Ten years ago, I wrote a book called EdSpeak, which ASCD published. It is sorely in need of updating. Nancy Bailey has the same fascination with words that I do. I hope she will help me revise EdSpeak as my co-author.
Read this and laugh out loud.
One thing I have noticed in the Brave New World of “reform.” Everything is opposite. Reform means disruption. Reform means privatization.
Mercedes Schneider has been following the money trail in Massachusetts, where voters will decide whether to allow charters to expand by 12 a year indefinitely. The issue is Question 2 on the November 8 ballot.
Some of the money supporting charters is “dark money,” bundled by committees that are not required to identify their donors publicly.
“To date, the ballot committees in favor of Question 2 have raised just shy of $14.5 million in unique dollars** to expand charters in MA– with $8.6 million of that amount (60 percent) coming from New York-based Families for Excellent Schools– and being dumped into the coffers of Great Schools Massachusetts.
“In contrast, the single ballot committee opposing Question 2, Save Our Public Schools, has raised $7.2 million– just under half of the amount raised by the pro-charter-expansion camp.”
“Thus, the total money spent on MA Question 2 is currently at $21.7 million. By comparison, as of October 05, 2016, the marijuana legalization ballot measure has a total of just over $4.3 million in funding ($3.7 million, in favor, and $634,000, opposing)– or only 20 percent of the amount of money behind Question 2 on charter expansion.”
Are the people of Massachusetts prepared to turn their public school dollars over to private corporations? Can they be fooled by expensive propaganda to privatize their public schools?
The public schools of Massachusetts are the best in the nation. Don’t let he privatizers buy them or steal them?
Ring doorbellls. Call your neighbors and friends. Don’t let the Walton/Walmart family of Arkansas take over and privatize your schools. The schools were built and paid for with your tax dollars. They belong to the people of Massachusetts, not to Wall Street and Walmart.
The Network for Public Education Action Fund enthusiastically endorses Governor Steve Bullock for re-election.
Governor Bullock is a parent of children in public schools, and he understands the importance of public education in a democracy.
“Paul Horton, a history teacher and public school activist [in Chicago], had this to say about Governor Bullock. “I was visiting a friend in Bozeman, Montana this summer and was invited to a talk given by Steve Bullock, the current governor of Montana who is running against a Koch funded candidate who supports education privatization. What I heard was heartening for someone from a city where privatization is dictated by an unelected school board. Gov. Bullock pledged that he would fight for public education at all levels and continue to work to increase investment in public schools and programs. Steve Bullock is a candidate teachers, parents, and students can trust. He believes in public education and continued 100% investment in public schools.
“Steve explained to us why his support for public education is so strong. “As the father of three children who attend public school, I know firsthand that what goes on in our schools is very important to families around the state. As Governor, I also know that having a great system of public education is the foundation for building and nurturing a thriving economy. Throughout my career, both as a private attorney and in public service, I have fought to ensure that we have great public schools in Montana. As Governor, I have made record investments in public education, vetoed measures that would have otherwise diverted funds away from or weakened our public schools, and used my position to elevate and support the innovative work happening in classrooms all across Montana.”
“Steve describes his resistance to privatization as follows, “Montana does not authorize public money to go to any private charter schools. I have and will continue to oppose any efforts to do so. Montana rule does allow public school districts, under the authority of the local school board, to apply for “public charter” status. This provision gives public schools additional flexibility to innovate and implement new strategies to improve student outcomes, but maintains accountability and transparency with the locally-elected school board and the Board of Public Education. Public resources should be used to support our outstanding public schools, which are open to all students, with any kind of need. I respect and will protect the rights of parents to choose to educate their children in non-public schools. I will not, however, support legislation that subsidizes that choice with public resources.”
“Steve will face his opponent, businessman, Greg Gianforte, who supports choice and vouchers on November 8.”
Keep Montana public schools strong. Don’t let billionaire bucks undermine democracy!
Vote to re-elect Steve Bullock!
This link will take you to the opening pages of the revised “Death and Life of the Great American Dchool System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education.” The book was originally published in 2010. It became a surprise national bestseller.
The publisher at Basic Books, Lara Heimert, invited me to lunch a year ago and made an unusual offer. She said that I could revise the book any way I wanted. This was an extraordinary offer. Publishers usually warn you not to add or subtract unless you keep the line count exactly the same. They want to avoid the expense of resetting the entire book. But I was offered the opportunity to change, add, delete as I wished. It was an offer I could not refuse.
The two big changes I made were these:
I removed my long-standing support for national standards and tests in light of the Common Core debacle.
Second, I revised my estimation of the 1983 report, “A Nation at Risk,” which gave rise to the myth that American education was broken.
I hope you will take the time to read this new edition. It reflects much of what I have learned from YOU on this blog over the past four years.
Diane
https://deutsch29.wordpress.com/2016/10/03/relay-grad-school-of-ed-operation-rejected-in-pennsylvania/
The phony Relay Graduate School of Education” has received authorization from several state willing to make a mockery of graduate study in education. Few, if any, of the “faculty” have doctorates. Relay consists of charter teachers giving faux master’s degrees to other charter teachers, without a library,nwithout scholars, without research. Lest we forget, “scholars” are little children, not people who have devoted their lives to study of a field.
Mercedes Scheider reports good news. Pennsylvania said “scram” to Relay. No phony graduate schools wanted. Beat it. You are not wanted in the Keystone State. Those of us who worked years for our degrees say, “Thank you, Pennsylvania!”
When most of his peers were silent about the governor’s dreadful plan for state takeovers, one school superintendent Steve Green of DeKalb County spoke out. He is a hero of public education. He joins the honor roll of this blog.
Governor Nathan Deal of Georgia is working hard to promote his constitutional amendment to allow the state to take over public schools with low test scores and turn them into charter schools. He calls this an “Opportunity School District,” modeled on the Achievement School District in Tennesssee, which failed to meet its goals. The OSD is an ALEC-inspired ploy to privatize public schools and gut local control.
Do you believe that right wing politicians like Nathan Deal can be trusted with the lives of Georgia’s most vulnerable children? If you do, I have a bridge in Brooklyn I would like to sell you.
One superintendent has spoken out loud and clear about the Governor’s misguided plan: Steve Green of DeKalb County. Green lived through a similar battle in Kansas City. He knows that the state doesn’t have a plan or an idea about how to help low-scoring schools.
He writes:
I have said it before, and I’ll say it again now: I am opposed to any state takeover of local schools no matter what it is called.
For me, the state of Georgia’s effort to take control of 26 DeKalb County schools … and schools elsewhere … is déjà vu all over again.
When I became superintendent of the Kansas City (Missouri) Public Schools in 2011, my team and I found ourselves in a desperate fight for survival and for control of public education. An appointed Missouri state employee was attempting to take over the school system under a conspiratorial smokescreen – by creating a special statewide district for low-performing schools.
Sound familiar?
In Georgia, the state wants control of schools it has stigmatized as “failing,” based on standardized testing. This takeover effort comes despite strong evidence that standardized tests can’t fairly take into account … or accurately measure … the extreme complexity of teaching and learning in a district like DeKalb County, with 135 schools and 102,000 students from 180 nations and with 144 languages.
We fought … and won … the battle to keep schools in Kansas City under control of parents and professional educators and out of the hands of politicians. I am probably the only school superintendent in the state of Georgia to lead a system through this unique experience. Key members of today’s DeKalb schools leadership team also worked beside me in Kansas City. These academic professionals are battle-tested in holding onto local control of schools.
Striking parallels can be seen between the struggle in Missouri and ours in Georgia.
The real issue in Kansas City involved powerful, ambitious officials exploiting a political situation rather than working with local school systems to address root causes of underachievement and provide what schools needed to succeed.
It was ruthless aggression – like predator and prey. A rapacious state political system wanted to take over the weakest, most vulnerable schools.
Georgia feels painfully similar. We see racial, socio-economic, and political parallels. The names are different, and the titles of the people who want to take over are different, but the goal is still the same – seize local control of public education….
As Green and fellow citizens fought the state takeover, they knew the stakes were high:
“We’d seen the failed results of state takeovers of local schools in New Orleans and Memphis. (After being unable to take over schools in Kansas City, the Missouri commissioner did manage to take over the school system in nearby Normandy. That state-controlled education experiment failed miserably – students performed more poorly under the state regimen than under local control.) It was also abundantly clear to us that too much power and secrecy concentrated in the hands of a detached, uninformed, faceless state bureaucracy would ultimately fail students, schools, and society.”
Green and his team created an effective plan to improve the Kansas City schools:
Progress came by design – our team made strategic, systematic, intentional, student-by-student improvements. The key? We built a foundation of trust and a sense of purpose among parents, school leaders, teachers, and the community.
Here in DeKalb, our own progress in just two years using this same model has already earned national and international attention. Of the specific 26 DeKalb schools targeted for takeover, 15 are within five points of the 60-point threshold. Ten others need more intensive support, and we’ve launched strong remedial measures. In all schools, we’re laser-focused on the classroom experience, where any lasting improvement in education must start.
There are no quick fixes, no short cuts. Turning around schools takes deep, hard, intimate work. It means fighting poverty and all that it brings. It means helping new arrivals to our country anchor lives and hopes to our communities and country. It means giving special needs and pre-school students and others among our most vulnerable the schooling, security, and stability that allows them to be their best.
That’s the kind of work going on right now with our most challenged schools and at others all through our system.
We stand for something in DeKalb County – education with rigor, relevance, and relationships. Our goal is nothing less than to be recognized nationally for academic excellence and for world-class service to kids, caregivers, and communities.
In my opinion, you’ll look far and wide before you find a politician in Georgia who goes to bed at night and gets out of bed in the morning with this same ambitious goal.
In DeKalb, we have 15,000 teachers and staff who work 365 days a year to reach our goal of excellence. We are professional educators … not predatory politicians.
Who do you want teaching and looking out for our children?
On September 28, Eva Moskowitz closed her Success Academy charter schools for the day so her students, teachers, and families could attend a political rally. Alan Singer wonders why this is permitted? The students, the staff, and families are used as pawns to advance Moskowitz’s political goals. Certainly, the children don’t need more charters. They already attend one. They can’t attend two or three. Eva is using them for her own benefit.
Who pays the bills? Families for Excellent schools. They are not the families of the students. They are billionaires and hedge fund managers whose excellent schools are private and have a tuition of $50,000 or more. You surely won’t see them hanging out with the children at these political rallies.
Face it: the kids are pawns being cynically used to advance adult interests.
Why is it legal?
Tom Ultican teaches high school math and physics in California. He has watched the arrival of charter schools in his district with growing alarm.
https://tultican.wordpress.com/2016/10/01/charter-school-scourge-invading-sweetwater/
He knows that their growth is a result of political connections. Nothing they do is innovative. They duplicate existing administrations. They add nothing of value.
He concludes they are a scourge and a failed experiment. Their time has come and gone.
You may wonder why I am posting so often about the charter question in Massachusetts. Simple. If out-of-state billionaires can persuade the voters of the top-performing state in the nation to authorize a competing, privately managed system, they can do it anywhere. This issue–Question 2–is a line in the sand that will determine whether privatization of public education can be stopped.
We know that the billionaires and hedge fund managers are pouring an unprecedented $20 million or more into the campaign to lift the cap on charters in Boston. If Question 2 passes, Massachusetts could add 12 new charter schools forever. At some point, there would be no more public schools. Unaccountable corporate chains would take over local public schools. Massachusetts has the best public school system in the nation. It needs better public schools in every neighborhood, not disruption and turmoil.
Our reader and commentator Jack Covey has followed the debates about Question 2 and shares his observations here:
He writes:
I”m watching the latest Question 2 debate, and the pro-Charter guy Mark just made some hare-brained claim that the teachers union’s motives in opposing Question 2 are racist, or — at the very least — their motives are rooted in the fact that the union leadership is white, and their white-ness is driving them, subconsciously or whatever, to oppose Question 2 … again to the detriment to students and families of color.
Go here:
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( 35:02 – )
“https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XCsZZ-J7mcU
( 35:02 – )
MARK, THE PRO-CHARTER GUY: “We have our strongest opposition from the teachers unions across the state, whose leadership is primarily white… our goal, and whom we are trying to serve, are those black and brown parents and young parents who are trying desperately to get alternatives for their children.”
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Yeah, right, that’s your “goal” … unlike those crypto-racist teachers in teacher unions who only care about themselves, even if that screws the education of black kids. This is in spite of the fact that those unionized teachers are the ones teaching kids of all races and classes — including blacks —- for seven or more hours each day.
Naaah, only billionaire-backed charter folks care about black and brown kids.
So if Barbara Madeloni and other Massachusetts teachers union leaders were as black as Karen Lewis, Mark, the Pro-charter guy, wouldn’t attempting this line of argument? No, then he’d probably characterize those hypothetical black Massachusetts labor leaders as an Uncle Tom sell-outs, who value big union officer salaries more than she does helping out her fellow blacks.
What utter nonsense!
Thank God African-American anti-charter Tito Jackson was there to immediately counter this asinine attempt to frame this as a race issue, and inflame racial tensions.
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( 35:27 – )
“https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XCsZZ-J7mcU
( 35:27 – )
TITO JACKSON: “Mark, the leadership of the teachers unions is primarily white, but SO IS the leadership of most charter school in the city of Boston, and so I think that THAT is a critical component.”
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Y
Tito then changes topic, then proceeds to debunk the vaunted charter school wait list numbers.
DEBUNKING THE WAITLIST
Think about it. If here were 30,000 – 40,000 people furious at being wait-listed and denied entry to a charter school, because there wasn’t enough of such schools, wouldn’t that mean these parents would have formed an army of volunteer campaign workers swarming the state pushing for passage of Question 2— knocking on doors, phone-banking, marching down streets, etc.? They wouldn’t need $20 million of out-of-state billionaire money. The volunteer component would be enough to win the day.
No, there’s nothing of the kind going on in Massachusetts. The pro-Question-2 stuff is all big money commercials, mailers, and robo-calls, not live calls from live volunteer workers, or live canvassers knocking on doors.
Anyway, back to what Tito could have said to Mark regarding the overwhelming whiteness of Massachusetts charter leaders, as well as those leaders not living in the neighborhoods where their charter schools are located.
Here’s what Tito could have said, but was said by someone else at the other debate.
In the other debate, the FEMALE MODERATOR, in a question to Charter Lady Marty Walz, goes into detail about THE TOTAL ABSENCE OF ANY BLACKS, OR ANY LOCAL PARENTS OR CITIZENS IN ANY POSITION TO EXERCISE ANY DECISION-MAKING POWER OVER THESE CHARTER SCHOOLS.
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(34:30 – )
(34:30 – )
FEMALE MODERATOR: “Representative Walz, for some who oppose Question 2, one of the issues that it comes down to is this, and I’m going to paraphrase Carol Burris, she’s a former New York high school, and she says
” ‘The democratic governance of our public schools is a American tradition worth saving.’
U
” … and then the Annenberg institute for school reform at Brown University earlier this year released a study, and they analyzed EVERY board for EVERY charter school in the state of Massachusetts. and they found that ..
“31% of trustees (school board members) statewide are affiliated with the financial services or corporate sector. Only 14% were parents.
“60% of the charter boards had NO parent representation on their boards WHATSOEVER.
“Those that DID were largely confined to charter schools that served MOSTLY WHITE students.
“Here’s an example: City on a Hill (Charter) Schools in Roxbury — again, this is according to the Annenberg Institute Report — has schools in Roxbury and New Bedford, (has a) 14-member board, trustees for all three of those schools.
“ONLY ONE member of the board lives in New Bedford. Three live in Boston, but NONE in Roxgury. The rest live in (upscale communities) Brookline, Cambridge, Cohasset, and Hingham.
“So they (at Annenberg) ask:
” ‘How can those charter schools be considered locally controlled and locally accountable?’ ”
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Charter Lady Walz responds by claiming — and winning applause from the charter folks stacked in the audience — that local control through school boards has “wholly failed’ to produce quality schools and educate children, and need to be wiped out.
Those in the audience are cheering the end of democracy? Really?
Wait. Isn’t Massachusetts the highest achieving state in the U.S.? Really? She says that democratically-governed schools with elected school boards in Massachusetts have “wholly failed” students? Really?
At another point in the debate, Charter Lady claims their group is about improving all types of schools, but here she is recommending replacing all of traditonal public schools with privately-managed charter schools. So which is it?
The Moderator interrupts by insisting that Charter Lady answer the question about accountability, and Charter Lady brings up the only method needed — the Death Penalty AND THAT’S IT…. but no accountability to parents and citizens, while those schools are actually open, and ZERO OPPORTUNITY OR MECHANISM for those parents and citizens to enjoy any kind of decision-making power over shose schools while they are in operation.
And we need to watch John Oliver again to find out how well that works out:
Nicholas Tampio, a professor of political science at Fordham University in New York, published an essay about national standards in the peer-reviewed “Journal of Politics,” one of the top journals in the field. It should be part of our national discussion about the dominant policy paradigm of the past 35 years: policy makers assumed without question that the way to improve education is to set standards, train teachers to teach the standards, teach the standards, test the standards, then start over?
Tampio says this paradigm is wrong.
He writes:
“This article intervenes in the debate about whether democracies should adopt national education standards. For many democrats, national education standards may promote economic growth, social justice, and a common set of interests. In this article, I reconstruct John Dewey’s warning against oligarchs using standardization to control the schools as well as his argument that democracy requires student, teacher, and community autonomy. The article argues that the Common Core State Standards Initiative has been a top-down policy that aims to prepare children for the economy rather than democracy, and for the foreseeable future, economic elites will tend to dominate efforts to create national education standards. In the conclusion, I make a pragmatic argument for local education control and address objections such as that democracies need national educational standards to ensure racial equity.”
