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Jill Lepore: The Hoax of “Disruptive Innovation”

By dianeravitch
March 11, 2015 //
24

One of the shibboleths of the corporate reformers is their belief in “creative destruction,” “innovation, and “disruption” as an end in itself. These ideas justify their efforts to tear apart traditional public school systems, replace experienced teachers with inexperienced youngsters, close schools, and experiment with charters, vouchers, and anything else that will destroy the status quo. To be sure, some are in the school reform business to make money, but others see themselves as heroes of a movement that sees itself as blowing up “failing schools” and forcing fresh innovations into a stagnant sector of the economy.

 

This remarkable article by Jill Lepore, published by the Néw Yorker, explodes the dogmas of “disruption” as progress. I posted the article last year, but am posting it again because I see it as a classic. It sheds light on our narrative about how change happens.

 

Lepore attributes the fascination with disruption to the influential work of Harvard business professor Clayton Christensen. He popularized the idea that big companies die as they are overtaken by nimble start-ups that embrace innovation. Business leaders took heed and committed themselves to persistent re-invention and self-disruption, or buying up the start-ups before they overtook the established industry leader.

 

In education, we have seen the dogma of disruption in the policies of Arne Duncan, the Bloomberg administration of education in New York City (with its focus on closing schools and opening schools and closing the schools it opened), the Rahm Emanuel model (closing 50 public schools on the same day), the Broad Foundation, the Gates Foundation, the Walton Foundation, and business groups. They scorn incremental change and pursue the disruptive idea–like closing schools, the Common Core, federally funded tests–that will shake up schools across the nation with a series of bold and experimental strokes.

 

Do schools need to be disrupted by techniques borrowed from the business world? Do families need to be disrupted? Do communities need disruption? According to disruption theory, disruption is the precursor to success.

 

Lepore, it can be fairly said, demolishes disruption theory by showing that Christensen’s examples provide no evidence for the theory. To the contrary, the successful companies over the long haul were not the innovators that disrupted the industry, but those that changed incrementally, tinkering and constantly improving their processes and their products.

 

One of Christensen’s leading examples of disruption was the disk-drive industry. This was the subject of his doctoral dissertation. In his telling, a company called Seagate Technology fell by the wayside as competitors disrupted its market. But, Lepore shows, Christensen was wrong.

 

“In fact, Seagate Technology was not felled by disruption. Between 1989 and 1990, its sales doubled, reaching $2.4 billion, “more than all of its U.S. competitors combined,” according to an industry report. In 1997, the year Christensen published “The Innovator’s Dilemma,” Seagate was the largest company in the disk-drive industry, reporting revenues of nine billion dollars. Last year, Seagate shipped its two-billionth disk drive. Most of the entrant firms celebrated by Christensen as triumphant disrupters, on the other hand, no longer exist, their success having been in some cases brief and in others illusory…..

 

“As striking as the disruption in the disk-drive industry seemed in the nineteen-eighties, more striking, from the vantage of history, are the continuities. Christensen argues that incumbents in the disk-drive industry were regularly destroyed by newcomers. But today, after much consolidation, the divisions that dominate the industry are divisions that led the market in the nineteen-eighties. (In some instances, what shifted was their ownership: I.B.M. sold its hard-disk division to Hitachi, which later sold its division to Western Digital.) In the longer term, victory in the disk-drive industry appears to have gone to the manufacturers that were good at incremental improvements, whether or not they were the first to market the disruptive new format. Companies that were quick to release a new product but not skilled at tinkering have tended to flame out.”

 

Lepore systematically demolishes disruption theory. This is one of my favorite stories she tells:

 

“Christensen’s sources are often dubious and his logic questionable. His single citation for his investigation of the “disruptive transition from mechanical to electronic motor controls,” in which he identifies the Allen-Bradley Company as triumphing over four rivals, is a book called “The Bradley Legacy,” an account published by a foundation established by the company’s founders. This is akin to calling an actor the greatest talent in a generation after interviewing his publicist. “Use theory to help guide data collection,” Christensen advises.”

 

Lepore’s article is one of the best critiques of the corporate reform move my in education that I have read. The belief that education will improve if schools are closed and opened, closed and opened again, if change and turmoil are goals, if leaders are trained to accept disruption as a positive method, there we find the workings if disruption theory.

 

Lepore says it’s hooey.

 

She writes:

 

“Disruptive innovation as an explanation for how change happens is everywhere. Ideas that come from business schools are exceptionally well marketed. Faith in disruption is the best illustration, and the worst case, of a larger historical transformation having to do with secularization, and what happens when the invisible hand replaces the hand of God as explanation and justification. Innovation and disruption are ideas that originated in the arena of business but which have since been applied to arenas whose values and goals are remote from the values and goals of business. People aren’t disk drives. Public schools, colleges and universities, churches, museums, and many hospitals, all of which have been subjected to disruptive innovation, have revenues and expenses and infrastructures, but they aren’t industries in the same way that manufacturers of hard-disk drives or truck engines or drygoods are industries. Journalism isn’t an industry in that sense, either.

 

“Doctors have obligations to their patients, teachers to their students, pastors to their congregations, curators to the public, and journalists to their readers—obligations that lie outside the realm of earnings, and are fundamentally different from the obligations that a business executive has to employees, partners, and investors. Historically, institutions like museums, hospitals, schools, and universities have been supported by patronage, donations made by individuals or funding from church or state. The press has generally supported itself by charging subscribers and selling advertising. (Underwriting by corporations and foundations is a funding source of more recent vintage.) Charging for admission, membership, subscriptions and, for some, earning profits are similarities these institutions have with businesses. Still, that doesn’t make them industries, which turn things into commodities and sell them for gain.”

Categories Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Scandals Fraud and Hoaxes

Hello, Gov. Cuomo, Two More Charters Fail in Albany: LINK ADDED

By dianeravitch
March 9, 2015 //
60

Now will the charter lobby stop boasting that they have the answers to low test scores?

Two charter middle schools run by the Brighter Choice Foundation were closed by the state’s Charter Schools Institute. At one time, reformers claimed that Brighter Choice was “the Holy Grail” of charter schooling. No more.

The two schools–one for boys, one for girls–pleaded for more time, sounding like public schools. They didn’t get it. They will close.

But long-time columnist Fred LeBrun writes:

“I have a sneaking suspicion that money and financing at stake over bricks and mortar are as much of a motivator for keeping those charters alive as is serving the community. Regardless, about 440 students after this academic year may well have to find an alternative school.

“Students, and parents, who had put their hopes in charters, Brighter Choice in particular, now find themselves associated with failed schools as defined by the Charter School Institute.

“It was five years ago that Brighter Choice got into the middle-school business, with fanfare and swagger.
The same year Albany’s first charter school, New Covenant, one of the first in the state, finally gasped its last after 11 years of teetering. The failure of New Covenant was devastating to the city’s minority community, which had invested heart and soul in it.
The leaders of Brighter Choice at the time coldly wrote off New Covenant as exactly the way not to start and run a charter school.

“But now that Brighter Choice has seen its own limitations at the middle- and high-school levels, we are not hearing quite the same bravado anymore.
I’ll get an argument, I know, but I believe that in the long run Albany is not better off for being a heralded laboratory for charters.

“In fact, a word Albany school district spokesman Ron Lesko used a while back about the effect of charters on the school district comes to mind. They’ve been ”destabilizing.” The school district has been left to constantly adjust to the ebb and flow of a transient student population and its resources have been diverted in the name of ”choice.”

“Can we really afford that choice? What has it done for the kids?

“Albany taxpayers have taken a hosing from charters, a redundant school system that adds extra cost to public education a strapped city can’t afford. State aid by percentage has been dropping away and more and more it is the local property taxpayer who supports this vital service to the community. The Albany school district sends more than $35 million a year to charters, and as state Comptroller Tom DiNapoli said, exactly where that money goes is not easy to figure out.

“The state is again at one of those crossroads over public education, with the governor’s unfortunate infatuation with this same charter movement.
For whatever reason, he continues to unfairly beat up traditional public education and those who serve it, and underfunds it to a deplorable degree. If he believes he’s preparing the way for charters as some sort of a rescue option, forget it. We’ve already seen that plan in action.

“Upstate, at least, there is zero reason for giving charters anything more than what they already have. Zero.”

Categories Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Cuomo, Andrew, New York

John Kuhn: The Big Error of “Accountability”

By dianeravitch
March 9, 2015 //
24

John Kuhn, Texas superintendent, is a brilliant orator and writer. In this article, he skewers the cheerleaders for high-stakes testing in Texas by showing how they cherry pick data to buttress their case for testing kids more and more instead of providing adequate resources for them to learn.

 

He begins by demonstrating how they situate their love of testing as a civil rights issue. They cite the Brown decision and in other ways claim that they love the children who are poor and needy and want the best for them. But what they never do is to advocate that the Legislature restore the billions of dollars that were cut from the schools attended by the children they claim to love.

 

Here is a small sample of a smartly argued and well documented analysis:

 

In “The Big Idea of School Accountability,” their slick apologia for high stakes testing and punitive accountability, both of which have dominated American education politics and pedagogy since the 1980s, Bill McKenzie and Sandy Kress start out on the high road. McKenzie is a high-ranking opinion-shaper at the George W. Bush Institute and a former editorialist for the Dallas Morning News. Kress was an architect of Bush’s No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 and, though he leaves this out of his bio attached to the essay, a long-time lobbyist for Pearson, the world’s leading vendor of K-12 standardized tests. The two edu-lobbyists begin their essay by mentioning historical moments in education policymaking and politics that would seem to appeal to a wide audience. They condemn segregation and celebrate Brown v. Board of Education. They praise the Elementary and Secondary School Act of 1965 (later renamed ESEA) and they celebrate its noble intention that “schools in disadvantaged communities would receive the resources to provide their students a decent education.”

 

Pay close attention to that statement, because it is the last time the authors will refer to resources as a necessary element to ensuring quality education in disadvantaged communities. Through the sleight of hand that has been perfected by the modern education reformer—and McKenzie and Kress are education reformers of the highest order—the writers deftly pivot from any and all talk of the need to provide equitable educational resources across all communities so that schools in even the poorest areas can deliver on the promise of education, and they spend the remaining pages of their article discussing something much easier on the taxpayer’s pocketbook: accountability, or the careful creation of just the right punishments to make teachers and students succeed in making learning happen, without respect to the pesky details of resources available to them (or unavailable to them, as they case may be). In the next paragraph—without establishing that the equity of resources LBJ’s law intended to guarantee was ever successfully attained—the writers begin to speak of campuses being “held responsible,” of the need to “hold schools accountable” and of “what should happen if schools do not show progress for all their students.”

 

Pivot complete.

 

The authors have shifted totally from an inconvenient conversation about fair and equitable investment in children and communities—investment that is adequate and comparable regardless of a student’s zip code or skin color—to one about holding children and communities responsible for their own outcomes. Accountability is constructed on the principle of blame and consequences as leverage to move schools and kids forward (blame and consequences, it should be noted, entirely directed at the teachers and students, with no consequence whatsoever reserved for citizens outside the schoolhouse who may or may not provide adequate fiscal supports for schools and children). At the urging of testing advocates like the authors of this essay, educational improvement via punitive test-based policies has eclipsed humane concepts of shared assistance and support for hurting American children (particularly anything resembling the investment of tax receipts) as the “civil rights issue of our time.” Educational accountability is designed as a low-cost replacement for social responsibility.

 

Children in America’s poorest neighborhoods lack all manner of opportunities and resources from birth that many American families take for granted. This isn’t to say they can’t learn. Of course they can learn, but there are obstacles they must overcome that society has kindly ensured do not litter the path of many other children from middle and upper class areas. From birth weight forward, all the data in impoverished zones is stacked against children, and elevating accountability for schools as our primary lever for improving these children’s lives has the effect of squelching any urgency and attention directed at efforts to feed and clothe and love and help them outside the school. We hear reformers speak of “the fierce urgency of the now” when they speak of improving schools, but we never hear it when they speak of improving lives. More than anyone in the United States, the poor child needs a hand up. More than any organization in the United States, the public school—the place where our children gather, and where they come as they are—needs support…..

 

Folks in the accountability camp like to say “we can’t throw money at the problem.” In fact, they apparently prefer actively pulling money away from the areas where the greatest problems exist. It is lunacy to believe that a testing program can do anything to help children who are being denied the same educational resources provided to their peers in wealthy communities. And to compare those under-funded students with their better-funded peers is nothing short of cruelty.

 

Thanks to the shift in focus toward testing and away from resourcing, in 2015 Texas sank to 49th in the nation in school funding (2). The accountability clique convinced lawmakers that funding was of little import; academic success could be forced upon children at a discount via test-based coercion and threats. An analogy might be if the Good Samaritan in the Bible story had stopped beside the injured traveler and, instead of lifting him out of the dirt and paying for his recuperation at an inn, had stood over him with a stopwatch and told him to hurry and get up, and assured him that he was comparing his time with that of uninjured people.

 

After quickly dismissing the topic of equitable funding for schools in poor areas, the authors praise bipartisanship and claim the legacy of Lyndon B. Johnson and Robert Kennedy as they discuss the debate surrounding ESEA. But even as they quote LBJ opining how his signature education law meant more “to the future of America” than anything he had signed before, they neglect to mention that what they are advocating in this essay—the continuation of required annual standardized testing in grades 3-8 and once in high school and significant punishments for schools, teachers, and students based on said tests’ results—were nowhere in LBJ’s bill.

 

Kuhn knows that reformers like to say that any reference to poverty means that you don’t believe poor children can learn. He knows that poor children can learn, but he also knows that poor children need at least the same resources as affluent children to learn. The “big error” of the accountability hawks is that they think that high-stakes testing is a substitute for resources. It is not. A brilliant and powerful essay.

Categories Accountability, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Poverty, Testing

Peter Greene: David Brooks Gets Everything Wrong (Again)

By dianeravitch
March 6, 2015 //
40

Peter Greene here reviews David Brooks’ latest effort to advise the nation about education issues. Brooks argues that it would be a mistake to try to reduce poverty by redistributionist policies (I assume he means such policies as higher taxes on billionaires or direct benefits to those who are poor or government programs for job creation); instead, we should count on education to reduce inequality and poverty.

 

In earlier columns, he concluded that Geoffrey Canada’s Harlem Children’s Zone charters were “miracle schools” that had closed the achievement gap between white and black students (however, the miracle has not been sustained, even though Canada kicked out the entire entering class whose scores were low, and his schools spend substantially more than public schools with which they are compared); and Brooks endorsed the idea that teachers would produce higher test scores through a trick called “loss aversion,” where they are given a bonus at the beginning of the year, but the bonus is taken away if the scores don’t go up. In 2011, after he heard me speak in Aspen, Colorado, he wrote a column criticizing me for questioning high-stakes testing and charter schools, and of course, he complained that I said that poverty is a leading cause of low test scores. He seems to believe that testing and charters are the answer to poverty, even though after some 13 years of high-stakes testing and 25 years of charters, there seems to be more child poverty, not less.

 

In today’s column, Brooks claims that the way to prosperity is not to reduce poverty by, for example, creating jobs for people who want to work or raising taxes on the super-rich (that would be redistributionist, which is a very bad thing in his eyes), but by making sure that everyone goes to college. If everyone goes to college, then everyone will get good jobs, and no one will be poor. But where will all those new jobs come from? According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the 20 occupations that will supply the most jobs between now and 2022 are mostly low-paying. Except for registered nurses and managers, 18 of the 20 occupations are not high-wage occupations. Do we need to improve our schools? Yes, of course. Will that be enough to reduce poverty? No.

 

Greene writes:

 

Mostly Brooks wants to argue for education as the miracle engine of economic justice. And to make his argument, he trots out the work of Raj Chetty, a piece of research that proves conclusively that even researchers at Harvard can become confused about the difference between correlation and causation. (Chetty, for those of you unfamiliar with the “research,” asserts that a good teacher will result in greater lifetime earnings for students. What he actually proves is that people who tend to do well on standardized tests tend to grow up to be wealthier, an unexciting demonstration of correlation best explained by things we already know– people who score well on standardized tests tend to be from a higher-income background, and people who grow up to be high-income tend to come from a high-income background.)

 

Brooks also cites magical researcher David Autor of MIT, who believes that if everyone graduated from college with a degree, everyone would make more money because, reasons. Because if everyone had a college degree, flipping burgers would pay more? Because if everyone had a college degree, corporations would suddenly want to hire more people? The continued belief in the astonishing notion that a more educated workforce causes higher-paying jobs to appear from somewhere is big news to a huge number of twenty-somethings who are busy trying to scrape together a living in areas other than the ones they prepared for these days.

 

Brooks isn’t done spouting nonsense:

 

[Brooks writes:] “Focusing on human capital is not whistling past the graveyard…No redistributionist measure will have the same effect as good early-childhood education and better community colleges, or increasing the share of men capable of joining the labor force.”

 

Because the vast number of high-paying jobs currently going unfilled is….. what?

 

Brooks says that redistributionists don’t get it, that they believe that modern capitalism is fundamentally broken, but that their view is biased by short-term effects of the recession. I have two responses for that pair of thoughtbubbbles.

 

First, it’s not clear whether capitalism is broken or not because we are currently tangled up in some sort of twisted fun-house mirror version of faux capitalism where the free market has been obliterated by a controlled money-sucking machine run by the government on behalf of the oligarchs. I’m actually a fan of capitalism, but what we currently have in this country is not capitalism at all.

 

Second, your argument about the “temporary evidence” of the recession is invalid because the recession was (and is) not the result of some mysterious serious of natural events. The economy went in the tank because the CEOs and Wall Street put it there. The economy broke because the “capitalists” broke it, and consequently the recession itself is Exhibit A in the case against modern faux capitalism and the greedheads who run it.

 

Throwing all this back at a magical belief in education is simply another way to blame poor people for being poor. So sorry you need food stamps and health care, but if you’d had the guts and character to go to college and get a degree, you wouldn’t be in such a mess. Your poverty is just the direct result of your lack of character and quality. Well, that and your terrible teachers. But it certainly has nothing to do with how the country is being run. It’s all on you, lousy poor person. And also your teachers.

Categories Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Jobs, Poverty, Testing

Las Vegas: What Happens When Reform Is Not Reform But Destruction?

By dianeravitch
March 6, 2015 //
8

In an article published in 2013, journalist Launce Rake comments on the departure from Nevada of two “reformers.” He takes the opportunity to explain why the word “reform” should never be used to describe events, individuals, or organizations.

 

He writes:

 

A GOOD EDITOR, YEARS AGO, told me to jettison the word “reform.” Calling a policy change “reform” is a way to dress it up and make it acceptable to the public, she explained.

 

If you want to award less money to people who sue after being horribly maimed by bad products or services, don’t call it “giving victims less money.” Call it “tort reform.”

 

Likewise, if you want to take apart the teachers unions and make it easier to fire teachers, don’t say “make it easier to fire teachers”. Call it “education reform.”

 

And they have. For a decade, education reform — that is, administrative and policy changes to public schools — has been a train barreling down the tracks, embraced by elected and appointed officials at all levels, across the political spectrum. Everybody loves reform!

 

That’s as true in Nevada as anywhere in the nation; schools in Nevada and the Clark County School District, the nation’s fifth largest, consistently rank among the worst-performing in the nation. While some wags also point out that they are also among the worst funded in the nation, political leaders, unable or unwilling to address the funding issue, have instead called for “reform.”

 

Isn’t it amazing that this writer gets it, but no one in the mainstream media does?

Categories Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Education Reform, Privatization, Testing

Denisha Jones: Beware the Education “Reformers” Who Co-Opt the Language of the Civil Rights Movement

By dianeravitch
March 6, 2015 //
15

Denish Jones is a contributor to EmPower magazine. She holds a Ph.D. in Curriculum and Instruction from Indiana University. She has taught kindergarten, preschool, served as a campus based preschool director, and taught college for over 10 years. Currently she is a Visiting Assistant Professor of Early Childhood Education at Howard University.

 

In this article, Jones warns that so-called “reformers” have stolen the language of the civil rights movement to advance their goals of privatization and deprofessionalization. Their aims actually contradict the aims of the civil rights movement.

 

 

She writes:

 

1. Privatization is inherently unequal.

The corporate reform movement that is waging war against public education has one goal in mind: privatization. Free-market advocates do not believe in a system of public education and are on a mission to see every aspect of a public society privatized from our prisons to our schools. But with privatization comes the loss of public ownership. Public systems are open to inspection by the public. Records are made public and the process is transparent so that community members can understand what is happening and voice their concerns. Privatization removes the ability of the public to know what is happening with their tax dollars. Private companies can use proprietary laws to prevent them from disclosing documents and following laws pertaining to public records….

 

Without the transparency of how our tax dollars are spent how do we hold private corporations accountable? Some businesses do well but others fail to garner enough capital to stay afloat; that is the nature of capitalism. But when the business model of winners and losers is applied to public education, the losers tend to be children who struggle academically and families without the social capital needed to advocate for their children. The winners are CEO’s and stock holders who earn high salaries with public money but can use their private status to shield themselves from public accountability.

 

2. School choice is not about parents choosing good schools it’s about schools choosing good students.

 

School choice has been pushed by corporate reformers since the creation of charter schools and vouchers. Using the plight of underfunded poverty ridden urban schools reformers argued that low-income and minority families should be given a choice in where they send their child to school. Choice and competition would force low-performing schools to compete for students or be closed. Why should low-income and minority families have to settle for a failing neighborhood schools when parents with more money could choose better schools? This is how the argument for school choice is often framed as a benefit for certain groups. But the research paints a different picture….

The push for privatization distorts the picture of who really gets to choose under school choice schemes. Reformers would have us believe that parents are doing the choosing but in reality it is the charter schools, many which are for-profit corporations, who get to choose.

 

3. Underprepared teachers for other people’s children.

 

Privatization of public education cannot be fully implemented unless the system for educating teachers is also privatized. Typically teachers were prepared through colleges and universities were they took a variety of courses and completed a semester long student teaching internship before they could apply for a teaching license through their state. Today fast-track teacher preparation programs like Teach for America (TFA) are turning teacher preparation into a business. Recent college graduates are recruited to spend a few years teaching in inner-city schools with high needs students. Armed with five weeks of training and a desire to give back, these recruits are placed in classrooms and expected to outperform educators with teaching degrees and years of experience. TFA is touted as noble program that will change the teaching profession by removing the union thugs who only care about themselves and replacing them with young idealistic people who have the commitment to do what needs to be done and will not use poverty as an excuse.

 

Armed with language of from the Civil Rights movement, TFA claims to be champion of low-income and minority children. Statements like this, “Nearly 50 years after landmark civil rights marches throughout the region, deep, entrenched poverty still persists along racial lines” and “From Birmingham to Selma, corps members are helping to prove that all kids can achieve at high levels, even those living in poverty” can be found on their website and are clear examples of how TFA has co-opted the language of the Civil Rights movement. But hidden behind these nice quotes is the assumption that other people’s children deserve underprepared “saviors” as their teacher…..What the richest and most educated parent wants for their own child should be what we aspire to give all children.

 

Denisha Jones concludes:

 

There is much work to done as we continue to march towards Dr. King’s dream. Corporate education reform is not an ally in our fight for educational justice. We must not be fooled by those who seek to use the legacy of our struggle to turn a profit at the expense of our children’s education. A strong democratic republic needs high quality public schools that offer a free and appropriate public education to all.

 

 

Categories Charter Schools, Common Core, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Education Reform, For-Profit, Privatization, Testing

Read With Care: Washington Post Editorial Board Endorses Rahm

By dianeravitch
March 6, 2015 //
27

I say read with care, because if you are fed up with Rahm Emanuel’s attacks on public education and unions, you may need to have a barf bag nearby. If you live in New York, and you are aware of Governor Cuomo’s pandering to Wall Street, you will have the same reaction. As you read this encomium to the great Rahm, you may wonder how the term “progressive Democrat” became a definition for someone who attacks teachers, unions, and public education, and exactly how they differ from conservative Republican governors like Scott Walker, John Kasich, and Mike Pence. But bear in mind that this is the same editorial board that thought Michelle Rhee was a great success as chancellor of the D.C. schools and cheered her every move.

Categories Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Reform, Privatization, Testing

Jack Hassard: Governor Nathan Deal’s Very Bad Deal for Georgia’s Struggling Schools: Privatize Them

By dianeravitch
March 5, 2015 //
4

Jack Hassard, professor emeritus of science education at Georgia State University, writes here about the passage of a bill in the State Senate that would allow the state to takeover struggling public schools and turn them over to a statewide district as charter schools. This is an attempt to replicate Louisiana’s Recovery School District and Tennessee’s Achievement School District. Never mind that the Louisiana Recovery School District is one of the lowest-performing districts in the state or that the Tennessee ASD has not achieved any of its goals. The important thing is to hand these low-performing schools over to a private operator and give the appearance of “doing something.”

 

Wouldn’t it make more sense to reduce class sizes in these schools? Make sure these schools have adequate resources? Send in expert teachers to help the staff? Establish high-quaity preschool programs in each school district? Put a school nurse in every one of those schools? Make sure they have a library, after-school programs, and a school psychologist? What do you want to bet that every one of these “struggling schools” has high rates of poverty? The state should act responsibly to help the children now, not to fob them off to an entrepreneur.

Categories Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Privatization

What Happened to Mark Zuckerberg’s $100 Million to Transform Newark Schools?

By dianeravitch
March 4, 2015 //
14

This is not a new article. It was published last May in The New Yorker. For some reason, I did not post it at the time. It was an oversight, for sure. The article is an absorbing and disturbing look into the “reform” movement. Save it to read when you have about 30 minutes. It is a long and fascinating description by veteran journalist Dale Russakoff of what happened to Mark Zuckerberg’s $100 million gift to Newark. It seems to have evaporated over a four-year period into the pockets of consultants, advisors, and other reformy hotshots. I was going to use the word “leeches” but decided that was too strong. In fact, as you will see when you read the article, a horde of organizations and people flocked to get a piece of the action. Lots of people enjoyed Zuckerberg’s largesse, but they weren’t the children of Newark. And it wasn’t just Zuckerberg’s $100 million. He insisted that his $100 million be matched with another $100 million; other super-wealthy philanthropists and reform groups stepped up with big contributions. When a local philanthropist offered $1 million, he was turned away because the amount was too small.

 

Russakoff is not anti-charter. At one point, Russakoff notes parenthetically that a son teaches in a KIPP charter school. Russakoff worked for the Washington Post for 28 years, and is now completing a book about the Zuckerberg gift to Newark. If it is as good as the article, it should be a best-seller.

 

The first thing you will notice when you read the account of the alliance between Cory Booker, then Newark mayor now New Jersey Senator, and Governor Chris Christie is that they have no interest in democracy. Booker and Christie wanted Newark to become an all-charter district. Booker is a supporter of vouchers; maybe Christie is too but he can’t impose them on the state of New Jersey. They agree that top-down, fast reform is necessary, without consensus, without public discussion, or it won’t happen at all. They proceed, too slowly, it turns out, without public engagement (although a consultant is paid over $1 million to create public engagement). Eventually, they hired Cami Anderson to run the district, admiring her take-no-prisoners style of decision-making. How did that work out? She now can’t or won’t attend meetings of the advisory school board because of intense hostility to her. She moved out of Newark for the safety of her family. In fact, she was the focal issue in last year’s mayoral campaign; voter antagonism to her helped to elect Ras Baraka.

 

The most striking quote in the article comes from Vivian Cox Fraser, president of the Urban League of Essex County, who says “Everybody’s getting paid, but Raheem still can’t read.”

 

The next point that is striking is that the woeful condition of Newark schools has a history, which Russakoff recounts. The state has controlled the district since 1995, so no one can or should blame the people of Newark for dysfunctional schools and decrepit buildings. The people have had no control of the schools for 20 years. Before 1995, the Newark schools seems to have been a honey pot for corrupt politicians, most of them with ties to the political structure.

 

There are cautionary lessons here. Booker apparently still thinks that Newark may be a national model of school reform in two or three years (he said that almost a year ago, so we should expect Newark to be a national model in one or two years). Zuckerberg has gotten interested in school reform, along with his wife, Dr. Priscilla Chan, who grew up poor and credits her public school teachers with helping her find the right college (Harvard) and inspiring her to go to medical school. Last year, the Zuckerbergs gave $120 million to San Francisco area public schools, after consulting with administrators and teachers. Perhaps the fiasco in Newark, where his $100 million disappeared, will make him more cautious about investing in the very expensive school reform industry, as its results don’t match its promises. Its promises are very expensive.

 

 

 

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

Texas: Senate Leaders Lay Out Plan to Destroy Public Education

By dianeravitch
March 3, 2015 //
19

Texas Republican leaders in the state senate unveiled their ambitious plan to enact the ALEC (American Legislative Exchange Council) agenda for privatization of public education.

With the help of Texans for Education Reform and a battalion of highly paid lobbyists, the Republicans will promote charters, school choice, and accountability measures to stigmatize public schools.

Texas schools have high numbers of students who are poor and who are English language learners. The senate has no new funding measures, despite the fact that $5 billion was cut from school funding a few years ago.

Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick is a voucher advocate. “On Tuesday, he said “148,000 students, approximately, today, are trapped in 297 school campuses across our state that have been failing for more than two years.”

His agenda includes school choice and other items, including:

“Giving letter grades (A-F) to individual public school school campuses each year based on their performance — something already done for districts;

A stronger “parent empowerment” law, often called “the parent trigger,” that would allow parents to petition for new management schools that have been failing for two years rather than five;

Removing limits on full-time virtual schools and online courses;

Making sure high school students can take more courses that count for college credit;

Creating a “college and career readiness” course for Texas middle schoolers.”

The spokesman for teachers was critical:

““None of the proposals offered by Sen. Taylor and the lieutenant governor would give teachers and students the time and resources they need to improve teaching and learning,” said Texas State Teachers Association President Noel Candelaria. “The Taylor-Patrick agenda fails to meet the needs of five million public school students whose schools have been inadequately funded by the very legislators who are eager to declare schools a failure based on standardized test scores.”

The Taylor-Patrick agenda is a grab-bag of failed ideas cribbed from the ALEC play book. None of them has been beneficial to students or successful anywhere.

Categories ALEC, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Funding, Parent trigger, Texas, Vouchers
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