Archives for category: Corporate Reformers
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“Students Matter” Sues 13 California Districts for Not Using Student Test Scores to Evaluate Teachers

By dianeravitch
July 17, 2015 //
87

“Students Matter,” the Silicon Valley-funded group that launched the Vergara lawsuit to block teacher tenure in California, is now suing 13 school districts for their failure to use test scores in evaluating teachers.

 

The goal is to compel the entire state to use value-added-modeling (VAM), despite the fact that experience and research have demonstrated its invalidity and lack of reliability.

 

The Southern California school systems named in the latest filing are El Monte City, Inglewood Unified, Chaffey Joint Union, Chino Valley Unified, Ontario-Montclair, Saddleback Valley Unified, Upland Unified and Victor Elementary District. The others are: Fairfield-Suisun Unified, Fremont Union, Pittsburg Unified; San Ramon Valley Unified and Antioch Unified.
“School districts are not going to get away with bargaining away their ability to use test scores to evaluate teachers,” said attorney Joshua S. Lipshutz, who is working on behalf of Students Matter. “That’s a direct violation of state law.”

 

The plaintiffs are six California residents, including some parents and teachers, three of whom are participating anonymously.

 

In all, the districts serve about 250,000 students, although the group’s goal is to compel change across California.

 

“The impact is intended to be statewide, to show that no school district is above the law,” Lipshutz said.

 

The plaintiffs are not asking the courts to determine how much weight test scores should be given in a performance review, Lipshutz said. He cited research, however, suggesting that test scores should account for 30% to 40% of an evaluation.

 

The current case, Doe vs. Antioch, builds on earlier litigation involving the Los Angeles Unified School District. In 2012, a Los Angeles Superior Court judge ruled that the school system had to include student test scores in teacher evaluations. But the judge also allowed wide latitude for negotiation between the union and district.

 

The court decision was based on the 1971 Stull Act, which set out rules for teacher evaluations. Many districts had failed for decades to comply with it, according to some experts.

 

Will the Silicon Valley billionaires help to find new teachers when the state faces massive teacher shortages based on the litigation they continue to file?

 

 

 

 

Categories California, Corporate Reformers, Teacher Evaluations, Teacher Tenure

A Radically Sensible Idea about “Good Jobs”

By dianeravitch
July 17, 2015 //
83

New York Times columnist Joe Nocera went to the Aspen Ideas Festival and learned about a brilliant new strategy for the new economy. The status quo thinking of American business today is that the road to profit requires constant cost-cutting: Hire the lowest cost workers, outsource jobs to countries that pay less than American workers expect, cut, cut, cut.

We have seen the same mindset in education, where school boards bring in Teach for America and welcome teacher churn because it means young workers who won’t stay around long enough to qualify for a pension. It also means that experienced teachers are a burden instead of a treasure, because they cost “too much.”

Joe Nocera heard a radically sensible idea from a professor at MIT named Zeynep Ton. She said that instead of cutting costs to the bone, employers should “provide employees a decent living, which includes not just pay but also a sense of purpose and empowerment at work.” This strategy “can be every bit as profitable as companies that strive to keep their labor costs low by paying the minimum wage with no benefits. Maybe even more profitable. Getting there requires companies to adopt what Ton calls “human-centered operations strategies,” which she acknowledges is “neither quick nor easy.” But it’s worth it, she says, both for the companies and for the country. Surely, she’s right.

Nocera writes:

Her thesis comes out of research she did early in her academic career on supply chain management in the retail industry, focused especially on inventory management. What she and her fellow researchers discovered is that while most companies were very good at getting products from, say, China to their stores, it was a different story once the merchandise arrived. Sometimes a product stayed in the back room instead of making it to a shelf where a customer could buy it. Or it was in the wrong place. Special in-store promotions weren’t being executed a surprisingly high percentage of the time. She saw this pattern in company after company.

As she took a closer look, Ton says, she realized that the problem was that these companies viewed their employees “as a cost that they tried to minimize.” Workers were not just poorly paid, but poorly trained. They often didn’t know their schedule until the last moment. Morale was low and turnover was high. Customer service was largely nonexistent.

Yet when she asked executives at these companies why they put up with this pattern, she was told that the only way they could guarantee low prices was to operate with employees who were paid as little as possible, because labor was such a big part of their overhead. The problems that resulted were an unavoidable by-product of a low-price business model.

She sought out companies that valued employees and treated them well. They had middle-class wages, better morale, good training, and minimal turnover. Their employers wanted to keep them for a long time.

These findings reflect the work of scholars like Edward Deci, G. Edwards Deming, and Dan Ariely (summarized in Daniel Pink’s “Drive.”) People are motivated to work harder when they are given autonomy, support, and respect. Deming wrote that people want to take joy in their work, and their employers should make it possible for them to do so.

Could someone share the news with the corporate reformers in education, who love disruption and churn, and who think that motivation stems from threats and rewards. Their thinking reflects the behaviorist ideas of Frederick Winslow Taylor, now a century old. Time to enter the 21st century.

Categories Corporate Reformers

Campbell Brown Launches Her “Nonpartisan” and Opinion News Service

By dianeravitch
July 13, 2015 //
35

Campbell Brown, the pretty, telegenic journalist who was once a talking head for CNN, has launched her website and news service to report and opine on education issues with a strong point of view. It is called The 74 Million, referring to the 74 million children below the age of 18. You can expect to read and hear about the glories of charter schools, vouchers, privatization, and Teach for America. You should not expect to see any good news about public education, unions, or veteran teachers.

Its funders include Bloomberg Philanthropies, the Dick and Betsy DeVos Foundation, Daniel S. Loeb, Jon Sackler, and the Walton Foundation. All of these are well-known supporters of vouchers and charters. Loeb, a billionaire hedge-funder, is the chair of the Board of Eva Moskowitz’s Success Academies; Sackler started a charter chain; the Walton Foundation pours about $150 million a year into vouchers and charters and Teach for America; Betsy DeVos founded American Federation for Children, which zealously advocates for vouchers; Jonathan Sackler, a wealthy equity investor, is a leader in the Connecticut and national charter school movement.

Two of our best bloggers have reacted to The 74 Million.

Jennifer Berkshire, aka EduShyster, got a tip about a journalist who applied for a job with The 74. She was told that the 74 news service needed investigative journalists but they would not cover subject of charter school scandals. She shared her story with EduShyster but insisted on anonymity as revealing her name would be “career suicide.” EduShyster repeatedly reached out to a high-level official at The 74. Eventually he responded and insisted that he could not comment based on a report from an anonymous source. And of course, the site will be “fair and balanced.” Where have we heard that before?

Peter Greene also received the news blast about the arrival of the Campbell Brown news service. Greene is impressed by the professional look of the site and the journalists hired to write for it. Its budget is $4 million but he says it is far slicker than Peter Cunningham’s Ed Post, which was funded by same of the same sources with $12 million.

He observes:

This is an advocacy site, and “advocacy” is our nice name for PR. It has a point of view that it wants to push, and whether that’s because Brown is a clueless rich dilettante who doesn’t know what she’s talking about or an evil mastermind who’s fronting for her husband and his disaster capitalist friends, either way, this is a site that has a point of view to push. This is no more nor less than we expected. That’s evident just in the choice of topics. One good way to be subtle in slanting news is to provide fairly level coverage– but only of the things you want to talk about….

We’ll see how things play out. If Brown can convince candidates to cue up for her educational summits, she may start looking like a real player in the ed debates, or at least a good mouthpiece for candidates who want to say educationy things without being challenged on their baloney.

But if you had the slightest thought that there would be any surprises at The 74, banish such foolish notions. It’s a slicker package and better buns, but it’s the same old pro-charter, anti-union, pro-privatization, anti-public ed meal inside. I can’t wait till they start covering Brown’s heroic fight to destroy tenure in New York, but I definitely won’t hold my breath waiting for a hard-hitting expose of a charter school scandal.

There is no such thing as advocacy journalism. You cannot, as Brown promises we will, have both. Either you have a journalist’s interest in pursuing the truth, wherever the path leads you, or you have an advocate’s interest in finding support for the position that you have already committed yourself to. It’s one or the other, and for all the journalistic trappings, Brown has chosen the path of the advocate.

Categories Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Privatization, Vouchers

Governor Cuomo Meets the Hedge Clippers in the Hamptons, at $5,000 Per Person

By dianeravitch
July 11, 2015 //
12

It is a beautiful sunny day on eastern Long Island, a perfect day for Governor Andrew Cuomo to mingle with the rich and powerful hedge fund managers and moguls who underwrote his campaign. He is raising money for yet another campaign, only months after his re-election. If you can afford to pay $5,000, you too might join the fun and share the canapés. The hedge funders have been his most reliable allies, and he repaid them by giving free rein to the charter industry, especially in New York City, where Mayor de Blasio had threatened to curtail their expansion. Cuomo derailed de Blasio’s plans, showing his disdain for mayoral control of the schools when the mayor doesn’t agree with him.

Ah, but what is this? Uninvited guests! The Hedge Clippers, labor activists who object to Cuomo’s love-the-rich policies and charter schools. You can read about it in the Wall Street Journal.

Busloads of labor activists and liberal operatives are headed Saturday to a place where they won’t be welcome: A fundraiser for Gov. Andrew Cuomo at a sprawling estate in the Hamptons.
Mr. Cuomo has become the primary target of the group calling itself the Hedge Clippers that protests the governor’s policies and his ties to the wealthy.

Their rise comes as Mr. Cuomo contends with a growing rift within the Democratic Party between his centrist approach and the liberal base, much of which doesn’t like his cultivation of support from Republicans and many in business.

The target of the Hedge Clippers this weekend is a $5,000-a-person East Hampton event in honor of the governor hosted by Daniel Loeb, a top hedge-fund manager based in New York City. Mr. Loeb is also a political fundraiser who, like Mr. Cuomo, has sparred with teachers unions and championed charter schools.

The showdown has tony communities in the Hamptons slightly amused and slightly on edge.

“Dan Loeb is thick-skinned and relishes a fight,” said Euan Rellie, an investment banker who summers in the Hamptons and is a friend of Mr. Loeb’s. “But no successful business person wants to be seen as a remote billionaire living with pitchforks at the hedges. Who would want that?”

The activists plan to fly aerial banners over the grounds of the Loeb mansion as Mr. Cuomo’s donors nibble canapés and sip cocktails on the lawn.

To be sure, Mr. Cuomo is hardly the only politician to be met with protesters at some of his events. But the Hedge Clippers are trained largely on one politician, and their pockets are deep.

Funded by the American Federation of Teachers, the group has been galvanizing liberal activists in Albany, Washington, D.C., and New York City since February.

“The larger point is the governor of New York should listen to everybody, not just the billionaires in the Hamptons,” said Michael Kink, a former state Senate aide who now runs a union-backed activist group and said he planned to attend the protest.

Multiple hedge-fund managers who declined to speak for attribution said they appreciated Mr. Cuomo’s opposition to new taxes and saw him as a politician interested in compromise.

They said they believed that charter schools were a better alternative to some of the city’s troubled schools. Many hedge funders identify as libertarians, said people in their industry, and don’t support a particular party.

Categories Corporate Reformers, Cuomo, Andrew

Mercedes Schneider Quotes Laura Chapman on Future of ESEA/NCLB

By dianeravitch
July 8, 2015 //
5

Mercedes has been closely following the evolution of the Congressional debate about the future of federal aid to education. She became one of the few people in the world to read every line of the Senate proposal, which she gave a “close reading.” In this post, she leans on a comment by Laura Chapman.

 

She know the final product won’t please everyone. Everyone has a different idea about how it should be revised.

 

The least desirable path is to leave the NCLB-‘Race to the Top as is. It is a harmful, toxic brew that kills education and crushes the joy of learning.

 

Our goal must be to fight off the intrusion of uninformed politicians who know nothing about schooling but assume it is their duty to tell teachers what and how to teach, and how to evaluate teachers. It would be useful to have a good summary of the research about charters and vouchers to demonstrate that their record of success is slender and that they damage more schools (and children) than they save.

 

In a perfect world, Congress would limit its education program to things that it can do–and do well:

 

1) distributing money to the neediest schools

2) protecting the civil rights of teachers and students

3) making sure that federal funds go to students who need them most.

 

How did we get into this mess of believing that the U.S. Department of Education has the knowledge, wisdom, experience, and foresight to create a single template of standards, curriculum, standards, professional development, teacher evaluation, and assessment to guide the nation’ s millions of children and teachers? It does not. That is a fantasy. Here is a fresh idea: evidence-based policy-making. Field trials. Or how about the simple recognition that teachers are not the sole cause of students test scores. Or how about the startling idea that every child does not progress at the same time and in the same way?

 

There is a simple axiom that our parents taught us: Stick to what you know.

 

 

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Education Reform, U.S. Department of Education

Who Funded Jeb’s “Foundation for Educational Excellence”?

By dianeravitch
July 7, 2015 //
20

Jeb Bush created the “Foundation for Educational Excellence” with two goals in mind. First, to burnish his credentials as a “reformer.” Second, to serve as a vehicle for advocating vouchers, charters, online learning, and high-stakes accountability.

Peter Greene writes that we now know who contributed large sums to Jeb’s FEE. We may safely assume that they shared Jeb’s policy goals.

He writes:

It is not an exact list in that donors are organized by ranges. So we know that Bloomberg donated somewhere between $1.2 million and $2.4 million, which is quite a margin of error. But it’s still a chunk of change, either way.

Joining Bloomberg Philanthropies in the Over a Cool Million Club are these folks, a completely unsurprising list:

Walton Family Foundation (between $3.5 mill and over $6 mill)
B&M Gates (between $3 mill and over $5 mill)
Charles and Helen Schwab Foundation (between $1.6 mill and $3.25 mill)
News Corporation (between $1.5 mill and $3 mill)
GE Foundation (between $2.5 mill and over $3 mill)
Helmsley Trust (at least $2 mill)

The Might Have Hit a Million Club includes

The Broad Foundation
Jacqueline Hume Foundation
Robertson Foundation
Carnegie Corporation of New York
Kovner Foundation
The Arnold Foundation

Beyond those, we find Florida businesses and a fair sampling of folks who have a stake in the FEE mission, like McGraw Hill and Renaissance Learning.

For the most part, it is a familiar list of billionaires and mere multimillionaires. What Greene notes is that there is no evidence of a grassroots base for Jeb’s activities. It is the same old, same old super-rich people–the 1%, if you will–fattening one of their favorites spokesmen.

Or, as he writes:

The truth about FEE is a reminder– for the gazillionth time– that we have yet to see an actual hard-core full-on grass roots movement in support of reformster policies. It’s also a reminder that if education issues were being decided on merit, or if all the Rich Person money just dried up tomorrow, we wouldn’t be having this conversation.

Ed reform is a big delicate rosebush in the middle of the desert, and money is the water that keeps it alive. Shut off the water, and it’s done.

Since there have been no positive results for any of the billionaires’ favorite Big Ideas, there is always the chance they will get bored. Never underestimate the power of boredom among the glitterati.

Categories Bush, Jeb, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, On-Line Education, Virtual Charter Schools, Vouchers

Corporate Reformers Descend on Detroit to Pick Over the Ruins

By dianeravitch
July 5, 2015 //
20

Just when you thought it couldn’t get worse for Detroit, here come the stars of the corporate reform movement with advice to do more of what Detroit has been doing without success.

 

More than half the students are in charter schools, but Detroit doesn’t have enough, it seems. The lowest-performing schools were dumped into the woebegone “Education Achievement Authority,” under an emergency manager with dictatorial powers, but that didn’t go anywhere.

 

If Detroit can’t get its school problems solved, it won’t be for lack of quality advice from national education experts.

 

As city and state leaders seek to figure out how best to salvage Detroit Public Schools and improve performance across a complex network of school choices, top school reformers from around the country want a piece of the action, too.

 

Last week, Michael Petrilli, CEO of the D.C.-based Fordham Institute, and Eric Chan, a partner at the Charter School Growth Fund, were a few of the latest to drop in on Detroit. Excellent Schools Detroit, which is helping lead the conversation locally about improving all city schools, invited them to town to discuss how best to create the right environment for quality charter school growth.

 

The more insights, the merrier. Other cities have undergone major school turnarounds, and there are consistent guidelines for success. When asked what Detroit needs to do to start showing results for kids, Petrilli and Chan echoed similar ideas.

 

“Deal with low-performing schools, and encourage high-performers,” says Petrilli, whose organization works to raise the quality of U.S. schools. “There are concrete things we can do.”

 

The examples of success offered by Petrilli and Chan: New Orleans, the District of Columbia, and Memphis. Privatization is the answer. Neither Petrilli nor Chan has an idea about how to improve public education. Just privatize it. Get rid of it. Bring in high-quality “seats.”

 

Readers of this blog have read again and again that most charter schools in New Orleans are rated D or F schools by the state of Louisiana; D.C. continues to be one of the lowest performing districts in the nation, as judged by the NAEP; and Memphis is home to the all-charter Achievement School District, whose founder Chris Barbic promised would produce a dramatic turnaround in only five years. That turnaround has not happened. Not in  New Orleans, D.C., or Memphis.

 

Surely there must be better examples of success for corporate reform. Or are there?

 

 

 

 

Categories Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, District of Columbia, Education Industry, New Orleans, Privatization, Tennessee

Our Unstoppable Blog Poet: A Paean to Reformers

By dianeravitch
July 4, 2015 //
21

Our blog poet, who signs as SomeDam Poet, contributed these words of wisdom:

 

Hail Arne
Full of Gates
The Core is with thee
Mes-sed art thou among Reformers
And mes-sed is the fruit of thy room, RTTT

 

Our Coleman
Who aren’t an educator
Hollow be they claim
Thy King-dom come,
Thy will be dumb,
In NY as it is in Washington
Spare us this Core our daily bore,
and forgive us our testpasses,
as we forgive those who testpass in charters ;
and lead us not into DAM nation,
but deliver us from Common Core.

 

Amen

Categories Coleman, David, Common Core, Corporate Reformers, Duncan, Arne, Gates Foundation, Bill Gates, Humor

SHOCKER: Connecticut Governor Malloy Vetoes Bill Requiring State Commissioner to Have Education Experience

By dianeravitch
July 1, 2015 //
23

Connecticut’s Governor Dannel Malloy vetoed legislation requiring the state education commissioner to have educational experience and qualifications.

 

He said it encroached on the governor’s authority to name anyone he wanted, regardless of qualifications.

 

Mayor Bloomberg took that path when he appointed publisher Cathie Black as schools chancellor. She lasted three months.

 

Will Governor Malloy be comfortable if the pilot of his next flight has no experience? Will he go to a hospital where his surgeons are fresh from college with no training or experience?

Categories Administrators, superintendents, Connecticut, Corporate Reformers, Education Reform

Louisiana: John White Wants to Keep His Job; Dem Candidate; “No Way”

By dianeravitch
June 30, 2015 //
11

In an interview, John White made it clear that he wants to keep his $275,000 job as state superintendent in Louisiana. Bobby Jindal pushed the state board to hire him after his brief stint as superintendent of the Néw Orleans Recovery School Diistrict. White loyally implemented Jindal’s agenda of vouchers, charters, for-profit schools, and attacks on teachers’ due process, as well as test-based evaluation. But then Jindal and White locked horns over Common Core. Jindal wanted out, White didn’t. (White’s only school experience is TFA. Also he attended the unaccredited Broad Superintendents’ Academy.)

Now one of the leading candidates for governor has said White has to go. Open the statement for links.

John Bel Edwards issued the following statement;

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: media@johnbelforlouisiana.com; 225-435-9808
Edwards: John White Will Never Be Superintendent On My Watch

BATON ROUGE, La. – State Representative and candidate for governor John Bel Edwards (D-Amite) responded to news that State Superintendent John White wishes to remain in his current position under the next governor’s administration.

“I have no intention of allowing John White, who isn’t qualified to be a middle school principal, to remain as Superintendent when I am governor,” Edwards said. “We have so many highly qualified candidates right here in Louisiana that we don’t need to go looking in New York City for our next head of K-12 education.”

White’s tenure as State Superintendent has been frought with controversy and accusations of wrongdoing. In 2012, White was embroiled in scandal after emails revealed political motives behind his fight to ensure that expanded school vouchers were approved by the Louisiana Legislature. Thanks to testimony by Rep. John Bel Edwards, the Louisiana Supreme Court later found the voucher scheme to be unconstitutional, because it did, as White denied, illegally divert funding designated for local city and parish public schools. Later, voucher schools approved under White’s watch were shown to lack a requisite number of teachers, lunch rooms, and other resources common to any proper school. In 2013, he was accused of having purposefully inflated letter grades for certain schools. For at least three years, White knew about inequities in special education funding which violated directives in the La. Constitution, but declined to take action to correct the problem even after the Legislature urged and requested that he do so in 2014. Under White’s watch per pupil funding for public k-12 schools was frozen despite many new unfunded mandates. During the same time period the per pupil amount paid to private schools through the state voucher program increased each year.

Citing these controversies Edwards said,”We need genuine leadership at the helm of the Louisiana Department of Education. We will have that when we elect a genuine leader as governor.”

White’s only formal training in educational administration was earned during six weekend trainings at the Eli Broad Superintendent’s Academy, meant to be an introduction to issues facing Superintendents at the local level.

Categories Charter Schools, Common Core, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, For-Profit, Jindal, Bobby, Louisiana, Vouchers
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