Archives for category: Education Reform
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New Haven: Charter School Principal Resigns After Video Released

By dianeravitch
January 21, 2019 //
25

Achievement First Amistad in New Haven is known for two things: high test scores and high suspension rates.

https://fox61.com/2019/01/17/principal-of-new-haven-charter-school-quits-after-video-surfaces/

But when a video captured the principal
exercising the usual harsh discipline, the principal stepped down and a former “behavior specialist” spilled the beans.

“The State Department of Education has reprimanded the leadership of AF Amistad in the past for what the state says amounts to three times more suspensions as any other New Haven public school. Now, a video obtained by the New Haven Independent, shows AF Amistad principal Morgan Barth grabbing a male student, who tried to leave his office, while discussing previous discipline.

“The school’s Chief External Officer, Fatimah Barker, calls the principal’s conduct “unacceptable,” in a statement. It continued:

“When this incident happened, we conducted an internal investigation, documented the incident in accordance with state laws, and worked with the student’s family – including sharing the video with them. In addition, Mr. Barth was disciplined and also required to attain additional restraint training.”

“From the time I met that man, very intimidating to the kids,” said Steve Cotton, a now former AF Amistad employee. “Multiple staff always referred to his style as intimidation, basically.”

Categories Accountability, Connecticut, Discipline, Education Reform, Privatization

Mercedes Schneider: Reflecting on MAGA on Martin Luther King, Jr., Day

By dianeravitch
January 21, 2019 //
20

Mercedes Schneider ponders the meaning of Make America Great Again. MAGA.

What does Trump mean by “great?”

What does he mean by “again?”

She thinks she knows.

It’s a loaded phrase. It causes trouble because people understand what it means.

“And cause trouble, it does, because those “good old days” tend to be days in which life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness were chiefly available to whites– and particularly white males– with varying degrees of economic and social exclusion/oppression for women and people of color.”

That America—the era of white supremacy—is gone forever. It’s time to acknowledge and embrace a new and better America.

Categories Accountability, Civil Rights, Democracy, Education Reform, Equity

Georgia: Free Showing of “Backpack Full of Cash”

By dianeravitch
January 18, 2019 //
3

Are you aware that PRIVATIZATION for PROFIT is well underway in schools, city governments, transportation, etc. in Georgia? People are being elected to office with these ends in mind, are financed by for-profit entities and are soft selling decisions to authorize this movement…

Are you aware of the dire effects of allowing the proliferation of this movement to continue to grow in capacity?

THIS IS NOT JUST ABOUT SCHOOLS…

JOIN US FOR A FREE SCREENING

This feature-length documentary is a free screening and open to the public. No children please as space is limited.

When

Wednesday, January 30, 2019
7:00 pm – Film Screening
8:30 pm – Q&A Discussion

Where

Porter Sanford Performing Arts & Community Center
3181 Rainbow Drive
Decatur, GA 30034

Join the Georgia Federation of Teachers, JEEPAC and the NAACP DeKalb Chapter for a screening of Backpack Full of Cash.
This documentary narrated by Matt Damon, a Cambridge, MA public school graduate, takes an urgently-needed look at how charter schools, vouchers and the privatization movement are threatening the nation’s public schools. In the wake of the 2016 presidential elections and the appointment of Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, as well as the installation of a pro-charter majority of the Atlanta Public School Board, BACKPACK is timelier than ever. Filmed in Philadelphia, New Orleans, Nashville and other cities, BACKPACK takes viewers through the tumultuous 2013-14 school year, exposing the world of corporate-driven education “reform” where public education — starved of resources — hangs in the balance. Backpack puts a human face on complex social, racial and civic issues confronting educators, students, families, and our communities. Backpack serves as a tool to show how other communities are fighting back against an effort to privatize public education.

The documentary also showcases a model for improving schools – a well-resourced public school system in Union City, New Jersey, where poor kids are getting a high quality education without charters or vouchers. BACKPACK FULL OF CASH makes the case for public education as a basic civil right.

The film features genuine heroes like the principals, teachers, activists, parents and most hearteningly, students who are fighting for their education. Former Assistant Secretary of Education Diane Ravitch, writer David Kirp and policy expert Linda Darling Hammond are among the national thought leaders who provide analysis in the film.

This feature-length documentary is a free event and open to the public.

Categories Democracy, Education Reform, Georgia

New York: The Mysterious Decline of Graduation Rates, Five Years Afer Start of Common Core

By dianeravitch
January 18, 2019 //
27

An article in The Hechinger Report puzzles over the mysterious decline of graduation rates in New York, after five years of Common Core.


A student in a high school just outside of New York City. Jackie Mader/The Hechinger Report
Back in 2013, when New York was one of the first states in the nation to adopt Common Core standards and administer tougher tests, children’s test scores initially plummeted. Then, as teachers had time to develop lesson plans and adjust to new curricula, student performance began to improve. A similar pattern seemed to be emerging among the state’s high school students, who are required to pass a series of exams, called Regents, to earn a diploma. After an initial drop in pass rates among eighth and ninth graders on a Common Core algebra exam in 2014-15, scores improved.

But now, after five years of high schools teaching to the Common Core standards (now slightly revamped and called Next Generation Learning Standards in New York), there’s a sudden spike in the high-school failure rate. More than 13,000 more students failed the algebra Regents exam in the most recent 2017-18 school year compared to the previous year, pushing the failure rate up from 25 percent to 30 percent, according to a December 2018 report by education policy consultant David Rubel. In the English Language Arts or reading exam, the number of failing students grew by more than 12,000 students, increasing the failure rate from 16 percent to 21 percent.

“It’s odd that there would be a decline at this point,” said Morgan Polikoff, a professor at the University of Southern California’s school of education and an expert in assessments. “Most often the trend is that a new exam is implemented, there’s a ‘dip’ in performance. I don’t like calling it a dip because it’s a different test so it’s not really comparable. And then scores gradually increase over time.”

A puzzle indeed. It can’t possibly be anything wrong with Common Core or the Tests. It must be the kids. Too many ELLs.

Or there’s always this hope:

Low-achieving children who are exposed to Common Core instruction from the start in kindergarten may test better in high school in the years to come. Perhaps this problem will be a transitional one that will work itself through the system in the next five years.

Categories Accountability, Common Core, Education Reform, Graduation rates, New York, Testing

Mary Oliver: “Wild Geese”

By dianeravitch
January 18, 2019 //
11

A reader tweeted that she has a copy of”Wild Geese” on her desk.

Mary Oliver,”Wild Geese”

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.

Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.

Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.

Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting –
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

Categories Education Reform

Mary Oliver, Poet, RIP

By dianeravitch
January 17, 2019 //
11

Mary Oliver died today.

Mary Oliver, the prolific and award-winning poet, died on Thursday.

This is one of her poems:

“When Death Comes”

When it’s over, I want to say: all my life

I was a bride married to amazement.

I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.

When it’s over, I don’t want to wonder

if I have made of my life something particular, and real.

I don’t want to find myself sighing and frightened,

or full of argument.

I don’t want to end up simply having visited this world.

Our friend Bob Shepherd wrote about Mary Oliver:

No, I Will Not Tell You, Tonight, about Despair

Rest in Peace, Mary Oliver, September 10, 1935–January 17, 2019. How can we ever thank you?

We are so grateful for what you did with your wild and precious life.

How do we continue without you, Mother Mary, source of grace and courage? One thing, for certain, we must do: we must swallow your legacy whole, so that it becomes us, so that your voice lives in us and perhaps, if we are so blessed, will, at times, speak through us, a living thing.

Damn it.

Her most famous poem, to which Bob Shepherd alludes:

“The Summer Day

Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean-
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down-
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don’t know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?

—Mary Oliver

Categories Education Reform

What I Said at UTLA Rally on January 16 at Alexander Hamilton High School

By dianeravitch
January 17, 2019 //
14

This is a video of my brief remarks at the UTLA rally at Alexander Hamilton High School in Los Angeles on January 16. Hundreds of teachers, parents, students, and supporters picketed that morning in support of UTLA’s just demands for smaller classes and additional resources for nurses, counselors and other staff. The rally also spoke out against the proliferation of charter schools andprivatization. Teachers and students alike tied the diminishing resources in public schools to the expansion of charters and thepoerful, billionaire-funded California Charter School Association. The day before, on January 15, 50,000 people rallied against charters in front of the CCSA headquarters.

This is my summary of yesterday’s stirring rally. The spirit of the Resistance is strong!

UTLA is making history!

The fight goes on.

The whole world is watching.

Categories Accountability, Billionaires, Budget Cuts, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Education Reform, Funding, Los Angeles, Privatization

New York: Will Elia Punish Opt Out Schools?Will Legislature Return Teacher Evaluation to Districts?

By dianeravitch
January 17, 2019 //
5

Peter Goodman has been covering New York State and city education politics for many years.

In this post, he reports that Commissioner MaryEllen Elia is planning to punish schools that have high opt out numbers, treating them as”failing schools” even though they include some of the highest performing schools in the state.

Elia is out of control. She doesn’t know how to listen but she sure knows how to crack the whip.

On the teacher evaluation front,Goodman reports that the Legislature is prepared to turn the issue back to districts. It’s fair to say that the Legislature’s efforts to base teacher evaluation on test scores and computer algorithms has been a disaster.

Uncertain: even as teacher evaluation is returned to districts, Will it still be based on test scores, a measure proven to be flawed and inaccurate?

Categories Accountability, Education Reform, Failure, New York, Opt Out, Parent Groups, Teacher Evaluations, Testing

Shawgi Tell: Charter Schools Have Become Controversial and Affect Elections

By dianeravitch
January 17, 2019 //
6

Shawgi Tell is a professor of education at Nazareth College in Rochester, New York.

In this post, he says that charter schools have become a flash point in elections, and many parents are fighting against them. Charter advocates have tried for years to sell them as “public schools,” but the public is getting wise that they are a form of privatization that harms their public schools.

The intensely controversial nature of nonprofit and for-profit charter schools in the U.S., due in no small part to endless news about the infinite problems plaguing them, is increasingly a major issue in local, state, and federal election campaigns. It is hard to find a political race today where a candidate, especially a school board candidate, is not expected to have some position, hopefully well-worked out, but usually not, on charter schools. Tens of millions of dollars are being spent in some places based almost entirely on whether a candidate supports or opposes charter schools (e.g., California recently). This point is especially critical to appreciate as the tide against charter schools steadily rises. The last thing charter school advocates want is to open the door to disciplined investigation and serious discussion on charter schools. For them, disinformation and propaganda must have the upper hand. Informed, conscious, and oriented people do not serve their agenda.

Currently, more than a dozen individuals are vying for the position of Mayor of Chicago, a powerful position in one of the country’s largest cities, not to mention home to about 125 charter schools and the place from whence education privatizer and former U.S. Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan, sprung. Elections will be held on February 26, 2019. Incumbent Mayor, Rahm Emanuel, is not seeking reelection.

A December 28, 2018 Chicago Sun-Times article titled, “Where 14 candidates for mayor stand on charter schools — their full responses,” exposes the extreme confusion that has traumatized the public and distorted the “great charter school debate” for decades.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Education Reform, Privatization

New York City: School Committee Asks for Charter Moratorium

By dianeravitch
January 17, 2019 //
11

This letter was sent by the secretary and chair of the charter committee of the Community Education Council of District 15 in Brooklyn.


Dear Community Leaders,

My name is Antonia Ferraro. I am the Secretary and Charter Committee Chair for CEC15 in Brooklyn. I am writing to share some news with you. Community Education Council District 15 in Brooklyn (CEC15) has written a draft of a resolution: Resolution to Oppose an Increase in the State Charter School Cap and City Charter School Subcap. The draft is attached below. CEC15 will have its final public vote on Jan. 29, 2019 at 6:30 pm at PS 131, located at 4305 Fort Hamilton Parkway in Brooklyn. The resolution has been released for a period of public comment.

We hope that you will share this draft with your community and consider writing in support of our resolution.

Attached also is a hearing notice for Success Academy. They are not asking for space at this time, rather the authorization to serve more students. The hearing is this Wednesday, January 16, 2019, at 5:30 pm. Consider voicing your opposition by attending the hearing or writing to the address listed in the hearing notice.

Charter expansion is why our resolution is so crucial. New York City has 39% of the state’s students and houses 71% of the state’s Charter schools. Given this imbalance, the prospect of a Charter School Subcap increase, requires us to ask—What is the vision for New York City public schools? Any amendment to the law that enables further Charter growth without an evaluation of impact, is an unmistakable signal that Charter schools are not merely a vehicle for educational alternatives and threaten to put New York City public schools out of business. Therefore, we ask Albany to impose a Five-Year New York City Charter Moratorium and perform an evaluation of our existing dual education system because education policy should create systems that work together to make progress for all New York children—not systems designed wherein one undermines the other.

I want to emphasize that this is not an anti-Charter school resolution. We realize there are different opinions on the Charter school issue across the 5 boroughs. However, given the numbers, a Charter Cap and/or Subcap increase should be something our city’s parents and educators oppose with a unified voice. The legislative session is upon us and parent leaders can’t miss this opportunity to press pause on Charter expansion at the source—Albany.

Thank you and don’t hesitate to reach to me with questions. Also, please consider supporting CEC15 by attending our Jan. 29th meeting.

Sincerely,

Antonia Ferraro
CEC15 Secretary and Charter Committee Chair
antoniacec15@gmail.com

Categories Charter Schools, Education Reform, New York City, Privatization
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