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John Kuhn: Corporate Reformers Try to Take Back Social Media from Supporters of Public Schools

By dianeravitch
February 28, 2016 //
23

John Kuhn is superintendent of the Perrin-Whitt school district in Texas. He first emerged as a national figure in the fight for better education for all children when he spoke at the national Save Our Schools march in 2011 and gave a rousing speech.

 

 

 

 

 

Education reformers have worked tirelessly for years to advance their preferred education policy ideas using a panoply of tactics, with mixed results.
As an example, reformers have steeped future big-city superintendents in #edreformthink through the (*cough-unaccredited-cough*) Broad Academy and then deployed them to try out their ideas in the real-life laboratory of various unlucky school districts. (Update: a refreshingly large number of these superintendents have gone on to transform urban education upend large school systems with no tangible positive results before being run out of town on a rail.)

 
Another effort aimed at advancing pro-reform policy has been the embedding of Teach for America alumni in congressional offices as staffers. Then again, there is the tried-and-true tactic of having a corporation-funded organization coordinate the development and introduction of model ed reform legislation nationwide. Or, if you’re a fan of the straightforward approach, you will appreciate efforts to just expend a ton of money to force the implementation of anointed ideas, ala Gates and Zuckerberg.

 
Back in the early years of the Education Wars (when Diane Ravitch was on Twitter and her blog didn’t exist yet) it became apparent that reformers—despite enjoying the generous fiscal backing of wealthy individuals and organizations and the political backing of influential officeholders from both parties—were losing the public relations battle, particularly on social media. Scrappy teacher-bloggers and Twitter-ers were running them ragged with asymmetrical PR warfare, and they knew it. So began in earnest the development of a Marvel Universe of pro-reform social media personalities and collectives.

 
In this short article, I will highlight a few of these actors—this is a back-of-an-envelope map of one corner of the reform echo chamber, if you will—and I will let you know what they’ve been up to this week. I will also let you know where each of these voices stands on a recent high-profile story, the infamous Success Academy video.

 
THE 74

 
Apparently named for the average IQ of its contributors (just kidding guys; I’m sure you’re all Ivy League), the 74 is the brainchild of Campbell Brown and hosts pro-reform Twitterfolk like Dmitri Mehlhorn and Chris Stewart. The 74 mixes pro-reform op-eds with a dab of more newsy education pieces (like one about a campaign to prevent student suicide, for example), apparently in an attempt to come across as neutral-ish. This is window-dressing, of course, as demonstrated by the fact that the top four articles on the page as of this writing are: Nevada parents hoping vouchers survive a court challenge; Chris Stewart trumpeting a slew of news stories about non-Success-Academy teachers being mean to students; a pretty balanced story on the effect of good teachers on students’ happiness; and a story about Trump University that spends one paragraph rapping the scourge of for-profit college scams before getting to “the real story” by indulging in a ten-paragraph call for the next President to “hold all colleges accountable.”

 
Position on the SA video: “but other schools do it too” and “stop hating”.

 
EDUCATION POST

 
Another slick effort to appear neutral and above the fray by offering a “better conversation” (for discriminating education connoisseurs, one would imagine), Education Post actually peddles orthodox ed reform ideas and is, per Mercedes Schneider, funded by Broad, Walton, and Bloomberg—not exactly the Triumvirate of Educational Neutrality. Contributors include Chris Stewart (again!), Eric Lerum, and Chris Barbic. Top articles today are one about a teacher acknowledging her own biases, one arguing that what TFA haters really hate are charter schools, one telling teachers to stop using lack of parent involvement as an excuse not to teach kids well, and a thoughtful article about the tensions of being in the education politics fight and having to choose where to send your own kids to school.

 
Position on the SA video: the video’s a bummer, but Success Academy is a target because it is so much better and everyone is jealous

 
EDUCATION NEXT and EDEXCELLENCE.NET

 
These are Fordham Institute/Michael Petrilli/Chester Finn vehicles. Instead of pretending to publish objective journalism ala The 74 and Education Post, these sites pretend to publish objective research. The duo are a vehicle for motivated scholarship, of the faux variety. Like the above online journals, they are really just political devices.

 
Top stories today at Education Next are: a story about how family background influences achievement and what schools can do about it, a story about how schools of choice expand opportunity for urban students, an article contending that teacher quality is the most important in-school factor, a paean to the Common Core arguing that it forced states that rejected CCSS to adopt tougher standards, a story on desegregation and a story about academic competitions. This carousel of stories—most of them related to the 50th anniversary of James Coleman’s report “Equality of Educational Opportunity” in an apparent effort to re-cast his report as a validation of reform orthodoxies rather than a call for equity—is followed by a reformer response to film critic David Denby’s New Yorker article calling out reformers for bashing teachers. Then comes an article by Petrilli arguing that NCLB spawned a bunch of smarter school policies. (Thanks, NCLB!) Oh, then there’s a call to end required union contributions.

 
Position on the SA video: conspicuously hard to find. A search of the site reveals the last mention of “Eva Moskowitz” to be in 2014, when the site chirped, “Talk about a ‘Tough Liberal!” and said charters like hers shouldn’t be criticized for lacking diversity. A search for “Success Academy” finally takes us to a 2/15/2016 post that summarizes a Vox.com article by Libby Nelson (with the telling quote “The video is undeniably upsetting. But…”) and then goes on to point to Education Post’s limp defense of poor wittle Success Academy.

 
THIS WEEK IN EDUCATION

 
Alexander Russo’s blog also pretends to be above the fray but really isn’t. However, unlike the others, Russo does directly criticize reformers on a fairly regular basis, probably because he fancies himself a gadfly with an independent streak. In reality, his pro-reform bias is evident to me, and maybe also to the casual reader. Where The 74 and Education Post dab on the makeup of objective reporting, Russo slathers it. He does a good enough job of posting too-numerous-to-count news pieces and fun/thought-provoking pieces that it effectively softens the blow of his bias and almost camouflages his running campaign to provide journalistic cover for the Broads and Waltons of the world. One blogger put it succinctly in saying that Russo “works the refs” for reform. He’s the guy in the bleachers who reliably highlights bad calls that go against his team and often ignores bad calls against the other team, unless they’re so painfully obvious that he feels he has to grudgingly acknowledge them. But at least he tells funny stories between being a total homer.
Top stories today are a video of Obama with Civil Rights leaders, a story on Detroit teachers trying to bring attention to their schools, a collection of news articles on various issues including how school safety issues are tracked and Common Core exam glitches. Where Russo shines as a reform ally is in his careful selection of others’ opinions that he broadcasts. The first quote one comes to today is from The 74, where Matt Barnum tries valiantly to jack the mojo of David Denby (the New Yorker film critic referred to above, who had the audacity to critique public school critics in his article called Stop Humiliating Teachers) by contending that what Denby wants is really the same thing as what the reformers want. (Really, Matt? Read the article again.) Russo earns a few objectivity points for the hilarious note from a CPS parent that says his sick daughter is feeling better and “eager to get back to school in hopes of achieving a high score on…Standardized Tests…given this year to insure that Private Corporations continue to receive huge and profitable contracts…” Russo has a soft spot for snark.

 
Position on the SA video: straddles the fence—SA didn’t respond well to the reporting and NYT didn’t report thoughtfully. Russo shared the video and followed up with SA’s response video and, later, a GIF of the original video.

 
DROPOUT NATION

 
RiShawn is a trench fighter for reform. Where Russo has snark, Biddle has meanness, and he has criticized people he calls “traditionalists” pretty relentlessly. If you think about the unending terrible treatment of poor American children of color, meanness is probably a proper response, though I almost always disagree with Biddle’s prescriptions for fixing the problem. I think it comes down to this: I believe we should force ourselves to fulfill the constitutional promises that we will provide a quality public education for all American children, and Biddle appears to believe that we never will fulfill that promise because we are helplessly racist, so we might as well give up on it and find salvation for poor city kids in school choice. It’s an honest disagreement—I personally think what Biddle and other reformers advocate is akin to the biblical tale of Esau trading his birthright for a bowl of soup. In this case, the birthright is the promise that the US and state governments will by constitutional obligation–prosecutable in court—ensure that all children are adequately educated; the bowl of soup is we can trust that chains of charters started by white-collar guys who want to make money will fill the void and educate everybody better than the government has or will.

 
It wouldn’t do me any good to argue with RiShawn because he’s as convinced that public schools are hopeless for minority children as I am convinced that charter schools are designed from the outset to keep most of those kids out. To use Michael Petrilli’s eternally useful phrase, they are meant to help the “strivers”. Of course, that leaves the non-strivers somewhere. Probably concentrated in whatever remains of the public school system.
Look, I understand “educate all children” is idealistic, and I understand that we are a nation that has never gotten past racial prejudice. I also understand that giving up the hill here—abandoning the notion that “educating all children” is what we SHOULD BE ABOUT and COULD BE ABOUT IF WE HAD THE COURAGE TO DO SO—giving up that fight ensures that we will never come back to the audacious promise of public education as the protector and perfecter of a diverse democracy. We will settle for less. Exponentially less. Bowl of soup instead of birthright less. We will settle for Taco Bell as a schooling model, we will give up courts for choice, and it won’t be any better—it will be the same or worse, but the upside of it—the maximum best it could ever be—won’t even PRETEND to be that it offers a quality education for ALL kids. We will forever abandon the notion that that was even ever possible in the United States of America, and that to me is intolerably depressing. The open arms concept of free and equal education for all will be lost to the archives and we will be stuck with a few lifeboat schools and a bunch of bobbing heads in the water.

 
But today I agree with RiShawn Biddle, because he has broken with Peter Cunningham from Education Post and Campbell Brown from The 74, in that he won’t countenance the notion that Success Academy merits a defense. In fact, his lead articles today are “Success Academy Merits No Defense” and “No Excuses for Moskowitz”. Biddle’s condemnation of Success Academy practices like the one captured in the video have resulted in harsh name-calling and criticism from fellow reformers like Michael Petrilli. And Biddle didn’t come late to the party. He wrote “The Hole Eva Moskowitz Keeps Digging” long before the video emerged, after John Merrow’s piece on disciplinary practices at SA emerged months ago.

 
I’m not naïve enough to think that RiShawn Biddle and I agree on much besides the fact that SA is wrong when it comes to its disciplinary treatment of children. Our views on equitable school funding are probably aligned, and maybe some other tangential issues too. But when it comes to the speculative promise of school choice versus the literal promise of school constitutional guarantees, there is a stark difference in where we two find hope for the nation’s future. Nevertheless, I have to pause and recognize that among all the reformers, Biddle is apparently the only one brave enough to call out what Success Academy and its defenders are doing wrong. How can we expect Success Academy to change its ways when its defenders rush forth with enabling op-eds? Where other reformers are scrambling to defend a model, Biddle is stepping up to defend children. If Eva Moskowitz is Ethan Couch, then Campbell Brown and Peter Cunningham are his mother taking him to Mexico to avoid punishment. I’m glad RiShawn Biddle is clearly saying this isn’t okay.

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

NBC News: Students Fall Behind in Virtual Charters; For-Profits Rip Off Taxpayers

By dianeravitch
February 26, 2016 //
23

NBC News has caught on to one of the biggest hoaxes of the corporate reform movement: the failure of virtual charter schools. About 200,000 students are currently enrolled in virtual charters. The attrition rates are high, but the industry spends taxpayer dollars constantly recruiting to increase their numbers. It is good to see the mainstream media catching on to what critics of virtual charters have known for a few years.

 

Some sharp eyed person in their news department learned about the CREDO study last fall that showed that students enrolled in these stay-at-home schools lose ground academically. In the case of math, they lose a full year of instruction for every year they are enrolled. In reading, they also lose ground, as much as 72 days.

 

The CREDO study says:

 

The first set of analyses examines the academic growth of online charter students compared to the matched VCRs made up of students who attended brick-and-mortar district-run schools. These schools are typically referred to as traditional public schools (TPS). Compared to their VCRs in the TPS, online charter students have much weaker growth overall. Across all tested students in online charters, the typical academic gains for math are -0.25 standard deviations (equivalent to 180 fewer days of learning) and -0.10 (equivalent to 72 fewer days) for reading (see Figure 3). This means that compared to their twin attending TPS, the sizes of the coefficients leave little doubt attending an online charter school leads to lessened academic growth for the average student. (p. 23).

 

As the report from NBC shows, some “reformers” are growing disillusioned with virtual charters, but others keep making excuses and say that the bad guys in the industry are anomalies. This is an excuse we are getting used to.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Online Learning, Privatization

Emily Talmage: The Phony Fables That Rephormers Tell

By dianeravitch
February 25, 2016 //
13

Emily Talmage teaches and blogs in Maine. She explains in this post how she developed the desire to teach, how she thought she would “save” poor kids from their “bad” teachers, how she learned her limitations, and how she learned through experience that the corporate reform narrative is a self-serving lie.

 

She writes:

 

 

 
When I was in college, I heard a riveting story.

 

Actually, you probably heard it too.

 

It went like this: American public schools are failing. Teachers have abysmally low expectations of their students. They are getting paid to spend their time in rubber rooms! This is the civil rights issue of our time.

 

I was indignant. And I needed a job.

 

And so, like so many college students of my generation, I went straight from college into a classroom in the Bronx as a New York City Teaching Fellow.

 

At first, I was elated. I had always wanted to teach elementary school, but it wasn’t really what you did if you went to a fancy and expensive college like I did. But now I had a way.

 

I was, of course, rudely awakened. You probably know this story too: young new teacher discovers she is utterly unprepared to manage a group of unruly students. She cries a lot.

 

I had taken a position teaching children with the “emotional disturbance” label in New York City’s district for students with severe special needs, and could do little more than hang on by my fingernails for the first year. They fought, they swore, and they saw me for what I was: a white girl from Maine who had no clue what she was doing. My experienced colleagues – the ones who were supposed be lazy and incompetent – offered to help, but I was a terrible listener. I was too busy searching for the story I had been told and trying the play the role I had been assigned – even though nothing fit.

 

By the end of my third year, I had grown humbler, but was no less gullible. This time, I fell for the second part of the story above – the part that tells how charter schools are the answer to all these failing public schools. You know, the Waiting for Superman story.

 

And so I left my position for one at a relatively new charter school in Brooklyn that modeled itself after the KIPP and Success Academy “No Excuses” regime.

 

You can read the details here, but the short version is that I was horrified. We snapped at the kids like dogs and obsessed over standardized test scores like they were cancer diagnoses. My previous school had been challenging, but it was full of warmth. There was no warmth at this school. No kindness. Panic filled our classrooms and hearts.

 

I have been fooled twice. Shame on me. But it won’t happen again. I hear, now, the stories reformers tell for what they are. Disrespect, hubris, empty jargon. PR.

 

Read on. Emily’s eyes were opened. And now she won’t be fooled again.

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

The Death of a Community Public School in North Carolina–Killed by a Charter and Budget Cuts

By dianeravitch
February 22, 2016 //
29

When I read this story, my eyes filled with tears. The community public school in Waynesville, North Carolina, is closing. Not because it is a failing school, but because of budget cuts by the state legislature, and because of a charter school launched by a very rich man in Oregon. You read that right: in Oregon! The public school lost nearly a million dollars to the new charter, and it couldn’t survive.

 

This is the price of privatization. The death of public schools. It is not an accident. This is what ALEC and StudentsFirst and DFER (Democrats for Education Reform) and the Gates Foundation and the Walton Family Foundation and the John and Laura Arnold Foundation and the Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation and the Dell Foundation and the Koch brothers and Michael Bloomberg want.

 

 

At one elementary school in the North Carolina mountains two-thirds of the students qualify for free or reduced lunch.

 

That would make you think that the school would not fare well on the state’s A-F grading system where poverty seems a reliable predictor of the arbitrary grade—97 percent of schools receiving a D or F have more than 50 percent of their students who are from low-income families.

 

But thanks to the efforts of teachers and parents and the community, the rural school managed a C grade in the latest state report card rankings and did even better as far as the N.C. Arts Council is concerned, earning an A+ for art-based education reform.

 

Clearly something is working at this low-income school, Central Elementary in Waynesville, but not for long.

 

The Haywood County School Board voted Monday night to close the school thanks to state budget cuts and the opening of a local charter school that has siphoned students and almost a million dollars in state funding from the local system.

 

Parents and other supporters of the school will appeal to legislators in Raleigh, but no one thinks they have much of a chance.

 

Most likely Central Elementary will close and the parents of the 250 students who are learning there this year will be reassigned and the community will lose a vital resource, a place where one parent said “…students from the whole socio-economic spectrum learn from the dedicated teachers and from and with one another.”

 

The proponents of the school privatization always claim that it’s all about parental choice and that competition is good.

 

But this is not a failing school that is closing, it’s one where students are doing ok despite the hurdles they face. And it is a school that parents and the community work hard to support.

 

Here is a local article explaining the financial situation of the schools, the budget cuts, and the effect of losing students to a charter, online schooling, and homeschooling. Read the comments. You will be reminded why some people home school; anyone can do it. No education needed. It is a way to preserve your child from the influence of “those children” and to preserve the parents’ religious views.

 

Once the privatizers and profiteers took control of the North Carolina legislature and governorship, schools like Central Elementary became just so much collateral damage. Its fate was decided by the privatization zealots in Raleigh and by a rich man in Oregon.

 

If the people of Haywood County don’t like what is happening, they should elect someone else to represent them.

 

 

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, North Carolina, Privatization

Leo Casey: Tracking Attrition Patterns at Eva Moskowitz’s Success Academy Charters

By dianeravitch
February 21, 2016 //
35

Leo Casey, director of the Albert Shanker Institute in Washington, D.C., has pulled together New York state data on the Success Academy charter chain in New York City.

 

When the New York Times revealed the existence of a “Got to Go” list of students, Moskowitz replied that this was an “anomaly.”

 

When the New York Times published a video of a teacher chastising and humbling a first-grader for not answering a question correctly, Moskowitz said this was an “anomaly.”

 

Critics have often said that Moskowitz gets good test results by pushing out students who might pull down scores and by not replacing them with new students (“backfilling”). Casey reviews the data. Tables are in the link.

 

Casey writes:

 

The general pattern is unmistakable. In the early grades, student enrollment in Success Academy Charter Schools increases: Whatever losses the schools may suffer through student attrition are more than compensated for by the enrollment of new students. After Grade 2, however, the enrollment numbers begin to decline and do so continuously through the later grades. There are only small variations in this essential pattern among the different Success Academy Charter Schools.

 

In New York State, high stakes standardized exams begin at the end of Grade 3.

 

Success Academy Charter Schools has made a conscious decision to not fill seats opened up by student attrition in the upper grades of its schools. And this is a deliberate, network-wide practice, as evidenced by Success Academy’s own website. When one compares the grades in each Success Academy Charter School, as listed on its website, with the grades in each school, as listed on the website of the New York City Charter School Center, one finds that the Charter School Center lists all the grades currently being provided under the school’s charter, while Success Academy lists many fewer grades – only those in which it is willing to enroll students.

 

In effect, the Success Academy website has the equivalent of a “do not apply” sign posted for each unlisted grade.

 

Moskowitz has forcefully defended the policy of not accepting new students beyond grade 3, saying it would disrupt the culture SA created.

 

Moskowitz also insists that her schools should not have to accept students from district schools who have received what she considers to be an inadequate education. Even if one accepted her questionable characterization of education in district schools, it is worth noting that she is insisting on a “one way” street: district schools should have to enroll the students who leave Success Academy Charter Schools, but Success Academy schools should not have to enroll students who leave district schools.

 

Casey notes that while few other charter operators are willing to criticize SA, the leader of Democracy Prep has called her out for refusing to fill empty seats in the upper grades as students are winnowed out.

 

Recent developments may well put Moskowitz’s defense of Success Academy’s discipline and enrollment policies to the test. The authorizer of the Success Academy charter schools, the SUNY Charter School Institute, has announced that it is launching an investigation into the disciplinary practices at Success Academy. And the U.S. Education Department’s Office of Civil Rights, responding to a complaint by the New York City Public Advocate, the Legal Aid Society, and a group of former and current Success Academy parents, will investigate claims that Success Academy schools illegally discriminate against students with special needs. The reaction to last week’s video publication by the New York Times can only increase the scrutiny of Success Academy Charter Schools.

 

Most national studies find that charters do not outperform public schools, yet their foundational claim is based on the assertion that they get higher scores. If the veil is ripped away from practices that produce higher scores–by selective winnowing of students–this would be a major blow to the charters’ drive to expand. Casey predicts that a major political battle over the future of public schools and charter schools is in the making.

 

 

 

Categories Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Testing

DFER Blasts Sanders for Failure to Support Charter Schools

By dianeravitch
February 19, 2016 //
39

Shavar Jeffries ran unsuccessfully for mayor of Newark; he was beaten by Ras Baraka. He is now executive director of the Democrats for Education Reform, the organization founded by hedge fund managers to promote the privatization of public education.

 

Jeffries published an article in the New York Daily News attacking Bernie Sanders for his opposition to charter schools, although he supported them in the past. He makes false claims about the “success” of charter schools, never mentioning that they impose militaristic discipline on black children and that national studies have repeatedly shown that they are no more “successful” than public schools unless they cherrypick their students and kick out the hardest to educate.

 

Jeffries throws a compliment to Hillary for backing off her accurate statement that charter schools don’t enroll the most challenging students.

 

And, biggest insult of all, he implies that Martin Luther King Jr. has something in common with the Wall Street predators that are promoting charter schools. Of course, we know they work in Wall Street because they wake up every morning wondering what they can do to help the poor children of America. And their conclusion: destroy public education. That’ll do it.

Categories Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, DFER, Education Industry, Privatization

Jeff Bryant: The Lesson of the Walk-Ins: Americans Are NOT Giving Up on Public Schools

By dianeravitch
February 18, 2016 //
22

Earlier this week, I posted an interview with Peter Cunningham of Education Post, who said that more and more Americans are abandoning public schools for privately managed charters (which may hire uncertified teachers and generally do not get higher test scores than public schools), for homeschooling (where the quality of their education depends directly on the quality of their parents’ education), and vouchers (where children get public money to attend religious schools where many teachers are uncertified and the curriculum may be based on the Bible).

 

Jeff Bryant sees the walk-ins that occurred yesterday as a response from many thousands of parents and students who support their public schools.

 

He writes:

 

In Boston, the walk-in took place at City Hall where hundreds gathered outside to protest an estimated $50 million budget shortfall for the city’s schools. “At the proposed level, district schools could lose teachers, after-school programs, and elective classes like languages and arts,” according to a local news account. The crowd presented to the mayor a list of demands and a petition with more than 3,500 signatures, then proceeded to march to the State House to present their demands to the governor too.

 

As part of the protest, ninth graders at one school, according to the Boston Globe, wrote a letter to the mayor complaining of the budget cuts and “asking that you come to our school and explain to our students why you are letting this happen.”

 

School budget cuts were a point of contention in Chicago as well, where walk-in protests occurred at hundreds of schools across the city. “We’re united as a community, “Chicago Teachers Union vide president Jesse Sharkey tells a local reporter. “The cuts are unacceptable.”

 

Parents and students joined the teachers at many of the Chicago events, according to another local reporter, and voiced their disapproval of school budget that have swollen class sizes and eliminated course offerings. “Not every school is able to get what they want for their students,” one teacher explains. “I hope they get exactly what they’re asking for,” a parent chimes in.

 

Jeff cites the statement by the Alliance to Reclaim Our Schools, which coordinated the walk-ins:

 

The future of public education in the United States stands at a critical crossroad.

 

Over the past two decades, a web of billionaire advocates, national foundations, policy institutes, and local and federal decision-makers have worked to dismantle public education and promote a top-down, market-based approach to school reform.

 

Under the guise of civil rights advocacy, this approach has targeted low-income, urban African-American, Latino and immigrant communities, while excluding them from the reform process. The reforms have sown distrust and division among parents and teachers, and utterly failed to improve educational outcomes for children. These attacks are racist and must be stopped.

 

The time is ripe for a new education movement that provides students throughout the United States, regardless of their race or income, with equitably resourced neighborhood schools.

 

Today, I stand with the Alliance to Reclaim Our Schools to demand and fight for:

 

Full, fair funding for neighborhood-based community schools that provide students with quality in-school supports and wraparound services
Charter accountability and transparency and an end to state takeovers of low-performing schools and districts
Positive discipline policies and an end to zero-tolerance
Full and equitable funding for all public schools
Racial justice and equity in our schools and communities.
There is too much at stake to be silent in this moment. I commit to fighting until we bend the political will in this country so that we create public schools where parents want to send their kids, students are engaged and educators want to work; the schools all our children deserve.

 

Members of the public are invited to sign the AROS statement.

 

Jeff writes:

 

Views can differ on whether there is “a web” of collaborating groups – as AROS contends – directing education policy, and whether or not the intent is to “dismantle” public schools, but it’s very clear the thousands of people involved in this week’s walk-ins feel they have little choice in what’s happening to their schools.

 

They did not choose to chronically under fund their schools and send public money somewhere else. Someone else chose to do that.

 

While some parents may find charter schools and vouchers can provide useful workarounds for them, that doesn’t correct the chronic under funding of the entire system and the unwillingness of political leaders to take that problem on. Participants in this week’s walk-ins see the hard, bitter truth of that. Good for them.

 

Anyone who denies that there is a “web” of collaborating groups has not been paying attention. Start with Gates, Broad, Walton, Dell, Helmsley, the Fisher Family, Teach for America, ALEC, the Koch brothers, Stand for Children, Democrats for Education Reform, Families for Excellent Schools—or save some time by reviewing the list of those groups that are funded by the Walton Family Foundation. There is a very large part of the web.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Categories Budget Cuts, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Funding, Privatization

Laura Chapman: Will Britain Take One of Our Reformers? Why Not Take Them All?

By dianeravitch
February 17, 2016 //
17

Retired arts educator Laura Chapman posted the following comment:

 

 

According to The Telegraph (newspaper), Nicky Morgan, the education secretary, is looking at bringing in an expert from overseas to be the next chief inspector of English schools to replace Sir Michael Wilshaw. The Telegraph says that the favorite candidates from the US are:
1. Dave Levin, co-founder of the KIPP network of more than 180 “high-performing” charter schools, and (hold your hat)
2. Doug Lemov, head of a chain of charter schools in New York, and (hold your hat)
3. Eva Moskowitz, chief executive of Success Academy Charter Schools in New York, and (hold your hat)
4. Joel Klein, who as chancellor of the New York schools district took on the teaching unions.
“Mrs. Morgan believes the new chief inspector needs a track record of pushing through education reforms against resistance from unions, whether experience was garnered in this country or abroad.”

Downing Street reportedly supports the international search for a “radically different leader” of Ofsted (Office for Standards in Education, Children’s Services and Skills).
http://reports.ofsted.gov.uk/inspection-reports/find-inspection-report/provider/ ..

Christine Blower, the general secretary of the National Union of Teachers said; “If the government is scouring the world for a new head of Ofsted, they should look to Finland.”… “It is universally agreed to have an excellent education system characterized by co-operation, collaboration and trust – a far cry from the Charter School ethos of the US.”

Lucy Powell, Labour’s shadow education secretary, said: “We should be looking to the best examples internationally…to improve school standards.“

“The key ingredient to raising standards is enough high quality teachers in our classrooms…. Ministers are failing to recruit and retain enough teachers, threatening our future economic success and the prospects of young people in the global education race.”
Source http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/educationnews/12156541/Ministers-looking-abroad-for-new-chief-inspector-of-schools.html

That all narrative sounds familiar, but the plot thickens.

 

Major sub-contractors for Ofsted inspections of educational programs, including the Tribal Group, lost contracts in May 2014. Tribal Group’s stock dropped. But by 2015, Tribal Group had been reinstated with a contract as Inspector for southern England and London. Why should this factoid be of interest?

1. Tribal Group is listed on the London Stock Exchange. It is a leading provider of technology products and training services to education, and it operates internationally, including the US.

 

2. The Gates Foundation is funding an “Inspectorate” system for teacher preparation based on the Tribal Group’s method but with criteria supplied by the National Center for Teacher Quality. This 33 month 2015 grant to “Teacher Prep Inspection — US, Inc. is for $3,248,182.

3. Among the “experts” enlisted to shape and approve the criteria for the National Center for Teacher Quality’s ratings (published in US News and World Report) and now to be part of the Gates-funded Inspectorate are:

Sir Michael Barber, Chief Education Advisor, for Pearson International—publisher of texts, tests K-12, and teacher education, including on-line learning.

Doug Lemov, Managing Director of “The Taxonomy of Effective Teaching Practices” project for Uncommon (charter) Schools, trustee of the New York Charter Schools Association and of KIPP Tech Valley Charter School. Author of Teach Like a Champion: 49 Techniques that Put Students on the Path to College. Lemov is known for propagating the extremely authoritarian teaching techniques used in Eva Moskowitz’s Success Academy charter schools.

Merideth Liben, Director of Literacy and English Language Arts for Student Achievement Partners. Liben worked on the Common Core State Standards for English Language Arts and developed tools for analyzing text “complexity,” mathematical formulas and rules for selecting texts that comply with the Common Core State Standards (CCSS). Recall that that the Gates Foundation financed those standards. Only eight states are using the Common Core as written, nineteen have “re-branded” them.” More on the technical panel at NCTQ at http://www.nctq.org/teacherPrep/review2014/ourApproach/whoWeAre/technicalPanel.jsp#318

4. If you work in teacher education, you should know that Inspections have already been piloted in the US. In 2013, Dr. Edward Crowe, co-founder of Teacher Preparation Analytics, managed the first pilots of the inspection process, modeled on the Tribal Group’s British inspection system. Crowe continues this work, leading the Gates-funded work Teacher Prep Inspection-US (TPI-US).

Here is an overview of the US Inspectorate process, also showing the clear connection to criteria from NCTQ, notorious for their prescriptions that pretend to be based on research, http://www.iacte.net/files/Inspectorate%20Model%20Overview%201.31.14.docx

5. In the US Inspectorate— US (TPI-US)— higher education faculty in teacher education are excluded from the process except for being subjected to extensive surveillance and being “cooperative” in providing information as requested. Inspectors fault programs that fail to track the test scores produced by their graduates and have the equivalent of customer satisfaction reports from their graduates and employers of their graduates (among much else).

 

You can get an idea of the process used in the 2013 inspections here. https://secure.aacte.org/apps/rl/res_get.php?fid=835&ref=rl

Categories Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Reform

MIT Study: The Big Fail of Vouchers in Louisiana

By dianeravitch
February 16, 2016 //
12

I posted this study a month or so ago. But I continue to get inquiries from school board members in states that are considering the adoption of vouchers. I heard today that this study may have killed vouchers in Tennessee, at least for now (true believers never give up). Make sure that every member of your state school board and every member of your state legislature gets a copy of this study. The study was completed by researchers at MIT.

The study is titled “School Vouchers and Student Achievement: First-Year Evidence from the Louisiana Scholarship Program.” Granted, this is only the first year, but the findings are strong and devastating to the belief that vouchers (most of which go to religious schools) will “save poor kids from failing public schools.” The study compared the test scores of lottery winners and lottery losers, which is supposedly the gold standard for voucher research.

In brief, the students who attended voucher schools lost ground academically. Attendance at a voucher private school lowered math scores by 0.4 standard deviation and increased the likelihood of a failing score by 50 percent. Voucher effects for reading, science, and social studies were also “negative and large.” The negative impacts of vouchers were consistent across all income groups. Apparently the voucher schools were the weakest private schools and were not as good as the so-called “failing public schools.”

A summary of the study appeared in The Economist magazine in the issue of February 6, 2016. If your legislator won’t read the study from MIT, maybe they will read the one-page summary in the libertarian magazine.

Categories Accountability, Corporate Reformers, Louisiana, Privatization, Vouchers

UPDATE! UPDATE! UPDATE! DC: Parents Interview Teachers at New Rocketship Charter

By dianeravitch
February 14, 2016 //
22

This is a very strange post. I have written it four times, and each time the text has disappeared. Hmmm.

Washington, D.C., is getting its first Rocketship charter school. The building is under construction, and parents who plan to send their child have been invited to interview prospective teachers.

Rocketship started in San, Jose, California, where it was a sensation for a while. The business model is that kids spend a lot of time in front of computers, monitored by inexperienced teachers, mostly TFA. No art, no music. John Merrow did a segment about it on PBS, wondering if this was the Henry Ford factory-style school of the future. The scores of the Rocketship charters were high, which brought them much acclaim. But then the scores faded, and community opposition impeded the chain’s expansion.

Here is a recent analysis from the Hechinger Report: http://www.tennessean.com/story/news/education/2015/07/05/rocketship-charter-network-criticized-overly-rigid/29646659/

But now Rocketship plans to open eight charters in DC. Very likely they are benefiting from the strong interest of the Walton Family Foundation in turning DC into another New Orleans: No public schools, private management, many TFA, no unions.

It is hard to believe that the Waltons actually believe that this model will have a dramatic effect on the children of DC. At present, DC has the largest achievement gaps of any urban district tested by NAEP.

The news here is not about parent involvement. The real news is that Kaya Henderson and the mayor of DC, who controls the schools, apparently have given up on public education and are prepared to privatize the public schools.

Categories Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, District of Columbia, Education Reform, Technology, Computers
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