Archives for category: Corporate Reformers
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A Fab New Program: America for America

By dianeravitch
December 13, 2012 //
16

Friends and readers, many years ago I worked for a small magazine. Once in a while, we would receive a submission from a completely unknown writer. We said “it came over the transom.” Now to understand the expression, you have to know what a transom is. It’s the movable glass panel on a hinge over the door. You left it open to get air circulation, in the days before air-conditioning. So, if you worked in this little magazine, you might have an article literally tossed over the transom, unsolicited. Who knew? Maybe it would be the next great American author.

So I got this strange article over the transom (and I don’t have one). I have no idea what it’s about but I laughed out loud. Maybe you will too. The author requested anonymity.

Here goes:

America For America

When my family joined the program, I thought being a host sister would be a life-changing event. I’d grown up watching reruns of The Wire and Yo Teach! and I’ve just always felt like I wanted to do my part. For the past two years I’ve been part of the program, I’ve agreed to share my room if the 5th grade student we host is a girl, but naturally a boy student stays with my younger brother. Right now we have a boy, which I’m glad about because I’m exhausted by the added Talk Time™ that comes with waking up and falling asleep with a student sharing my room. Honestly, the prescribed Good mornings! How did you sleep? the Would you like to use the bathroom first or shall I? And that’s the easy stuff! My phone’s app tracks my talk and presents me with endless incentives to make the student Stretch It™ even when we’re just watching one half hour of Roku together before bed. I don’t care if she can extend her response to my open-ended question about Taylor Swift’s analysis of this week’s International Idol contestants. Can’t we just agree Taylor Swift is a has-been and her red lipstick way too much?

But we can’t ever agree–it’s in my family’s contract. We have to Push™ the student to argue until she wins the argument or until she starts to cry. It’s sort of new, this whole Push™ thing. Before that, we just had to ask a simple question, get a response, then evaluate it. I think we called it IRE™ after Bob Marley. Such an amazing guy. So now agreeing to disagree isn’t okay in the program either. That’s actually the tablet example of lowering expectations for our host student– and families who lower them get kicked out of the America For America (AFA) program and if that happens I can’t get into Brown.

In the mornings I am always reminding the student to put on her belt, get her reading log signed and find and sharpen her five pencils. The pencils are such a pain because she keeps forgetting to empty the electric sharpener, which means I have to do it and then I have to take dollars off her Allowance™. I’m not a fan of the Allowance™ but it’s mandatory for us. When friends ask why my parents, brother and I are always fiddling with the Allowance™ tracking app our phones, my Dad explains that Accountability™ is one of AFA’s five pillars which means we have to monitor all our student’s actions, words, body language, half-thoughts, full-thoughts and utterances. We record positive behaviors by adding dollars when she does things like clear her place or Stretches It™ without being asked. (Sometimes I just add dollars for not leaving toothpaste in the sink. As an AFA family I’m proud to say we focus on the positive.) On the flip side, we remove dollars when the student forgets to empty the pencil sharpener, talks too loudly at our dinner table or in the car, forgets to support an argument with evidence, doesn’t show an appropriate amount of Gratitude™ for being in our home or lacks Grit™ when helping my brother rake the leaves.

Once we had a friend over for dinner who asked my Dad to explain Enrichment™. My Dad said, basically, if the student slips and says Don’t nobody or Imma (not that they all talk like that but most of them do) then she eats dinner alone at the old desk in the guest bedroom downstairs. When she’s done eating there’s an app she plays for an hour called SpeakUp!©It’s on both the student’s and my Dad’s phones and tracks when she makes mistakes speaking proper English. The app, SpeakUp!©, feeds her a variety of games to learn the right way to talk. It’s really fun and the graphics are awesome. After an hour of practice, she comes back upstairs and shows her mastery. Then he always says I’m proud of you because you worked so hard at that. For some people it’s really confusing why he says that, but my Dad shouldn’t ever tell her she’s smart or else she’ll grow a Fixed Mindset™ and then we’ll get kicked out of the program.

That night, after my Dad explained Enrichment™, the friend got upset and left. We didn’t hear from her again but then she called last week. I guess she has a two-year old daughter now and was looking for programs. My Dad offered some advice about demonstrating Zest™ and Optimism™ in the application process, but I don’t think she has what it takes. Besides, it’s not like it’s 2018 anymore. Everyone’s applying to America For America now.

Categories Corporate Reformers

Tony Bennett Lands on his Feet in Florida

By dianeravitch
December 12, 2012 //
16

Tony Bennett, the defeated state superintendent from Indiana, has landed the job as state commissioner in Florida.

Bennett is the hero to the rightwing “reform” sector, a champion of privatization, vouchers, charters, online for-profit schools, and the Common Core. His last action in Indiana was to lower standards for new trackers and principals, so that no preparation was needed to become a teacher and anyone could become a principal with only two years of experience as a teacher, even in higher education.

Jeb Bush is mad for Bennett, who serves as head of Bush’s Chiefs for Change.

Categories Bush, Jeb, Chiefs for Change, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Florida, For-Profit, Indiana, Merit pay, On-Line Education, Privatization

Brilliant! Opposite Day in Ohio with StudentsFirst

By dianeravitch
December 12, 2012 //
16

This may be the best blog post of the year. Read it. It is priceless!

Welcome to Opposite Day in Ohio!

Veteran educator Maureen Reedy explains what “education reform” meant on Opposite Day.

This is the day when StudentsFirst came to the Ohio Legislature to tout the virtues of charter schools, even though public schools in Ohio far outperform charters. The bottom performing 111 schools in the state of Ohio last year were all charter schools. Opposite Day!

And when StudentsFirst claimed that great teachers could teach 100 or more children online, even though Ohio already has poorly performing online charters. Opposite Day!

And when an employee of StudentsFirst boldly claimed that teaching is not a profession. Opposite Day!

Please read. This story should be on Anderson Cooper, Rachel Maddow and the Newshour. John Merrow, are you there?

Categories Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, For-Profit, Ohio, On-Line Education, Privatization, Rhee, Michelle, StudentsFirst

Karen Lewis: Where Corporate Reform Is Going

By dianeravitch
December 11, 2012 //
11

A Comment from Karen Lewis about the simultaneous deluge of “reforms,” none of which is grounded in research or experience:

“Any decent researcher knows that when you change more than one variable in an experiment, you have to do some pretty heavy lifting in order to determine which one had more effect than another. So in Chicago we have a new evaluation, Common Core, a longer day and year, a new contract, school closings and the usual suspects of attacks on an urban system. The key is to be clear about what and whose purposes all of this serves.

“We now know with the Wall Street Journal “exposing” how America tests in relation to other countries, that the scope of the hand-ringing is to make sure parents of children in good schools will begin to question their efficacy in order to move to a purely private system. Public schools, with the promise of democracy, citizen-building and the common good are in danger of disappearing. If the billionaire dilettantes have their way, public schools will be for the “throwaway” kids and their teachers will be temps.”

Categories Charter Schools, Common Core, Corporate Reformers, Education Reform, Emanuel, Rahm, Privatization, Teacher Evaluations, Unions

Outlook for Common Core: Turmoil Ahead

By dianeravitch
December 11, 2012 //
11

Researchers usually find that students flourish where there is stability in the school, with an experienced staff, clear expectations, small classes, and a rich curriculum.

In Kentucky, first state to implement and test the Common Core, student scores fell and achievement gaps widened.

This teacher in Connecticut foresees rough weather ahead as the state and federal government launch a massive experiment:

I wonder about the impact specifically in Connecticut where we are rolling out a new comprehensive teacher evaluation system at the same time [as Common Core]….so we have teachers learning new standards, possibly new curriculum, new evaluation processes, new observational rubrics for lessons, teaching and then setting learning goals based on results of one type of test in 2014, and then another online, common core test in 2015…how many schools will fail? How many teachers will not make gains with their students? How many will be fired? How many schools will be taken over? How will the students handle all the stress and change in the schools? It sounds to me like a lot of people will benefit – private companies waiting to take over schools, publishers, trainers, RESCS, but the hands-down, biggest loser will be the students. It is going to be a rough ride in Connecticut for a few years as this experiment unfolds.

Categories Charter Schools, Common Core, Connecticut, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Teacher Evaluations, Teachers and Teaching, Technology, Computers, Testing, US Education

CTU: A Scary Bedtime Story About Greedy Fatcats Who Want to Destroy Public Schools

By dianeravitch
December 10, 2012 //
3

In this video, a father tells a scary story to his little girl as he tucks her in at night.

It is about the greedy Fatcats who are trying to close Chicago’s public schools and take them private.

This is a creative use of social media to educate the public.

Categories Budget Cuts, Charter Schools, Chicago, Corporate Reformers, Democrats for Education Reform, Duncan, Arne, Education Industry, Emanuel, Rahm, Privatization, Race to the Top, Stand for Children, Vouchers

When Sabrina Stevens Crashed the ALEC Meeting

By dianeravitch
December 9, 2012 //
11

Sabrina Stevens wanted to tell the ALEC education task force what she thought of their plans to privatize American education and destroy unions. At first, she planned to protest. Instead, she walked right in, sat quietly, fumed, and then spoke out.

Categories ALEC, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, For-Profit, Privatization, Unions, Vouchers

Preparing Our Youth for the Military-Industrial Complex and Global Competition

By dianeravitch
December 9, 2012 //
32

On November 28, at a meeting of Jeb Bush’s Foundation for Excellence in Education, Joel Klein and Condoleeza Rice discussed the report of a task force they chaired and the report they produced for the Council on Foreign Relations.

The central claim of the report was that American public education is so dreadful that it constitutes “a very grave threat to national security.” I thought that the findings and the recommendations of the report were far-fetched and predetermined by the makeup of the task force. I agreed with the panel’s dissenters and reviewed the report here.

I am happy to see that the Association of Literary Scholars, Critics, and Writers has published a forum in which a group of scholars respond to the CFR report.
Several authors reacted with derision to the CFR’s warm embrace of the Common Core standards, especially to its recommendation That students need more “informational text” and less “narrative fiction.” The writers saw this as a direct challenge, if not an insult, to the humanities and to the development of creativity, imagination, moral judgment, and critical thinking.
Two of the essays note the similarity between the CFR report and the views of Mr. Gradgrind in Dickens’ “Hard Times.” Mr. Gradgrind memorably said,
“Now what I want is Facts. Teach these boys and girls nothing but Facts. Facts are wanted in life. Plant nothing else, and root everything else out.”
Most of the authors are disturbed by the narrow and cold utilitarianism of the report, the attitude that people are not individuals with their own purposes but “human capital” that must be shaped to serve the needs of industry, the military and global competition.
A sampling of the commentary:
Several of the authors, writes Rosanna Warren of the University of Chicago, share “a sinister political assumption floating in the CFR report but nowhere in it argued or defended, that the United States is from now on to be committed to the enterprise of global domination.” Not only does it implicitly raise questions about what kind of nation we should be but “One of the more repellent features of the CFR report is its persistent referring to human beings–students and teachers–as ‘human capital,’…terminology that may be fine for economic planners or those writing about corporate success, but as an educational vision it is chilling.” The writers of the CFR report, she says, “regard people as units of merely instrumental value in larger systems of corporate production and military defense.
Elizabeth D. Samet, who teaches at the U.S. Military Academy, defends the teaching of fiction. She writes, “Informational texts often invite a reader to answer a series of questions at the end of teach chapter; fiction demands that a reader figure out which questions to ask.” The security of our nation depends, she writes. “on citizens possessed of liberated cultural and political imaginations.”
Rachel Hadas of Rutgers asks, “What is an ‘informational text’—a textbook?…And what does “narrative fiction’ denote?” She finds, “Reflection and self-criticism, or indeed questioning of any sort, are not among the benefits the Report associates with education, or indeed with national security.” Without such questioning, there can be neither imagination nor creativity.
James Miller of the New School finds that the report is “preoccupied with staffing up the military-industrial complex” and thus disregards liberal education as a goal of education. Written in “wooden, barely literate prose,” the report is concerned only with immediate, utilitarian interests. “In the name of bolstering national security, they are offering an intellectual starvation diet for the vast majority of American students.”
Robert Alter, now emeritus at the University of California at Berkeley, says that “the ruthless instrumentalization of the student population they [the CFR task force] envisage is quite likely to alienate young people rather than excite them about learning.” The Report’s neglect of language and literature, he writes, is “not merely dim but scandalous.” It neglects Greek or Latin “because you can’t cut a deal with a multinational in the language of Homer or Virgil. Literature itself is relegated in the Report to a distant and irrelevant memory because it has no utilitarian application.” It is important, of course, to read information text, but too much such text “is an excellent recipe for instilling a hatred of reading.”
David Bromwich of Yale University notes that since 2001, a “panic fear” about national security has grown. He asks, “Who should answer for the decline of American prestige in the world? This pamphlet renders a curious verdict. Not economists, not corporate heads, not generals or presidents or their advisers. No: public school teachers are to blame.” The Report, he writes, “takes the militarization of the motives for education to an unprecedented extreme.” Nowhere does it present “learning and wisdom” as good ends in themselves. He concludes, “…the intellectual bankruptcy of this enterprise suggests a corruption of mind more dangerous to a free society than any combination of military stalemates and diplomatic defeats.”
This short (67-page) pamphlet is a refreshing rejoinder to much of the cant and dogma that are in the air these days. There are several other excellent contributions by other authors, including John C. Briggs, James Engell, Virgil Nemoianu, Lee Oser, Michael B. Prince, Diana Senechal, and Helaine L. Smith. Every one of their short commentaries contain more wisdom than the CFR Report.
Categories Charter Schools, Common Core, Corporate Reformers, Curriculum, Education Industry, Education Reform, Privatization, US Education

Joel Klein’s Plan to Spin Education into Gold for Murdoch

By dianeravitch
December 7, 2012 //
5

Earlier this year, Joel Klein and Condoleeza Rice chaired a task force at the Council on Foreign Relations, which issued a scathing indictment of public education, calling our public schools “a very grave threat to national security.”

Klein works for Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation, where he is in charge of selling technology. The latest report from his division repeats the gloomy (and inaccurate statistics) about US education and says there is a way to fix all these dire problems: Buy the technology he is selling!

Here, Jersey Jazzman deconstructs Klein’s snappy visual claims.

Just for the record. Klein’s (and the task force’s) assertion that test scores have been flat for 20 years is flat out wrong. Reading scores on NAEP have increased slowly and significantly for blacks, whites, Hispanics, and Asians since 1992. Math scores have increased dramatically for the same groups.

Categories Corporate Reformers, For-Profit, Klein, Joel, Privatization, Technology, Computers

Another Great Public School Targeted for Closure in NYC

By dianeravitch
December 6, 2012 //
1

The Bloomberg administration continues its path of closing schools rather than helping them.

Read more here on the New York City parent blog.

Only 13 years ago, DeWitt Clinton High School was rated one of the best in the nation. It was once an honored school, home to great teachers and students.

But now, going into the 11th year of mayoral control, it is overcrowded and on the chopping block.

The Bloomberg administration’s Department of Education demonstrates yet again that it has no idea how to improve schools. It just demolishes them.

In time, the small schools that replace DeWitt Clinton will also close.

And then?

Categories Bloomberg, Michael, Corporate Reformers, NYC
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