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Alan Singer: Say NO to Unqualified Teachers in New York’s Classrooms

By dianeravitch
September 3, 2017 //
11

Influential charter operators in New York have been pressing for exemption from certification requirements for their teachers. This is a truly bad idea. Why should children have unqualified teachers?

Alan Singer writes here about the fight against this effort to lower standards for charter teachers, which is not only bad on its face, but would make these “teachers” unemployable in real public schools.

He writes:

“Politically influential charter school operators in the State of New York are on the verge of pushing through an administrative ruling that eliminates the requirement that children attending their schools be taught by certified teachers. This is happening at the same time that support for charter schools across the nation is in steep decline, probably because of Donald Trump’s endorsement of charter schools and private-school vouchers. According to a recent public opinion poll the growing opposition to charter schools is bipartisan. Support among Republicans declined by 13%. Democratic support for charter schools dropped by 11%.

“The Network for Public Education and New York State United Teachers (NYSUT) are organizing parents, teachers, and the public to flood the SUNY Trustees and the SUNY Charter Schools Institute with protests against the certification waiver proposal. Their opposition to the waiver is supported by the Deans of Schools of Education at eighteen colleges in the State University of New York system.

“Comments can be submitted online or mailed to Charter Schools Institute, State University of New York, 41 State Street, Suite 700, Albany, NY 12207 by September 10. You can also sign the NYSUT email letter. More information is available at the United University Professionals website.

“The Charter School teacher “decertification plan” is under review by political appointees on a sub-committee of the Board of Trustees of the State University of New York (SUNY). The SUNY Charter Schools Institute is interpreting its authority to ensure the “Governance, structure and operations of SUNY authorized charter schools” as authorization to eliminate teacher certification requirements. It calls the proposal alternative certification, but it allows charters to declare anyone they want to be a teacher. In a series of Huffington Posts I explained why this decertification proposal is a threat to public education and the political forces and financial donors behind the charter school plan. In this post I examine whether the people hired under this waiver are qualified to teach children.”

Categories Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Teachers and Teaching

Here is a Good Reason to Buy Samuel Abrams’ “Education and the Commercial Mindset”

By dianeravitch
September 2, 2017 //
8

Samuel Abrams is director of the Teachers College, Columbia University, Center on the Study of Privatization of Education. He wrote a wonderful book called “Education and the Commercial Mindset.” Most of the book is focused on the haplessness and failure of the for-profit Edison Project, which became Edison Schools, which became EdisonLearning, and which lost money, a lot of money. Abrams’ book represents deep scholarship into the consistent failures of for-profit education.

I reviewed it in the <em>New York Review of Bookss, along with Mercedes Schneider’s superb “School Choice.”

Barron’s just posted a negative review of the Abrams’ book by a reviewer who has made a career of besmirching public schools, teachers, and unions. He hates them all, so of course, he hates Abrams’ elegant expose of the profit motive in education. The reviewer is a polemicist, not a scholar, so he probably didn’t understand the book.

I don’t subscribe to Barron’s so I can’t post the review. You probably don’t subscribe either. I wish I could quote it but I can’t. I know it is hostile to Abrams’ scholarly work because the title of the review is “Slurring Charter Schools: A skewed defense of our failing public schools, and a hit job on Harvard Business School.”

But I know a great deal about the reviewer, Bob Bowdon.

Bowdon wrote and produced a “documentary” called “The Cartel,” in which he compared the teachers’ union in New Jersey to the Mafia. He is a familiar figure on far-right TV shows, where he bashes teachers and public schools.

Read his Wikipedia entry, where it says:

Bowdon directed The Cartel, a 2009 documentary film about corruption in American public education that was distributed by Warner Brothers.[1] The film views the current state of public schools in the U.S. as a “national disaster for the workforce of the future.” Bowdon notes that the U.S., by many measures, “spends more on education than any country in the world,” and chooses to concentrate principally on his own state, New Jersey, which spends more per student on public education than any other state, but where average standardized-test scores in public schools are very low. In an effort to explain where all the money allocated to public education is going, Bowdon portrays a union-dominated institutional culture in which bureaucracies are overstaffed by highly paid administrators, expenditures on school-construction projects are unsupervised and out of control, corruption and patronage are rampant, incompetent teachers cannot be fired, and excellent teachers cannot be rewarded. As a solution to the problem, Bowdon proposes school choice and charter schools.[3]

New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, who watched The Cartel twice, has praised it as an influence on his own ideas about school reform.[4][5]

When my book “The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education” was published in 2010, I was invited to be interviewed by Judge Napolitano. I learned when I got there that I was going to debate Bob Bowdon. Judge Napolitano was on Bowdon’s side, and he said snidely, “would you allow any child of yours to attend a public school?” I vowed never again to appear on any show on FOX, as my experience left me feeling deeply outraged by their hostility to the views I had formed over 40 years of study. Bowdon knew nothing whatever about education, nothing whatever about teaching. All he knew was that privatization was good, public schools bad.

It is an ugly experience to get into the ring with someone who literally doesn’t know what he is talking about but is sure of his opinions.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Education Reform, For-Profit, Fraud, Privatization

A New Orleans Parent Warns Houstonians to Beware the Elite “Saviors”

By dianeravitch
September 2, 2017 //
19

Ashana Bigard is a native of New Orleans and a parent. This is her warning to the parents and other citizens of Houston.

She writes:

“My prayers are with you, Texas. My memories are with you too. The day after Katrina hit New Orleans, my family and I made the 17 hour car ride to Houston. The people of Texas welcomed us, opening their homes and helping us out with clothing, even financial assistance. As a native New Orleanian, I wish that I could do the same for you now. But what’s happened in my city and to its schools serves as a cautionary tale to residents of Houston. Reeling from the disaster, our communities were scattered like the four winds. I returned from Houston, many of us did, but the New Orleans we left doesn’t belong to us anymore.

“Rents have quadrupled as gentrification remakes whole neighborhoods, pushing out long-time residents. Nearly half of the children here now live in poverty, and job security is worse, salaries lower. The sense that we’re doing worse than before Katrina is borne out in the data: Black New Orleanians have 18% less wealththan we did in 2005.

“My prayers are with you, Texas. But my warnings are too.

“1. Be wary of elites with big plans. Even as Katrina’s waters were receding, a handful of local elites were making plans for taking over the city’s schools. In the years following the storm, more than $76 billion came to the city of New Orleans. Yet the native population is poorer than we were before Katrina; we have 18% less wealth than we did in 2005. It became obvious early on that the money for New Orleans wasn’t making it into the hands of native New Orleanians. Huge sums of money demand oversight, accountability, and, most importantly, a vision for how exactly investment will help the people who need it most. All parts of your community must be allowed to participate fully in the rebuilding of their own city.

“2. Trauma can’t be “disciplined” out of kids A hurricane is a deeply traumatic experience for children and trauma cannot simply be “disciplined” out of kids. New Orleans is now full of schools with “college prep” in their names, but their strict rules, harsh discipline and fixation on a culture of compliance have more in common with prison than with college. The “new” and “innovative” approach to educating kids that swept through our city after Katrina seems to start from the assumption that what children need to be successful is to be treated like adult criminals. We’ve had multiple incidents of children as young as five being handcuffed in schools, even arrested. Students who can’t afford the uniforms that are now mandatory at virtually every school in New Orleans are suspended, often for long periods of time. As an advocate for children in the schools, I’m regularly reminded that our post-Katrina schools in New Orleans intersect with the criminal justice system starting in the earliest grades, and ensnaring parents too. Louisiana, after all, that incarcerates a higher percentage of its residents than any other state. I wonder why that is?

“3. Don’t let your teachers get swept away Three months after Katrina, 7,500 school employees, including 4,000 teachers, were fired. Many of them had lost their homes to the hurricane. New Orleans lost the core of its Black middle class, and our schools lost adults who were connected to the city and its culture. What happens when all of your teachers are fired? You have a teacher shortage. New Orleans now imports its teachers: recent college grads from programs like Teach for America, who are entrusted with our kids’ development after receiving less training than what we require from workers at a nail salon.

“4. Your culture isn’t a liability to be overcome Beware of people who see your culture as a liability. The culture and soul of our city is music, arts and drama. Yet the people who came to “fix” New Orleans viewed the city and its culture as the source of our problems that they had to help us overcome. That mean schools without art, music or drama, in a city whose culture draws people from all over the world. Think about that. Without arts in the schools where will the next generation of performers come from? The arts are also an important way for kids to deal with trauma in a city that’s seen so much of it. Our kids desperately needed art, music and drama—yours will too.”

But that’s not all she writes. Read it all. Share the wisdom.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Democracy, Education Industry, New Orleans, Privatization

NYC Shuts Down Key Part of “Leadership Academy,” Legacy of Bloomberg-Klein Era

By dianeravitch
September 1, 2017 //
35

The New York City Department of Education announced that it was closing down the “Aspiring Principals” program, which was the linchpin of the NYC Leadership Academy. The Leadership Academy was launched by Joel Klein as a bold effort to attract business leaders, young teachers, and out-of-town principals who wanted a fast track to be a principal in New York City.

The first chairman of its board was Jack Welch of General Electric, who believed in grading all employees every year and firing the bottom 10%. The first CEO of the Academy was Robert Knowling Jr., a tech executive from Denver whose company had just collapsed. He brought a staff of more than 20 people with him to New York, including his personal coach.

Bloomberg raised $75 million for its first three years of operations. After that, the Department had a “competition” and awarded $50 million to the Leadership Academy, at which time Klein was chairman of the board.

The Leadership Academy was announced with great fanfare, like all Bloomberg initiatives, and school boards came from across the country to learn about it. What a great idea! Training business executives to be principals! It was about as good an idea as Bloomberg’s choice of a publishing executive to become chancellor after Klein stepped down. She lasted only three months.

The results of the Leadership Academy were unimpressive.

The only out-of-town principal who joined the program departed after six months. No business executives finished the program. It served as a pipeline for typically young teachers, who didn’t want to wait to gain the experience to become a school leader. Those who became principals found themselves in charge of a staff of veteran teachers who resented the quickie principals who had little experience and were in their late 20s or early 30s.

The city also cut its ties with TNTP, which Michelle Rhee created before she was D.C. Chancellor.

Categories Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, New York City, Principals

Alan Singer: Do Test Scores Really Measure Success?

By dianeravitch
September 1, 2017 //
19

Alan Singer is not impressed with the sensational test scores posted by Eva Moskowitz’s Success Academy.

“On its website, Success Academy reported “For the ninth consecutive year, Success Academy Charter Schools have scored among the highest-performing schools in New York State,” claiming that “students with disabilities and English Language Learners at Success Academy schools not only surpassed their peers statewide, but also outperformed students without disabilities and native English speakers, respectively, across New York.”

“But a closer look at a successful Success school shows how selective recruitment and pressure to leave “cooks the books.” According to the website Inside Schools, Success Cobble Hill of “got to go” fame, with 469 students grades K-5, has 10% of its students with registered disabilities and 5% who are English Language Learners, compared to 16% of students citywide with registered disabilities and 14% who are ELL. Students with disabilities and ELL are also very broad categories. For teaching and testing, there is a big difference between a middle-class student who has a 504 designation for mild attention deficit syndrome and needs additional time to complete tests and assignments, and a disruptive student with severe emotional issues or a student with serious learning difficulties. ELL students range through four categories from new arrivals who speak no English and may never have attended school in their home country to children who are very literate in their first language and are rapidly mastering English. An accurate comparison of schools requires knowing who the students are that attend the schools.”

The real damage done by Success Academy is that it “succeeds” by playing a game that many educators believe is inherently meaningless and harmful to real learning.

As Singer writes:

“It may just be that success at Success demonstrates the illegitimacy of the entire national high-stakes testing regime. Before celebrating Success Academy test scores and granting the network waivers to hire uncertified teachers, New York State education officials should investigate how the schools operate. If they do magic, they deserve credit. If it is a smoke and mirrors show that produces test scores through selective recruitment and the intimidation of children and families, it should be shut down.”

I would put a different spin on the conclusion.

Whether or not the scores are valid misses the point. Education cannot be measured by standardized tests. Standardized tests corrupt education. Getting the right answer is less important than asking the right question. What matters more than scores? The four C’s. Character. Citizenship. Creativity. Compassion.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Privatization, Testing

Peter Greene: Get Your Barf Bag Ready for September 8, When Mrs. Jobs Reveals How to Fix Education

By dianeravitch
August 30, 2017 //
40

Peter Greene has a timely warning for us. Laurene Powell Jobs has lined up multiple TV channels and a star-studded cast to tell the world how she is fixing education. Her group is called the Emerson Collective. She hired Arne Duncan to advise her, despite the fact that he wasted $5 billion of federal funds (taxpayer money) on a failed effort to “reform” public schools by privatizing them, closing them, firing teachers and principals, and making standardized tests the purpose of education.

Peter notes that no working educator helped Mrs. Jobs formulate her plans. What do teachers know about education?

He writes:

“Brace yourselves. It’s time for a star-studded ed erformstravaganza.

“Another wave of PR dropped yesterday, touting a four-network, celebrity-packed, media event, proudly trumpeted everywhere from Variety to USA Today. On September 8, a huge line-up (including Tom Hanks, Yo-Yo Ma, Samuel L. Jackson, Jennifer Hudson and (sorry) Common) will present “an hour-long live television special about reinventing American high schools….

“The XQ Institute is an offspring of the Emerson Collective, a Palo Alto-based do-gooding group founded by Laurene Powell Jobs. The organization is dedicated to removing barriers to opportunity so people can live to their full potential in order to develop and execute innovative solutions that will spur change and promote equality. They were one of the first groups to hire Arne Duncan after his Ed Secretary stint (do not miss his hardcore street pic here). Oh, and they just bought controlling interest in the Atlantic which, for reasons we’ll get to, is kind of a bummer.

“Jobs was always a philanthropic power player, and she’s logged time in the ed reform biz with NewSchools Venture Fund (We raise contributions from donors and use it to find, fund and support teams of educators and education entrepreneurs who are reimagining public education), but as the widow of Apple Empresario Steve Jobs, she has a huge mountain of money to work with. She is, in fact, the fourth richest woman in the world. And she has decided she would like to fix education.

“Jobs has said, “We want to make high schools back into the great equalizers they were meant to be.”

“To do that, she launched XQ Institute, which launched a big competition– XQ: The Super School Project.

“The Super School Project is an open call to reimagine and design the next American high school. In towns and cities far and wide, teams will unite and take on this important work of our time: rethinking and building schools that deeply prepare our students for the rigorous challenges of college, jobs, and life…

“Jobs doesn’t use many of the dog whistles or talking points of reformsters, except for one that she really loves:

“Jobs told the NYT, “The system was created for the work force we needed 100 years ago. Things are not working the way we want it to be working.”

“In USA Today: The XQ Institute aims to “rethink” American public high schools, which, it maintains, have remained virtually unchanged for a century while the world has transformed dramatically.

“Schools haven’t changed in 100 years” is the dead horse Jobs rides in on, a criticism that only makes sense if you don’t know what schools were actually like in 1917, and if you haven’t actually visited one in the last century….

“I also note that in all the publicity for the event that I’ve now read, there is no mention of other sponsors, so while I don’t have proof, I’m pushed to conclude that Laurene Powell Jobs just busted out her checkbook and bought a full hour of Friday night primetime television on four networks.

“What can we expect. Well, music and comedy and documentaries are billed. And we’re talking about a SuperSchool live, so presumably we won’t bother with any coverage of those dopey Clark Kent schlubby schools where the rest of us slog away. This special will just focus on Jobs’ own created reality.”

Don’t you wish that billionaire dilettantes would fix health care or save national parks or find some other pet hobby? When do they get tired of failing? Again and again and again…

Categories Accountability, Billionaires, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Education Reform, Privatization, Teachers and Teaching, Testing

Mercedes Schneider: Beware, Houston! They Will Use the Hurricane to Try to Privatize Your Public Schools

By dianeravitch
August 30, 2017 //
7

Mercedes Schneider is a native of Louisiana. She hopes that the corporate reformers don’t do to Houston’s public schools what they did to those in New Orleans.

Arne Duncan memorably and disgustingly said that Hurricane Katrina was the best thing that ever happened to the schools in New Orleans. Katrina killed nearly 2,000 people. It also made it possible to eliminate public education, which Arne celebrated. Most schools were taken over by charters. The union was crushed. All the teachers, mostly black, were fired. Charter chains and TFA took over.

In this post, Schneider warns Houstonians to defend their public schools against the privatizers. They will see Houston as a new opportunity. The predatory Walton Family Foundation has already targeted Houston for mass charter expansion.

Houston: Beware of a Post-Harvey Charter Conversion of Your Schools

As a graduate of the Houston public schools, I say “repel the barbarians at the gates of Houston.” Send the mercenaries and profiteers packing. Let the city heal. Don’t raid its public schools. Go away. Stop preying on the public sector. Vultures.

Categories Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Privatization

This Is What Jeb Bush Believes In: “Total Voucherization”

By dianeravitch
August 29, 2017 //
19

Republicans like to say that Florida is their model of good education policy. Betsy DeVos said so. Not her own state, because Michigan voters rejected vouchers three times.

Florida also rejected vouchers in 2012, by a decisive vote of 55-44. They voted down the voucher proposal crafted by Jeb Bush even though it was deceptively called the “Religious Freedom Amendment.” How many people would vote against “religious freedom”? A majority, as it turned out. Had it been called “An Amendment to Permit School Vouchers,” it might have gone down 65-35% or more, as in other states. But privatization of public goods requires stealth and lying.

So Florida engaged in a workaround, led by Jeb Bush, to defy the voters’ wishes.

Because Jeb believes in “total voucherization.” He sees no role for public schools. He spends his waking hours figuring out new ways to privatize public schools and put state money into the pockets of profiteers.

He created a tax credit scheme so corporations and rich individuals could give money to a nonprofit (Step Up for Students) which then gave the money as “scholarships” to students to attend religious schools. Thus, despite the voters’ clear rejection of vouchers, Jeb ensured that Florida has them.

And of course, Florida has one of the most politically connected and corrupt charter industries in the nation. Members of the Legislature have ownership interests in charter schools and regularly vote themselves bigger tax subsidies.

Categories Betsy DeVos, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Privatization

Steven Singer: Closing Schools Doesn’t Raise Test Scores!

By dianeravitch
August 29, 2017 //
16

Steven Singer wrote a great post about a study by corporate reformers proving that they are wrong. Will they care that one of their favorite tactics is a failure? Of course not.

https://gadflyonthewallblog.wordpress.com/2017/08/26/study-closing-schools-doesnt-increase-test-scores/

Open the link to read it all and to see the links he cites.

He writes:

“You might be tempted to file this under ‘No Shit, Sherlock.’

“But a new study found that closing schools where students achieve low test scores doesn’t end up helping them learn. Moreover, such closures disproportionately affect students of color.

“What’s surprising, however, is who conducted the study – corporate education reform cheerleaders, the Center for Research on EDucation Outcomes (CREDO).

“Like their 2013 study that found little evidence charter schools outperform traditional public schools, this year’s research found little evidence for another key plank in the school privatization platform.

“These are the same folks who have suggested for at least a decade that THE solution to low test scores was to simply close struggling public schools, replace them with charter schools and voilà.

“But now their own research says “no voilà.” Not to the charter part. Not to the school closing part. Not to any single part of their own backward agenda.

“Stanford-based CREDO is funded by the Hoover Institution, the Walton Foundation and testing giant Pearson, among others. They have close ties to the KIPP charter school network and privatization propaganda organizations like the Center for Education Reform.

“If THEY can’t find evidence to support these policies, no one can!

“After funding one of the largest studies of school closures ever conducted, looking at data from 26 states from 2003 to 2013, they could find zero support that closing struggling schools increases student test scores.

“The best they could do was find no evidence that it hurt.

“But this is because they defined student achievement solely by raw standardized scores. No other measure – not student grades, not graduation rates, attendance, support networks, community involvement, not even improvement on those same assessments – nothing else was even considered.

“Perhaps this is due to the plethora of studies showing that school closures negatively impact students in these ways. Closing schools crushes the entire community economically and socially. It affects students well beyond academic achievement.”

Categories Accountability, Closing schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Privatization, Research

Emily Talmage: Why Aren’t We Talking About the Racism Called “No Excuses”?

By dianeravitch
August 28, 2017 //
42

Emily Talmage, who teaches in Maine, recalls the time when she applied to teach at a charter school. It was a chilling experience.

She writes:

When I was twenty-five, I interviewed at a charter school in Brooklyn.

Before I sat down to talk to the dean, I observed a kindergarten class that looked nothing like any kindergarten class I had ever seen: just shy of thirty children sitting in rows on a carpet, each with legs crossed and hands folded, all completely and utterly silent.

In my interview, the dean asked me what I noticed about the class.

“They were very well behaved,” I said.

“Yes, they were. But they sure don’t come in like that,” he answered. With icy pride in his voice, he said: “It’s only because of the hard work of our staff that they act like that.”

I took the job – foolishly – and soon found out what this “hard work” meant: scholars, as we called them, were expected to be 100% compliant at all times. Every part of the nine-hour school day was structured to prevent any opportunity for deviance; even recess, ten-minutes long and only indoors, consisted of one game chosen for the week on Monday.

We were overseers, really. Our lessons were scripted according to the needs of the upcoming state test, and so we spent our days “catching” scholars when they misbehaved, marking their misdeeds (talking, laughing, wiggling) on charts, and sending them to the dean when they acted their age too many times in one day.

There weren’t any white children at the school, but there I was – a white teacher, snapping at a room full of black children to get them to respond, in unison, to my demands.

…

Everyone in the nation is talking about our racist history, but do people know what type of racism is happening today, beneath our noses, under the banner of education reform?

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