting from school failure. I wish she–who received $4 million to start her website–would provide evidence for that statement!

 

 

Categories Accountability, Corporate Reform, Education Reform, NAEP, Testing

Kentucky: First to Adopt Common Core, Achievement Gap Widens

By dianeravitch
May 23, 2016 //
26

The Hechinger Report reviews what has happened in Kentucky, the first state to adopt the Common Core standards.

 

In the first year, test scores plummeted. They have started to inch up, but the achievement gap between white and black students has grown larger.

 

“Kentucky stepped into the national spotlight in 2010 when it became the first state to adopt the standards after the Obama administration offered federal money to help pay the costs. (Over 40 other states and the District of Columbia eventually adopted the Common Core.) On Kentucky’s previous state tests, tied to its old standards, over 70 percent of elementary school students scored at a level of “proficiency” or better in both reading and math. Once the state introduced the Common Core-aligned tests in the spring of 2012, that percentage dropped 28 points in reading (to 48 percent) and 33 points in math (to 40 percent), according to the Kentucky Department of Education. Middle and high school students’ scores also dropped.

 

“Of course, we knew that the tougher standards had to be followed up with extra attention to students who were behind,” said Sonja Brookins Santelises, vice president of K-12 policy at the Education Trust.

 

“Scores have been edging up ever since. By spring 2015, 54 percent of Kentucky elementary school students were proficient in the English language arts and 49 percent were proficient in math.

 

“Despite that improvement, within those numbers are hidden divisions that have existed for decades. Breaking the scores down shows that African-American students fare much worse than their white peers.

 

“In spring 2015, in the elementary grades, 33 percent of black students were proficient in reading, versus 58 percent of white students; in math, the breakdown was 31 percent to 52 percent, according to Kentucky Department of Education figures.

 

“And those gaps, in many cases, have widened, according to an analysis of state testing data by The Hechinger Report and the Courier-Journal.”

 

Education Trust, which has received many millions from the Gates Foundation, is one of the strongest supporters of the Common Core standards, which were funded by Gates. Since Education Trust has long been the leading exponent of the view that raising standards and making tests more rigorous would close the achievement gap, the situation in Kentucky is a bit awkward for them.

 

There is still no evidence, despite the billions spent on Common Core, that it raises achievement or closes gaps between races. Common sense would suggest that making tests harder would cause the kids who are already scoring low to score even lower. A student who can’t clear a four-foot bar is going to be in big trouble if you raise the bar to six feet.

 

But Common Core was never related to common sense. It was about a theory, which decreed that all students would one day be college-and-career-ready if school work was more rigorous. And this far, the theory is failing.

Categories Common Core, Corporate Reform, Education Reform, Kentucky, Testing

Mercedes Schneider: What Happened to New Orleans?

By dianeravitch
May 23, 2016 //
5

You may have read that Louisiana’s famous, controversial, ballyhooed Recovery School District has been dissolved. Eleven years after Hurricane Katrina, the district comprised of charter schools is being returned to the districts from which they were drawn. Most are in New Orleans and will be returned to the Orleans Parish School Board.

 

Can it be true? Are the charter champions really giving up their struggle? John White knows. He is the State Commissioner who regularly boasts about the miracle of the RSD. But he is not telling.

 

Michael Klonsky has his doubts. So does Karran Harper Royal.

 

 

Mercedes Schneider has written two versions.

 

Here is a brief overview.

 

Here is her close analysis of the law. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Categories Charter Schools, Corporate Reform, Education Reform, Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), Louisiana, New Orleans

Our Blog Poet on Corporate Reform (with Apologies to Robert Frost)

By dianeravitch
May 21, 2016 //
6

Thanks to Some DAMpoet:

“The Path Not Taken” (apologies to Robert Frost)

Two paths diverged in a public school,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, help and tool
I looked down one, like a teaching fool
To how it lent to the student growth

Then took the other, as much more fair,
And having for taps the better claim
Because it was psycho and wanted power,
And as for empathy and care,
Had torn the students apart for game,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this for the Fates
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two paths diverged in a school, and for Gates,
I took the one of Norman Bates,
And that has made all the difference.

Categories Charter Schools, Common Core, Corporate Reform

Trying to Educate the Education Reformers, Without Success

By dianeravitch
May 20, 2016 //
52

This article is a slightly revised version of the one I posted yesterday afternoon. I wrote the original on my cell phone (as I wrote most posts) while sitting outside a fisher let on Southold, New York. You can always tell the difference between a post written on the cellphone and one written on the computer. The latter has quotes in italics. The former has quotes inside quote marks, “like this.”

I posted it today on Huffington Post because that is where Peter Cunningham posted his lame defense of Campbell Brown.

Read and leave comments, if you are so inclined.

Categories Corporate Reform

Video: How Charter Schools Hurt Public Schools

By dianeravitch
May 19, 2016 //
22

Do you have 3 minutes towatch a video?

 

Watch this graphic video and share it with your friends when they ask you what a charter is.

 

It explains in clear visuals how charters operate and how they hurt public schools by draining away the students chosen by the charter and the resources that previously funded the community’s public school.

 

The he video was commissioned by the Network for Public Education. Help it go viral. Share it. Tweet it. Put it on Facebook.

Categories Budget Cuts, Charter Schools, Class size, Corporate Reform, Education Industry, Funding
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