Archives for category: Education Reform
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Tennessee: “Backpack Full of Cash” Was Hit in Knoxville

By dianeravitch
December 8, 2017 //
6

Professor Mark Harmon writes here about the showing of “Backpack Full of Cash” in Knoxville, where the audience learned about the devastating impact of charters draining resources from public schools, as well as charter school scandals.

Someday, when people look back on this era of malignant privatization, “Backpack Full of Cash” will be recognized for its role in informing the public about the assault by rightwingers on public education.

Go to the film’s website and learn how you can arrange a showing in your community.

It is a shame that PBS refuses to show this excellent documentary. If only a few billionaires stepped up and offered to buy time for it. Or even one billionaire.

Categories Charter Schools, Education Industry, Education Reform, Privatization

Mercedes Schneider: Study Says State Takeover of Low-Performing Schools in Tennessee Failed

By dianeravitch
December 8, 2017 //
18

Mercedes Schneider reports on a study funded by the Race to the Top program of the U.S. Department of Education and the Walton Family Foundation which concludes that state takeovers of low-performing schools in Tennessee made no difference. The schools remained low performing. That is, the takeovers failed. The schools taken over did not vault from the bottom of state rankings to the top. The so-called Achievement School District failed. The study can be found here.

This finding is no surprise to readers of this blog, as Gary Rubinstein has followed the progress–or lack thereof–of the ASD since its inception and has regularly reported that the low performing schools were not making any gains. Rubinstein said after six years of watching that the ASD was “a colossal failure.”

This is the abstract of the study by Ron Zimmer, Gary T. Henry, and Adam Kho:

In recent years, the federal government has invested billions of dollars to reform chronically low-performing schools. To fulfill their federal Race to the Top grant agreement, Tennessee implemented three turnaround strategies that adhered to the federal restart and transformation models: (a) placed schools under the auspices of the Achievement School District (ASD), which directly managed them; (b) placed schools under the ASD, which arranged for management by a charter management organization; and (c) placed schools under the management of a district Innovation Zone (iZone) with additional resources and autonomy. We examine the effects of each strategy and find that iZone schools, which were separately managed by three districts, substantially improved student achievement. In schools under the auspices of the ASD, student achievement did not improve or worsen. This suggests that it is possible to improve schools without removing them from the governance of a school district.

Schneider’s post includes additional quotations from the study.

And she finds it amusing, as do I, that the study was funded by the Walton Family Foundation, which is spending $200 million a year on new charters, every year. Add that to the $263 million that Betsy DeVos handed out from the U.S. Department of Education and that is a half billion a year to open new charters, from only two of the many sources committed to privatization.

After 25 years of the charter “experiment,” there is a growing body of evidence that they do not have a “secret sauce,” other than selection and attrition. That is not a replicable model for American education.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Reform, Privatization

Leonie Haimson Visits a Summit Charter School, Funded by the Chan-Zuckerberg Initiative

By dianeravitch
December 7, 2017 //
11

A few days ago, I posted an article by Kristina Rizga about Summit charter schools and their online lessons. On the whole, it seemed to me, the article was admiring.

Leonie Haimson has a different view of Summit.

Haimson has played a leading role in the movement to stop data mining of students and to protect student privacy. After writing a column in The Answer Sheet Blog expressing her concerns about the Summit charter schools and their online platform, Haimson was contacted by the founder of Summit and invited to visit one of their schools.

Haimson writes here about her experience when she visited the flagship Summit Charter School in Redwood City, California.

“Summit charter schools and their online platform, now used in over 300 schools across the country, both public and charter, have received millions of dollars from Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg; Zuckerberg has pledged to support the continued expansion of the online platform through his LLC, the Chan-Zuckerberg Initiative.

“Shortly after my Washington Post piece appeared, I was contacted by Diane Tavenner, the CEO of Summit charter schools, who asked if we could meet when she was visiting NYC. I agreed. We had lunch on Sept. 15, and I handed her a list of questions, mostly about Summit’s privacy policy, most of which my associate, Rachael Stickland, had already sent to Summit staff that she had met at SXSW Edu the previous March, and to which she’d never received a response….

“During the lunch, I mentioned that I was going to be in Oakland the weekend of Oct. 14- 15 for the Network for Public Education conference, and that I would be interested in visiting some schools after that are using the Summit platform. I said I was especially eager to visit public schools, since I’d heard from many public school parents in five states who told me their children had negative experiences with the program. These parents were upset that Summit had withdrawn the right of parents to consent to the system shortly after CZI took over, and they were concerned about how their children’s personal data was being shared with Summit and then redisclosed with unspecified other third “partners” for unclear purposes.

“Diane later emailed me and said that I could visit Summit Prep charter school on Oct. 16, in Redwood City, their flagship school. An Uber would come and pick me up at my Oakland hotel, she said, and the drive would take about an hour each way…

“At Summit Prep, I was met by two school leaders, and we talked in an empty office for about a half hour, where they explained to me about the platform and how it was designed. Then we briefly toured two classrooms. In the first classroom, there were about thirty students engaged in “Personalized Learning Time”, gazing at computer screens and working on their individual “playlists.” These playlists include content in different “focus areas” delivered via various mediums, including online texts and videos. When students have learned these materials, they’re supposed to take multiple choice online tests to show they’ve “mastered” the area. In addition, in each of their courses, there are projects they are supposed to complete…

“I visited another classroom where 12th graders were engaged in peer-reviewing essays they had written at the beginning of the class, grading them according to the Summit’s complex rubric of cognitive skills. When I asked why the essays were written on paper rather than on computers, the school leaders told me that this was because they were practicing for the California state exam in which students are asked to write essays on paper.

“I noted that I had seen no classroom or small group discussions. The Summit leaders said that was because none were occurring during my brief visit. It is true that the amount of time I spent in classrooms wasn’t sufficient to make an informed judgment either way, but what I saw did not encourage me.

“When we returned to the office, I questioned why delivering content primarily online was an effective method of teaching. Shouldn’t learning happen in a more interactive fashion, with the material presented in person and then discussed, debated, and explored? Why did they have this comparatively flat, one-dimensional attitude towards content? And how could math be taught this way, given that math requires helping students learn how to solve problems in a more interactive fashion?

“They told me math is taught differently, and indeed had to be taught through teacher-student interaction, but that this isn’t true of any of the other subjects, whether it be English, social sciences or physical sciences.”

Leonie reviewed the many complaints that she has heard from parents at Summit charter schools, especially regarding privacy of student data and long hours in front of a computer.

She writes,

“Yet the juggernaut that is Summit will be difficult to stop. The Silicon Valley Community Foundation gave $20 million to Summit in 2016. The Gates Foundation awarded Summit $10 million in June 2017, “to support implementation of the Summit Learning program in targeted geographies.” In September, the day before I met with Diane Tavenner, Summit was one of the ten winners of the XQ Super High School prize, receiving another $10 million from Laurene Powell Jobs’ LLC, the Emerson Collective, to create a new high school in Oakland.”

Besides, Betsy DeVos loves Summit.

Categories Chan-Zuckerberg Initiative, Charter Schools, Education Reform, Privacy and Privacy Rights, Students, Technology

Michael Hynes: Time to Slay the College Board Dragon

By dianeravitch
December 7, 2017 //
15

Michael Hynes is Superintendent of the Patchogue-Medford School District on Long Island in New York State.

He writes about his contempt for the College Board.

He writes:

“Reader beware. Before you read my thoughts about the educational sacred cow and standardized testing machine known as the College Board, you should know up front that I am no fan of the College Board CEO/President David Coleman who years ago was the architect of Common Core.

“Most of us in the educational world know of the Common Core State Standards and the “test focused education reform movement” that accompanied it was a fiasco that still plagues American schools today.

“Mr. Coleman was on the English Language Arts writing team and his good friend and eventual partner at Student Achievement Partners (SAP) Jason Zimba was a leader on the Common Core Mathematics team. Student Achievement Partners is a non-profit organization that researches and develops achievement based assessment standards.

“Interesting enough, it was funded in part by Bill Gates. The final nail in the coffin for me was when I realized Mr. Coleman, his former assistant and Mr. Zimba were founding board members for Michelle Rhee’s StudentsFirst, an organization that lobbies for standards driven educational reform.

“Do you see a pattern?

“Now Mr. Coleman leads the College Board money-making machine and this educational monolith is the church that most public schools worship several times a year.

“For the reader who doesn’t know what The College Board is: it is the ultimate gatekeeper and judge-jury-executioner for millions of students each year who dream to enter college and it literally is a hardship for many families due to the test taking expense.

“Schools and families have no other choice because there is no other game in town, aside from a student taking the ACT exam.

“The College Board claims to be a non-profit organization, but it’s hard to take that claim seriously when its exam fees for the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT), Advanced Placement test (AP), services for late registration, score verification services and a multitude of other related fees are costing families and schools millions of dollars each year.

“Eleven years ago this “non-profit” made a profit of $55 million and paid nineteen College Board Executives’ salaries that ranged from three hundred thousand dollars to over one million dollars a year.

“That trend continues today.

“Cost aside, it is hard to fathom and understand how the College Board has claimed a monopoly-like status over our public school system.

“Over the years it has literally convinced school administrators, school board trustees, teachers, parents and students they can’t live without what they sell. They sell classes and tests to schools like Big Pharma sells pills to consumers.”

Read on.

Categories Coleman, David, Common Core, Education Reform, High School Graduation, Standardized Testing

After 17 Years of “Reform,” International Test Scores Stagnant

By dianeravitch
December 6, 2017 //
50

In 2000, when George W. Bush ran for President, we heard about “the Texas Miracle.” We were told that testing every child every year would produce high test scores and close the achievement gaps. Believing in the claim, Congress passed No Child Left Behind, which required testing every child every year from grades 3-8.

Then came “Race to the Top,” which ratcheted up the testing punishments, requiring that teachers be evaluated by student test scores.

In 2011, the National Research Council warned that test-based accountability was not working and was unlikely ever to work.

Congress ignored its report. In 2015, Congress passed the Every Student Succeeds Act, continuing the practice of annual testing, a practice not known in other nations.

What has 17 years of high-stakes testing produced? Narrowing of the curriculum to what is tested. Cheating scandals. Gaming the system. Teacher demoralization. Teacher shortages.

Billions spent on testing instead of teaching.

But nowhere closer to the “top.” Even the NAEP scores went flat in 2015, the first reversal in many years.

The latest international test results show no gains in reading. None.

This failure belongs to Reformers.

https://www.usnews.com/news/best-countries/articles/2017-12-05/other-countries-surpass-us-students-in-international-reading-comprehension-test

Categories Education Reform, International, NCLB (No Child Left Behind), Privatization, Race to the Top

SomeDAM Poet: Betsy as “Annabel Lee”

By dianeravitch
December 5, 2017 //
14

“Lizabeth Dee” (With a lot of help from Edgar Allan Poe– “Annabel Lee”. And yes, her middle name really is “Dee”.)

It was many and many a year ago,
In a Kingdom by the sea [Michigan, by Lake Michigan]
That a Sec Ed there lived whom you may know
By the name of Elizabeth Dee
And this billionaire lived with no other thought
Than to loathe and be loathed by me

I was a teacher and she was a plant
In this Kingdom by the sea,
And we loathed with a loathe that was more than loathe—
I and Elizabeth Dee
With a loathe that the wicked devils in Hell
Coveted her and me.

And this was the reason that, long ago
In a Kingdom by the sea,
A wind blew out of a cloud, thrilling
The voucherful Lizabeth Dee
So that her highborn kinsmen came
And bore her away from me,
To put her up in a big White House
In the Kingdumb by D.C.

The devils, not half so happy in Hell
Went envying her and me—
Yes!—that was the reason (as all men know,
In this Kingdom by the sea)
That the wind came out of the cloud by night,
Thrilling, fulfilling Elizabeth Dee

But our loathe it was stronger by far than the loathe
Of those who were older than we—
Of many far wiser than we—
And neither the devils in Hell below
Nor the demons down under the sea
Can ever dissever my sole from the soul
Of the voucherful Lizabeth Dee

For the moon never beams, without bringing me dreams
Of the charterful Lizabeth Dee
And the stars never rise, but I hear “privatize”
From the dollarful Lizabeth Dee;
So, to all I confide, I will not let her ride
On my classroom— my schoolhouse — my life and my pride
In her wealth-bubble there by the sea—
In her Kingdumb there by DC

Categories Betsy DeVos, Education Reform, Humor

The GOP Tax Bill Will Smash Homeowners in Blue States

By dianeravitch
December 4, 2017 //
27

The Republicans passed a tax bill on both houses intended to hurt homeowners and public services in blue states. Home prices will tumble. And that’s not all.

“The tax bill approved by the Senate is many things, offering a huge tax cut for corporations, lower rates for the wealthy, and a big victory for Republicans and the White House.

“It is also an economic dagger aimed at high-tax, high-cost and generally Democratic-leaning areas — most notably New York City and its neighbors.

“The bill, if enacted into law, could send home prices tumbling 10 percent or more in parts of the New York area, according to one economic analysis. It could increase the regional tax burden, complicating companies’ efforts to attract skilled workers. It could make it harder for state and local governments to pay for upgrades to the transit system and other infrastructure. And it could force cuts in federal programs that help immigrants, the elderly and other low-income residents afford the region’s high cost of living.

“Most significantly, the bill would eliminate the deduction for state and local income taxes, and would cap the deduction for property taxes at $10,000.”

Categories Education Reform

Nonprofit Quarterly: What Happens When You Bust Public Sector Unions? Nothing Good.

By dianeravitch
December 4, 2017 //
21

Rob Meiksins writes in Nonprofit Quarterly about what happened to Wisconsin after Governor Scott Walker and the Legislature crushed public sector unions.

I previously posted the underlying study here about how teachers’ salaries and benefits declined.

Meiksins adds:

“An article by Mother Jones covering the same study cites a conversation with a professor at the University of Wisconsin teaching certification program, ranked by US News and World Report as one of the best in the country. This professor said that prior to Act 10, they would receive 300-400 applicants for their 125 openings, annually. Now they get one applicant per opening.”

Categories Education Reform

Emily Talmage: Misery Money

By dianeravitch
December 4, 2017 //
12

Emily Talmage describes her years as a beginning teacher: only 22, having no background in education, she was assigned to teach severely disabled students.

Now she sees a movement to put these kinds of children in front of computers and let them practice their skills online, with digital, game-based avatars. The bottom line, as it so often is, is profits…

“There really are people out there – powerful, absurdly wealthy people – who think that the best way to help hurting kids like A.J. is to isolate them on a computer, ask them to choose “thought options” from a drop-down menu, and then to collect data on their “growth.”

“Ultimately, the goal is to monetize the “evidence” they’ve gathered….

“A.J., and millions of kids like him, don’t need digital avatars. They don’t need drop-down thought-menus to choose from while they are plugged in, alone, to an electronic device. And they don’t need data-wells built on their backs that are designed to make the rich even richer.

“What they need is grown-ups – like us – to demand that the exploitation stops.”

Categories Education Reform

Yesterday in San Diego….

By dianeravitch
December 2, 2017 //
52

I spoke to the California School Boards Association yesterday, at its annual meeting in San Diego. I love San Diego. It is on the ocean and always beautiful, with a temperate climate. I had dinner the night before I spoke, with Cindy Marten, the superintendent of the San Diego district. As in the past, we had dinner at Miguel’s in Old Town. The one thing I have never been able to find in NYC is good Mexican food. When I first moved to NYC in 1960, after marrying a Native New Yorker, a friend told me that Texans in the city were always looking for Mexican food and always disappointed. In San Diego, I am never disappointed.

I spoke to a very large and friendly audience at the Convention Center. A few thousand people. I didn’t see any empty seats. When the video is released, I will post it. I was preceded by Marshall Tuck, who is running for State Superintendent and sure to have the support of the charter industry. We spoke in the Green Room, and he assured me that he would lead the fight to ban for-profit charters. The charter industry in the state is unregulated and unaccountable.

In my speech, I went through the history of NCLB and Race to the Top, and the damage they have done to students, teachers, and public schools. I then dissected the negative impacts of standardized testing and its utter uselessness as currently implemented. I pointed out that the achievement gap can never be closed with standardized tests because they are designed on a bell curve, and the bell curve never closes.

I then ticked off the many charter scandals in the state, the inevitable result of a total absence of supervision. I listed scam after scam. I reiterated the conclusions and recommendations of the NAACP report on charters.

My theme was the relationship between public schools, citizenship, and democracy.

When I concluded, I received a standing ovation.

Later, I was sitting in the lobby, waiting to meet a friend from Los Angeles and chatting with people who had heard me speak. One woman stepped up and said, “I walked out on your speech. It was too political. There’s no room for politics her.” She turned on her heel and left. I happened to be sitting with another member of the same school board, and I asked him, “What did she find ‘too political?’”

He said, “She’s a Trump supporter. You mentioned Trump in your opening remarks.”

That was true. I started by mentioning that Trump wants to cut federal funds for education by 13%, and he wants to shift $20 Billion to charters and vouchers.” These are factual statements. But the board member objected and walked out.

I can accept that people disagree. What I find hard to understand is an unwillingness to face plain and incontrovertible facts.

Anyway, I’m writing this on the airplane home. The CSBA was incredibly gracious. I met hundreds of people who are passionate about public schools. I’m looking to them to carry on the fight for better schools in their communities and at the ballot box.

Categories Accountability, California, Charter Schools, Citizenship, Democracy, Education Industry, Education Reform, Privatization, Testing
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