I kept going back to this tweet because it is surreal.
It is a teacher job fair at the University of Michigan.
The tables are around the room, staffed and ready to hand out fliers to prospective teachers.
But the hall is empty.
There are no prospective teachers.
Thanks, No Child Left Behind.
Thanks, Race to the Top.
Thanks, inventors and promoters of VAM.
Thanks, teacher-bashers.
Who will teach?
Oh, right. Computers.
Politico has a exclusive report on the scrambling inside the US Department of Education to limit the damage after Secretary DeVos hailed the nation’s Historically Black Colleges and Universities as models of choice.
http://www.politico.com/tipsheets/morning-education/2017/04/state-colleges-facing-budget-bind-219778
Her ignorant remark led to an explosion of negative reaction. Apparently she had no idea that HBCUs were created because black students were not allowed to attend most colleges and universities. She didn’t know, like Sean Spicer didn’t know about the chemical gas used by Hitler.
Someone quickly drafted a new comment.
“EXCLUSIVE: DAMAGE CONTROL AFTER DEVOS’ HBCU STATEMENT: The day after Education Secretary Betsy DeVos issued a statement tying the origin of historically black colleges and universities to school choice, career officials at the Education Department alerted the new communications crew that it was playing very poorly in the media. One career employee noted it was trending on Twitter and said, “folks are now calling requesting that we amend the statement or issue a correction acknowledging the true origin of HBCUs,” according to emails from the agency’s Office of Communications and Outreach obtained by POLITICO through a Freedom of Information Act request.
“- DeVos clarified the remark at an HBCU Congressional Luncheon. DeVos’ first statement, issued on Feb. 27 at night, equated the history of HBCUs – founded during an era of racial segregation – to charter schools and publicly funded private school options. “HBCUs are real pioneers when it comes to school choice,” she said. But on Feb. 28, as criticism exploded , DeVos stressed at the luncheon that the schools were “born, not out of mere choice, but out of necessity, in the face of racism.” Career employees continued to flag negative media coverage of DeVos’ original statement, with political communications hire Gillum Ferguson instructing them to refer callers to DeVos’ later remarks that HBCUs were born “in the face of racism,” according to the emails.
“- Karen Stratman, a career official and director of national engagement, flagged a Slate article to Ferguson and political communications hire Matthew Frendewey with the headline, “Insane Betsy DeVos Press Release Celebrates Jim Crow Education System as Pioneer of ‘School Choice,'” according to one email. Stratman wrote: “More on this–remember we’re just the messenger–just FYI on how closely words are being watched (not that you needed a reminder…).” She also asked staff to gather links to negative coverage, sending them to Ferguson and Frendewey. In response, Ferguson instructed Stratman that as she sends out DeVos’ luncheon remarks, she should specifically highlight the paragraph acknowledging that HBCUs were born “in the face of racism.” Jim Mould, a career official and director of media and customer relations, also suggested that Stratman highlight that paragraph. An Education Department spokesman didn’t respond to request for comment.”
I don’t know about you, but “in the face of racism” still sounds lame to me. I bet she never heard of Jim Crow or Plessy or Bull Connor.
Jeff Bryant writes that Congress is in recess until April 23 and this is the time to reach out and speak to your member of Congress and your members of the state legislature about protecting public education against the DeVos privatization agenda.
Join with your friends and neighbors.
Join the Network for Public Education. Use its toolkit to inform yourself about the issues.
Jeff writes:
Why should you care?
Whether you have school-age children or not, you have a lot at stake in the struggle to ensure public schools continue to benefit the public.
Public education is America’s most collaborative endeavor by far. We all pay taxes to support public schools. Schools are community anchors like main streets, town halls, public parks, churches, and community centers. And we depend on public schools to prepare our future workers, entrepreneurs, and citizens. Public schools are the foundation of our democracy where students learn to respect and appreciate others who are different from them and schools model civic values to students and the community.
But public schools are imperiled, which means our democracy, and our future, is too.
If you doubt that at all, just review prominent news stories from the past few days. They present ample evidence of the widespread effort to turn public education into opportunities for private gain.
The Trump-DeVos regime has nothing positive for public schools. They want to turn your tax dollars over to entrepreneurs and corporate chain schools and religious schools. This is not about better education. It is about turning our tax dollars into someone else’s profit or treasury.
Vouchers! Failed.
Charters! Failed.
Cyber Charters! Failed.
There is nothing new in this agenda, nothing that hasn’t been tried for the past 25 years without success.
Consider a recent news story from the other side of the continent. As the Los Angeles Times reports, a new study by pro-public advocacy group In the Public Interest finds that in California, charter schools are getting billions of dollars in state funding to open in places where they’re not needed and compete with public schools for students and precious education resources.
The report reveals that that three-quarters of these charters do worse on standardized tests than comparable public schools, and hundreds of them have been caught red-handed by the American Civil Liberties Union for maintaining discriminatory enrollment policies. Much of the money taxpayers provide goes to charter schools that are part of large chains that operate statewide and across the country. And charter organizations use public funds to purchase vast tracts of real estate and buildings they profit from and can retain even if the school operation shuts down.
Although the study is confined to California, the findings are likely similar to what occurs in the charter industry in other states, says report author Gordon Laffer, during a media call. What’s also worrisome, says ITPI Executive Director Donald Cohen during the call, is that Secretary DeVos and President Trump are strong supporters of charter schools, pledging to provide federal funds to incentivize the spread of these schools.
RESIST!
This post appeared on Mitchell Robinson’s Facebook page. He is a professor of music education at Michigan State University.
The best argument yet for public schools…
Donald Trump, Kew-Forest School and New York Military Academy, private
Betsy DeVos, Holland Christian Schools, religious
Sean Spicer, Portsmouth Abbey School, private
Steven Mnuchin, Riverdale Country School, private
Mick Mulvaney, Charlotte Catholic High School, religious
Wilbur Ross, Xavier Prep High School, private
Alex Acosta, Gulliver Schools, private
Jared Kushner, Frisch School, religious
Ivanka Trump, Chapin School, private
He might have added Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr., who attended the Hill School, private.
People who came into education have a strange penchant to work for ultra-conservative politicians, like John White in Louisiana, Kevin Huffman in Tennessee, and Eric Guckian, who was education advisor to the far-right North Carolina Governor Pat McCrory.
Now comes this news via Politico Pro. I can’t give you a link because I don’t have a subscription (they told me it costs $3,500 and I run a very low-cost shop here):
A senior Trump administration education adviser is expected to move into a new role at the Education Department, according to multiple sources familiar with the shift who asked to remain anonymous because they were not authorized to speak about personnel issues.
Jason Botel, the former executive director of the Maryland education advocacy group, MarylandCAN, joined the Trump administration in January as senior White House adviser for education.
One source said he is being considered for a deputy assistant secretary position at the agency’s Office of Elementary and Secondary Education, which serves as a key partner to states and school districts in matters spanning pre-K through high school. The position is politically appointed but isn’t Senate-confirmable.
Neither Botel, nor an Education Department spokesman responded to requests for comment.
In recent months, Botel had helped an understaffed Education Department in various roles.
Botel shocked some of his colleagues by joining the Trump administration earlier this year. He had donated $400 to former President Barack Obama’s presidential bid in 2008. Those who know him say he’s passionate about strong accountability standards, and racial and social justice issues — priorities embraced by the Obama administration. Botel joined Teach for America out of college, teaching in Baltimore public schools, and later brought the charter school network, KIPP, to Baltimore.
You will note that Botel worked for Maryland CAN, which exists to encourage privatization via charter schools. After he left Governor McCrory’s office, he worked at TFA’s Leadership for Educational Excellence, which trains ex-TFA to run for office. Acquaintances believe that his appointment suggests a renewed emphasis on standards, testing, and accountability. Interesting that someone would feel equally comfortable working for Obama and then Trump. A flexible mind.
I am happy to report that Valerie Strauss reposted my article on why public funds should go only to public schools, and she added a valuable introduction about the case that will soon come before the Supreme Court.
Last year, the Supreme Court agreed to hear Trinity Lutheran Church of Columbia v. Pauley. The case involves the appeal of a Lutheran church in Missouri and its preschool that had sought a grant from a state program to use scrap tires for a playground but was denied because of the 1875 provision in the state constitution — known as a Blaine Amendment — that forbids using any public money “directly or indirectly, in aid of any church, sect, or denomination or religion.” The church and preschool sued the state, citing the First Amendment, but lost in a federal district court and a federal appellate court upheld the decision by the state.
Now the Supreme Court will hear the case, with arguments set to begin April 19, and the decision could determine the fate of Blaine Amendments across the country. The high court just returned to a full complement of justices, with President Trump successfully placing his first nominee, the conservative Justice Neil M. Gorsuch, on the court to take the seat of Antonin Scalia. Gorsuch may well be the deciding vote in this case.
If the state is required to pay for the new playground, it would also be required to pay for a new roof and for any other expenses incurred by religious schools. You see where this is heading.
There won’t be more money for public schools, there will be less.
I am not a big believer in the power of petitions, but sometimes they are a stimulus to more significant and visible activism. So for that reason I urge you to sign the petition on behalf of Sarah Chanbers. Her cause was brought to my attention by two highly trusted advocates for equity: Xian Barrett, Chicago teacher and activist, and Monty Neill of FairTest.
Please sign and support Sarah:
“Chicago teacher Sarah Chambers faces firing because she has been fighting cuts to funding for special ed (she is cochair of special Ed taskforce) and against citywide education cuts. In recent years she also was a leader of the hugely successful teacher boycott of standardized tests at Saucedo school (complemented by mass parent and student opting out in this overwhelmingly Latino school).
“Here is a petition that was created to try to defend her:
“I hope you will join me in signing the petition.
Monty”
—
Monty Neill, Ed.D.; Executive Director, FairTest; P.O. Box 300204, Jamaica Plain, MA 02130; 617-477-9792; http://www.fairtest.org;
The Network for Public Education has created a toolkit to help you fight back against the DeVostation of our public schools.
Here are the one-pagers you need to answer questions about charters, vouchers, and privatization.
Here is an interactive map that shows where every state has gone with the DeVos agenda.
Here is the information you need to get involved, tell your friends, share with your neighbors, and fight the attacks on public education.
By the way, the NPE membership has climbed to 350,000. We have members in every state, ready to write their legislators and to schedule meetings with them. We are helping our members organize to support their public schools.
Please join us!
Georg Lind is a retired psychologist.
“As a psychologist I recommend to abandon all tests based on Classical and Modern “test theories.” But I am not sure whether my colleagues at APA and AERA will agree with me. They make a living on applying traditional tests. Even those who critically examine test usage do not question their validity and their use in principle. They have not only vested interests but have not heard of possible alternatives to which they could switch. Critical scholars like Alan Schoenfeld, professor of math didactics and former president of APA, warn us of the use of psychometric methods but all they suggest is a moratorium of tests. I think we can do better.
“I am a retired German professor of psychology, having specialized in experimental and psychometric methods, besides my involvement in the study of moral-democratic competence and its application in education. Already during my study at university I developed some suspicion against Classical Test Theory and its modern variations (IRT, Rasch-scaling), on which nearly all tests are based. The better I understood these “theories” the more I discovered that they have nothing to do with scientific psychology. Prevailing test theories are a modern form of Vodooism with sacred rituals which are to make the people believe that our sorting and evaluating of people is something rational, scientific. It is not.
“Prevailing test theories fail an important standard of sound science: they cannot be falsified by data, they are immune against reality. If a test yields some anomalies, its items are replaced until the data fit the statistical dogma of reliability – regardless of the damage this “item analysis” does to the overall validity of the test. Because test makers have no real understanding of what they measure they cannot answer the basis question of validity: Does the test really measure what we intent to measure? Instead they invent all kinds of “validities” in order to save their assumptions.
“No wonder that these tests have all failed. They have little, if any, “prognostic validity”. Even much criticized teacher grading is a better predictor of college success. Moreover, no support can be found for the allegation that their use would improve teaching and learning. I have analyzed many studies of the effects of the high-stakes-testing which began with the Head Start program in 1965, the year when I was exchange student in the US. I could not find any support for this allegation. Some small, short-term increases of test scores occurred but they could be fully explained by growing test-wiseness and cheating. Therefore, tests have to be replaced by new versions at an ever faster rate.
“Then it was the first time I had to take a test as a school student. In Germany we had no multiple choice tests in school until PISA started. I was surprised how easy it was to get an A. To answer a 90-minute test, it took me just ten minutes. I did not know many of the answers, I just made guesses. Only much later I understood why my school-mates worked harder but got lower test scores. It was BECAUSE they worked harder. For me tests were just fun like cross-word puzzles. I was not obliged to get credits. For them tests were high-stakes. They scared the hell out of them and confused them. Peter Sacks has shown how test anxiety, students’ background and test scores are connected. Tests cannot compensate for student poverty, bad teacher-education and poor curriculum. On the contrary, they even seem to deepen these disadvantages.
“But, if tests are based on well-elaborated teaching goals and on sound psychology, and if they are used anonymously, they can be a great help for improving curriculum and teaching methods. If tests are not used for evaluating people (which I believe is a human rights issue), but for evaluating teaching method and content, and for improving teacher education programs, they can be a real blessing. I have shown how a valid test can help to multiply the effect size of methods for teaching moral competence. Just google for the experimentally designed Moral Competence Test. Its construction principle, Experimental Questionnaire, can be easily adapted for other fields of teaching.”
Jeannie Kaplan was an elected school board member in Denver for two terms. She has watched the complete takeover of the corporate reform movement with a sense of shock, dismay, alarm. Vast sums of money are expended at each local school board election to keep the privatizers in control.
For the moment, Denver is the darling of the corporate reformers. It has choice. Charter schools. Teach for America. High-stakes testing. Common Core standards. A non-union workforce in new schools. Alternative teachers and alternative leaders. It has everything that reformers want.
Except results.
Study after study hails the Denver reforms.
But by every measure, Denver students are not getting a better education. Segregation is growing. The curriculum is narrowing.
Reform is succeeding but the students are not.
Churn, churn, churn=stagnation.
