The corporate reform crowd thinks that fixing schools will fix poverty.
They say that poverty is an excuse for bad teachers.
They think that closing schools where test scores are low will improve education.
They have all kinds of wrong ideas, but wrongest of all is their notion that schools by themselves will fix the social order.
Gary Rubinstein has some interesting thoughts on that subject.
A reader comments on this post:
Poverty is not destiny; it’s policy.
A retired teacher writes about her experiences teaching in an inner-city school in Hartford, Connecticut:
I retired last June, after nearly 38 years of teaching at M. L. King Elementary School, in Hartford, CT. ,one of the poorest mid-sized cities in the nation. As I listen to the President, educational leaders, media commentators, and many in the concerned public, I am always distressed by the degree of blame and scorn heaped upon “failing” city schoolteachers and their “obstructionist “ unions. While I believe that the expressed concerns regarding the state of education in our poorest communities are valid, the solutions seem to be leaving many of our most vulnerable students even further behind.
I began my teaching career with a Masters in Urban Education, from Columbia University. Over the years, I earned 90 college credits beyond my masters, all in efforts to improve instruction. My last year of teaching, as in most other years, I was at school daily until 5, 6, 7, or even 8:00 PM. In addition, I took work home at night, and over the weekend as well. There are countless other teachers just like me. With all of our training, experience, and effort, we faced “failure” on a daily basis.
With the advent of “magnet”, and “charter” schools, I watched the population of King School decrease by more than half. It had been, for years, a stable community school, with parents, children, and sometimes grandchildren being taught by the same teachers who spent their entire professional lives serving this community. Out of district families often requested special permission to attend the school. Over time, the student population of King School has decreased by more than half, with numbers of students leaving to attend “choice” schools. Unfortunately, many, if not most of the students and families who left, were those who had greater economic, educational, emotional, and social advantages. It takes time, knowledge, and energy for parents to apply to these choice schools. The application process is now on line. Those families without time, computer skills, or even basic literacy are excluded. Those students left behind require more resources, yet in the current decentralized, competitive school model, they receive far less.
Despite all of these disadvantages, Martin Luther King School teachers have demonstrated marked improvement on test scores for two consecutive years. They are no longer considered a “failing school”. Yet in spite of these efforts, teachers were recently told that their school will be shut down. Not immediately, but phased out over three or four years. King School will be replaced by a charter school. Teachers will gradually be laid off. The nine teachers who are being cut this year have been informed that they might not have the option to transfer to another Hartford Public School. It seems to me that we have stepped through the looking glass, with all reason and fairness having evaporated.
I can’t help but compare my teaching experiences to those of my sister, who works in a nearby suburban school. She earns more money than the teachers in Hartford. She works in a brand new building, with state of the art equipment. While she is a hard working teacher, she works far fewer hours. She does not have to deal with an enormous amount of paperwork documenting her efforts to improve instruction for large numbers of academically deficient students. Her students are overwhelmingly well cared-for, and it is highly unlikely that any of them have encountered drug dealers or traumatic violence in their neighborhoods. These children have, for the most part, grown up with respect, and in turn, have been taught to respect others, particularly their teacher. She has a wealth of supplemental materials she may need, at hand. She’s never had to spend her own money on crayons, markers, copy paper, or other critical supplies. When school begins in the fall, she is treated to a teacher’s luncheon, provided by the school PTA. She has well-educated parent volunteers in her classroom every day, to assist her students while she delivers small group reading instruction. At holiday time, she comes home with bags full of gifts given to her by the children, and their parents. At the end of the school year, she gets expensive gift certificates, cooperatively given by the parents in her class, as a thank you gift for all she has done. Most importantly, she is not blamed for her students’ failure to meet proficiency. They are usually all at, or above proficiency. She is a member of a teacher union that bargains for improvements in teachers’ pay and working conditions (amount of preparation time, additional duties, etc.). It is a source of counsel and support, should she be harassed or mistreated.
Many teachers in Hartford are presently trapped, due to an economic situation which has resulted in few teacher openings, but this will soon change. The “baby boom” generation of teachers is about to retire, and cities and towns will be in competition to hire the best and the brightest. It doesn’t take an Ivy League education to see the stark disparity in the respect afforded teachers throughout the state and the nation. When my generation entered the ranks of teachers determined to fight the “War on Poverty” in our cities, we understood that resources were unevenly allocated, and we’d no doubt have to work harder than our suburban counterparts. At the same time, we worked collaboratively with administrators and, for the most part, received respect (if not appreciation) from the society at large.
In this brave new world of high stakes testing, and teacher accountability (note that there is little to measure parent, community, or student accountability), I fear for our most vulnerable children. Who will choose to subject themselves to the very vulnerable position of teaching in our poor urban districts? The disparity in pay, resources, and most importantly respect, will lead teachers to more stable careers in suburban school districts. Our city children will be left further and further behind. The tragedy of lost potential will only be magnified.
This article was published in 2007. David Gelernter, a brilliant computer scientist at Yale with strong conservative views, asked why we could not have a world without public schools.
Imagine every school run by private entrepreneurs, private managers, religious groups, whoever, whatever.
Or every student with a voucher.
Why have public education at all?
Sometimes it seems that this is the true goal of faux reformers today: a world of privatized schools, perhaps with a few public schools remaining as repositories for the students that no one wants. Sort of like New Orleans today.
I read this article when it appeared in 2007 and remember being astonished by its audacity. It basically suggests that democratic control of education is a failure, and that the private sector is superior.
Of course, this was before the collapse of the economy in 2008, caused entirely by deregulated private banks and greedy individuals. It takes a vigorous public sector to rein in the predatory greed of some institutions and individuals. Not every private institution is greedy or predatory, but why should we trust our children to the whim and competence of the private sector?
We now see private equity investors looking at the schools as opportunities to make money. This is alarming, because whatever profit they extract is money taken away from the education of children. And we know that they will aim to cut costs by increasing class sizes or using technology to reduce the number of teachers.
It bears mentioning that every nation with a high-performing education system has a strong public school system.
Public institutions are committed to equity. Private institutions seek excellence, but they operate in a market that is guaranteed to produce winners and losers, not equity. If markets produced equity, no one would ever lose money in the stock market and the market would only go up, never down.
Our challenge is to pursue the changes that strengthen our public schools and nurture both equity and excellence.
As it happens, we have ample evidence that neither charters nor vouchers have produced either equity or excellence.
I discovered Stephanie Rivera on Twitter. Ah, the power of social media. Stephanie took issue with Students for Education Reform, which is a mini-version of the Wall Street hedge fund managers group called Democrats for Education Reform. DFER thinks that charter schools will close the achievement gap, but sadly there is no evidence==other than an anecdote about a handful of charters–that this remotely possible on any scale. It hasn’t happened in Washington, D.C., which is awash in TFA and charters, nor in New Orleans, nor in New York City. Where is the evidence that they can close the achievement gap other than by skimming top students and kicking out low-performing students?
Stephanie met with the leaders of SFER in her part of New Jersey, and they tried to convince her she was wrong to be devoted to the public schools. Stephanie can’t understand why they would turn their backs on the schools where 90% of American students are. I think this is called “lifeboat” strategy, where you pluck a few kids and pat yourself on the back instead of trying to save the ship.
Well, as it happens, the ship is under attack from the likes of DFER and SFER and SFC and a long list of well-funded alphabet groups, but it is definitely not going down.
And the charters, we now know, are extremely varied. Some are excellent, some are dreadful, most are no different from public schools. And some are run by profiteers, who use tax dollars to pay off investors.
Lurking between the lines are class issues; the SFERs are at Princeton, Stephanie is at Rutgers. ‘Nuff said.
Be strong, Stephanie!
Many experienced and expert teachers are waiting to give you a hand when you join them.
A columnist in Pennsylvania reports that the billionaire Koch brothers are disappointed by Governor Tom Corbett.
They feel that he didn’t push his voucher bill hard enough, so they are planning a major advertising campaign to put pressure on legislators.
There is no reason for them to pay attention to the unimpressive results of twenty-one years of vouchers in Milwaukee, where kids in voucher schools got no better test scores than their peers in public schools. And no reason to pay attention to vouchers in D.C., where there were no test scores gains in either math or reading.
What matters most is to break the public education system.
Matt Mandel is a National Board Certified Teacher in the Philadelphia public schools.
He has figured out reform.
He explains it here for those who were puzzled.
The most important thing you need to know is this:
“It’s not about the children.”
The reason reformers keep saying that it is “for the children,” is because it’s not.
They say that to confuse people.
Read Matt Mandel and learn what it would look like if it were really “about the children.”
This is what school reform looks like in New York City after ten years of mayoral control.
In nearly 200 of the city’s 1,500 schools, at least 90 percent of the students are below the poverty line.
Four out of five of these schools have disproportionate concentrations of students who are limited English proficient or special education.
Only 31 percent of the students in these high-needs schools passed the state reading test, as compared to 47 percent citywide.
Only 45 percent of the students in these high-needs schools passed the state math tests, compared to 60 percent citywide.
Chancellor Dennis Walcott responded: “I know schools that have a variety of percentages of students, through over-the-counter or special ed or English language learners, who are knocking the socks off the ball.”
According to the NY1 story, the chancellor is referring to 21 of the high-needs schools that beat the odds. That’s 6 percent.
Next time you hear someone from the New York City Department of Education boasting about the “miracle” of mayoral control, think about these children.
Next time they tell you that “poverty is not destiny,” ask them about these schools and what the DOE did to change the odds.
After ten years of mayoral control, who will be held accountable for the system’s inability or unwillingness to meet the needs of these students?
A reader sent this analysis of the city’s data:
A recent story in NY1 examined New York City schools where 90% of the students are below the poverty line. NYC School Chancellor, Dennis Walcott, was quoted as saying that there are schools “who are knocking the socks off the ball.”
We took a careful look at the 2010-11 New York City data on elementary and middle schools and identified 153 schools where 90+% of students were eligible for free lunch. Of those schools only 3 were in the top half of the city in Math and English as calculated by the New York City progress report. PS 134 and PS 130 in Brooklyn and PS 002 in Manhattan were in the top half of students scoring at or above grade level in Math and English. In other words less than 2% of high poverty schools beat the city average and, unfortunately, not by much. In English for example the highest school was at the 65th percentile.
| School | ELA % Level 3 or 4 City Percent of Range |
| PS 134 | 64.4% |
| PS 002 | 52.1% |
| PS 130 | 51.6% |
Digging deeper we noticed that all of these 3 schools have higher levels of student movement out of the school (ranging from 20-12% of the student population) than most elementary schools. This raises questions about how the high scores are generated. Additionally, one is not making AYP for English Language Learners.
New York City’s own data shows that schools with high concentrations of poor students are not knocking the socks off of any balls. Perhaps the Chancellor should stop spending time inventing new idioms (one knocks the cover off of balls and socks off of people, although one can sock a ball over the fence) and should start paying attention to his own data. Making up numbers and success stories will not improve schools for kids. Figuring out the supports and services that would help high poverty schools might.
Anyone?
Last week we saw a report from Reuters about the conference for equity investors held at the posh University Club in Manhattan.
And we learned there about the many new frontiers for making a buck by jumping into the public education marketplace.
Here is another article from the same conference, this one in Education Week, reporting with a straight face that the equity investors see new opportunities to make money when the new national tests inevitably produce low scores.
Message: Never let an opportunity to make money off other people’s misery go to waste!
A bonanza, to be sure!
If we let this happen, shame on us.
Shame on state education departments.
Shame on the U.S. Department of Education.
Shame on Arne Duncan and President Obama.
And shame on the investors who want to take a cut of the dollars intended to educate America’s children.
Are they part of the reform movement too?
Principal Carol Burris is one of the co-founders of the Long Island principals’ revolt against high-stakes testing. When she heard that Governor Cuomo’s commission would be holding hearings in New York City, she joined up with fellow principal Harry Leonardatos and they headed for the hearings.
Read their gripping account of the proceedings, where the deck was stacked in favor of the corporate agenda.
They were among the first to register, but soon discovered that they would not be allowed to speak.
Who was allowed to speak? Campbell Brown, an ex-anchor for CNN who spoke about sex abuse in the schools (her husband is on the board of Rhee’s StudentsFirst, which she did not disclose); the TFA executive director for New York City; someone from the New Teacher Project (founded by Michelle Rhee); an 18-month-veteran of teaching who is now heading a Gates-funded group of young teachers who oppose tenure and seniority. “…they all represented organizations that embraced the governor’s policies, and they all advocated for the following three policies: state imposition of teacher evaluation systems if local negotiations are not successful, elimination of contractually guaranteed pay increases, and the use of test scores in educator evaluations.”
Although the two principals were told that the last 30 minutes would be reserved for those who signed up first–which they had–they were not allowed to testify. Instead the commission heard from the leader of Rhee’s StudentsFirst in New York. They thought they would be allowed to testify against the NY system of grading teachers on a bell curve, which guarantees that half will be found “ineffective.”
Please read this article. It is alarming. Governor Cuomo and his commission have aligned themselves with the enemies of public education.
