Archives for category: Education Reform
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Teresa Hanafin on Trump’s Stonewalling of Impeachment Inquiry

By dianeravitch
October 9, 2019 //
16

Teresa Hanafin writes the daily Fast Forward for the Boston Globe.

 

As he did with the Vietnam War, Trump has decided to sit out the House impeachment inquiry, using what constitutional experts say are bone spurs spurious arguments to claim that Democratic House leaders are conducting an illegitimate inquiry.

He not only is refusing to cooperate with the investigation, he also has declared war on Congress’s very right to investigate the executive branch. It’s a remarkable moment.

The result is that Trump is blocking all employees of the executive branch from testifying before Congress, will withhold every document Congress requests, and will ignore every subpoena that congressional committees issue. We’ll see today what the Dems do next.

Just remember this: Under the Constitution, the House is empowered to impeach, and can conduct an inquiry and hearings any way it wants. The president doesn’t get to tell the House what to do and how to do it.

Many of you have e-mailed me about the impeachment process. Think of it like a district attorney’s investigation and a grand jury. Several House committees (the prosecutors) are currently investigating to determine whether there are grounds for impeachment. If they decide they have enough evidence, they will write up articles of impeachment (charges) and present them to the full House (the grand jury) for a vote.

Nowhere in a grand jury process does the accused or his lawyers get to jump in, call witnesses, interview witnesses, subpoena witnesses, etc. It’s one-sided by design. And that’s also how a House impeachment process works.

So when Trump’s lawyer writes in his letter to House Democratic leaders that Trump is being denied “the right to cross-examine witnesses, to call witnesses, to receive transcripts of testimony, to have access to evidence, to have counsel present,” he’s being disingenuous. He knows very well that all of those rights kick in at the impeachment trial, which would be held in the Senate.

Categories Education Reform

Wendy Lecker: Why We Should Invest More In Neediest Children

By dianeravitch
October 9, 2019 //
18

Wendy Lecker is a civil rights lawyer who specializes in issues related to education and children.

A new Education Week national survey of school districts reveals disturbing gaps between state and federal policy and the reality in American public schools.

The vast majority of districts report major funding problems. Most list rising special education costs and rising levels of needy students as their top challenges. They also doubt they are financially prepared for the next recession.

The most serious funding problem districts report is convincing elected officials to sufficiently fund public schools. They give both state and federal officials poor marks for their ability to understand school spending, and cite state legislators as the biggest obstacle to making spending decisions that best address student needs. Rather than address need, state legislators perpetuate myths about school spending and quality.

Scholars Sally Nuamah, Jamila Michener, and Domingo Morel have found that poor communities, like school district leaders, lose faith in elected officials, and worse, in democratic institutions, when they experience policies that exacerbate rather than respond to their challenges.

Recent research highlights the failure of federal and state leaders to grasp the reality facing public schools. The most pernicious failure is the refusal to recognize the connection between poverty, funding and educational opportunity.

A new study of the effect of the 2008 recession, by Kenneth Shores of Penn State University and Matthew Steinberg of George Mason University, found that the economic downturn resulted in cuts in state and local school spending. Those spending cuts were associated with contemporaneous and persistent declines in student test scores.

Moreover, “school districts serving higher concentrations of low-income and minority students experienced greater declines in achievement from school-age exposure to the recession.”

Stanford education researcher Sean Reardon observes that test scores are a reflection of a difference in access to the opportunity to learn, affected by all circumstances in a child’s life, both in and outside of school. They often do not reflect school quality. Two recent analyses, from Ohio and North Carolina, emphasize this truth. Both found the state ratings of public schools, mostly based on test scores, track almost perfectly with school poverty.

Because children do not leave their life experiences at the schoolhouse doors, schools must have the tools to mitigate the effects of poverty in order to provide students with the opportunity to learn. National studies show that increased school spending improves academic and life outcomes — particularly for poor students.

Yet almost half the states still fund schools below recession levels. And a recent Urban Institute paper reveals that federal spending on education has dropped precipitously and is expected to keep dropping, despite rising student need. Since 2010, funding for Title I, the largest federal education program supporting children in poverty, dropped by $7 billion, as did funding for IDEA, the federal program for students with disabilities.

Rather than recognize that high-poverty schools need more tools, and thus more funding, to best serve their students, federal and state leaders mandate intervention strategies that are proven failures: school turnaround, school closures, and state takeovers of school districts.

A report from the National Education Policy Center shows that the poorer and less white a school district is, the more likely a state will aggressively intervene with these failed mandates.

Federal and state policies repeat a toxic cycle of disinvestment, punishment, then further disinvestment. 

Neighborhood and school segregation compounds the inequity. Children of color are five to seven times more likely than white children to be concentrated in high-poverty neighborhoods. African American and Latinx children are also concentrated in high-poverty schools.

No wonder that school districts and poor communities have little faith in their elected officials.

Massachusetts is bucking the trend of denying the connection between investing in public schools and student outcomes. A new Massachusetts school funding bill commits to closing that state’s 1.5 billion dollar school funding gap. In supporting the bill, state Sen. Sonia Chang-Diaz acknowledged that “closing the achievement gap requires two times the investment for our poorest students if we are serious about doing it at scale.”

Connecticut Voices for Children reports that Connecticut’s recovery from the 2008 recession is more unequal than the national recovery, which was among the most unequal in U.S. history. Connecticut’s middle class is smaller and whiter than it was before the recession. Moreover, the census revealed that Connecticut is the only U.S. state where poverty increased in 2018. Our leaders should learn from Massachusetts. Investing in our neediest children, both inside and outside of school, will not only improve their outcomes, it may also restore faith in our elected officials.

 

Wendy Lecker is a columnist for the Hearst Connecticut Media Group and is senior attorney at the Education Law Center.

 https://www.stamfordadvocate.com/news/article/Wendy-Lecker-opinion-Investing-in-our-neediest-14491762.php

Categories Education Reform, Funding, Poverty

Teresa Hanafin of the Boston Globe Updates the Dotard’s Activities

By dianeravitch
October 8, 2019 //
8

As I have mentioned more than a few times here, my favorite daily reading is Teresa Hanafin’s “Fast Forward” in the Boston Globe. She always begins with some kernel of wisdom from the Old Farmer’s Almanac. Today, she says that the Almanac has a children’s edition every other year and she includes sample pages that show kids how to whistle. Very important information. She updates Boston sports news, then offers nuggets on the latest madness from Trumplandia. More obstruction of justice. Plus, the Supreme Court will hear a case on whether it is okay to fire someone because they are LBGT. The Trump administration, despite his many claims to the contrary, is siding with the anti-gay side of the argument. Are you surprised? He has to keep his evangelical base happy.

Today:

 

Breaking: In my great and unmatched wisdom, I was shocked (shocked!) that the coverup cowards in the Trump administration were going to let Gordon Sondland, ambassador to the European Union, testify before Congress this morning, given their panicked efforts to hide everything they can from the American public.

Never mind! Secretary of State Mike Pompeo pulled the plug on Sondland’s deposition at the last minute this morning. Of course he did.

Sondland is a pretty critical witness in the Democrats’ impeachment inquiry. He’s the guy who told Wisconsin GOP Senator Ron Johnson that nearly $400 million in US military aid came with a quid pro quo: Ukraine’s willingness to dig up dirt on Trump’s top political rival, Joe Biden, and his son Hunter.

Johnson, upset by the information, asked Trump about it, and then actually believed him when he denied it. Or at least he says he believes him. Who knows what these Republicans are really thinking as they lay awake at night watching their souls slowly seep out and puddle on the floor.

Sondland, a businessman with no diplomatic experience, got his gig as ambassador to the EU because he donated $1 million to Trump’s inauguration. How he came to oversee the US relationship with Ukraine is murkier, given that Ukraine is not a member of the EU.

Actually, maybe it isn’t murky: Sondland led the effort to pressure the Ukrainian president to publicly announce that he’d investigate the Bidens, even going so far as to write a statement for him to read (which he never did). Sondland also wrote in a text messagethat Trump expected “the deliverable” from the Ukrainians, and tried to ward off objections to the dirty deal from Bill Taylor, the Ukraine embassy charge d’affaires.

“Are we now saying that security assistance and WH meeting are conditioned on investigations?” Taylor texted Sondland Sept. 1. (Translation: “We’re committing a crime, right?”) “Call me,” Sondland responded. (Translation: “We can’t leave a paper trail on this stuff.”)

About a week later, Taylor, an experienced career diplomat, again tried to get things on the record, texting Sondland, “As I said on the phone, I think it’s crazy to withhold security assistance for help with a political campaign.” That really scared Sondland, because he called Trump, worked out a response, then texted Taylor back five hours later with what read like an official White House CYA formal statement:

“Bill, I believe you are incorrect about President Trump’s intentions. The President has been crystal clear: no quid pro quo’s of any kind. The President is trying to evaluate whether Ukraine is truly going to adopt the transparency and reforms that President Zelensky promised during his campaign. I suggest we stop the back and forth by text. If you still have concerns, I recommend you give Lisa Kenna or S a call to discuss them directly. Thanks.” (Translation: Um, none needed.)

Meanwhile, in his press conference response to Sondland’s failure to appear, House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiffsaid that Sondland has unreleased text messages on a personal device that are “deeply relevant.”

So look for subpoenas, look for Trump and his minions to continue to hide as much as they can, and look for House Democrats to bundle all of these coverups into obstruction articles of impeachment.

So is Trump about to hand his BFF Putie a lovely birthday present? (The Russian strongman turned 67 yesterday.) The chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee says Trump is planning to pull the US out of the Open Skies Treaty, and if true, then Putin will be dancing the barynya at his dacha on the Black Sea.

The treaty is a critical one: It allows the signatories — 34 countries have signed on — to fly unarmed surveillance planes and dronesover each other’s territory as a way to keep an eye on military activity and weapons development and keep everyone in check. Russia is one of the countries because it wants to send surveillance flights over Europe, but it doesn’t like that Ukraine can fly over its territory.

Current and past diplomats are horrified at the prospect, but the White House is silent. Let’s see if Trump goes through with it.

But it does raise the issue of how much Trump has helped Russia. No wonder Putin tried to interfere in the US election in 2016 to get Trump elected.

Take that meeting at the United Nations in New York last month between Trump and Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky. The Washington Post points out that while everyone has focused on their July phone call, in their NY talk, Trump told Zelensky that he should patch things up with Russia and accept a deal that Russia favors.

Yes, Russia, the country that invaded and took over Crimea, part of Ukraine, and has gradually moved into the eastern Ukrainian provinces of Donbas and Luhansk. In case you forgot, the US is supposed to be protecting Ukraine from Russia’s aggression.

Trump’s withdrawal from northern Syria is also seen as benefiting Russia (as well as Turkey; see below), and he harangued former British PM Theresa May over her government’s claim that Russia poisoned one of its former spies on British soil. (My Putie? Nah.)

Speaking of northern Syria, Trump has another reason for letting Turkey have its way there: In my great and unmatched wisdom, I read that he has a big conflict of interest in Istanbul,where his name adorns two massive residential/office towers, a licensing deal that has paid him up to $5 million a year since 2015.

During the 2016 campaign, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan easily manipulated the candidate by threatening to have Trump’s name removed from the towers, endangering that revenue stream. Wouldn’t you know it, Trump soon was praising the strongman.

He found nothing wrong with Erdoğan’s brutal crackdown after a failed military coup (that some think was staged), imprisoning political opponents, jailing journalists, stripping Parliament of most of its duties, and increasing his power and iron grip on the country. “I do give great credit to him for turning it around,” Trump said. Isn’t that sweet.

The Supreme Court hears arguments in another controversial case today, this one about LGBTQ rights: Trump is claiming that federal employment law that bars discrimination based on sex does NOT include sexual orientation and gender identity, because he wants his conservative supporters to be able to harass or fire gay and transgender workers at will. So the next time he brags about how much he protects LGBTQ people … well, you know the drill.
Categories Education Reform, Hypocrisy, Lies

Michael Moore on Education in Finland

By dianeravitch
October 8, 2019 //
25

 

Michael Moore visited Finland with a camera crew to learn about its education system.

How could a nation post high test scores on international tests when its schools emphasize creativity, play, physical activity, and the arts and ignores standardized testing?

Watch his video and see what you think.

Categories Arts Education, Creativity, Education Reform, International, Play, Standardized Testing

Jack Covey on Checker Finn vs. Finland

By dianeravitch
October 8, 2019 //
70

 

Reader Jack Covey, a teacher in Los Angeles, sent the following comment to me:

 

First, watch this clip from Michael Moore about
schools in Finland:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4-DcjwzF9yc
Now, read Education Next on the same topic, in
the context of a book review by Cherker Finn.
https://www.educationnext.org/more-play-will-save-our-schools-book-claims-review-let-the-children-play-sahlberg-doyle/
Here’s the ending of Chester Finn’s “Stick with GERM” 
review of Past Sahsberg’s new book, and his
argument that “play” hurts poor kids, but it’s fine
for middle class kids (and presumably upper class
kids as well).  
He says we’re “bizarrely and cruelly” damaging 
those poor kids when U.S. schools “model themselves 
on a charming small country in northern Europe 
(it’s Finn vs. Finns, I guess)
CHESTER FINN:
But wait. We’re living in a time when academic achievement is flat at the end of high 
school; when scads of young people emerge unready for either college or career success; 
when American employers must look overseas for skilled personnel; and when results-based  
accountability for kids, teachers, and schools alike hangs in the balance and “soft skills” are in
 the ascendancy. 
We also have ample evidence that while “playful teaching and learning” does little harm to 
middle-class kids with support and structure in the rest of their lives, for children from 
troubled circumstances it’s a recipe for failure. Many such youngsters already have plenty 
of “play” of various sorts in their lives, even a corrupted sort of “natural state,” but 
precious little formal learning—and few of the other benefits (character formation, 
self-discipline, citizenship, etc.) that also flow from purposeful adult direction.
Are we—bizarrely and cruelly—to exacerbate the achievement, economic 
and mobility gaps that already plague us as a nation, while turning a blind eye to the 
academic mediocrity that already afflicts even those on the up side of those gaps, 
all in the name of modeling America on a charming small country in northern Europe? 
The evidence the authors cite is persuasive that kids need to play but not that we 
should diminish the quest for stronger skills and knowledge or should try to organize 
U.S. schools the way they do in Vuohtomaki, the rural village where Sahlberg grew up. 
Appealing as that model is in its way, it doesn’t transplant at scale to the Bronx, nor 
would it pave a path out of poverty for children who live there (or in Memphis, Houston, etc.)
I think I’ll stick with GERM—and keep doing what I can to infect others. It 
may be too late to block America’s migration from one education sun to the other, 
but it’s a dreadful mistake to accelerate it.

Chester E. Finn, Jr., is a Distinguished Senior Fellow and President Emeritus at the Thomas B. Fordham Institute. He is also a Senior Fellow at Stanford’s Hoover Institution.

Categories Accountability, Early Childhood Education, Education Industry, Education Reform, International, Play, Privatization, Testing

Jamie Gass: How the Common Core Dumbed Down Standards in Massachusetts

By dianeravitch
October 8, 2019 //
57

 

Jamie Gass writes here about a powerful literary tradition that was honored in Massachusetts and perhaps a few other places, but was tossed aside by the state when it adopted the Common Core.

Gass illogically puts the blame on “educrats” and schools of education for the decision that junked the state’s reverence for literature: the political decision by its governors to pursue Race to the Top funding and endorse the Common Core. The blame lies with the Gates Foundation, which funded the federally mandated, content-free Common Core. Then with the authors of the Core, who took upon themselves the task of writing national standards. And then, of course, the elected officials of both parties who put money above principle.

Gass writes:

The Bay State, with English standards that were rich in classic literature and high-quality vocabulary, outperformed every other state between 2005 and 2017 on the reading portion of the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), “the nation’s report card.”

When Deval Patrick and Charlie Baker studied English at Harvard, its revered professor W. Jackson Bate won the 1978 National Book Award and Pulitzer Prize for his Samuel Johnson biography.

Interestingly, Dr. Johnson’s Dictionarydefines “politician” as “a man of artifice; one of deep contrivance.”

In 2010, the hollowness of the Patrick administration’s sloganeering – “education is our calling card” – was revealed when they took $250 million in one-time federal grant money to abandon our proven English standards and MCAS tests in favor of inferior nationalized Common Core and PARCC testing, which cut enduring fiction by 60 percent.

The Baker administration could have easily ended Common Core’s academic mediocrity in the Bay State, but instead it followed Patrick’s example by deferring to the wishes of career state edu-crats.

Why blame state employees for decisions made by the governors of both parties, the state commissioner, and the state board?

Categories Accountability, Education Reform, Literature, Massachusetts

Trump’s Latest Narcissistic Tweet

By dianeravitch
October 7, 2019 //
40

 

As Republicans and top military brass recoil in shock after Trump’s decision to abandon the Kurds (which benefits Putin while betraying a faithful ally), Trump tweeted this:

As I have stated strongly before, and just to reiterate, if Turkey does anything that I, in my great and unmatched wisdom, consider to be off limits, I will totally destroy and obliterate the Economy of Turkey (I’ve done before!),” he wrote. 

The stable genius’s self love is unlimited. His wisdom is most definitely limited.

Do you think Republicans might begin to think about how to liberate their party from the iron grip of this shallow and ignorant con man?

Categories Education Reform

Los Angeles: Michael Kohlhaas Explains How Charter Lobby Neutralized the LAUSD Inspector General

By dianeravitch
October 7, 2019 //
6

 

Working with his treasure trove of emails among charter operators, which he obtained via a public records request, blogger Michael Kohlhaas explains how the Charter Lobby managed to reduce the powers of the Office of Inspector General, whose investigations into corrupt charters had been a thorn in their side.

This is an important post. Read it in full. The charter lobby dedicates a lot of time and money to avoiding accountability and transparency.

He begins:

The Los Angeles Unified School District has a particularly powerful oversight office, the Office of the Inspector General, known in the trade jargon as OIG. And in 2018 the School Board failed to renew then-IG Ken Bramlett’s contract. According to LA Times education reporter Howard Blume, pro-charter board members Monica Garcia, Kelly Gonez, and Nick Melvoin voted against renewal, which was enough to deadlock the board and prevent Bramlett’s return. Blume also noted that Bramlett had aggressively investigated some charter schools, in some cases leading to criminal charges being filed, and that charter schools had been clamoring for limits on OIG’s ability to investigate them but he stopped short of saying that Bramlett’s fall from grace was due to charter school influence.

And later a bunch of overwhelmingly salacious details of a number of really appalling and quite serious hostile work environment complaints against some of Bramlett’s senior subordinates came out along with credible accusations that Bramlett had at best failed to take these complaints seriously. Regardless of the validity of the uproar, and it seems quite valid indeed to me, this had the effect of directing most of the media attention away from charter school involvement in Bramlett’s downfall. Not entirely, though. For instance, Kyle Stokes, education reporter with KPCC, did mention that charter schools had been seeking to limit OIG’s role in overseeing them, although in that same article noted that “sources who spoke to KPCC said that concern over charter oversight was not a factor in the board’s thinking”

But newly published internal documents from the Los Angeles Advocacy Council, a shadowy organization run by the California Charter School Association and about 20 local charter school leaders, paint a very different picture. In fact LAAC and the CCSA give themselves credit for taking advantage of the chaos at OIG in order to effectively remove oversight of charter schools from OIG’s purview.

Not only that but they claim to have kept quiet about the issue in order to protect their public image. In the same document they also claim that they were asked to do so by unnamed people in the District who promised CCSA and LAAC that “they would handle it, and they followed through” Given some statements in another document it’s not impossible that convicted felon and then Board member Ref Rodriguez was one of these unnamed people. The charterites were thrilled by the outcome of their work against OIG oversight, announcing that it “should be seen as a major win by and for the charter community.” Perhaps this media strategy underlay Stokes’s sources’ comment about charter involvement in Bramlett’s non-renewal.

Categories Accountability, California, Charter Schools, Corruption, Education Industry, Education Reform, Los Angeles, Privatization

Politico: Trump’s Very Busy Week (Not)

By dianeravitch
October 6, 2019 //
34

Politico Playbook describes Trump’s schedule. He leaves lots of time for watching FOX News and tweeting. Now we understand what he meant when he said he could run the country and the Trump Organization at the same time. It’s a piece of cake, with plenty of time for golfing.

SNEAK PEEK … THE PRESIDENT’S WEEK AHEAD: MONDAY: The president will have lunch with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. He will participate in a briefing with senior military leaders. He and First Lady Melania Trump will have dinner with senior military leaders and their spouses. TUESDAY: Trump will have lunch with VP Mike Pence. He will present the Presidential Medal of Freedom to Edwin Meese.

THURSDAY: Trump will hold a campaign rally in Minneapolis. FRIDAY: The president will participate in a photo op with the Little League Baseball World Series champions and the Little League Softball World Series champions.

Categories Education Reform

Gary Rubinstein: Nevada Closes Its Failed “Achievement School District”

By dianeravitch
October 6, 2019 //
30

Gary Rubinstein has followed the failure of the “portfolio model” more closely than anyone in the country. He watched the Tennessee “Achievement School District” as its leaders made bold promises,     then departed for lucrative reformy gigs as the ASD collapsed in failure.

In this post, he describes the failure of Nevada’s copycat ASD. ,which was modeled on Tennessee’s ASD, which was modeled on New Orleans’ low-achieving Recovery School District.

He notes that Michigan’s “Education Achievement Authority” failed and was shuttered.

All of which raises the question, why are Corporate Reformers incapable of learning from experience?

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Education Reform, Failure, Michigan, Nevada, Privatization, Tennessee
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