Archives for category: Corporate Reformers
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Arne Duncan Says…

By dianeravitch
August 7, 2012 //
42

I hesitate to inflict this interview on my readers. You trust me to inform you and even on occasion to make you laugh with a good satire or parody. I try to shield you from pain and double-speak.

But I must share this with you.

Here is the latest interview with the Secretary of Education. It begins with a stomach-turning but accurate admission that education is the one thing that President Obama and the teacher-bashing governor of New Jersey Chris Christie agree on. How’s that for a reassuring opening?

When asked why the evidence for the reforms he is pushing seems weak, Duncan replies it is because they are new and therefore don’t have a 50-year track record. Oh, please, they don’t have any track record at all, yet he is pushing these untested, invalid measures on schools across the nation. Of course, everyone wants great teachers and great principals and great schools, but nothing he is doing is producing those results.

The questioner gently asks why there were no “dramatic” improvements in New York City or Washington, D.C. or Chicago, where Duncan was in charge for eight years. The answer is so vague as to be indecipherable. Ten years of Duncan-style reform in New York City, six years in D.C., twelve years in Chicago, and nothing to show for it. Just have faith! Believe!

I can’t go on.

Maybe you can.

But isn’t it nice to know that Arne Duncan and Chris Christie and all the rightwing governors are on the same page about how to deal with teachers and principals and schools and education?

 

 

Categories Charter Schools, Chicago, Corporate Reformers, Duncan, Arne, Merit pay, New Jersey, New York, Teacher Evaluations, US Education

How Charters Prosper

By dianeravitch
August 7, 2012 //
5

This is a good one. Florida charter chain Charter USA is expanding into Indiana, where it will run three charter schools. It is a for-profit operator. The states where it operates don’t require it to spend any minimum on educating kids. So it has enough money left over in its profits to make political contributions. According to our friend Coach Sikes, Charter USA contributed to the political campaign of state superintendent Tony Bennett, who in turn will be real friendly in granting more charters so they will have more profits to contribute to more political campaigns. Florida taxpayers are subsidizing Indiana’s race for state superintendent.

Remember education reform? Oh, that.

Categories Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Florida, For-Profit, Indiana

Who Is Really an Irreplaceable Teacher?

By dianeravitch
August 7, 2012 //
11

We have lately heard that certain teachers are “irreplaceable.” So was the conclusion of a report by The New Teacher Project, an organization founded by Michelle Rhee to place new teachers in the classroom. TNTP always thinks big ideas that will push out experienced teachers and make room for the new teachers they recruit. TNPT is enamored with test scores as the bottom-line measure of good teaching because they are convinced their new teachers will raise test scores faster and higher than veteran teachers. Whether this is so, it is hard to say because the new teachers have never taught before and one year of data doesn’t mean much. So maybe after three or four years, it is possible to test their claims. The larger question, which TNTP never addresses or considers unimportant, is whether the ability to raise test scores is the very best way to measure who is a good teacher, who is irreplaceable.

Here is the tip-off to their self-interest: “In fact, in these districts, 40 percent of teachers with more than seven years of experience are less effective at advancing academic progress than the average first-year teacher.” Imagine that! The average first-year teachers (that is, the ones you can get if you work with TNTP) are far more effective that 40 percent of teachers with more than seven years experience! You can see where this is leading: experience is irrelevant because those great first-year teachers are better than 40 percent of the veterans. Why not ditch tenure and seniority and get rid of 40 percent of anyone who has taught for more than seven years? Unfortunately, the report laments, those ineffective experienced teachers were making more money than the average first-year teacher, which struck TNTP as blatantly unfair! Why not pay the highly effective, irreplaceable first-year teachers even more than the seven-year veterans and fire the veterans? I’m not clear about how they know first-year teachers are irreplaceable when they have no data until they are in their second year or third or fourth or fifth year. And maybe they are just good test-drill instructors. But since I don’t understand why anyone would think the way TNTP thinks, I can’t explain their thinking. Read it for yourself.

When the New York Times wrote its editorial advocating carrots and sticks, it was responding to the TNTP report, taking it as fact and truth.

Here is a different point of view about who is irreplaceable:

I was a good teacher before I went through National Boards. It was a grueling process–I had three episodes of shingles during that year, and cried the entire month of January. But I came out the other end a much better teacher, and I can document the impact I’ve had on student learning and student lives. If you’re NBCT, you’re highly effective–one might even say you’re one of the “irreplaceable” teachers that are beginning to make the news. BUT…you can’t use test scores to show student learning–it’s a much more complex and subtle process of actually looking at students as individuals and measuring learning in many ways. This is not comprehensible to anal-retentive number-crunching business-type reformers, who see the world in black and white–their world is binary. Research has shown that NBCTs are highly effective teachers. Several of my fellow NBCTs are leaving teaching for the private sector, and many others are retiring early, because of the “reforms” in education. So not only are the reformers destroying a program that increases teacher effectiveness, they’re driving effective teachers out of the classroom. I’m sad for our students, because they’re the ones that are getting the raw deal.
Categories Corporate Reformers, Education Reform, Rhee, Michelle, Teacher Evaluations, Teacher Tenure, Teachers and Teaching, Testing

The Ten Elements of Digital Learning

By dianeravitch
August 7, 2012 //
14

Doing some research on for-profit virtual schools, I come across study after study about their poor performance, high attrition rates, and low graduation rates.

But then I discovered a document produced by Jeb Bush’s Foundation for Excellent Education and Bob Wise’s Alliance for Excellent Education. It is called “the Ten Elements of Digital Learning” and it is a rallying cry for deregulation and proliferation of every manner of virtual education, including for-profit virtual charters.

Among other recommendations, it says that teachers should not be certified, as that would hamper innovation and diminish quality. It claims that digital learning will transform education, close the achievement gaps, and narrow the income divide in American society. It promises the world, in short. Digital learning is the magic bullet, so it says.

It does not take note of the studies that say that digital schools underperform brick-and-mortar schools.

The report was funded by–no surprise–the Gates Foundation, the Broad Foundation, and the Walton Foundation.

Maybe it is the Magna Carta of virtual schooling. But the gap between promise and reality is a giant canyon.

Categories Broad Foundation, Bush, Jeb, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, For-Profit, Gates Foundation, Bill Gates, On-Line Education, Technology, Computers

Who Should Be Florida’s Next Commissioner?

By dianeravitch
August 6, 2012 //
12

That was the question I was asked by a reporter from the Tampa Bay Times.

It seemed that his last story on that topic had a list of names such as Michelle Rhee, John White, and Joel Klein.

Someone suggested he contact me, and this is what I told him.

Read the story as it presents an interesting contrast to the list of names approach.

Categories Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Education Reform, Florida

When Students Awaken, Everything Will Change

By dianeravitch
August 6, 2012 //
9

I just got this post on Twitter by a student who wants no part of the DFER-like “Students for Education Reform,” created at Princeton to advance the corporate reform agenda. This student is amazing! Impressive research, real understanding about how words can be used to deceive, and a grasp of the issues.

There is a bottom-line question that no one ever answers: If DFER and SFER and SFC and TFA and StudentsFirst and other corporate reformers already know how to close the achievement gap, as they repeatedly claim, why are there no examples of it anywhere? It hasn’t happened in New York City, after ten long years of corporate-style reform; it hasn’t happened in New Orleans since Katrina even though 80% of the children are in charter schools; it didn’t happen in D.C., under Michelle Rhee (which still has the biggest gaps in the nation). Why do they keep saying they know how to do it when they haven’t done it? At some point, the dance ends. And the bill comes due for all those promises and claims.

 

Categories Corporate Reformers, Stand for Children, Students, StudentsFirst

How Charter Schools Divide Communities

By dianeravitch
August 5, 2012 //
81

Critics of charter schools have noted that they undermine neighborhood public schools and decimate communities. By offering a slot to a small proportion of students in the neighborhood, they break up any sense of community spirit centered on the community school and they simultaneously promote the free-market fetishizing of consumer choice. Add to the charter movement the effects of NCLB: labeling a school with low scores as a “failing school,” which causes families to abandon it and demoralizes teachers; and the effects of Race to the Top, which encourages school closings as a remedy for low scores. All of this is a great avoidance strategy, a way of not facing up to the most consistent predictor of low test scores: poverty. Yes, poor kids can learn, and yes, it is possible to create a high-test score school composed of poor kids, but neither of those facts contradicts the consistent correlation between poverty and low academic achievement. Corporate reformers like to pretend that poverty doesn’t matter, because they know of 1 or 20 schools where poor kids got high test scores. But that is a non sequitur. There is no district in the nation, even those run by the most ardent reformers, that has closed the achievement gaps of race and income. Certainly not DC or NYC.

A reader reflects on this scenario:

One of the less-developed discussions about charter schools is their role in destroying the neighborhood school – now effectively accomplished among NYC high schools, for example – and how that is integral to the class and racial reconfiguration of the neighborhoods in which they are being placed.

As Mark Naison perceptively wrote weeks ago, throughout the grim Reagan, Bush I and post-NAFTA years of deindustrialization that hollowed out so many communities, the one place that remained was the neighborhood public school, which often employed neighborhood residents and provided an island of stability. Now, as developers have their eyes on some of those communities, they have allied with charter school operators. It’s no coincidence, for example, that one of the most active real estate developers in rapidly gentrifying Harlem (Gideon Stein) is on the Board of Eva Moskowitz’s aggressively metastasizing Harlem Success Academies.

It’s a vicious irony that, hyped as a panacea for poor Black and Latino urban children, charter schools in many cities and neighborhoods are in fact a vehicle for ultimately displacing them. After all, as census data has been showing for a while, the slums of the future are forming in the suburbs (charter operators take note: a rapidly developing market!), and the urban core is becoming whiter and more affluent.

Charters, whether brick-and-mortar schools or virtual sweatshops started by ex-felons (as is the case with K-12 and its founder, Michael Mlken) are not just about busting the unions and monetizing every last data point generated in the school building, but are also a real estate play, eliminating what is often one of the last public, universally accessible institution in these neighborhoods, and making way for more desirable consumers who don’t rely upon or care about the ongoing destruction of the public realm.
Categories Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, NYC

Rahm Emanuel’s Financial Illogic

By dianeravitch
August 5, 2012 //
9

Chicago Public Schools have a large deficit. Mayor Rahm Emanuel is responding to the deficit by encouraging the growth of charter schools to carry the burden of educating the city’s children.

One reason for the growing deficit is declining enrollment, caused in large part by the CPS promotion of charter schools. The  more students leave the CPS system to enroll in charters, the less state aid CPS gets. As more charter schools open, the financial crisis gets worse. Thus, Mayor Emanuel’s policy makes the deficit worse by stimulating the exodus of students from the school system and reducing its revenues.

One of the mayor’s favorite charter chains is UNO, which is based in the Latino community. UNO just leased a historic Roman Catholic school, St. Scholastica Academy and is set to increase its enrollment. It is sad to see Catholic schools close in urban areas, especially one with such a long history of serving its community.

Both the city and state are pumping money into charter schools, both for operating costs and capital costs. This money is diverted from public schools to privately managed charters. UNO received a state grant of $98 million to expand, and the city adds to its capital costs. In effect, both the city and state are paying charters to drain students and revenues out of the public school system.

Mayor Emanuel is one of those new conservative Democratic mayors who attack the teachers’ union and work to privatize public education in his city. He is following the trail blazed by Arne Duncan in Chicago. If it was a successful policy, Chicago should be one of the nation’s top performing school systems. It is not. How many years will it take before the politicians begin to understand the futility of privatization and the harm they are doing to one of society’s important public institutions?

Categories Charter Schools, Chicago, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Education Reform, Emanuel, Rahm

Is CNN Shilling for ALEC?

By dianeravitch
August 4, 2012 //
52

A reader wrote this morning to complain about a biased and ill-informed CNN program.

Teachers, parents: When you see shows like this, call the network’s 800 number and tell them you want to complain. Be specific. Next time Rhee is on a program complaining about the “failure” of U.S. schools, tell the network to ask about the cheating scandals in D.C. and the achievement gaps in D.C.

They take notes. If they get hundred of calls, they listen:

This morning, CNN devoted two segments on how American education is failing compared to the rest of the world. Of course, Michelle Rhee was interviewed and the segment was completed one sided with no counter arguments presented. I wish they would have had you on to debunk Rhee’s false claims. I wrote the following complaint to CNN:
This morning 8/4/12 you had a completed one-sided story about US education which included Michelle Rhee. The entire premise of the segment is that the US is failing in education compared to the rest of the world. You even used a biased chart of nation rankings in education from the American Legislative Exchange Council or ALEC. Rhee, other corporate “reformers” like Bill Gates, and ALEC has one mission-to privatize public education. Rhee’s organization, Students First demonizes teachers and wants to set up more charter schools which perform in many cases no better than public schools. Rhee and other “reformers” never talk about how the US has one of the highest poverty rates of all the industrialized nations. Research indicates poverty has the greatest impact on student performance. So instead of dealing with poverty issues in America, Rhee looks to blame teachers and unions. Moreover, when controlling for poverty, the US ranks in the top 10 of nations in education. In fact American schools have been improving not failing. The National Assessment of Educational Progress shows steady gains in reading and larger gains in math over the years. Why doesn’t CNN act like a responsible news organization and do some actual research about education before having someone like Rhee on the air? Why not have someone to counter her false claims about education like Diane Ravitch? Shame on you CNN for not doing your homework!
Categories ALEC, Corporate Reformers, Rhee, Michelle, US Education

Is Compromise Possible? Wise?

By dianeravitch
August 4, 2012 //
23

Nancy Flanagan was a music teacher for thirty years in Michigan and a National Board Certified Teacher. She writes a smart blog at Education Week called “Teacher in a Strange Land,” which is an apt title for the disjointed and bizarre times we live in. Her perspective is rooted in her deep experience. I always learn something new when I read her posts.

Her current post is called “Sleeping with the Enemy.” She asks why can’t we all just get along? Can the lion and the lamb lie down together? She offers James Carville and Mary Matalin as a case in point. It can happen.

And she writes about the pent-up anger among so many teachers, who don’t understand why they are treated so abusively in the media and by the policymakers who have never taught a day or maybe taught for a few months or even two years.

Nancy is clearly conflicted. She can’t decide whether compromise is possible, whether there is a middle group between the corporate reformers and the nation’s battered teachers. Or whether compromise reveals a lack of moral conviction.

She ends with a story about a colleague who is attending a conference where he will display his best lessons, in hopes of being chosen to attend an international conference. And she wonders, as do I, why Bill Gates appointed himself to choose America’s best teachers. As do I.

She leaves us pondering that compromise, pondering what we give up and what we gain. And who really wins.

Categories Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Gates Foundation, Bill Gates
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