Archives for category: Education Reform
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Why Did Trump Hide His Academic Records if He Did as Well As He Claimed?

By dianeravitch
March 9, 2019 //
59

Why is this “stable genius” hiding his academic records? This story appeared in the Washington Post:

 

‘Grab that record’: How Trump’s high school transcript was hidden


A portrait of Donald Trump hangs on the wall at the New York Military Academy, in Cornwall-on-Hudson, N.Y. (Mike Groll/AP)
By Marc Fisher

March 5 at 4:27 PM

In 2011, days after Donald Trump challenged President Barack Obama to “show his records” to prove that he hadn’t been a “terrible student,” the headmaster at New York Military Academy got an order from his boss: Find Trump’s academic records and help bury them.

The superintendent of the private school “came to me in a panic because he had been accosted by prominent, wealthy alumni of the school who were Mr. Trump’s friends” and who wanted to keep his records secret, recalled Evan Jones, the headmaster at the time. “He said, ‘You need to go grab that record and deliver it to me because I need to deliver it to them.’ ”

The superintendent, Jeffrey Coverdale, confirmed Monday that members of the school’s board of trustees initially wanted him to hand over Trump’s records to them, but Coverdale said he refused.

“I was given directives, part of which I could follow but part of which I could not, and that was handing them over to the trustees,” he said. “I moved them elsewhere on campus where they could not be released. It’s the only time I ever moved an alumnus’s records.”

The former NYMA officials’ recollections add new details to one of the allegations that Michael Cohen, the president’s longtime personal lawyer and fixer, made before Congress last week. Cohen, who told the House Oversight and Reform Committee that part of his job was to attack Trump’s critics and defend his reputation, said that Trump ordered him “to threaten his high school, his colleges and the College Board to never release his grades or SAT scores.”

Trump has frequently boasted that he was a stellar student, but he declined throughout the 2016 campaign to release any of his academic records, telling The Washington Post then, “I’m not letting you look at anything.”

Michael Cohen said in his Feb. 27 testimony that President Trump directed him “to threaten” academic institutions regarding the release of his SAT scores. (Reuters)

Last year, he said he “heard I was first in my class” at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton business program, where he finished his undergraduate degree, but Trump’s name does not appear on the school’s dean’s list or on the list of students who received academic honors in his class of 1968.

Trump spent five years at the military academy, starting in the fall of 1959, after his father — having concluded that his son, then in the seventh grade, needed a more discipline-focused setting — removed him from his Queens private school and sent him Upstate to NYMA.

At the academy, which modeled its strict code of conduct after the nearby U.S. Military Academy at West Point, Trump loved competing to win contests for cleanest room or best-made bed. Although not known as an academic standout, he was a prominent baseball player and was well known on campus for bringing women there and showing them around. Despite getting a series of Vietnam War medical deferments for bone spurs in his feet, Trump has said that his military academy background provided “more training militarily than a lot of the guys that go into the military.”

Trump told The Post during the 2016 campaign that he “did very well under the military system. I became one of the top guys at the whole school.”

He said his parents originally sent him there because “I was a wise guy, and they wanted to get me in line.”

Jones and Coverdale declined to disclose the contents of his transcript.

Those who were aware of the 2011 effort to conceal Trump’s records said the request set off a frenzy at the military academy.

“I know for a fact that in 2011, the decision was made by the superintendent to remove those records and secure them so no one on the staff could get to them,” said Richard Pezzullo, a graduate who worked closely with school officials in a drive to save the school, which was then in financial distress. “People had been making inquiries, and there was a paramount interest in securing those records.”

The boarding school had no formal archive at the time. Jones said he combed through the basement of Scarborough Hall on the academy’s sprawling campus, 60 miles north of New York City, and found the real estate mogul’s transcript in file cabinets containing student records.

Categories Education Reform

Remember the Congressman That AOC Beat?

By dianeravitch
March 9, 2019 //
36

 

There was much gnashing of teeth in establishment Democratic circles when 29-year-Old Alexandria Ocasio-Cortes beat high-ranking Congressman Joe Crowley. Upstart! How dare she?

But don’t cry for Joe Crowley. He has landed a job at one of DC’s top lobbying firms, which represents fossil fuels, private prisons, and other distinctly non-liberal corporations. 

Since I’m meeting AOC in a week to talk about education, I started reading about her. Clearly Republicans are obsessed with her to the point of madness. I worry about her safety.

I liked this article in Vox.

This satirical piece by the wonderful Alexandra Petri in the Washington Post made me laugh out loud. 

It starts:

“Enough is enough! Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez needs to stop inserting herself into our every waking moment!

“I am sick of hearing about Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez from my voice talking about Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. I would like to spend just one day without seeking out, looking at and commenting on pictures of her everywhere she goes. It would be nice, just once, not to have to be enraged by clicking on an article that mentions her name, and then another, and then another. Just once I want to spend a day without bringing her up, unprovoked, in the middle of a discussion of an unrelated subject.

I just don’t know why people are so obsessed with her, specifically, myself. Why has she compelled me to type her name so many times that when I type the letter “A,” my phone supplies “OC”? It is a conspiracy, I think.

“Just yesterday, I had to listen to an exhausting, 10-minute lecture from some idiot who would not shut up about Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, only to discover that it was myself, talking to myself. This happens every day.

“Why is it that when I look into fire, her face emerges and when I gaze at the spots on a cow (She hates the cows! She wants to destroy them!), I see what appears to be her profile? How can it be that this week alone I have read 18 articles about her, two of which I did not write?” And more in that vein.

I think I have figured out why so many of those curmudgeons not only don’t like her, they hate her. She is not only young and joyful but she has the ideals they long ago lost. They are jealous. They are not young. They are not joyful. And they have no ideals, just deals.

 

Categories Education Reform, Humor, Joy

On Paul Manafort’s Sentence of 47 Months

By dianeravitch
March 8, 2019 //
49

 

From this morning’s Washington Post:

 

— A string of defense attorneys, especially public defenders, pointed to much harsher sentences doled out to people for non-white-collar crimes than what Manafort got from Ellis. Mueller’s team laid out evidence during the Virginia trial that Manafort, by concealing $16 million in income, didn’t pay $6 million he would have owed in federal taxes, among other crimes.

“Scott Hechinger, a senior staff attorney at Brooklyn Defender Services, an organization that provides legal representation to defendants who cannot afford it, used one of his recent clients, who was just offered a 36-to-72-month sentence, as an example. The crime? Stealing $100-worth of quarters from a residential laundry room. Hechinger’s client may wind up doing more time than Manafort, a man who defrauded the Internal Revenue Service out of $6 million,” Reis Thebault and Michael Brice-Saddler report. “Hechinger listed a half dozen more examples. Among them were a Brooklyn teenager who got a 19-years-to-life sentence for burning a mattress in the hallway of his apartment building, resulting in the smoke-inhalation death of an officer who responded to the scene. He also cited the case of Cyrstal Mason, an ex-felon who was sent back to prison for five years after voting in the 2016 presidential election while on probation — an act she says she didn’t know was illegal.”

A defense lawyer tweeted that she had a client serving 3 1/2-7 years in prison for stealing laundry detergent from a drugstore (@DrRJKavanagh)

Two systems of justice. One for rich. The other for poor.

Categories Education Reform, Inequity, Injustice

Los Angeles: Jackie!

By dianeravitch
March 8, 2019 //
7

 

 

Howard Blume wrote an incisive analysis of the race for the LAUSD seat in District 5, where Jackie Goldberg won 48% of the vote in a crowded field. He writes that UTLA put $660,000 into the race on behalf of Jackie, who is a progressive fighter for kids and public schools. She raised another $200,000 on her own. But she did not spend the most. The biggest spender (Heather Repenning) had a kitty of $1 million, contributed mainly by Local 99. Eli Broad put $100,000 into the Local 99 anti-Jackie effort but she received only 13% of the vote. Why did Local 99 spend $1 million to elect a pro-charter candidate? Odd, especially since charters are overwhelmingly non-union. Anyone have answers? Aside from Eli, the rest of the billionaire charter donors apparently decided to wait and see who ran against Jackie in the runoff, but their favorite (Repenning) ran 35 points behind Jackie. Maybe they will let this one go unless they can figure out how to paint a solid progressive as a devil with horns.

 

 

LOS ANGELES — Last year, the power of the local teachers union seemed to be on the wane while charter schools’ prospects were rising. Los Angeles Board of Education members backed by charter supporters were in control, and they’d pushed through a new superintendent whose background had nothing to do with education.

On Tuesday, voters showed how quickly things can change.

Jackie Goldberg, the union-backed candidate, easily outpaced nine others on the ballot in a special election that could shift the balance on the school board — thanks in large part to public support cultivated during a six-day strike by teachers in January…

Goldberg, who served on the board for two terms until 1991, proclaimed herself part of a larger movement to bring more resources to education — and also to rein in charter schools.

“This is the beginning and not the end of putting together all those people who came together around the teachers’ strike — not just here but in Oakland and the folks in Madera and the folks in Fresno that are all trying to make these things happen,” Goldberg said. “People moved to California when I was young for our schools. And since then we have starved them, and we cannot continue starving them. This movement is about that.”

It’s not yet clear whom Goldberg will face in the runoff, but it will either be Graciela Ortiz or Heather Repenning, who at last count were separated by 53 votes. Neither would be a clear-cut option for charter supporters. The candidate with the strongest pro-charter position, Allison Bajracharya, finished fifth.

Ortiz is a school counselor and a member of the Huntington Park City Council.

Repenning is a former public works commissioner and longtime senior aide to L.A. Mayor Eric Garcetti.

Their order of finish will be settled by mail-in and provisional ballots. The vote count can continue as late as March 19.

Goldberg’s success was partly because of her own brand: She served on the school board, on the L.A. City Council and in the state Legislature; she’s well-known and well-regarded by many.

But her success also was built on teacher activism, including last year’s strikes in other states and this year’s walkouts in Los Angeles and Oakland. Union leaders in L.A. followed up their January strike by immediately launching a campaign that spent about $660,000 on Goldberg’s behalf. She also raised about $200,000 for her own campaign — and she noted Tuesday night that she’d benefited from 1,300 small contributions and 800 volunteers.

Her activism goes back to the University of California, Berkeley free speech movement of the mid-1960s — an era, she noted, in which students paid no tuition for their higher education. The state, she said, needs to find its way back to a deeper investment in its children…

Goldberg aligns with those who say privately operated charters — which compete with district-run schools for students and the funding that goes with them — are undermining public education…

Anti-charter themes were a regular refrain of striking teachers, and they seemed to strike a chord with people who may not previously have been familiar with the arguments.

A survey of L.A. Unified School District residents during and just after the strike found that about 3 in 4 said the focus should be on improving existing public schools rather than on alternatives such as charters, said Brianne Gilbert, associate director of the Center for the Study of Los Angeles at Loyola Marymount University.

Although the charter lobby remains powerful, it suffered a setback at the state level last year, when it ran campaigns on behalf of candidates who lost the races for governor and the state superintendent of public instruction. On Tuesday, Gov. Gavin Newsom — who has signaled his openness to more regulation of charter schools — signed legislation that would compel charters to follow laws on public records and public meetings….

For this week’s primary, charter backers were never able to coalesce around an opponent to Goldberg. Bajracharya, an executive at a charter organization, had substantial support from charter allies but not the overwhelming sums provided by megadonors in recent elections.

Four candidates raised enough money to get their message out: Goldberg, Bajracharya, Ortiz and Repenning. And each also had donors who funded independent campaigns on their behalf. The teachers union’s spending on Goldberg was a relative bargain compared to what it spent in recent races — often in a losing cause.

But the biggest spender in the primary was Local 99 of Service Employees International Union, which represents most nonteaching district employees. It put nearly $1 million into a campaign to elect Repenning, who also had the endorsement of Garcetti.

Part of Local 99’s money paid for a misleading campaign against Goldberg, describing her as a career politician who is “always looking out for #1” and who favored prisons over schools, slashed education spending and presided over a failing school system.

Even if their campaign helped force a runoff, Repenning finished so far back that Local 99 now must ponder how much it wants to continue fighting Goldberg, with whom the union previously has gotten along.

Many observers assumed that the pro-charter funders — organized under the group California Charter Schools Association Advocates — were simply holding their fire till the runoff. Goldberg’s strong showing could affect that calculus.

A spokesman for CCSA Advocates declined to comment Wednesday.

Categories Education Reform, Los Angeles

Jan Resseger: Why Is America Underinvesting in Education?

By dianeravitch
March 8, 2019 //
53

 

Jan Resseger writes one astonishingly smart post after another. We can all learn from her. Having dedicated her career to social justice and especially to education justice, she is steeped in the issues. But she has a way of putting together information from different sources that brings new light on old discussions.

This post about our national underinvestment in education is exemplary.

She begins like this:

For nearly two decades the preferred spin of policymakers at federal and state levels has been that financial investments (inputs) are far less important than evidence of academic achievement (outcomes as measured by standardized tests). And the outcomes were supposed to be achieved by pressuring teachers to work harder and smarter. Somehow teachers have been expected to deliver a miracle at the same time classes got bigger; nurses, counselors and librarians were cut; and teacher turnover increased as salaries lagged.

Statements of justice in public education have always been a little vague about the most direct path to get there.  One of my favorite definitions of public education’s purpose is from Benjamin Barber’s 1992 book, An Aristocracy of Everyone: “(T)he object of public schools is not to credential the educated but to educate the uncredentialed; that is, to change and transform pupils, not merely to exploit their strengths. The challenge in a democracy is to transform every child into an apt pupil, and give every pupil the chance to become an autonomous, thinking person and a deliberative, self-governing citizen: that is to say, to achieve excellence… Education need not begin with equally adept students, because education is itself the equalizer. Equality is achieved not by handicapping the swiftest, but by assuring the less advantaged a comparable opportunity. ‘Comparable’ here does not mean identical… Schooling is what allows math washouts to appreciate the contributions of math whizzes—and may one day help persuade them to allocate tax revenues for basic scientific research, which math illiterates would reject. Schooling allows those born poor to compete with those born rich; allows immigrants to feel as American as the self-proclaimed daughters and sons of the American Revolution; allows African-Americans, whose ancestors were brought here in bondage, to fight for the substance (rather than just the legal forms) of their freedom.”  (An Aristocracy of Everyone, pp. 12-13)

There are many reasons to consider Barber’s principles carefully in Trump’s America. In the specific case of the provision of education, however, we ought to consider this question: Can these words—“Education need not begin with equally adept students, because education is itself the equalizer”— be achieved without our society’s investing in tangible inputs like class size and numbers of counselors and the presence of school music programs?  For a year now—in walkouts and strikes—schoolteachers have been telling us that policymakers are naive to believe inputs don’t matter.  In a new report, K-12 School Funding Up in Most 2018 Teacher-Protest States, But Still Well Below Decade Ago, the Center on Budget and Priorities (CBPP) confirms teachers’ outrage about the collapse of financial investment in their schools.

CBPP’s new report summarizes school funding in several of the states where striking teachers have called attention to their states’ long collapse of funding for K-12 public education: “Protests by teachers and others last year helped lead to substantial increases in school funding in Arizona, North Carolina, Oklahoma, and West Virginia, four of the 12 states that had cut school ‘formula’ funding—the primary state revenue source for schools—most deeply over the last decade. Despite last year’s improvements, however, formula funding remains well below 2008 levels in these states.”

CBPP explains further that to end teachers’ strikes, legislators too frequently went for a quick fix instead of a stable solution: “Three of the four teacher-protest states that increased formula funding last year used revenue sources that may prove unsustainable…. Arizona teachers ended their strike after Governor Doug Ducey signed a budget giving them a 20 percent salary increase over three years.  But the budget doesn’t include the new revenue required to finance the planned spending…. North Carolina’s legislature increased funding for schools without raising new revenue to do so, even though the state faces a revenue shortfall next year for covering ongoing needs, primarily due to unsustainable income tax cuts that began to take effect in 2014… Oklahoma funded pay increases for teachers and other public employees that included a hike in cigarette taxes, a boost in gasoline taxes, and an increase in the tax rate on oil extraction.  While these revenue sources were adequate to cover the pay hikes, they may not be in the future.”

Even the emergency increases after teachers’ strikes are not enough: “Most of the teacher-protest states had cut their formula funding so deeply over the last decade that even last year’s sizeable funding boosts weren’t enough to restore funding to pre-recession levels.  For example, in Oklahoma, per-student formula funding remains 15 percent below 2008 levels, including inflation adjustments.  And per-student formula funding in Arizona, North Carolina, and West Virginia, as well, is still well below pre-recession levels.”

Categories Budget Cuts, Education Reform, Funding

New York City: A Forum on Education Issues with AOC

By dianeravitch
March 8, 2019 //
35

Want to meet Rep. Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez? So do I. If you are in New York City or its environs, here is your chance.

Public Education Town Hall

A conversation on a bold new vision for public school justice and equity

 

Featured speaker: Diane Ravitch with education advocates

With responses from Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and NYS Senator Jessica Ramos

 

Panel and discussion followed by audience Q&A

 

Saturday, March 16

2:00-4:30PM

Fiesta Hall

37-62 89th Street, Jackson Heights

Subway: 7 train to 90th Street

Participating Organizations:

Alliance for Quality Education

Class Size Matters

Network for Public Education

NYC Opt Out

NYS Association for Bilingual Education

 

Sponsored by Jackson Heights People for Public Schools

RSVP at: jhschools..org/events

Seating will be on a “first come first served” basis

 

Categories Education Reform, Equity

Florida: Teachers Want a Salary Increase, Not Bonuses

By dianeravitch
March 7, 2019 //
11

 

The Florida Legislature is getting set to modify its “best and brightest” teacher bonus, which gave incentives to students who had high SAT/ACT scores in high school. Almost every teacher in the state gets some bonus, which is not pensionable. Average teacher pay in Florida is among the lowest in the nation, ranked 42nd. 

 

Leslie Postal of the Orlando Sentinel wrote:

 

More than 11,200 Florida teachers will earn bonuses of $7,200 each in the next month through the controversial “best and brightest” program state leaders now want to revamp, state figures show.

The 11,286 teachers earned “highly effective” ratings at their public schools — and had ACT or SAT scores in the top 20 percent when they applied to college — making them eligible for the highest awards in Florida’s Best and Brightest Teacher and Principal Scholarship program.

Nearly 81,000 other teachers are to get bonuses of $1,200 for their “highly effective” evaluations, and another 67,600 deemed “effective” are to get about $700, officials said. About 670 new teachers with the high ACT or SAT scores will get bonuses of $6,000, according to the tally released by the Florida Department of Education.

Combined, more than 171,000 teachers — or about 91 percent of Florida’s classroom instructors — will get at least one of the bonuses. And 557 principals will get bonuses worth $4,000 or $5,000, with those working at a high-poverty school earning more. The state will spend more than $233 million on the payouts.

The bonuses are to be paid by April 1, though the exact pay dates will vary by school district.

The Orange County school district had the most top-award winners in the state — 1,241 — as it did last year.

The release of information on bonus winners comes as lawmakers look to redo the program, which many have criticized for tying awards not only to classroom success but also to old college admissions exam scores.

The Florida Senate’s education committee on Wednesday approved a multi-pronged bill (SB 7070) that would do away with the test-score requirement and create a revised program that would aim to recruit teachers in high-demand subjects, retain good teachers and reward top classroom performers. Gov. Ron DeSantis has urged lawmakers to delete the test score requirement, which he said “didn’t make sense.”

But many teachers want the state to instead earmark more money for public education so teachers can get pay raises, not one-year bonuses.

“Tell the Senate Ed Committee to fund salaries not bonuses,” read a tweet posted Tuesday by the Florida Education Association, the statewide teachers union. It called the bill a proposal that “introduces yet another bonus scheme instead of investing in educators & neighborhood public schools.”

Categories Education Reform, Florida, Merit pay, Teacher Pay, Teachers

Breaking News: Eli Broad Gave $100,000 to Defeat Jackie Goldberg in School Board Race

By dianeravitch
March 7, 2019 //
18

Howard Blume of the Los Angeles Times just tweeted this:

 

1 hour ago

More

Eli Broad made a $100,000 donation on March 5, election day, to an SEIU Local 99 PAC backing Heather Repenning for the open L.A. school board seat. Other pro-charter folks gave to support other candidates, suggesting divided views and/or an anybody-but-Goldberg strategy.

Heather Repenning worked for Mayor Eric Garcetti. Local 99 of the SEIU spent $1 million to defeat Jackie. Now we know where some of that $1 million came from. The question for Local 99 is why they would want more charter schools, since most are nonunion? Repenning came in either 2nd or 3rd, with about 13% of the vote, far behind Jackie, who received 48%.
Categories Education Reform

LAUSD Race: Jackie Has 48.26% and the Count Continues!

By dianeravitch
March 6, 2019 //
4

 

The special election for the empty seat on the LAUSD Board continues. If you recall the contest between Tony Thurmond and Marshall Tuck for state superintendent, the final vote was not released for many dates as the elections board counted mail-in ballots.

At this early stage, Jackie has 48.26% of the vote. The #2 and #3 candidates are virtually tied at about 13%.

A victory for Jackie is a defeat for the Billionaires Boys Club.

Watch for updates:

https://lavote.net/election-results?fbclid=IwAR2OZ4myQsODybqaDW5R3TgfKY_y-vV_XDbzeZeYHX59683B7AdCCEZ7fGo#year=2019&election=3983

Categories Education Reform

Democrats Who Support Charters Now Face Criticism in Presidential Contest

By dianeravitch
March 6, 2019 //
82

 

It’s about time. A story in the Los Angeles Times notes that those Democratic candidates who supported charters (and still do) are facing a backlash by their party’s voters. The wave of teachers’ strikes have brought into sharp relief the fact that most families enroll their children in public schools, not charter schools; that charter schools are a priority for Republicans, Wall Street, and far-right libertarians like Betsy DeVos; and that support for public schools is a bedrock principle of the Democratic Party.

The candidate who was most outspoken as a supporter of both charters and vouchers was Cory Booker. He worked in alliancewith anti-union Governor Chris Christie to bring chartersto Newark. He worked closely with Betsy Dezvos and gave a speech to her organization. He was honored by the rightwing Manhattan Institute for supporting school choice. He wanted to turn Newark into the New Orleans of the North, with no public schools and no teachers’ union. He still defends that record.

Michael Bloomberg was a big supporter of charters in New York City and favored them over the public schools he took control of. He’s now out of the race, so no need to worry other than that he will find a Democratic DeVos to fund. He despises public schools.

Michael Bennett of Colorado supported charters when he was superintendent of schools in Denver. Governor Hickenlooper appointed Bennett to the Senate.

Governor Jay Inslee of Washington State did not stand up to Bill Gates after the Washington State Supreme Court decided that charter schools and not entitled to receive public money. Gates persuaded his friends in the legislature to give lottery money to charters, and Gov. Inslee neither signed nor vetoed the law, allowing Gates to get state funding. Not a profilein courage.

The election of 2020 will be a deciding moment, when Democratic candidates are asked to declare whether they support the public schools, or the privately-managed, scandal-ridden charters that enroll 6% of the nation’s students.

 

 

 

 

Categories Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Billionaires, Bloomberg, Michael, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Democrats, Education Industry, Education Reform, New Orleans, Newark, Privatization, Scandals, School Choice
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