Steven Singer had a stellar year in 2017. He published a book and he posted some brilliant commentaries. He even got censored by Facebook, not once, but twice.
Here are his top ten posts.
His #1 Post was about the ignorance and arrogance of Betsy DeVos.
His #2 Post was about U.S. schools. He said, “They are NOT failing. They are among the best in the world.”
Laura Chapman writes here about the beast that wants to Destroy Public Education, which has many names:
Many of these schemes are part of the Education Cities initiative. I may have commented about this before.
About Education Cities: FUNDERS Laura and John Arnold foundation, Michael and Susan Dell Foundation, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, and Walton Family Foundation.
PARTNERS
“Education Cities works with leading organizations to help our members achieve their missions.”
“Bellwether Education Partners works with Education Cities on research and capacity building projects. Bellwether is a nonprofit dedicated to helping education organizations—in the public, private, and nonprofit sectors—become more effective in their work and achieve dramatic results, especially for high-need students.”
In Cincinnati, Bellwether was the recruiter for the “Accelerate Great Schools,” initiative that seemed to have appeared out of nowhere, pushed by high profile local foundations and deep pockets in the business community—all intent on marketing the need for “high quality seats” meaning you close and open schools based on the state’s weapon-ized system of rating schools. You also increase charter schools and hire TFA. (We have a TFA alum on the school board). The CEO of Accelerate Great Schools recruited by Bellwether was a TFA manager from MindTrust in Indianapolis. He lasted about 18 months and accelerated himself to a new job. http://www.cincinnati.com/story/news/education/2017/01/24/ceo-quietly-quits-school-accelerator/96997612/
“Center on Reinventing Public Education (CRPE) at the University of Washington partners with Education Cities to analyze and identify policies that create the conditions that allow great schools to thrive. Through research and policy analysis, CRPE seeks ways to make public education more effective, especially for America’s disadvantaged students.”
CRPE should be regarded as an operational arm of the Gates Foundation. It marketed the Gates “Compacts.” These are MOUs (memoranda of understanding) designed to create a “make-nice-with-your-charter schools who want to have you for lunch.” The MOUs mean that districts agree to give central office resources to charters (e.g., deals on meals and transportation) with charters promising to share their “best practices” and other nonsense. The bait to districts included $100,000 up front with the promise of more money to the district if they met x, y, z, terms of the MOU. Only few districts got extra money. Many reasons, some obvious like the departure of the people who signed the MOUs.
“Public Impact” partners with Education Cities (and Bellwether Education Partners) on research and capacity building projects. With a mission to dramatically improve learning outcomes for all children in the United States, Public Impact concentrates its work on creating the conditions in which great schools can thrive. The Opportunity Culture initiative aims to extend the reach of excellent teachers and their teams to more students, for more pay, within recurring budgets. Public Impact, a national research and consulting firm, launched the Opportunity Culture initiative’s implementation phase in 2011, with funding from The Joyce Foundation, Carnegie Corporation of New York and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.” Current work is funded by the Overdeck Family Foundation and the Charles and Lynn Schusterman Family Foundation.”
Get past the self-aggrandizing rhetoric and you see that Public Impact is marketing 13 school turnaround models, almost all of these with reassignments of teachers and students to accommodate “personalized” something. One arm of the “opportunity culture” website is a job placement service for teachers. In prior USDE administrations, Public Impact and Bellwether worked together to get federal support for charter schools.Both have political clout.
“Thomas B. Fordham Institute partners with Education Cities to analyze and identify policies and practices that create the conditions that allow great schools to thrive. The Thomas B. Fordham Institute works to advance educational excellence for every child through research, analysis, and commentary, as well as on-the-ground action and advocacy in Ohio.”
Well, we have a pretty good idea in Ohio of how all of that pontification worked out.
Here are the cities in the foundation-led move to eliminate democratically elected school boards and fold public schools into a portfolio of contract schools that receive public funds but are privately operated. At one time the number of Education Cities was 30, then 28, now 25.
Albuquerque, NM, Excellent Schools New Mexico
Baton Rouge, LA New Schools for Baton Rouge
Boise, ID Bluum
Boston, MA Boston Schools Fund, Empower Schools
Chicago, IL, New Schools for Chicago
Cincinnati, OH, Accelerate Great Schools
Denver, CO, Gates Family Foundation, Donnell-Kay Foundation
Detroit, MI, The Skillman Foundation
Indianapolis, IN, The Mind Trust
Kansas City, MO, Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation
Las Vegas, NV, Opportunity 180
Los Angeles, CA, Great Public Schools Now
Memphis, TN, Memphis Education Fund
Minneapolis, MN, Minnesota Comeback
Nashville, TN, Project Renaissance
New Orleans, LA, New Schools for New Orleans
Oakland, CA, Educate78, Great Oakland Public Schools Leadership Center, Rogers Family Foundation
Philadelphia, PA, Philadelphia School Partnership
Phoenix, AZ, New Schools for Phoenix
Richmond, CA, Chamberlin Family Foundation
Rochester, NY, E3 Rochester
San Jose, CA, Innovate Public Schools
Washington, DC, Education Forward DC, CityBridge Education
These cities have been targeted by national and local non-profits for capture by promoters of choice, charters, and tech. This is a national effort designed to make school “reform” look like it is a local initiative, inspired by generosity and driven by civic values and “partnerships” in combination with “forward thinking” associated with a chamber of commerce campaign. Look at the names of these initiatives; New Schools, Education Forward, Comeback, Renaissance, and so on. Marketing market-based and corporate managed education is the aim and it is sought by pushing the idea that established public schools are failures
Jennifer Berkshire pointed Peter Greene to a paper published by the libertarian Heartland Institute in 2002, nearly 18 years ago. It lays out the goals of the privatization movement very clearly. The main goal was nothing less than the elimination of public schools in America, replaced by a free-market system. The paper was written by Joseph Bast, the president of the Heartland Institute.
Whenever you hear someone refer to public schools as “government schools,” you can be sure you are in the presence of a free-market zealot.
“Bast expresses a childlike faith in the magic of the marketplace. “Privatization is so effective it typically costs a private firm half as much as the government to produce a product or service of similar (often superior) quality.” It’s a cute notion, for which he offers zero evidence. What was clear even in 2002, but what Bast never acknowledges, is that privatization allows private operators to hoover up a big pile of tax dollars that would otherwise have gone to the public sector. But Bast belonged to the Cult of Competition, believing that competing schools would reward schools that please parents, stimulate parent involvement, be more efficient, and penalize failure. None of these things are related to the goal of providing a high quality education for every single child in America, but then, that’s not his goal.
“Bast had some clever (if not reality-based) ideas about how vouchers would satisfy many reformy constituencies. For instance, by setting voucher amounts below current per-students spending levels, vouchers would lessen the taxpayer cost. Because, I guess, the private schools would accept the low voucher amount. Because when I tell the dealer that I can’t afford a Porsche, he just says, “Well, then, I’ll just lower the price to what you would like to pay.” Because that’s how free market competition works…
“His big vision?
Pilot voucher programs for the urban poor will lead the way to statewide universal voucher plans. Soon, most government schools will be converted into private schools or simply close their doors. Eventually, middle- and upper-income families will not longer expect or need tax-financed assistance to pay for the education of their children, leading to further steps toward complete privatization. Vouchers could remain to help the truly needy.
“Use the poor to get vouchers started. Shut down public education entirely. Let the wealthy go back to their exclusive top-tier schools, and set up some cheap ones for everyone else. Boom. No public education, and no forcing taxpayers to pay a bunch of money to educate Those People’s children…
“If you take nothing else from this piece, remember this– for many of the most ardent voucher supporters, school vouchers are not a destination, but just a stop-gap, something that will have to do until they can finally move on their real goal– the complete dismantling of public education in this country, replaced with a loose system of unaccountable, unregulated private schools. That fully privatized system, not a voucher system, is the goal. Keep your eye on the ball.”
Heartland Institute is supported by the DeVos family, the Koch brothers, and all the usual rightwing foundations.
I enjoyed reading this story. I think you will too. It appeared in the National Geographic. It is about a man who fell overboard, was surrounded by sharks and other dangerous creatures, yet managed to survive. What was it? Character. Courage. Hope. Faith. All of the above.
https://news.nationalgeographic.com/2017/12/alone-lost-overboard-brett-archibald/
At first, I wondered, does this have anything to do with education?
Yes, I answered myself. We are swimming in shark-infested waters. The sharks want to destroy our public schools. They want to replace teachers with machines and call it “personalized learning.” They want to test our children until they cry. They want to monetize education and put their investment on the New York Stock Exchange. They want to take the money meant for public schools and distribute it to private schools, religious schools, for-Profit schools, and vendors of schlock. They want the public to pay money to schools that discriminate against children of certain groups, practices that are against our civil rights laws. The sharks don’t care about civil rights laws, although they claim to be the leaders of “the civil rights issue of our time.” They don’t care about children either. Don’t ever believe a shark. They lie.
We will survive. We will not let the sharks devour what matters most to us. We will prevail.
Indiana was once renowned for its public schools, which were beloved community institutions. Then rightwing zrepublicans took control of the state, and the result was disruption, chaos, and community division. Instead of working together to improve their public schools, the public was enticed to pursue private choices, all under the false promise of “reform.”
Carol Burris went to Indiana, visited schools, met educators, and has written a three-part series about the corporate attack on public education in the Hoosier State. At the center of destruction are two men: Mitch Daniels, the former governor who is now president of Purdue (a soft landing he engineered), and Mike Pence, the pious evangelical who is now Vice-President.
Here is part 1 of Carol’s gripping story of the attack on public education in Indiana.
“Entire public school systems in Indiana cities, such as Muncie and Gary, had been decimated by funding losses, even as a hodgepodge of ineffective charter and voucher schools sprang up to replace them. Charter school closings and scandals were commonplace, with failing charters sometimes flipped into failing voucher schools. Many of the great public high schools of Indianapolis were closed from a constant churn of reform directed by a “mindtrust” infatuated with portfolio management of school systems.
“When I asked who was most responsible for the downward spiral of public education in the state, the answer was always the same: Mitch Daniels, Indiana’s 49th governor.”
This is a truly frightening story.
Far-rightwing media giant Sinclair Broadcasting has won approval from the FCC to buy Tribune Media. It will control the news feed into 72% of all homes, writes Jaisal Noor reporting from Baltimore.
Jaisal Noor writes:
“The Trump administration’s FCC recently changed local media ownership rules, paving the way for Sinclair Broadcasting to buy Tribune Media for $3.9 billion dollars. When the deal goes through, Sinclair has access to 72 percent of households nationwide. The Hunt Valley-based Sinclair is the largest distributor of local news in the country, and forces its stations to run commentary from pundits such as former Trump aide Boris Epshteyn and frequently offers up news with an unabashed, pro-administration spin (“Did the FBI have a personal vendetta in pursuing the Russia investigation of President Trump’s former national security adviser Michael Flynn?”).
“While Sinclair consolidates its grip on the nation’s local TV market, in Baltimore, Sinclair is ramping up its local coverage with Project Baltimore on local affiliate Fox45, which aims to “save” Baltimore schools by bashing them. Project Baltimore’s propaganda is subtler than Sinclair’s employing click-bait headlines, skewed statistics, and half-truths to push a narrative that portrays Baltimore schools as beyond redemption and casts Project Baltimore as coming to the rescue.
“Its austere logo, in red, white, and blue offers up the tagline, “Save Our Schools.”
“Although Project Baltimore launched in March, recent stories have gone viral raising its profile and influence. A Nov. 8 report from Chris Papst titled “13 Baltimore City High Schools, zero students proficient in math” reported that over a dozen Baltimore City High Schools had zero students proficient in the math PARCC test—a test that’s part of the Common Core curriculum, aimed at evaluating students and teachers. Project Baltimore’s story was picked up by national right-wing outlets such as Breitbart and Fox News.
“While Papst’s reporting is technically accurate—13 city schools do indeed have no students that are math proficient—the story does not mention that in 2016 some of the highest performing schools in other parts of the state (including Montgomery County’s elite Walt Whitman High School) also have few if any students who scored proficient. Also not mentioned is that the PARCC test is not aimed at measuring achievement, rather measuring proficiency with Common Core curriculum. More than half the states administering the PARCC test have stopped using it due to concerns over the effectiveness of the test in measuring academic achievement and the burden it places on students. The test is also usually given on computers, which many Baltimore students lack access to at home or in their classrooms.”
What is laughingly called “Reform” is actually an interrelated group of education policies that have failed repeatedly. Reformers are never discouraged by failure. They ignore evidence. They like to fund any effort that will demoralize teachers and lead to privatization of public schools.
Laura Chapman reviews some of the current crop of reform efforts built on guess, conjecture, and ideology.
She writes:
“The Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation is trying to dominate policy in Kansas City. It has a parallel in Indianapolis called the Mind Trust.
“The Kauffman Foundation is part of the Education Cities network promoting “new” and “great” schools, but it is not just a member. It is a major contributor to that network, along with the Broad, Walton Family, Bill and Melinda Gates, Michael and Susan Dell foundations. Education Cities is part of a large network of “reform” organizations.
“Empower Schools.org, for example, is an adjunct to Education Cities. Empower Schools says: “We work with policymakers and education system leaders to adopt “Third Way” policies, structures, and strategies that allow for schools of all types, including both traditional district schools and schools led by proven and promising independent leaders. We capture and share the most promising Third Way practices to inform and shape the national conversation on education reform.”
“In other words, Empower Schools is far more than a starter of a “conversations.” The network connects 18 programs/organizations, among these the New Teacher Project, Relay Graduate School of Education, Teach for America, and others intent on de-professionalizing education.
Click to access An-introduction-to-the-Third-Way.pdf
“The Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation also funds the “Education Innovation Cluster” initiative, part of a USDE funded Digital Promise program (Obama era) and intended to bring together in one mega network people and groups identified as entrepreneurs, funders, researchers, educators, and other community stakeholders (families, local government, non-profits) to “design, launch, iterate on, and disseminate breakthrough learning practices and tools.”
“Breakthrough learning practices and tools” really refers the expanded use of on-line learning, competency-based awards such as badges and certificates for students and teacher education, learning enabled with mobile devices and so on. USDE appears to have outsourced this program http://nextgenlearning.org/blog/education-innovation-clusters-help-way
“The Kauffman Foundation has also been praised as a reason for Kansas City to be included in The U.S. Education Innovation Index: Prototype and Report, a rating system for cities released in September 2016 by Bellwether Education and the Digital Promise Innovation Clusters.
“This index measures “innovation activities “and conditions of urban schools along 42 indicators in nine categories: Innovation Culture (e.g., mayor control, Gates compact); Need for Academic Improvement ( e.g., scores of schools on state tests), Collaboration and Coordination Mechanisms (e.g., OneApp), Talent Supply and Quality (TFA a plus), Innovation-Supporting Institutions (e.g., the Kauffman Foundation in Kansas City, the Mind Trust in Indianapolis).
Innovation-Friendly Policies ( e.g., tax incentives) , Innovation Investment (venture capital flowing to education startups), District Deviation (a measure of how public schools budget money across eight categories compared to other similar school districts in the state), and Dynamism (a fancy word referring to the opening and closing of schools, market churn for schools). More detail on the rating system is outlined in Table A2: “Indicator Scoring Method.”
“This “innovation index” project from Bellwether was inspired by a similar effort on an international scale and funded by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) http://www.oecd.org/unitedstates/Measuring-Innovation-in-Education-USA.pdf.
“Bellwether’s index was also influenced by another index, published in 2013: Alive in the SwAmp 3. Assessing DigitAl innovAtions in eDucAtion.” That quirky typeface is in the title. The title is also prescient.
“Alive in the Swamp was published with support from Pearson, NewSchools (venture philanthropy), and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. It features colorful charts to show the potential influence of technology on learning and color-coded rating scheme for digital innovation in education.
“One of the authors of the digital index is Michael Fullan, a distinguished Canadian scholar in education whose ideas have been used to develop a “School Quality Improvement Index for California’s “CORE” distracts. The second author, Katelyn Donnelly, is an economist and director of Pearson’s venture fund for low-cost schools in the developing world. The examples of innovation cited in the report include Rocketship Education, School of One, Kahn Academy, and Learn Zillion, each of these rated for likelihood of producing “transformative outcomes.” These examples certainly tell us about inhabitants and supporters of the swamp-lands in education. See especially, page 13 and Appendix A.”
Edwin Rios of Mother Jones writes here about the early Christmas gifts that Congress has included in its tax plans for Betsy DeVos.
True, she didn’t get that tax break for Hillsdale College, which her brother Erik attended. That was a stocking stuffer. She gots plenty of other goodies, under the DeVos tree.
For starters, the Senate plan includes a provision that will help the private and religious schools DeVos has long championed: an expansion of a tax-free college savings program to include families who put their kids in private K-12 schools or even those who homeschool. At the same time, changes to state and local tax deductions could put a strain on how districts fund the very public schools DeVos is tasked with overseeing. And that doesn’t include several attempts Republican senators made to put provisions in the bill that favored religious schools and incentivized school choice, including a tax credit for corporations and individuals to nonprofits that provide scholarships.
“This bill,” says Noelle Ellerson Ng, associate executive director of policy at AASA, the association of the country’s public school superintendents, “is designed to prioritize the privatization of education.” Specifically, she argues, the Republican tax plans could both undermine public school financing and encourage private school attendance.
First, thanks to Vice President Mike Pence’s tie-breaking vote, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) added an amendment expanding 529 college savings accounts to allow parents to withdraw up to $10,000 each year for private and secondary K-12 schools. Cruz’s amendment also incentivizes families to use account funds for educational expenses and therapies for students with disabilities “in connection with a homeschool.” (At one point, the measure expanded college savings account eligibility to include unborn children, but the provision was removed because it failed to comply with the “Byrd Rule,” which blocks changes in the measure that don’t directly relate to taxes.)
“Expanding 529s to include any educational option,” DeVos told the Associated Press, “is a common-sense reform that reflects the reality that we must begin to view education as an investment in individual students, not systems.”
Expanding college savings accounts to cover K-12 private schools and homeschooling would “make it easier for people to choose out of public education.”
While some school choice advocates welcome the expansion of these savings accounts, others, like Michael Petrilli of the conservative think tank Thomas Fordham Institute, point out that the 529 savings program mostly benefits wealthy families and wouldn’t likely help low- and middle-class families. Mathew Chingos, a senior fellow and director of the education policy program at the Urban Institute, told Mother Jones in November that the expansion represents “a decent-sized government handout to people who would send their kid to private school anyway.” Ellerson Ng agreed, noting that the expansion of college savings accounts to cover K-12 private schools and homeschooling would “make it easier for people to choose out of public education.”
The Senate tax plan would also scale back state and local tax deductions (SALT), a move that Ellerson Ng warns could put pressure on already-squeezed state and local budgets. Originally, the Senate plan proposed eliminating all deductions for income, property, and other taxes, a move that could have resulted in a loss of $370 billion in state and local revenue over 10 years and put 370,000 education jobs at risk, according to an analysis by the National Education Association. But senators changed course and added a provision put forward by Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) that would allow people to deduct up to $10,000 in state and local property taxes.
Nora Gordon, an associate professor at Georgetown University’s McCourt School of Public Policy, wrote that changes to state and local tax deductions could make it harder for districts to raise revenue to fund public schools. Ending deductions on federal income, Gordon wrote, would make taxpayers who use them “less likely to vote for policies that could raise their state and local tax bills in the future.”
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John Thompson is a teacher and historian in Oklahoma. He writes often about education policy. In this post, he recounts the recurring failure of “the portfolio model,” a reformer favorite.
Matt Barnum’s three-part series on the national corporate reform campaign to expand the “portfolio” corporate school reform model provides a balanced appraisal of the movement which is very different than the alt-facts presented by reformers seeking privatization and union-busting.
Barnum’s first post starts with Indiana’s Mind Trust which “has called for dramatic changes to schools; recruited outside advocacy, teacher training, and charter groups; and spent millions to help launch new charter and district schools.” He then warns, “A Mind Trust–style organization may be coming to a city near you.” Barnum further describes “their idealized vision,” known as the “portfolio model,” with an enrollment system which helps families choose schools, and where the local district’s role shrinks to holding schools accountable, often (mostly?) by closing ones that supposedly don’t measure up.
https://www.chalkbeat.org/posts/us/2017/12/06/a-portfolio-of-schools-how-a-nationwide-effort-to-disrupt-urban-school-districts-is-gaining-traction/
The Mind Trust and other portfolio advocates have assembled teams of “quarterbacks” to contribute money to initiate the portfolio approach and recruit the same privatization team players – Teach for America, Relay Graduate School of Education, TNTP, and Stand For Children.
Barnum writes that it is unclear how much money has been invested in promoting portfolios. He notes that 1/3rd of the $77 million raised by the Mind Trust since 2006 came from national groups, but it is clear that “prominent philanthropies, including some that have also spent millions in recent years funding charter schools nationwide, are investing heavily.” In particular, he cites the Walton, Arnold, and Broad foundations. He points out the role of David Osborne’s book tour, funded by Walton, Arnold, and Broad, where Osborne “recently compared teachers unions’ opposition to charter school expansion in Massachusetts to George Wallace’s promotion of mandated school segregation.”
The thing that jumps out to me with Barnum’s first two posts is that the record of these political campaigns is mixed. And organizing an attack on unions and school boards is much, much easier than actually improving schools. This ambiguity is an even more important theme of his third piece, as well as the sources he footnotes. National reformers may believe that they can come into localities that they know nothing about and push through their privatization schemes. They may have tons of money to gamble on risky social engineering experiments, but they have little or no evidence that the tumult that they instigate would benefit students, and remain oblivious to the damage down by failed experiments.
https://chalkbeat.org/posts/us/2017/12/08/advocates-of-the-portfolio-model-for-improving-schools-say-it-works-are-they-right/
Barnum cites conservative reformers and research from a range of scholars to puncture the public relations spin of big-bucks portfolio advocates. Even the cornerstone of the experiment, a common enrollment system, has prompted pushback by conservatives who note the way that it would promote more teach-to-the-test malpractice and by patrons who were confused by the systems. Even one of the most highly praised centralized enrollment system, in Denver, did not increase access of special education students to charters or have a statistically significant effect on the number of low-income students in charters.
Something similar applies to school closures which is the silver bullet being promised by portfolio advocates. Those who trust the increase in test scores in New Orleans attribute much of the gains to closing schools that were low-performing. As Barnum acknowledges, that only works when there are better schools available, and I would say that it would take more than a portfolio of silver bullets to create them in our most challenging districts. Barnum also links to his compilation of research which showed gains for students in closed schools in only 1/4th of the studies. He showed no examples of closures where displaced students benefitted but the outcomes in receiving schools didn’t decline.
And the question of costs versus benefits brings us to New Orleans, which is typically cited as the proof of the concept of portfolios. It is the only serious gripe that I have with Barnum’s wording. While he acknowledged that test score growth is a flawed metric, Barnum doesn’t mention why it is so much more problematic in evaluating NOLA and other experiments that focus unflinchingly on bubble-in accountability. Test score growth might or might not mean more learning, and as I hope any teacher would understand, it often means the learning of destructive habits. Personally, I can’t see any scenario where test score growth in a place that stressed such growth as much as the NOLA portfolio can stand by itself as evidence of meaningful learning that beneficial to students.
Regardless, Barnum cites a “national analysis [which] also found that New Orleans students made large academic gains between 2009 and 2015.” I wish he’d been more precise in noting that NOLA only had three years when the growth rate exceeded that of the old failing system. However, Barnum notes that the gains occurred when New Orleans was most generously funded, and was free to suspend or push out large numbers of students. He mentions the lack of clear evidence that gains can be sustained without those tactics, and that “more recent test scores in the city have suggested that schools are backsliding somewhat.” Corporate reformer Peter Cook called the decline “The Great NOLA Train Wreck.”
https://peterccook.com/2017/11/08/great-nola-train-wreck/
Barnum also notes “another concern: expansion of charters in New Orleans coincided with a decline in the number of schools offering prekindergarten.” And regarding NOLA, Newark, and elsewhere, he addresses the conflicts between outside reformers and communities.
Portfolio advocates should also explain the disappointing results of Memphis and Newark. Barnum writes, “A Vanderbilt analysis found that a state takeover effort known as the Achievement School District failed to raise test scores, even as it was dubbed a “national exemplar” in implementing the portfolio model.” I wish he’d also reported that Memphis became #1 as New Orleans became #3 in “disconnected youth,” or students out of school without a job.
http://www.speno2014.com/oydataguide/
Barnum notes a recent, revisionist (and I would say flawed) study which indicates the $200 million Zuckerberg reform investment in Newark was a “mixed success.” In a longer analysis he writes:
Journalist Dale Russakoff wrote a largely critical account of changes that focused on how a large share of the Zuckerberg money went to high-paid consultants. Since, media reports have largely suggested that the approach failed and that the money was wasted.
Given the thorough research by Russakoff, and the work of other excellent journalists, it’s hard for me to take seriously the special pleading by reformers who deny that Newark was a failure. It’s especially hard to fathom how social scientists would get away with spinning the conclusion that Newark portfolio might have worked because it might lead to future gains, but without offering evidence that the happy ending might occur, and “eventually alter system-wide productivity for future cohorts.”
Click to access newark_ed_reform_nber_w23922_suggested_changes.pdf
Finally, Barnum writes, “There is little or no rigorous research comparing gains in Denver, Indianapolis, and Washington D.C. to similar districts that have gone in a different direction.”
Denver was identified as having the largest achievement gap in the nation, indicating that like D.C. the gains may be due to economic growth and/or gentrification. And a recent scandal shows that D.C. still hasn’t shown the ability to curtail the cheating that portfolios would invariably encourage. And as far as Indianapolis, recent research can help estimate the gains that occurred when the Mind Trust and other corporate reformers invested in the city. Median income in Indianapolis is $10,000 or 1/3rd greater than that of the resource-starved Oklahoma City schools and 3rd grade scores are much higher. During the next five years, however, student performance grows at the same rate in both cities, 4.4 years.
https://www.chalkbeat.org/posts/co/2015/10/07/report-denver-ranks-last-among-50-cities-on-income-based-achievement-gaps/
https://www.chalkbeat.org/posts/co/2016/09/21/dps-students-of-color-not-making-as-much-progress-on-state-tests-as-white-peers/
https://www.chalkbeat.org/posts/in/2017/10/04/indianapolis-public-schools-sees-little-a-f-change-but-innovation-schools-got-top-grades/
https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/ballou-high-principal-reassigned-following-report-questioning-school-standards/2017/12/04/54bbcdfe-d947-11e7-b1a8-62589434a581_story.html?utm_term=.ce1c2339b34d
Now that the claims of gains for portfolios have been largely debunked in Newark, D.C., Tennessee, and Indianapolis, and the extreme exaggerations regarding Denver and New Orleans cut down to size, what are the prospects for the new portfolio public relations campaign? We educators have seen this dog and pony show repeatedly. We need to keep reminding political leaders of the Billionaires Boys Club’s sorry record in education policy.
Christine Langhoff, retired educator, wrote the following information about the corporate reform assault on Boston Public Schools. Voters overwhelmingly rejected expansion of charter school, but the privatization movement is never dissuaded by public opposition. They think democracy is the problem and have no qualms about ignoring the will of the people when it conflicts with their ambition.
Langhoff writes:
Last week, this rather odd Tweet appeared from the Boston Public Schools Twitter account:
The language about “choice” made me remember that NPR featured this article about how “coaches” are helping parents choose schools for their children.
Of course, most BPS parents don’t have money for this sort of help. No worries! There’s an edu-business non-profit for that: EdNavigator https://www.ednavigator.com
And they’re coming to Boston! After a successful run in – New Orleans?
So who is behind EdNavigator? The “leadership” page shows a bunch of folks from TNTP and some KIPPsters
https://www.ednavigator.com/who-we-are/leadership
And the Board of Directors is full of a bunch more charteristas, including Chris Stewart, aka @CitizenStewart, as Director of Outreach and External Affairs:
https://www.ednavigator.com/who-we-are/board-of-directors
Their partners page shows many hotels, i.e. low income workers. Remember that the Pritzker hedge fund family of Chicago own Hyatt Hotels :
https://www.ednavigator.com/who-we-are/our-partners
The plan is to offer school choice counseling as a “benefit” to low income workers and by developing this “trust” in their workers, the public school system is supplanted as the knowledgeable entity on education.
“Our Navigators combine expert knowledge of schools with a deep understanding of our communities. Most are accomplished former teachers, school leaders, or counselors, and all have passed a background check, received privacy training and adhere to a strict code of confidentiality.
They’re like pediatricians for your educational health, and they’re always ready to answer questions, troubleshoot problems, and get things done. In a recent survey, 95 percent of EdNavigator members said that their Navigator is “the person I trust most for information and advice about education issues.”
https://www.ednavigator.com/how-we-help
Here in Boston, EdNavigator goes by the name of Boston School Finder
https://www.bostonschoolfinder.org/about
About Boston School Finder
“Boston School Finder is being developed and distributed by a committed and diverse team of Parent Ambassadors supported by local non-profits. These parents and guardians represent nearly all the neighborhoods of Boston, and enroll their children in BPS, charter, Catholic, and private schools.
Funding for Boston School Finder was provided through the Boston Schools Fund and the Barr Foundation, two local non-profit organizations. Web design and development was provided by a team of volunteers who work at Wayfair, a Boston-based e-commerce company specializing in home goods.
Many other organizations, including the City of Boston, Boston Public Schools, the Boston Charter Alliance, the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Boston, and community organizations from all around the city are providing guidance and input on the site.”
They’ve hired “Parent Ambassadors”
https://www.bostonschoolfinder.org/about/contact
And have detailed information about enrollment for public, private, charter and religious schools
https://www.bostonschoolfinder.org/about/enrollment
Since November 29, some pages for the website have been removed, but here’s some of the information that has gone missing:
2017 Barrr Foundation grants:
Ed Navigator Inc.
To support the EdNavigator expansion to Boston.
• Year Awarded: 2017
• Amount: $500,000
• Term: 24 months
• Program: Education
Boston Schools Fund Inc. To support the development and implementation of the Boston School Finder Family Information Tool.
• Year Awarded: 2017
• Amount: $300,000
Term: 12 months
The Barr Foundation is also a champion of Unified Enrollment, which in turn is part of CRPE’s Gates Compact, all of which will have a detrimental effect on Boston’s public schools.
http://www.bostonschoolsfund.org/boston-compact/
Also in the missing link from November 29, was this list of Board members
PRESIDENT WILLIAM F. AUSTIN
TREASURER WILLIAM F. AUSTIN
CLERK JILL SHAH
DIRECTOR WILLIAM F. AUSTIN
DIRECTOR JILL SHAH
DIRECTOR KATHRYN EVERETT
Austin taught math at Roxbury Prep, which is the charter where John King was a founding teacher before he moved on to New York state and then to replace Arne Duncan. (It is also the school with the persistently highest suspension rate in the state of Massachusetts.) Austin has overseen its four-campus expansion. Shah and her husband own the on-line furniture store Wayfair; her husband is a director of the Federal Reserve Bank.
On Tuesday, Austin confirmed to a member of the Boston Teachers Union that the above is accurate.
So, charteristas and billionaires. Color me skeptical that these organizations are well suited to helping Boston parents choose public schools for their children. It seems, too, that the parents most likely to utilize the bostonschoolfinder.org website are the best educated and most advantaged to begin with.
The Boston City Council held a hearing on Tuesday evening, December 5, which I attended, with the purpose of getting this information on the record. The hearing was on the school assignment process, which has been a colossal boondoggle, featuring algorithms written by MIT students. The current plan was enacted in 2013, and there were supposed to be yearly reports about progress, or lack of and necessary improvements along the way. No reports have been issued over the past four years.
When Councilor Tito Jackson (who supported the “No” position on last year’s charter expansion ballot question) probed for a reason for the lack of reporting, the School Department’s answer was that we’ve had three different standardized state tests, so no judgments can be made about the quality of the schools, information parents need to choose a school. When Jackson asked about Unified Enrollment, the School Department claimed to know nothing about it, that there had been no meetings on the topic. But Mayor Marty Walsh has filed legislation to fast track Unified Enrollment, then later denied he did so after reports became public.
“Currently, students have a list of school options comprising only district schools and can apply also to as many charters as desired. Under unified enrollment, unless school list lengths are expanded, the presence of any charter school on the list necessarily will bump a district school off of it, reducing district school options, states QUEST in its report published on Sept. 18, 2017. Under bill H.2876 filed by Rep. Alice Peisch and co-sponsored by Walsh, Carvalho and Rep. Dan Hunt, charter schools could elect to give enrollment preference to students living near the school.”
http://baystatebanner.com/news/2017/oct/11/quiet-push-unified-enrollment/
(Rep. Alice Peisch, by the way, has been a staunch supporter of charter expansion and was one of their spokespeople during last year’s Question 2.)
On Friday, December 8, the School Department released another plan informed by an MIT algorithm for start times for our schools. Ostensibly, the goal was later start times for high schools, many of which begin now at 7:15. There are no school buses for high schools, which means kids often need to leave home by about 6:00 to arrive at school on public transportation. There has been an uprising among parents since new times were revealed because they have changed start times in 105 of 125 schools (84% of all BPS schools) ostensibly in order to change 21 high school start times.
Under the new plan, many elementary schools are scheduled to begin at 7:15, with afternoon dismissals as early as 1:15. Adding before and after school care to schedules for the littles could mean an 11 hour day away from home. When parents began to push back, asking how they could be expected to juggle work schedules with these new school hours, these pieces of advice were offered:
“My new bell time doesn’t work for me, what can I do?
• For students who are eligible for transportation and where we have capacity on our buses, BPS will provide transportation from off-site, before-school programs to school; and from school to off-site, after-school programs.
• Your school likely has before- or after- school programming. More than 90% of all BPS schools have after-school programing and 90% of BPS schools starting after 9:00 AM have a before-school program. Additionally, we will continue to work with programs and schools to expand available before- and after-school programming across BPS.
• BPS is happy to provide parents, guardians, and students with letters to employers notifying them of a school scheduling change and explaining why this may necessitate a change of working hours. For this, please email starttimes@bostonpublicschools.org.
• We realize that in some cases, the only option for families may be to change schools. For more information on this process, please visit a BPS Welcome Center, its website, bostonpublicschools.org/welcomeservices, or call 617-635-9010. Please also consider attending the BPS School Showcase on Saturday, December 9, at TD Garden; the event begins at 9:00 am and ends at 1:00 pm. For more information, visit bostonpublicschools.org/registrationevents.”
https://www.bostonpublicschools.org/Page/7016
The Boston Globe weighed in, essentially telling parents to suck it up:
Parents have posted a petition which has garnered over 4,700 signatures since Saturday.
When I start to add up all this chaos, I come to one conclusion: it’s deliberate.
It makes enrollment in traditional schools more difficult.
It makes school schedules more onerous for parents and kids.
It will destabilize the entire school system.
It will drive families away.
It will make the privatizers gleeful.
It will subvert the voters’ emphatic NO to an expansion of the charter industry.
Right here in the cradle of public education.
Diane Ravitch's blog 