Archives for category: Education Reform
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Anthony Cody: McCarthyism, My Family, and the New Trump Era

By dianeravitch
November 20, 2016 //
42

My friend and colleague Anthony Cody tells the story of his family’s travails during the McCarthy era and links it to events of the present day.

Not long after I first met Anthony, about five years ago, he briefly summarized the story of his parents and the hardships they endured because of McCarthyism. As a historian, I urged him to write about it. The events of the past week provoked him to do so, especially when he heard a Trump surrogate speak of the World War 2 internment camps for Japanese-Americans as a precedent for dealing with suspicious Muslims. Those camps were eventually ruled unconstitutional, and those who were interned were paid reparations, which were certainly inadequate to the loss of their freedom and the humiliation of being jailed because of their origins. But obviously the Trump surrogate didn’t know the facts.

Anthony’s parents were supporters of human rights and civil rights at a time when it was dangerous to be leftists. They fled the country and moved to Mexico to avoid being forced to testify before the infamous House UnAmerican Activities Committee in 1950.

When it was safe to return, in 1954, they moved to Berkeley and opened Cody’s Bookstore, which became a celebrated mecca for student activists and radicals of all stripes.

Fast forward to the present and we have a President-elect who was mentored by the infamous Roy Cohn, a protege of Joseph McCarthy. Cohn was an unscrupulous and unethical lawyer who was eventually disbarred. Trump was a close friend of Roy Cohn, who mentored him. According to profiles of the two, Cohn taught Trump to meet every challenge with “attack, counterattack, and never apologize.”

Anthony’s parents’ lives are a part of American history that we should study and learn from. One thing we can learn is that bad things don’t last forever. In the presence of injustice, we must stick to our principles and resist, as his parents did. It is resistance that eventually prevails, not passivity.

Categories Education Reform, Resistance, Trump

In Final Months of Election, More People Read Fake News on the Internet than Real News

By dianeravitch
November 19, 2016 //
6

Post-truth is reality today.

Craig Silverman writes in Buzzfeed that more people linked to fake news sites than to real news sites in the final months of the election.

“Of the 20 top-performing false election stories identified in the analysis, all but three were overtly pro-Donald Trump or anti-Hillary Clinton. Two of the biggest false hits were a story claiming Clinton sold weapons to ISIS and a hoax claiming the pope endorsed Trump, which the site removed after publication of this article. The only viral false stories during the final three months that were arguably against Trump’s interests were a false quote from Mike Pence about Michelle Obama, a false report that Ireland was accepting American “refugees” fleeing Trump, and a hoax claiming RuPaul said he was groped by Trump.”

Categories Education Reform, Media

The Cast of “Hamilton” Gives Mike Pence a Lecture; Trump Tweets Back

By dianeravitch
November 19, 2016 //
80

Mike Pence attended the Broadway show “Hamilton” last night. The show is a remarkable re-imagining of America’s founding with a cast of actors of different races, mostly black and brown. I saw it a few weeks ago and was greatly moved by its vision of an inclusive nation.

The cast and audience were aware of Pence’s presence. He received some applause but also loud boos.

At the end of the show, the character who plays Aaron Burr addressed Pence directly, with the cast surrounding him. He read a statement written by the show’s creator and director.

For the full statement from the cast to Pence, read here.

This morning, Donald Trump tweeted that the cast had “harassed” Pence and should apologize to him.

I stand with Lin Manuel Miranda and the cast. The statement was honest, heartfelt, and dignified. Pence needed to hear it. So does Trump.

As Harry Truman said, “If you can’t stand the heat, stay out of the kitchen.”

Categories Education Reform

Trump Agrees to Pay $25 Million to Settle Claims Against Trump University

By dianeravitch
November 18, 2016 //
53

A settlement was reached between Donald Trump and former students at the now defunct Trump University, who claim the courses they paid for were a scam.

Now Trump doesn’t have the embarrassment of testifying in a fraud case during his transition.

Some plaintiffs will get a full refund. Others much less.

Our president.

Categories Education Reform

Jerry Falwell Meets with Trump to Discuss Education

By dianeravitch
November 18, 2016 //
95

Jerry Falwell met with Donald Trump in New York City to discuss education issues.

“Falwell said the purpose of the meeting was to discuss the U.S. Department of Education. He would not confirm or rule out whether he was being vetted as secretary of education but is confident after the meeting with the president-elect and “some of his top advisers” that he would work with the administration….

“Falwell told the Richmond Times-Dispatch earlier this week higher education has to “get back to the basics of teaching” and eschew the “ivory tower” mentality that has led to “salaries that are out of this world.”

“In public K-12 education, Falwell told the newspaper, school vouchers could “transform the country and the inner cities” by giving parents an educational choice that provides “a whole generation of young people a new lease on life.”

“Falwell has said an early point of agreement between he and Trump came when the then-candidate said he wanted to repeal the “Johnson Amendment,” a part of the tax code prohibiting tax-exempt organizations, such as Liberty University, from supporting or opposing political candidates.

“While Falwell and Trump argued the law is a hindrance on free speech, opponents say removing it could turn certain nonprofits and churches into political action committees and deepen concerns over the power of money in politics.”

Categories Education Reform

Mike Klonsky: Did Arne Duncan Help Trump Win the Election?

By dianeravitch
November 17, 2016 //
31

Mike Klonsky wonders whether Arne Duncan’s patronizing comments about parents and critics of high-stakes testing helped Donald Trump win the election.

When 20% of the parents in New York opted out of the state testing, he sneered at them and said they were white suburban parents who found out that their child wasn’t so bright after all. This was rank condescension.

When Duncan used Race to the Top billions to bribe states into adopting Common Core, he continued to insist that Common Core was a project of the states. He became the nation’s leading cheerleader for Common Core, and he ridiculed the critics. The critics were vociferous, especially in the Midwest.

Throughout his time in office, Duncan celebrated the successes of charter schools, wherever he could find them, and barely noticed public schools. Last month, before Massachusetts voted on Question 2, Duncan turned up in Boston to argue that expansion of charters was unquestionably a good thing. Despite his ringing endorsement, Question 2 was soundly defeated in almost every district in the state.

I don’t know whether Duncan helped Trump win by making public school parents angry, but he most certainly paved the way for the full-throated privatization that Trump is now pressing. Who would have thought that Arne Duncan and Donald Trump would be on the same team, cheering for more school choice, more charters, more privatization? Trump took it to the next level and threw in vouchers. Once you endorse school choice and launch an assault on the very principle of public education, it is hard to walk it back.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Common Core, Duncan, Arne, Education Industry, Education Reform, Privatization, Race to the Top, School Choice, Testing, Trump, Vouchers

Politico: Eva Moskowitz in the Running for Education Secretary

By dianeravitch
November 16, 2016 //
49

Politico reports on speculation that Eva Moskowitz is high up on the Trump list as a potential Secretary of Education.

Hedge fund manager John Paulson gave Moskowitz $8.5 million for her charter chain. He was also a major supporter of Trump.

Would she want to leave her charter empire, where she is paid handsomely? As Secretary of Education, she could spread the gospel of privatization far and wide.

While Moskowitz has found herself on the defensive at home, Success is still seen as a national charter model by many influential reform leaders. That’s based in large part on loyal, vocal support for her from the families of her student body, which is overwhelmingly poor, black and Latino — groups among whom opposition to Trump in the election was particularly strong.

(Success staff seemed to be mourning the results last week; the network’s social media staff posted a Langston Hughes poem about equality in America on its Twitter feed the morning after the election.)

Politics aside, Moskowitz might chafe at the constraints of the post, which is viewed among education observers largely as a bureaucratic position without all the power the title would suggest. This would be particularly true if a Trump administration set about relinquishing some federal power back to the states.

And while Trump has pledged to “get rid of” the Common Core, Moskowitz is a strong supporter of the set of standards introduced by President Obama. An enormous part of her schools’ renown is Success students’ high scores on Common Core-aligned exams.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Common Core, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Education Reform, Privatization, Testing

Parents, Educators, Advocates Demand Federal Protection of Student Privacy

By dianeravitch
November 16, 2016 //
2

A coalition of parents, educators, and privacy advocates issued a statement in defense of student privacy, which is threatened by efforts to create a massive federal data base containing personally identifiable data.

Press Release: Parent, education and privacy groups oppose overturning the ban on a federal student database

For more information: Leonie Haimson, leoniehaimson@gmail.com; 917-435-9329

Parent, education and privacy groups oppose overturning the ban on a federal student database

This morning a letter was sent to the federal Commission on Evidence-Based Policymaking from parent groups, education advocates, and privacy experts, urging them against proposing that the ban on a centralized federal database of student personal data be overturned.

Recently, several DC-based groups testified before the Commission, urging that this ban be lifted, which was established by Congress as part of the Higher Education Act in 2008. The Gates Foundation has also announced that the creation of a centralized federal database to track students from preK through college, the workforce and beyond is one of their top advocacy priorities for 2017.

In the letter, parent, privacy and education organizations warned that eliminating this ban would risk that highly sensitive information would breached, as has occurred with sensitive data held by many federal agencies in recent years. A hack into the Office of Personal Management released personnel records of about 22.1 million individuals. More recently, an audit of the US Department of Education found serious security flaws in their data systems, and a government security scorecard awarded the agency an overall grade of D.

Moreover, K-12 student data currently collected by states that would potentially be incorporated in the federal database often include upwards of 700 specific personal data elements, including students’ immigrant status, disabilities, disciplinary records, and homelessness. Data collected ostensibly for the sole purpose of research would likely be merged with other federal agency data and could include information from their census, military service, tax returns, criminal and health records.

Said Leonie Haimson, co-chair of the Parent Coalition for Student Privacy, whose members led the fight against inBloom, designed to capture and share the personal student data of nine states and districts, “A centralized federal database containing the personal data of every public-school student would pose an even greater risk to individual privacy than inBloom. It would allow the government to create dossiers on nearly every United States resident over time, and if breached or abused would cause immeasurable damage.”

As privacy advocates in England recently discovered, the personal information in a similar national student database that the government promised would be used only for research purposes has been secretly requested by the police and by the Home Office, in part to identify and locate undocumented children and their families.

“Our disastrous data privacy situation here in England should serve to warn Americans of the grave dangers of this sort of comprehensive student surveillance and database. The personal confidential information in our National Pupil Database was supposed to be used only for research, but we found out recently that data on thousands of students and their families has been secretly requested by the police and for the purposes of immigration control in just the last 15 months. It would be unwise and irresponsible for the United States to create a similar database, which can so easily be used for political purposes which are not in all children’s best interests,” said Jen Persson, coordinator of defenddigitalme, a privacy and digital rights group in the UK.

Chad Marlow, Advocacy & Policy Counsel of the American Civil Liberties Union, said: “Improving educational opportunities for children and protecting student privacy are not mutually exclusive goals. In fact, it is our responsibility as parents, educators, and Americans to doggedly pursue both objectives. Creating any type of centralized database for personally identifiable student data would pose real and significant risks to the privacy of America’s students, and that is why such databases have consistently been rejected in the past. With education policy, as with privacy, ‘do no harm’ is a reasonable place to start, and here, doing no harm clearly requires rejecting any attempts to establish a universal database that compiles and tracks students’ most sensitive information.”

Diane Ravitch, President of the Network for Public Education and NPE Action pointed out, “Whether Democrat or Republican, the one thing parents agree on is the importance of their child’s privacy. To allow the federal government to collect personal and sensitive data on every public-school student in the nation risks that this information would be misused by the government and corporations.“

“Parents Across America opposes any effort to establish a national student record system. Ever since the federal government weakened protections for student privacy, parents have been in a crisis mode. Our children are exposed every school day to a growing mish-mash of screen devices and online programs that capture mountains of their data. We know that the threat to privacy will only get worse if there’s a national record system; education profiteers will line up to tap into an even more convenient source of private student information. But we are determined not to let that happen to our children’s data,” said Julie Woestehoff, Interim Executive Director of Parents Across America.

Lisa Rudley, Executive Director of the NY State Allies for Public Education, observed, “Data collection and sharing of our children’s personally identifiable information should require a parent’s informed consent. Just because the technology of data mining is here, it doesn’t mean children’s privacy rights should be sacrificed.”

“Our children and their families deserve protection of their data. More importantly, we must understand that protecting our children relies upon protecting their personal information from breach or abuse,” concluded Marla Kilfoyle, Executive Director of the Badass Teachers Association.

The Commission on Evidence-Based Policymaking is accepting public comment on this matter until December 14, 2016. For more information, visit the Parent Coalition for Student Privacy website here: http://www.studentprivacymatters.org/federaldatasystem/

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Categories Education Reform, Privacy and Privacy Rights, Students

E.D. Hirsch Jr. Is Disappointed with Common Core Standards

By dianeravitch
November 16, 2016 //
21

E.D. Hirsch, Jr. was the originator the Core Knowledge program and the author of the best-selling book, Cultural Literacy. He championed a knowledge-rich curriculum, believing that access to shared knowledge was necessary for all children. His book was very controversial when it appeared, because many academics and educators thought it was wrong to make up a list of words and phrases that “everyone should know.” But Hirsch persisted and continues to persist.

Using the proceeds from his book, he established the Core Knowledge Foundation and he issued lists of words and phrases for every grade. (I served on the board of the Core Knowledge Foundation in the 1990s.) When the Common Core standards were released in 2009, he lauded them, thinking that they embodied the essence of his philosophy.

Now, however, he has second thoughts. He sees the Common Core as the same contentless methodology that he always opposed.

For nearly three decades, E.D. Hirsch Jr. has been beating the drum on a simple idea, though one that’s proved a hard sell: To become good readers and communicators, U.S. students need a shared curriculum that teaches them about science, history, math, geography, literature, and the arts.

In other words, more than skills and strategies, students need knowledge.

His philosophy first came to the general public’s attention in 1987 when, as head of the English department at the University of Virginia, he wrote Cultural Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know. The book included an appendix listing about 5,000 names, dates, places, and ideas—everything from the adrenal gland to zeitgeist—that students should learn in school.

The list made the book a best-seller—and it also made Hirsch persona non grata in plenty of liberal education circles. He was labeled Eurocentric and an elitist, and many wrote off his ideas entirely.

But Hirsch, an avowed liberal who champions the idea that having students learn the same things will lead to equal opportunities for all, hasn’t backed down. And now, at age 88, he’s at it again with a new book about the need for a knowledge-based curriculum. The book’s publication comes as Hirsch is seeing his theories rebound and creep their way into more schools, teacher trainings, and instructional materials—largely, many say, thanks to the Common Core State Standards.

But in Why Knowledge Matters: Rescuing Our Children From Failed Educational Theories, Hirsch excoriates the education policies of the day, including—interestingly—the use of the common core.

The reading standards’ focus on all-purpose comprehension skills rather than content, while it may be politically necessary, is “a deep misfortune,” he said.

“It’s a pointless approach,” he concludes.

Categories Curriculum, Education Reform

Jonathan Lash: Why Do Schools and Colleges Use Meaningless Test Scores?

By dianeravitch
November 15, 2016 //
11

Jonathan Lash, the president of Hampshire College, wrote recently that grades and test scores are of little value. Hampshire College doesn’t use standardized test scores when it admits students, and once admitted, it does not give grades.

He wrote:

A few years ago I was speaking to a group of parents whose children had just started Hampshire College. A father asked a question that was on many minds: “How can your college be rigorous without grading student work?” Before I could respond, another parent stood up and asked, “May I answer that?” I nodded with interest.

“I run a company,” he said, “and I have a few thousand employees in multiple locations. They’d be mystified if our managers started to give them grades. We manage by setting goals, evaluating progress, and mentoring employees on how to improve their performance. What would a letter grade tell them?”

At the college where I serve as president, we do evaluate student work; we just use a higher-quality method. Our students receive written evaluations not only on every assignment, but also for every course and learning activity. These evaluations are designed to be formative teaching tools.

Categories Accountability, Education Reform, Testing
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