Archives for category: Duncan, Arne
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Valerie Strauss: Democrats Paved the Way for Betsy DeVos

By dianeravitch
January 21, 2017 //
41

 

 

Valerie Strauss wrote an excellent article about the hypocrisy of Democrats who now loudly oppose Billionaire Betsy DeVos, but spent the last eight years bashing teachers, unions, and public schools while pouring billions of dollars into the proliferation of privately-managed charter schools. Once Democrats became cheerleaders for school choice, they abandoned the principle that public schools under democratic control are a fundamental public responsibility.

 

I urge you to read this article, which recounts the perfidy of Democrats who fell for privatization and betrayed public education. In many cases, support for charter schools opened the door to billionaires and hedge funder donations, to groups like Democrats for Education Reform and Education Reform Now and Families for Excellent Schools. Think Corey Booker, Andrew Cuomo, Dannell Malloy. Think of the silence of the Democrats as the U.S. Department of Education spent more than $3 billion on charter schools. How do they now express opposition to DeVos’s love for charters (and vouchers). She has exposed their hypocrisy.

 

Both of my last two books are about this theme–how the Democrats embraced privatization and opened the door to vouchers.

 

So I have to add a couple of points to her accurate summary:

 

In March 2011, President Obama and Secretary Duncan were in Miami with Jeb Bush to celebrate the “turnaround” of Miami Central High School. At the same time, thousands of working people were protesting the anti-labor policies of Scott Walker in Madison. Neither Obama nor Duncan ever showed up in Madison to show support for the teachers and union members who support Democrats.

 

The other point that needs to be added is that a month after Obama, Arne, and Jeb met to toast the turnaround of Miami Central, the state education Department in Florida listed it as a “failing” school that should be closed. I reported this in “Reign of Error.” The press never did report it. Why were Obama and Arne burnishing Jeb’s “credentials” as a “reformer?” Paving the way for Jeb’s good friend Betsy DeVos.

 

Let’s see if Democrats rediscover the importance of public education, where all kids are welcome, no lottery, no exclusion of kids with disabilities. In public schools, not every child can get admission to every school, but every child must be served and enrolled. Not some, but all.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

have to add

Categories Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Bush, Jeb, Charter Schools, Common Core, Corporate Reformers, Democrats for Education Reform, Duncan, Arne, Education Industry, Education Reform, Obama, Privatization, Race to the Top, Testing, Vouchers, Walker, Scott, Wisconsin

Reader: Why the $3.5 Billion School Improvement Grants Failed

By dianeravitch
January 19, 2017 //
11

This morning, I posted an evaluation by Mathematica Policy Research, which concluded that the federal School Improvement Grants had no effect on test scores. A reader named Sara explains here why the SIG program failed, after spending $3.5 billion:

 

 

The SIG required certain interventions and did not give any autonomy or decision making power to the people who already worked in the school.

 

So for example in the school where I work, SIG required that an outside organization provide social emotional support to students- rather than supplementing the counseling and social work staff who are highly qualified and already know the students. Whenever new people come into a situation there is a long learning curve. Also people from an outside organization do not have a long term commitment to the school.

 
Another example, staff came in for the grant who merely measured and “coached” – what the school really needed was smaller class size, so for example another math teacher instead of a “coach.” Experienced teachers for the most part know what to do, they are just overwhelmed by the large number of students who have special issues – and they do not have support.

 
Hundreds of thousands of dollars were spent on technology – but the librarian and IT person were let go.

 
The presumption on the part of the administrators (not in the school) of the grant was that the problems in the school lay with the teachers – not with poverty, an insufficient number of qualified staff, and an unstable district.

Categories Accountability, Closing schools, Data, Duncan, Arne, Failure

Study Finds that $3.5 Billion Spent by Duncan on “School Improvement Grants” Had No Effect

By dianeravitch
January 19, 2017 //
39

A new evaluation published by Mathematica Policy Research concluded that the School Improvement Grant strategies promoted by former Secretary of Education Arne Duncan were ineffective.

 

Schools that received School Improvement Grants (SIG) to implement school intervention models used more of the practices promoted by these models than schools that did not receive grants. However, the SIG-funded models had no effect on student achievement, according to a new report released by the U.S. Department of Education. Through $3.5 billion dollars in grants in 2010, the SIG program aimed to improve student achievement in the nation’s lowest-performing schools. This is the final report from the multiyear SIG evaluation led and conducted by Mathematica Policy Research, with partners American Institutes for Research and Social Policy Research Associates, for the Department of Education’s Institute of Education Sciences.

 

These schools implemented one of four strategies recommended by the U.S. Department of Education:

 

  1. Transformation: replace the principal, use student test scores to evaluate teachers, use data to inform instruction, and lengthen the school day or year;
  2. Turnaround: replace the principal, replace at least 50% of the staff, use data to inform instruction, lengthen the school day or year;
  3. Restart: convert to charter school;
  4. Closure: close the school and send students to higher-achieving schools.

 

“There are several possible reasons why the SIG program had no impact on student achievement,” says Lisa Dragoset, a senior researcher at Mathematica and director of the evaluation. “One possible reason is that the program did not lead to a large increase in the number of SIG-promoted practices that schools used. It is also possible that the practices were ineffective or not well implemented.”

 

Wow! $3.5 billion down the drain. $3.5 billion that might have been used to reduce class sizes for struggling students, that might have been used to create health clinics for needy students, that might have been used to fund orchestras and teachers of the arts.

 

While we are all shaking our heads over Betsy DeVos and her evangelical agenda, we have to save a few shakes of the head for the disastrous education legacy of the Obama administration, which spent billions on testing, privatization, closing schools, invalid teacher evaluations, Common Core, and other ineffective strategies.

 

 

 

 

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Duncan, Arne, Education Industry, Obama, Privatization, Race to the Top, Testing

Peter Greene: Arne’s Education Ideas Are Now on the Ash Heap of History

By dianeravitch
January 8, 2017 //
49

Peter Greene reviews Arne Duncan’s bold effort to declare American public education a failure, to impose high-stakes testing on teachers everywhere, and to develop a test-based system of evaluation for teachers, students, administrators, and schools, all tied to national standards (the Common Core). In pursuit of his fancy, Duncan caused damage to real people: thousands of schools were called “failures,” thousands of teachers’ lives were ruined.

 

If you read my book “Reign of Error,” you will learn that reformers spun a Big Lie about “failing schools,” as an excuse for privatizing as many as they could. They pointed to an achievement gap between different groups and blamed it on schools and teachers, without bothering to demonstrate that their preferred alternative–charter schools–would have any effect on reducing those gaps.

 

In reviewing Duncan’s disappearing “legacy,” Greene offers a few words of consolation:

 

At this point I can feel a little bad for Duncan—he didn’t really accomplish any of his major goals, and the next administration is not even going to pay lip service to his efforts. It must be tough to feel like you really know a lot about how something works, but the people in power won’t even listen to you. It feels, in fact, a lot like being a teacher during Duncan’s tenure at the U.S. Department of Education.

 

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Closing schools, Common Core, Corporate Reformers, Duncan, Arne, Education Industry, Privatization, Testing

Obama’s Top 50 Accomplishents Do Not Include Education

By dianeravitch
January 6, 2017 //
43

Compared to Trump, Obama is a portrait of dignity, reason, and intellect.  The Washington Monthly published a list of his top 50 accomplishments. Note that there is no mention of K-12 education. As readers of this blog  know, Obama’s education policies were a continuation of the George W. Bush policies of measure-and-punish. Arne Duncan did whatever Gates and Broad wanted. He advanced privatization by his constant promotion of charter schools and his refusal to demand accountability for them.  He demoralized teachers by insisting that they be evaluated by test scores of their students. He trumpeted the lie that our public schools are failing. He was an agent of the right wingers who want to replace public education with an array of bad choices. When unions were under attack in Wisconsin and in the courts, the Obama administration was not there. It collaborated in the destruction of the Democratic base.

 

This is too was Obama’s legacy: the assault on public schools, teachers, and unions.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Common Core, Corporate Reformers, Duncan, Arne, Obama, Privatization, Teacher Evaluations, Testing

Was Barack Obama Bad for Democrats?

By dianeravitch
December 24, 2016 //
141

 

 

This is a very interesting article that appeared in the New York Times. It was written by Stanley Greenberg and Anna Greenberg. He, I recall, was a pollster and advisor to Bill Clinton.

 

They credit Obama with major accomplishments, but note that over 1,000 Democrats list office during his two terms, and Republicans took control of most states. His personal popularity did not help his party. Now Republicans will control the White House and both houses of Congress.

 

One of his great errors, they write, was neglecting his base.  As Republicans passed anti-union laws, Ibama remained silent.

 

The Greenbergs fail to mention that Obama s major effort in education was an extension of the GW Bush program of test and punish. Teachers, always an important part of the Democratic base, were repeated assailed as incompetent by Arne Duncan and alienated by his insistence on high stakes testing. Duncan and RTTT promoted privatization, worked closely with reformers like Jeb Bush noted for their hostility to public schools, sent millions to TFA to undermine the profession, and turned the Department of Education into a marketing arm of the education industry.

 

 

 

 

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Democrats, Duncan, Arne, Education Industry, Education Reform, Obama, Privatization, Testing

Alan Singer: Education Policy from Obama to Trump

By dianeravitch
December 11, 2016 //
20

Alan Singer greatly admires President Obama, as do I, except for his disastrous education policies, which laid the groundwork for privatization and deprofessionalization of teaching. Public school educators were scolded again and again by Arne Duncan for their alleged failings and their alleged low standards.

 

Singer here reviews the Obama record and tries to find something positive to say about the “reform” agenda of the past 15 years. Try as he might, he can’t find much to praise.

Categories Charter Schools, Common Core, Corporate Reformers, Duncan, Arne, Education Industry, Obama, Privatization, Race to the Top, Testing

Another Bad Report Card for Race to the Top

By dianeravitch
December 6, 2016 //
55

Back in 2009, when Arne Duncan announced the Race to the Top competition, he said we as a nation would literally be “racing to the top” of international competition by adopting his favored ideas: expanding charter schools, evaluating teachers to a significant degree by the test scores of their students, “turning around” low-scoring schools by radical measures such as closing them, creating state and national data storehouses to track students, and adopting “college and career-ready standards” (aka, the Common Core). Almost every state fell in line, because they had to do what Arne wanted in order to be eligible for a share of $4.35 billion.

 

But the report cards have not been kind to these “reforms.” When the National Assessment of Education Progress issued its regular report in 2015, test scores were flat or declining in most states.

 

Now the latest international test scores are out, and the U.S. has made no gains. We are not racing to the top. We are standing still. Why? Because Race to the Top did not address the root causes of academic failure: poverty and racial segregation. Charter schools have produced marginal gains at best, with some far worse than public schools. Evaluating teachers by test scores has been an abject failure, criticized by the nation’s leading scholarly organizations, including the American Statistical Association, which is not an arm of reformer-dreaded teachers’ unions or the “status quo.”

 

Here is today’s report from politico.com:

 

PISA RESULTS: BAD NEWS IN MATH: American 15-year-olds are getting worse at applying their math skills in the real world, when compared to their international peers. The 2015 Program for International Student Assessment results are out and they show a drop in “mathematics literacy” scores for U.S. students since 2012 and 2009. “Of particular concern is that we also have a higher percentage of students who score in the lowest performance levels … and a lower percentage of top math performers” compared to the international average, said Peggy Carr, acting commissioner of the National Center for Education Statistics, which released the results. The disappointing numbers come after results on another international study – the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study – recently showed gains made by U.S. fourth and eighth graders in math since 1995.

 

– U.S. science and reading literacy scores weren’t much different from previous years. Boys outperformed girls in science and math, while girls outperformed boys in reading. Scores for Massachusetts, North Carolina and Puerto Rico were broken out for international benchmarking purposes, and revealed that Massachusetts students, on average, are outperforming students in the U.S. and worldwide in all three subjects. North Carolina students were comparable with U.S. average scores and Puerto Rican students fared worse. PISA measures the performance of 15-year-olds every three years in three subjects across dozens of education systems worldwide. Check out the results here .

 

– Education Secretary John B. King Jr. is in Massachusetts today to hail the state’s success with PISA – while noting that the nation as a whole is “losing ground.” According to prepared remarks, King will say that it’s “a troubling prospect when, in today’s knowledge-based economy, the best jobs can go anywhere in the world. Students in Massachusetts, Maryland, and Minnesota aren’t just vying for great jobs along with their neighbors or across state lines, they must be competitive with peers in Finland, Germany, and Japan.” King will say that Massachusetts embodies the importance of perseverance. “The PISA results announced today for Massachusetts didn’t happen instantly or by accident,” he’ll say. “It has taken years of people showing courage – principals, teachers, parents, students, and state and district leaders. It has taken years of overcoming challenges. It has taken years to make real and meaningful change happen. And it will take time to see the work we are continuing to do today truly pay off for students.” More on King’s visit.

 

– Other noteworthy highlights: U.S. students value a career in science and have high expectations of having a science career, but they’re falling short when it comes to skills. Countries like Finland, Germany, Switzerland and Japan are also seeing better student outcomes than the U.S., while investing fewer hours in actual teaching – giving teachers more time for professional development and advancing their careers.

 

As I have often written before, the international test scores do not predict the future of our economy or anything else. Scores on standardized tests measure family income and income inequality. If you want to know more, read my chapter in “Reign of Error” on international tests and what they mean and do not mea.

Categories Duncan, Arne, Failure, International, Race to the Top

Julie Vassilatos: Betsy DeVos and the Zombie Apocalypse

By dianeravitch
December 2, 2016 //
9

Julie Vassilatos, an activist parent of children in the Chicago public schools, writes here about Betsy DeVos.

She begins by offering a round up of some of the best posts about DeVos. We all must get up to speed on who she is.

In addition to being a fervent advocate for vouchers and charters, she has given generously to anti-gay organizations and organizations that promote creationism. I am trying to imagine what the U.S. Department of Education will do under her leadership backwards.

Julie points out that Arne Duncan paved the way for DeVos. Duncan and his Department made school choice a priority, leaving an opening for the next step, which is vouchers.

She would not have been able to accomplish what she did in Michigan without the federal government’s encouragement of privatization efforts for the past 8 years. She would not now be poised to bring full privatization to the nation if the field had not been tilled for this for the past 8 years. Duncan’s Department of Ed absolutely created the conditions for Betsy DeVos. She may be different in emphasis, but not in kind from Arne Duncan. She touts charters, choice, and competition; Duncan’s Department of Ed touted charters, choice, and competition. She likes vouchers; the Department of Ed never definitively closed the door on vouchers. She has given millions to unregulated charters; so did the Department of Ed. Federal visa policy and the New Market Tax Credit created the conditions to make charters very big–global–business.

All that was settled years ago. Now corporate ed control is poised to succeed in a totalizing way; all that was needed was a billionaire secretary of education who knows absolutely nothing about public education, is purely ideology-driven, and is well-practiced at controlling legislators with her cash.

Don’t fool yourselves–DeVos isn’t the sudden end of the world for public education, like a bomb being dropped. She’s more like the result of a slow-traveling virus or a zombie invasion. Our schools have been in peril for years. Now I think we will be able to see it more clearly. It’s time to get to work.

You can start here, by signing your name to the Network for Public Education’s letter to legislators insisting they not confirm her.

Categories Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Duncan, Arne, Education Industry, Privatization, Vouchers

Mike Klonsky: Did Arne Duncan Help Trump Win the Election?

By dianeravitch
November 17, 2016 //
31

Mike Klonsky wonders whether Arne Duncan’s patronizing comments about parents and critics of high-stakes testing helped Donald Trump win the election.

When 20% of the parents in New York opted out of the state testing, he sneered at them and said they were white suburban parents who found out that their child wasn’t so bright after all. This was rank condescension.

When Duncan used Race to the Top billions to bribe states into adopting Common Core, he continued to insist that Common Core was a project of the states. He became the nation’s leading cheerleader for Common Core, and he ridiculed the critics. The critics were vociferous, especially in the Midwest.

Throughout his time in office, Duncan celebrated the successes of charter schools, wherever he could find them, and barely noticed public schools. Last month, before Massachusetts voted on Question 2, Duncan turned up in Boston to argue that expansion of charters was unquestionably a good thing. Despite his ringing endorsement, Question 2 was soundly defeated in almost every district in the state.

I don’t know whether Duncan helped Trump win by making public school parents angry, but he most certainly paved the way for the full-throated privatization that Trump is now pressing. Who would have thought that Arne Duncan and Donald Trump would be on the same team, cheering for more school choice, more charters, more privatization? Trump took it to the next level and threw in vouchers. Once you endorse school choice and launch an assault on the very principle of public education, it is hard to walk it back.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Common Core, Duncan, Arne, Education Industry, Education Reform, Privatization, Race to the Top, School Choice, Testing, Trump, Vouchers
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