Archives for category: Education Reform
« Older Entries
Newer Entries »

Understanding the Voucher Scam

By dianeravitch
September 9, 2023 //
7

A reader who signs as “Retired Teacher” posted this astute analysis of how vouchers work. Why are billionaires like Betsy DeVos, Charles Koch, the Waltons, etc. so enthusiastic about vouchers? No voucher will ever be large enough to send a child to the schools their children attend. Why do they want to defund public schools?

During the first phase of the privatization of education was the belief that the private sector can do everything better and more efficiently than the public sector. What ensued was trying to turn education into a commodity. Market based principles applied to education made everything so much worse including hiring the wrong people, endless testing, waste, fraud, firing legitimate teachers and closing public schools. The main goal of privatization has always been to gain access to public funds and transfer it into private pockets. The current interest in vouchers is an extension of this trend. It certainly is not about education as vouchers provide worse education.

Vouchers have always been the goal of DeVos, the 1% and right wing extremists. They are a way to scam the working class out of the public schools that protect their children’s rights and send them to valueless schools with zero accountability while teaching them religious dogma and almost anything else the school deems worthy for less cost. Unfortunately, the students are unlikely get a valid background in science, history, civics or the exposure to diverse students. Vouchers benefit the wealthy and affluent, and they are a losing proposition for the poor and working class.

Categories Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Bigotry, Billionaires, Corruption, Curriculum, Democracy, Education Reform, Fake, Hoax, Lies, Vouchers

Ruth Conniff: The War Against Democracy and Public Education in Wisconsin

By dianeravitch
September 7, 2023 //
4

Ruth Conniff, editor-in-chief of The Wisconsin Examiner, brilliantly summarizes the war against public education in Wisconsin, which reflects what is happening in many other states. Parents and teachers have mobilized to defend their public schools, while the governor and legislature agree on expanding vouchers and an austerity budget for public schools. She points out that the rightwing angst about CRT and gender is a giant smokescreen to distract public attention from the diversion of public funds to private schools. The attacks are funded, of course, by rightwing billionaires.

Conniff writes:

It’s an understatement to say that public school advocates are not happy with the state budget Gov. Tony Evers signed.

“We’re not here to cheer for crumbs,” Heather DuBois Bourenane, executive director of the Wisconsin Public Education Network, declared at the group’s annual Summer Summit last week. “This budget did not deliver and will not adequately meet the needs of kids.”

It’s a “weird moment” for public school advocates, DuBois Bourenane added, noting the conspicuous absence of Evers, a longtime ally, from the annual gathering of public education organizers. Evers has signed a budget DuBois Bourenane described as “disgusting,” leaving 40% of school districts with less funding this year than they had under last year’s zero-increase budget.

School superintendents who attended the summer summit reeled off program cuts and school closings around the state as districts are forced to tighten their belts even though the state is sitting on more than $6 billion in surplus funds. Wisconsin is entering its 16th year of school funding that doesn’t keep pace with inflation. The toll is visible in districts that have had to close buildings and cancel programs.

“It’s a difficult line, I suppose, to walk,” an unsmiling State Superintendent of Public Instruction Jill Underly told me, standing in the hallway outside the auditorium at South Milwaukee High School after delivering the welcoming speech at the summit. Her theme was growth and change and how no one is perfect, drawing on a poem about caterpillars and butterflies.

“I feel like the governor is caught in a bad spot,” Underly added. Evers had to negotiate a deal with Republicans who were threatening to withhold shared revenue funds from Milwaukee, potentially plunging the state’s largest urban area into bankruptcy.

“It’s all part of politics and negotiation,” Underly said. “I do feel bad for the schools, because we got little, on top of no increase in the past.”

Although the budget deal does allow most school districts to levy an additional $325 per pupil from local property tax payers, that just “puts the burden back on the local districts to make up for that revenue rather than the state,” Underly said. And the state’s failure to meet public school demands that it cover at least 60% of the cost of special education — an expense that is devouring school district budgets, leading to program cuts in other areas — was a “missed opportunity,” Underly said, given the huge budget surplus. “I do feel strongly that our public schools lost out again.”

As for the big increase in taxpayer money going to finance private schools through the voucher expansion Evers signed as part of his deal with Republicans, “It’s hard to swallow,” Underly said, “because, really, we can’t afford two school systems.”

In just two years, all the enrollment caps will come off the school voucher program in 2026 and the problem of supporting two school systems, one public and one private, from the same limited pool of education funds, is going to get even worse.

“I think there’s going to be a reckoning,” Underly said. “I think the people in this state are going to have to do some soul-searching and really answer the question: What future do they want for public schools and kids and communities? Do they want a system that serves everybody? Or do they want to have two systems where the one that serves everybody keeps shrinking?”

That pretty much sums up not just the battle over the future of public schools in Wisconsin this year, but all of the struggles over the future of democracy in our state and around the country that suddenly seem to be coming to a head this year.

Are we going to have a society where we come together around shared values and common interests, or are we going to continue to break into increasingly isolated, hostile camps, tearing down our shared institutions, and leaving individuals and families on their own to grab what they can for themselves?

The Wisconsin Public Education Networks’ slogan, “Public Schools Unite Us” captures the more optimistic of those two roads.

“I don’t know anyone who disagrees with that slogan,” podcaster Todd Albaugh, a former Republican who spent 30 years in government and politics, said during the summit. He talked about the state champion high school baseball team in the little town of Ithaca, Wisconsin, and how everyone rallied around them. “Wisconsin public schools, they are the identity of our communities,” he said.

The Wisconsin Public Education Network has done an admirable job of reinforcing that identity, and defying the “politics of resentment” by bringing people together from urban and rural parts of the state. Together, rural and urban districts hammered out a shared set of priorities and pushed for them in the Capitol. Although they didn’t get what they wanted in the budget, they showed unity of purpose in pushing for a big raise in the state reimbursement for ballooning special education costs and a $1,510 per pupil increase to make up for 15 years of budgets that haven’t kept pace with inflation.

The vision of schools as cradles of a healthy, diverse, civic society was on display at South Milwaukee High, which hosted the summit Aug. 10, with representatives from mostly white rural districts mixing with students of color and teachers and administrators from urban, majority-minority schools.

There was a lot of talk about school funding and not so much on the hot buttons pushed by the right: “critical race theory,” gender pronouns and “parents rights.”

Politicians and school-privatization lobbyists have put a lot of money and energy into stirring up anger and distrust based on those culture war topics, in an effort to distract voters and undermine public schools. But the real aim of rightwing attacks on public schools is not just to teach conservative family values or racist rewrites of history. School privatization advocates have been working for decades to get their hands on the public funds that flow to public schools. As Rupert Murdoch put it, discussing News Corp’s foray into the business of education: “When it comes to K through 12 education, we see a $500 billion sector in the US alone that is waiting desperately to be transformed.” In Wisconsin, that transformation is well underway.

Rod Gramer, president and CEO of Idaho Business for Education, a group of 250 Idaho business leaders who helped beat back publicly funded private school vouchers in their state, urged Wisconsin public school advocates gathered in South Milwaukee last week to keep the focus on the bigger picture.

“People don’t understand this is not a state problem,” Gramer said. “They don’t understand there’s a large group of billionaires who want to abolish public education.

“Billionaires who’ve never set foot in your state are spending billions to elect friendly legislators,” Gramer correctly pointed out. “I think people would be outraged if they know these elite billionaires are trying to undermine education in your state…”

We can do better. Voters, whether they are rural Republicans or urban Democrats, really can get together on defending a shared vision of a decent society. A cornerstone of that society is a free, high-quality public education system with beloved teachers, music programs, sports teams, and the whole sense of community that builds. Public schools do unite us. And as Evers said, before he got his arm twisted and signed the current budget, we should always do what’s best for kids.

Please open the link and read this important article to its conclusion.

Categories Accountability, Billionaires, Education Reform, Evil, Extremism, Funding, Parents, Privatization, School Choice, Vouchers, Wisconsin

Heather Cox Richardson: The First Labor Day

By dianeravitch
September 4, 2023 //
1

Count on historian Heather Cox Richardson to recount the origins of Labor Day, in her inimitable style..

Almost one hundred and forty-one years ago, on September 5, 1882, workers in New York City celebrated the first Labor Day holiday with a parade. The parade almost didn’t happen: there was no band, and no one wanted to start marching without music. Once the Jewelers Union of Newark Two showed up with musicians, the rest of the marchers, eventually numbering between 10,000 and 20,000 men and women, fell in behind them to parade through lower Manhattan. At noon, when they reached the end of the route, the march broke up and the participants listened to speeches, drank beer, and had picnics. Other workers joined them.

Their goal was to emphasize the importance of workers in the industrializing economy and to warn politicians that they could not be ignored. Less than 20 years before, northern men had fought a war to defend a society based on free labor and had, they thought, put in place a government that would support the ability of all hardworking men to rise to prosperity.

By 1882, though, factories and the fortunes they created had swung the government toward men of capital, and workingmen worried they would lose their rights if they didn’t work together. A decade before, the Republican Party, which had formed to protect free labor, had thrown its weight behind Wall Street. By the 1880s, even the staunchly Republican Chicago Tribune complained about the links between business and government: “Behind every one of half of the portly and well-dressed members of the Senate can be seen the outlines of some corporation interested in getting or preventing legislation,” it wrote. The Senate, Harper’s Weekly noted, was “a club of rich men.”

The workers marching in New York City carried banners saying: “Labor Built This Republic and Labor Shall Rule it,” “Labor Creates All Wealth,” “No Land Monopoly,” “No Money Monopoly,” “Labor Pays All Taxes,” “The Laborer Must Receive and Enjoy the Full Fruit of His Labor,” ‘Eight Hours for a Legal Day’s Work,” and “The True Remedy is Organization and the Ballot.”

The New York Times denied that workers were any special class in the United States, saying that “[e]very one who works with his brain, who applies accumulated capital to industry, who directs or facilitates the operations of industry and the exchange of its products, is just as truly a laboring man as he who toils with his hands…and each contributes to the creation of wealth and the payment of taxes and is entitled to a share in the fruits of labor in proportion to the value of his service in the production of net results.”

In other words, the growing inequality in the country was a function of the greater value of bosses than their workers, and the government could not possibly adjust that equation. The New York Daily Tribune scolded the workers for holding a political—even a “demagogical” —event. “It is one thing to organize a large force of…workingmen…when they are led to believe that the demonstration is purely non-partisan; but quite another thing to lead them into a political organization….”

Two years later, workers helped to elect Democrat Grover Cleveland to the White House. A number of Republicans crossed over to support the reformer, afraid that, as he said, “The gulf between employers and the employed is constantly widening, and classes are rapidly forming, one comprising the very rich and powerful, while in another are found the toiling poor…. Corporations, which should be the carefully restrained creatures of the law and the servants of the people, are fast becoming the people’s masters.”

In 1888, Cleveland won the popular vote by about 100,000 votes, but his Republican opponent, Benjamin Harrison, won in the Electoral College. Harrison promised that his would be “A BUSINESS MAN’S ADMINISTRATION” and said that “before the close of the present Administration business men will be thoroughly well content with it….”

Businessmen mostly were, but the rest of the country wasn’t. In November 1892 a Democratic landslide put Cleveland back in office, along with the first Democratic Congress since before the Civil War. As soon as the results of the election became apparent, the Republicans declared that the economy would collapse. Harrison’s administration had been “beyond question the best business administration the country has ever seen,” one businessmen’s club insisted, so losing it could only be a calamity. “The Republicans will be passive spectators,” the Chicago Tribunenoted. “It will not be their funeral.” People would be thrown out of work, but “[p]erhaps the working classes of the country need such a lesson….”

As investors rushed to take their money out of the U.S. stock market, the economy collapsed a few days before Cleveland took office in early March 1893. Trying to stabilize the economy by enacting the proposals capitalists wanted, Cleveland and the Democratic Congress had to abandon many of the pro-worker policies they had promised, and the Supreme Court struck down the rest (including the income tax).

They could, however, support Labor Day and its indication of workers’ political power. On June 28, 1894, Cleveland signed Congress’s bill making Labor Day a legal holiday.

In Chicago the chair of the House Labor Committee, Lawrence McGann (D-IL), told the crowd gathered for the first official observance: “Let us each Labor day, hold a congress and formulate propositions for the amelioration of the people. Send them to your Representatives with your earnest, intelligent indorsement [sic], and the laws will be changed.”

Categories Education Reform, History, Unions

Mr. Charvet: Listen to the Kids!

By dianeravitch
September 2, 2023 //
43

One of our readers, Rick Charvet, reacted to Nancy Flanagan’s review of Alexandra Robbins’ new book THE TEACHERS. Robbins wrote about three teachers after spending a year in their classrooms. It is a deeply sympathetic description of their lives as teachers.

Rick Charvet commented:

I have lived the three tales and more. I worked nights. I worked Saturdays. When I speak “from the trenches” it sounds like I “make crap up.” I did everything to survive on a teacher’s salary (and our district was the lowest paid in the county) and there wasn’t a day that went by I said, “I gotta quit.” But then I saw the little kid who had no socks; the little kid who didn’t have his hair combed for picture day; the other young man who fell asleep on my backroom floor so exhausted and more kids who had nothing to eat so just like The Lorax, “Who will help them?” And, of course, no one sees this. These are the things that go on when no one is watching. I loathed staff meetings to hear the “whine sessions.” This helped no one. I always thought about the lady who kept wiping away spider webs and could not figure out how to stop them: you need to get rid of the spider! As a creative, I learned quickly that I needed to get to the root of the issues. So many students with so many problems. The school psychologist told me, “You really found your niche helping the most needy.” So any time there was a troubled child, “Send ’em to Charvet, he will help them.” As in Ms. Flannagan’s review, I stayed away from the staff lunch room — such negative vibes; I preferred making a safe space for my kids. It was taxing, but in the end, it was about helping them to a brighter place. Times were dark. Kids did not see much beyond 18. And as Flanagan pointed out, “…If I hear one more time how Mr. Charvet did this or that…I even posted in the staff bulletin, “If anyone needs to send their student to me, I am willing to accept them into my room for a time out. Sometimes students just need a change of scenery because “it’s not happening for them today.” Oh how I heard, “Charvet won’t punish them. It wasn’t that they got away with stuff, it was about making amends and moving forward. Each day could be refreshed. And when I mentioned, “We are the eyes and ears for our kids. We teach to the whole child.” Basically, “Shut up, Charvet.” Charvet this and that…but the kids knew who LISTENED. And you know what? Those kids are fine today. But what did I know? It got to a point that because of my efforts to get the best out of students I was disciplined; written up “Created a negative environment…needs remediation…assigned to a peer review mentor to learn how to instruct…cannot adhere to curriculum…cannot manage a five-point lesson plan.” The peer mentor finally looked at me, “What the hell is going on here; you don’t need me.” I said, “I just want admin to let me be.” The kids needed a support system; school for me was not punitive, but making sure kids understood the consequences of their actions good or bad. And, I was even told that students who were not on grade level could never earn more than a C even it they were maxing out their cognitive capabilities. Wow, what joy! “Hey kid no matter how hard you work, you will never, ever earn an A.” Yeah motivates me. I never said I was great, I just followed my heart. But, here’s something for you all. https://gilroylife.com/2020/01/31/brownell-students-draw-on-creativity-to-solve-problems-initiate-change/ AND https://gilroylife.com/2019/06/07/education-project-h-o-p-e-helps-motivate-and-inspire-struggling-students/ Don’t get me wrong, there was joy and we laughed a lot — I mean I constantly told them, “If you can’t laugh, laugh at me because guaranteed I will do something stupid. Hey, but that’s how life is, eh? We shared life and I learned tremendously from my students.

Do open the articles to which he links.

Categories Art, Creativity, Education Reform, Teachers and Teaching

My New Plan for Blogging, Starting Today

By dianeravitch
September 2, 2023 //
51

As longtime readers may recall, I started blogging in April 2012. At that time, I posted five times a day. Some days I posted even more frequently. Recently, I have reduced daily posts to three, with occasional increases for breaking news.

Starting today, I will post whatever I choose. Once, twice, three times. Or more. Or not at all.

Maybe nothing will change.

I don’t want to feel compelled to find something to fill a hole in the schedule.

As of this writing, the blog has had 40.8 million page views.

I have written more than 29,000 posts.

You have submitted nearly one million comments.

I will continue to read every comment.

Keep reading and commenting.

Categories Education Reform, Personal

Johann Neem: Begin the New School Year with Gratitude for Public Schools

By dianeravitch
August 28, 2023 //
4

Johann Neem is author of Democracy’s Schools: The Rise of Public Education in America. He teaches history at Western Washington University in Bellingham, Washington.

A Plea for the New School Year- Johann Neem

I am so excited for the new school year to begin. I admit that I am a bit sentimental when it comes to public schools. That’s because public schools are one of the few institutions that almost all of us have been through, which means that the experiences of schooling connect us within and between generations. There are the common schedules and rituals. There will be the first day of school. There will be school pictures. There will be holidays and dances. There will be field trips. And, of course, homework and tests. It’s part of the growing up experience in America. In a diverse society, it’s easy to focus on our differences. But public schools not only bring diverse people together, they give us something to share for a lifetime.

As we head back for another school year, then, I hope that we can put aside some of the loudest and most extreme voices of our partisan culture wars. Actually, most Americans want the same things. We want our kids to have a fair shot. We want our kids to be part of a shared national community. We want our kids to be challenged, and also supported. We want our kids to be safe.

That’s why public schools, I still believe, can bring us together.After all, the overwhelming majority of parents support their local public school. And for good reasons. There is strong evidence that public schools are effective for students at all income levels. Yet partisan rhetoric has eroded support for public schools. From the right, advocates of parental rights and privatization urge parents to find schools that reflect their familyvalues, rather than see the schools as places where we forge common values. But too many on the left, including many educators, also question whether we Americans can share the same histories, holidays, values, and rituals. In the name of cultural pluralism and diversity, they challenge the public schools’ longstanding mission of socialization.

We need to keep the faith. As an immigrant, I know that public schools can be our welcome mats. Our nation has had, and still has, its share of nativism and prejudice, but what other nation welcomes so many people from so many different backgrounds? In public schools, we all become Americans. We read the same books, eat the same cafeteria food, play the same games, studythe same subjects, and get to know each other.

So this is my plea for the new school year. We will always argue over what we should teach, and in a democracy we should. But let’s enter this year focusing on what we share and what binds us together, rather than what separates us. There is so much pulling us apart today. It’s a shame that our public schools have become one more thing to fight over because we need them. We benefit individually and collectively from an educated public.

As the new school year begins, I hope we can all take a deep breath and remember that despite all their flaws, despite all our disagreements, at some deeper level, we Americans all agree that the rituals of American schooling—the academics, the bell schedules, the band concerts, the football games, the fieldtrips, the prom decorations—define us. We maintain them because they maintain us.

Categories Citizenship, Community Schools, Education Reform, Ethics, Supporting public schools

Linda Darling-Hammond: The Promise of Community Schools

By dianeravitch
August 25, 2023 //
33

Linda Darling-Hammond is a prominent professor at Stanford and president of The Learning Policy Institute. She has been a public school teacher, a researcher, and president of the California State Board of Education. In this essay, she explains why the community school model may be the best path forward for school reform.

She writes:

“Kasserian ingera”—the traditional greeting of Masai warriors—asks: “And how are the children?” It is still a greeting among the Masai, acknowledging the high value they place on their children’s well-being. The traditional answer, “All the children are well,” means that the safety and welfare of the young are protected by their communities.

Unfortunately, in the United States, we know that all of our children are not well. Indeed, by any measure, children and youth in the United States are struggling. The aftermath of the pandemic has brought with it an epidemic of mental health issues, from anxiety and depression to suicidal ideation. A Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report from 2022 found that 44% of adolescents said they felt sad or hopeless most of the time during the spring of 2021, and 20% seriously considered suicide. During that time, 29% had an adult in their household lose a job and 24% went hungry; 55% said they were exposed to harsh verbal or physical treatment at home.

Many report continuing to feel disconnected from school. Among high school students from 95 districts surveyed by Youth Truth in 2021–22, a minority (40%) reported feeling like part of their school community or enjoying coming to school, and just 39% reported having an adult at school they could talk with when they feel “upset, stressed, or having problems.” (See figure below.) These proportions are even lower for students of color, LGBTQ+ students, and students in large schools.

It is in this context that a diverse and growing chorus of educators, students, families, and policymakers are calling for a reimagining of our schools. They are highlighting the need to center relationships, belonging, and community; to create structures and practices to support relevant and engaging learning; and to organize resources, supports, and opportunities in ways that mitigate the pernicious effects of structural racism and decades of disinvestment in low-income communities of color.

As Learning Policy Institute Senior Fellow in Residence Jeannie Oakes noted recently, “We need to have schools really change the way they operate to compensate for deficiencies, not in the kids, but in our social safety net.”

Responding to the uniquely challenging moment we’re in, many districts and states are making big bets on community schools—both to address the tattered social safety net Oakes refers to, as well as to provide a catalyst for the deeper cultural and practice changes needed to better serve students and adults alike.

These initiatives are underway in large urban districts like Albuquerque, Baltimore, Chicago, Los Angeles, New York City, and Oakland, as well as in smaller rural communities in California, Kentucky, New Mexico, New York, and Vermont. A number of states have also established funding and supports for community schools. Maryland established the Concentration of Poverty grant program to provide annual community school personnel grants to eligible schools, along with additional per-pupil grant funding for each eligible student. New York created a community schools set-aside in its school funding formula for high-need districts and funded three regional technical assistance centers for community schools. California, for its part, has leveraged multiyear budget surpluses in 2021 and 2022 to make a historic $4.1 billion investment in planning, implementation, and coordination grants—as well as technical assistance—for the state-funded California Community Schools Partnership Program. This investment is intended to provide sufficient resources for every high-poverty school in California to become a community school within the next 5 to 7 years.

Community schools are a place-based strategy deeply rooted in their local context—the needs, assets, hopes, and dreams of students, families, educators, and community partners. They leverage a complex web of partnerships and relationships, like those at Mendez High School in East Los Angeles, to support and engage students and families. By integrating access to services—from medical care to housing and other supports—and making them available to students and families on school campuses, community schools provide a much-needed alternative to the fragmented and bureaucratic social services gauntlet that families in need are typically required to navigate. As we have seen time and again during the COVID-19 pandemic, these services and supports—provided in the context of trusting and caring relationships—can be life changing and can mean the difference between academic success and struggling students and families.

At Mendez, because of the infrastructure created through its community schools approach, the school and its partners were able to provide vital services to students and families as soon as schools shut down in 2020. A mobile clinic that already served the school began COVID-19 testing for the community; mental health providers already in place conducted regular mental health check-ins with students via devices or at a safe physical distance. Other partners created care packages with food, toilet paper, electronic benefit transfer cards, and other essentials, and teachers organized to provide Wi-Fi hot spots to families before the district had the capacity to do so.

But to achieve the transformation our students need and the times demand, community schools must be about much more than providing an efficient structure for integrated student supports (or wraparound services, as they are sometimes called). Transformation requires that we also address the structural barriers to student well-being and academic success that are encompassed by the other foundational elements of community schools: a culture of belonging, safety, and care; community-connected classroom instruction; expanded and enriched learning opportunities; empowered student and family engagement; and collaborative leadership. Foundational to all of this is a grounding in whole childeducation.

When implemented well, community schools are guided by principles for equitable whole child practices that are grounded in the science of learning and development. This whole child framework is at the center of the community schools initiative in California, where the State Board of Education has thus far approved $1.5 billion in planning and implementation grants from a larger initiative that is intended to reach one third of the state’s schools in high-need communities.

The key elements of a whole child framework should be foundational to our vision of transformational community schools:

  • Structures and practices to foster positive developmental relationships and ensure that students are known and supported. Examples include looping in the elementary grades, where a teacher stays with the class for more than one year, and utilizing advisory systems in middle and high school, which create small family units that offer personal attention, space for sharing needs and feelings, and family connections that support each student.
  • Supportive and caring school communities where students feel a strong sense of belonging and are safe to bring their full selves, without fear of being bullied by peers or stereotyped or negatively judged by students or adults at school.
  • Culturally affirming social and emotional learning that is infused throughout the school day and includes skill-building, as well as educative and restorative approaches to classroom management and discipline, so that children and young people learn responsibility for themselves and their community.
  • Rich learning experiences that support inquiry, motivation, competence, self-efficacy, and self-directed learning.
  • Integrated student supports that remove academic and non-academic barriers to learning by providing health and social services as needed, tutoring and other academic supports, and a focus on children’s individual talents and needs.

Move at the “Speed of Trust”

Just as we need to rethink how students are engaged and supported in schools, we also need to reimagine adult interactions—among families and educators, as well as among school staff. That means treating families as trusted partners in their students’ well-being and academic success and intentionally supporting their capacity building and leadership development.

As importantly, it also means investing in educators and school staff, so they have the necessary tools, agency, and support—including support for their mental health and emotional well-being—to shift practices in ways that expand the capacities of students and adults alike. This includes enabling new teachers’ success with strong induction and mentoring, while providing leadership opportunities for more experienced teachers. It means providing the collaboration time essential to advancing meaningful and engaging instruction and supporting teacher-led professional development. And, just as with students and families, it means nurturing trust and collaborative leadership among staff and with school and district leaders.

Open the link to read the rest of this article and to see the graphs.

Categories Community Schools, Education Reform, Equity, Ethics, Parents, Students, Teachers

Houston: Here Were Mike Miles’ Goals for Dallas in 2012

By dianeravitch
August 25, 2023 //
11

While browsing through some old posts, I stumbled upon this one, which is a story that appeared in the Dallas Morning News in 2012, shortly after Mike Miles took charge of the Dallas public schools. It gives valuable insight into Mike Miles’ thinking. Miles was appointed to lead the Houston Independent School District by State Commissioner Mike Morath after the state of Texas took control of Houston, fired its elected board and their superintendent. Miles is a military man who learned about education at the Broad Academy. Military men give orders; so do Broadies.

Please note that nothing in Miles’ goals addresses early childhood education, class size, medical clinics, or nutrition. Miles believes in metrics, the coin of the conservative, neoliberal realm.

Matthew Haag and Tawnell D. Hobbs wrote this story for the Dallas Morning News. It appeared May 10, 2102.

Dallas ISD Superintendent Mike Miles outlines ambitious plan to help make district one of the nation’s best

Mike Miles not only wants to boost graduation rates but also wants to see more high school graduates go straight into the workforce. To achieve that, he wants to create a “career-ready” certificate that would give eligible students priority for entry-level jobs at area businesses.

 

Dallas ISD Superintendent Mike Miles on Thursday unveiled a slew of ambitious goals, proposals and recommendations designed to turn around the school district and make it one of the nation’s best.

In his first presentation to trustees as the district’s new leader, Miles spent nearly two hours laying out his vision for the district in a presentation that both excited and overwhelmed the board members.

Under the plan, teachers would be under more scrutiny. Principals would have one year to prove their worth. And the business community would be asked to step up.

If the road map is followed, Miles said, Dallas ISD is bound to become a premier school district.

“We are going to raise expectations for our staff,” said Miles, who earned a reputation for disrupting the status quo in the school district he will soon leave in Colorado Springs, Colo. “If you cannot tell that from the presentation, you have to know it from what you heard about me.”

He said DISD will begin rolling out some changes next school year, while other changes will span several years. The most immediate change, he said, will be a philosophical one. The district must embrace a vision and mission of raising academic achievement, improving instruction and not accepting excuses.

“We cannot just post it and market it and put it in little brochures. We have to practice this,” said Miles, adding that he wants 80 percent of DISD employees to be “proficient” on those beliefs in a year.

Many of the changes Miles laid out Thursday mirror those he implemented while in Harrison School District 2 in Colorado Springs.

A seemingly small change he suggested — one he said stirred outrage among teachers in Harrison — is to keep classroom doors open all day.

With the doors open, principals and administrators can move freely into classrooms to observe teachers. Under Miles’ plan, every Dallas teacher would be observed up to 10 times a year. In three years, those observations will contribute to teachers’ grades and factor into their salaries, as part of a pay-for-performance evaluation system.

Rena Honea, president of the teachers group Alliance-AFT, said “people are going to be in shock” with Miles’ proposals. “I envision it will be very different from what DISD has seen and experienced,” she said.

Miles has said change will be hard, but it’s necessary.

“If you cannot raise student achievement or have high quality of instruction, you cannot be a teacher in Dallas,” he said Thursday.

90% grad rate by 2020.

If the changes are successful, Miles said, the district will see skyrocketing graduation rates and achieve goals former superintendents promised but failed to reach.

Only three-quarters of DISD students currently graduate in four years of high school — a number Miles wants to see hit 90 percent by 2020. He also wants student SAT scores to jump nearly 30 percent over that time.

“Even if the district was in the best position possible, we would have to change things,” Miles said. “There is growing belief that children need more education after high school. High school is not the end point anymore.”

Throughout Miles’ presentation, trustees said little as they absorbed details of the 29-page plan and asked only a handful of questions. At one point, trustee Nancy Bingham, who appeared in favor of the goals, said Miles had caused her heartburn. Other trustees wondered how he would pay for everything.

Miles told trustees that he will spend the next few weeks finding money to cover new programs and initiatives. He said he would have to cut elsewhere to make room for his plans.

Miles’ plan would allow principals more control over their campuses, but they would also be required to meet higher expectations, such as improving communication with parents and the community. If the principals fail, others will be waiting for their jobs.

Starting next school year, Miles wants to create a leadership academy for 50 or 60 educators who want to become principals. They would spend the entire year in training and will vie for open positions.

The idea brought nods and smiles from some board members, but trustee Carla Ranger questioned the program. She hinted that the people who go through the yearlong training lab would have an unfair advantage to land the jobs over existing principals.

“If the notion is that there is an unfair advantage, welcome to principalship,” Miles told her. “You have to compete. That’s the way the world works.”

Miles said he will be open to tweaking his action plan, called “Destination 2020,” but remained unapologetic about his ambitious goals and plans.

Previous downfalls

Lofty expectations for DISD have been mentioned before.

Former DISD Superintendent Michael Hinojosa rolled out an ambitious reform plan when he arrived in 2005. A major component was to reach a 90 percent passing rate on state exams by 2010 for all student groups.

The ultimate goal, Hinojosa said, was for Dallas to be the top urban district in the nation within five years, culminating by winning the coveted Broad Prize for Urban Education. While test scores improved under Hinojosa’s watch, DISD did not come close to winning the Broad Prize.

Hinojosa also set goals for the district’s graduation rate. Before his arrival, the graduation rate was 81 percent in 2003-04. He had set a 93 percent graduation rate goal for 2009-10. But the goal wasn’t met. The Class of 2010 had a graduation rate of about 75 percent.

Miles not only wants to boost graduation rates but also wants to see more high school graduates go straight into the workforce. To achieve that, he wants to create a “career-ready” certificate that would give eligible students priority for entry-level jobs at area businesses.

Starting next school year, Miles wants 1,000 entry-level jobs for students with the certificates. And he wants the certificate program to grow in the coming years — with 3,000 jobs by 2015.

Miles said he will go to the business community, ask for their support and urge them to focus their efforts on helping DISD students. He said he also wants the business community to help define what it means to be career-ready.

“Let’s let them put their money where their mouth is,” he said.

At a glance: The superintendent’s plan

In his first presentation to the Dallas ISD trustees, new Superintendent Mike Miles unveiled “Destination 2020,” a plan that sets goals for the district. Here are parts of that plan.

STUDENT ACHIEVEMENT GOALS FOR 2020

Graduation: 90 percent of students will graduate on time. [The Class of 2010 had a graduation rate of about 75 percent, which is the percentage of ninth-graders who graduated in four years, according to Texas Education Agency records.]

Test scores: 60 percent of students will receive a 21 or higher composite score on the ACT out of a possible score of 36, or 1110 on the reading and math portions of the SAT out of a possible score of 1600. [For the Class of 2010, the average ACT score was 17.1; the average SAT score was 860, according to Texas Education Agency records.]

Workplace ready: 80 percent of student will be proficient on the “Year 2020 workplace readiness assessments.” According to the plan, “These assessments will be designed by the business and nonprofit communities and will include critical thinking, communications, teamwork, information literacy, technology skills, and worth ethic.”

College and careers: 90 percent of students will enter college, the military or a “career-ready job” right out of high school. A career-ready certificate will be created for students who meet certain goals. Businesses will be asked to commit to providing entry jobs for those students.

AREAS OF FOCUS

Some areas of focus for the next three years:

Effective teachers: “While teachers in DISD are working hard and are committed to children, a quick review of instruction and discussions with instructional leaders in Dallas reveals that the quality of instruction is inconsistent and that good instruction is not pervasive in many schools.”

Effective principals: “While we will provide the best support and professional development any principal in the state could hope to receive, they will have only one year to demonstrate that they have the capacity and what it takes to lead change and to improve the quality of instruction.”

Professional and high-functioning central office: “The entire central office system will be designed to support schools as teachers and principals try to accomplish three main goals: 1) Improve the quality of instruction; 2) Raise student achievement; 3) Create a positive school culture and climate.”

Engaging parents and the community: “We will be much more purposeful in helping community supporters work in reinforcing ways. … We cannot have 100 different partners spraying reform initiative on our schools. That would diffuse the efforts and take us off our direction. Thus, we will help channel the support and ensure the major educational initiatives work in reinforcing ways.”

KEY TARGETS FOR AUGUST 2015

At least 75 percent of the staff and 70 percent of community members agree or strongly agree with the direction of the district.

At least 80 percent of all classroom teachers and 100 percent of principals are placed on a pay-for-performance evaluation system.

At least 60 percent of teachers on the pay-for-performance evaluation system and 75 percent of principals agree that the system is “fair, accurate and rigorous.”

Create a rubric to assess the professional behavior and effectiveness of each major central office department.

For 90 percent of new hires, the maximum length of the hiring process will be less than five weeks.

The community provides 3,000 jobs for graduates who have “career-ready” certificates.

 

SOURCES: Destination 2020; Texas Education Agency

Miles started in Dallas with a five-year contract. He resigned after three years.

Categories Administrators, superintendents, Broad Foundation, Dallas, Disruption, Education Industry, Education Reform, History, Houston

Florida: Restaurant Owner Fined $500,000 for Hiring Undocumented Workers

By dianeravitch
August 24, 2023 //
30

The Miami Herald reported that restaurants, hotels, construction, and other industries are experiencing a severe labor shortage due to Governor DeSantis’ crackdown on undocumented immigrants. Not only has he feuded with the state’s biggest employer, Disney, but he’s undermined the state’s tourist industry.

Richard Gonzmart, the fourth-generation owner of the iconic Columbia Restaurant chain based in Tampa, says it’s time for politicians to start listening on immigration. When federal immigration authorities arrived at his Sand Key restaurant in Clearwater to find outdated and noncompliant work documents for 19 of his employees, he was forced to fire them all — including seven people who had worked with his family for decades.

“With 2,000 employees, it becomes very difficult to monitor it,’’ Gonzmart said in an interview. “We think they’re legal but, when we had to check, we found seven people who have been with me 30 years — paying taxes, had children, grandchildren — and we were required to terminate them.” Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials in Tampa would not comment on the case, and Gonzmart said he was still negotiating a resolution to the conflict. But the incident underscores the double scrutiny many businesses face as a new state law layers new immigration enforcement policies to existing federal rules in a way that is exacerbating worker shortages.

It’s a scenario that’s playing out across Florida with restaurants, construction companies and farms searching for workers as the political rhetoric over immigration is clanging up against a tight labor market and expanding population. Gonzmart is the great-grandson of Casimiro Hernandez Sr., the founder of the historic Ybor City restaurant that is the chain’s anchor. Since its opening in 1905, the company has treated employees as part of the restaurant family, paying them above market wages and benefits, he said….

It’s a scenario that’s playing out across Florida with restaurants, construction companies and farms searching for workers as the political rhetoric over immigration is clanging up against a tight labor market and expanding population. Gonzmart is the great-grandson of Casimiro Hernandez Sr., the founder of the historic Ybor City restaurant that is the chain’s anchor. Since its opening in 1905, the company has treated employees as part of the restaurant family, paying them above market wages and benefits, he said….

It’s a scenario that’s playing out across Florida with restaurants, construction companies and farms searching for workers as the political rhetoric over immigration is clanging up against a tight labor market and expanding population. Gonzmart is the great-grandson of Casimiro Hernandez Sr., the founder of the historic Ybor City restaurant that is the chain’s anchor. Since its opening in 1905, the company has treated employees as part of the restaurant family, paying them above market wages and benefits, he said….

Many of his employees, especially those working in the kitchens and “back of the house” are fathers, sons and brothers, Gonzmart said. So when immigration officials told him the I-9 forms of his most loyal employees were not in compliance and he would have to fire them, he resisted. “I told them I wouldn’t let them go and they threatened to arrest me,’’ he recalled. “I said, ‘That’s a good idea. Why don’t you all come and arrest me? But let me know when, so I can have cameras here!’ Then, they sent me a $500,000 fine, and I let them go…”

Meanwhile, Gonzmart said the incident “almost put us out of business,’’ and while customer demand has rebounded from the pandemic, the inability to find enough new staff has forced him to suspend his catering services and reduce restaurant hours.

Carol Dover, president and CEO of the more than 10,000-member Florida Restaurant & Lodging Association, said that Gonzmart is not alone. Hotels are not opening all rooms because they don’t have enough housekeepers, restaurants that used to be open for breakfast, lunch and dinner are now open for just lunch and dinner, and existing staff puts in extra hours, she said. “Everybody’s having to get creative with their thinking.”

Read more at: https://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/immigration/article278161652.html#storylink=cpy

Categories Education Reform

Missouri Allows 19 Districts to Opt Out of State Tests

By dianeravitch
August 21, 2023 //
22

The Missouri State Board of Education has granted permission to 19 school districts and one charter school to use alternative assessments and opt out of the annual state tests. The districts recognize that the results of the annual tests arrive too late and provide too little individual student information to be useful. This suggests “test fatigue.”

The Missouri State Board of Education unanimously approved an exemption for 19 districts and one charter school to measure student achievement using alternative assessments instead of the state’s prescribed methods.

Students in these districts will begin to see changes this fall as districts in the Success Ready Students Network implement their plan.

“Progress monitoring during the school year is already taking place within these school districts, though it may not be monitored by the state at this time,” Jeremy Tucker, superintendent of the Liberty 53 School District and Success Ready Students Network facilitator, told the board Tuesday. “We can really add more touch points from the start of the year all the way to the end of the year.”

The state board’s approval, called an innovation waiver, will allow the districts to break from components of the state’s evaluation system for three years.

“(Missouri Assessment Program results) don’t inform what we do on a regular basis,” Branson Public Schools Superintendent Brad Swofford told the board, mentioning the delay in receiving the test’s results.

Teachers prefer to look at assessments that show students progress over the school year, allowing them to adapt to the data and instill confidence in learning students, he said. Branson currently gives students NWEA assessments, tests that adapt questions to students’ achievement level and outputs a number to describe their level of knowledge.

Lee’s Summit R-VII School District, another of the districts in the network, will use this assessment to track students’ progress over the school year, Associate Superintendent of Academic Services Christy Barger told The Independent.

State Board of Education member Mary Schrag said she has heard that in states that already have similar programs, students feel “much more vested” in their educational progress.

Students in participating districts will likely complete the MAP test to comply with federal requirements, unless districts receive a federal waiver, but their schools will not be scored at the state level based on those results.

Categories Accountability, Education Reform, Missouri, Standardized Testing
« Older Entries
Newer Entries »