State Commissioner of Education MaryEllen Elia announced that only one school in the state–JHS 162–failed to meet her targets. It missed by only a point or two.
This sets up the school for a radical change of staff, direction, leadership.
Here’s a thought: Let Commissioner Elia take over JHS 162.
Ten years ago, I wrote a book called EdSpeak, which ASCD published. It is sorely in need of updating. Nancy Bailey has the same fascination with words that I do. I hope she will help me revise EdSpeak as my co-author.
Read this and laugh out loud.
One thing I have noticed in the Brave New World of “reform.” Everything is opposite. Reform means disruption. Reform means privatization.
An organization called Bridge International Academies has plans to take over a large part of state education in Africa and replace it with for-profit schools. Free and universal education is a basic human right, according to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
But in this brave new world, everything is monetized.
To: AFT Media Affairs
Subject: Education International Report Shows Bridge Academies Abuses in Uganda
For Immediate Release
October 5, 2016
Contact:Andrew Crook
202-393-8637
acrook@aft.org
Education International Report Shows Rampant Bridge Academies
Abuses in Uganda
WASHINGTON— Education International, the global union federation representing 32 million educators in 170 countries, released a damning report today highlighting the abuses of for-profit school chain Bridge International Academies in Uganda.
Click to access DOC_Final_28sept.pdf
The report, “Schooling the Poor Profitably: The Innovations and Deprivations of Bridge International Academies in Uganda,” documents in distressing detail BIA’s disregard for legal and educational standards established by the Ugandan government. This includes failing to employ qualified teachers, failing to observe the national curriculum and failing to uphold school building standards.
BIA has expanded rapidly in Uganda since February 2015, with an estimated 12,000 fee-paying students. However, in August, the Permanent Secretary of Uganda decided to close all BIA schools due the company’s failure to meet the government’s educational and legal standards. EI’s research revealed that as many as 9 out of 10 BIA teachers are unlicensed, in direct contravention of Uganda’s Education Act.
The report shows that BIA’s business plan is based on standardizations, automated technology, shoddy school structures, and internet-enabled devices that are used to carry out all instructional and non-instructional activities on the cheap.
BIA is backed by $100 million in funding from global educational conglomerate Pearson, Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates, the World Bank, the U.S. and U.K. governments, and others. It plans to sell basic education services to 10 million fee-paying students in low-income communities throughout Africa and Asia by 2025.
However, many Ugandan children cannot afford to pay anything for education, much less BIA’s fees, according to officials. Families with an average household income have to spend up to 23 to 27 percent of their earnings just to send one child to a Bridge school for one year. Indeed, the BIA school dropout rate ranges from 10 to 60 percent.
The report highlights BIA’s use of broadband technology to deliver its “academy in a box,” with pre-programmed curricula transferred to tablet e-readers—“teacher-computers”—that distribute knowledge and information to pupils. BIA makes money by keeping overheads low and by employing unqualified teachers and paying them severely low wages.
The physical structures of Bridge Academies are also shown to be below par, with reports of “poor hygiene and sanitation” in school buildings that often do not meet basic requirements and minimum standards established by the Uganda Ministry of Education.Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, an EI member organization, said: “This report serves as a warning about what happens when private education providers put profits above people. BIA’s shameful abuses, cookie-cutter curriculum and cost cutting make for distressing reading but sadly aren’t in the least bit surprising.
“BIA and other for-profit operators need to realize that their compliance with national and international laws and regulations isn’t optional. Every student, no matter his or her country, has the right to a high-quality, affordable education taught by qualified educators. In Uganda, BIA has failed to deliver.”
Education International’s general secretary, Fred van Leeuwen, said: “We call on the government of Uganda to remain steadfast in demanding that Bridge International Academies operate in accordance with Ugandan legislative and regulatory requirements. Every child deserves to be taught by a qualified teacher delivering an engaging curriculum in safe schools conducive to good teaching and learning.”
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Ken Futernick wrote this post for the Harvard Press blog. Ken is a researcher who believes that collaboration is better than competition.
I first encountered Ken’s work when I read his superb paper: “Incompetent Teachers or Dysfunctional a Systems?” I urge you to read it too. He makes it clear that the billion-dollar-hunt for the “bad teacher” is not productive. And we know now that it is not.
He writes:
It’s time for those of us in education to revisit an old question: what’s our purpose? Some would say it’s to pass on what we know to the next generation.
That makes sense, provided we like what we’re passing on.
It’s hard to imagine that many Americans would want their children to inherit today’s toxic politics or to emulate the politicians who lie to the public, ignore science, peddle bigotry, and eschew civil discourse.
Not surprisingly, some students are doing just that. Last February, for instance, students attending a championship basketball game at Andrean High School in Indiana mimicked a popular presidential candidate, chanting, “build a wall” at their opponents from Bishop Noll Institute, whose students are mostly Latino.
And why wouldn’t we expect students to reject climate change, evolution, the use of vaccines, or science itself when some of their leaders do the same?
The point is that educators must be discerning about what we pass on. As the American philosopher John Dewey wrote one hundred years ago, “Every society gets encumbered with what is trivial, with dead wood from the past, and with what is positively perverse…. As a society becomes more enlightened, it realizes that it is responsible not to transmit and conserve the whole of its existing achievements, but only such as make for a better future society.”
Enlightened schools do this by updating their curricula with relevant, useful content and by cultivating values like equity, critical analysis, and civil discourse. In addition to academics, they promote social, emotional, and moral development. They confront bullying and racism, teaching students to resolve their differences respectfully. They teach the value of facts and demand that students support their opinions with reasons and evidence—even when politicians don’t.
These schools aren’t engaged in partisan politics. The values they’re teaching don’t belong to political parties—they’re fundamental values of a democracy, which is why all public schools in America should foster them.
Enlightened educators also model good leadership. As I show in my book, The Courage to Collaborate: The Case for Labor-Management Partnerships in Education, a growing number of school boards, administrators, and teacher unions are working as partners, rather than as adversaries. They still disagree, sometimes vehemently, but they manage their disputes through trust, collaboration, and civil dialogue. Without the acrimony, the name-calling, and the gridlock, these educators are able to innovate, solve problems, and cultivate good teaching and powerful learning. Isn’t this the type of leadership we want students to learn?
This link will take you to the opening pages of the revised “Death and Life of the Great American Dchool System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education.” The book was originally published in 2010. It became a surprise national bestseller.
The publisher at Basic Books, Lara Heimert, invited me to lunch a year ago and made an unusual offer. She said that I could revise the book any way I wanted. This was an extraordinary offer. Publishers usually warn you not to add or subtract unless you keep the line count exactly the same. They want to avoid the expense of resetting the entire book. But I was offered the opportunity to change, add, delete as I wished. It was an offer I could not refuse.
The two big changes I made were these:
I removed my long-standing support for national standards and tests in light of the Common Core debacle.
Second, I revised my estimation of the 1983 report, “A Nation at Risk,” which gave rise to the myth that American education was broken.
I hope you will take the time to read this new edition. It reflects much of what I have learned from YOU on this blog over the past four years.
Diane
https://deutsch29.wordpress.com/2016/10/03/relay-grad-school-of-ed-operation-rejected-in-pennsylvania/
The phony Relay Graduate School of Education” has received authorization from several state willing to make a mockery of graduate study in education. Few, if any, of the “faculty” have doctorates. Relay consists of charter teachers giving faux master’s degrees to other charter teachers, without a library,nwithout scholars, without research. Lest we forget, “scholars” are little children, not people who have devoted their lives to study of a field.
Mercedes Scheider reports good news. Pennsylvania said “scram” to Relay. No phony graduate schools wanted. Beat it. You are not wanted in the Keystone State. Those of us who worked years for our degrees say, “Thank you, Pennsylvania!”
Ninety-three percent of charters are non-union. This is part of their business plan. Teachers work long hours and turn over frequently. This keeps costs low.
Sometimes charter teachers try to form a union. The management fights them, as big business did decades ago.
This article in Salon shows how charters fight to keep unions out.
Hella Winston reports that charter management fights unions by intimidating teachers, even calling in cops. Teachers have no rights.
Why do they want a union?
“Alliance educators began their push to unionize in large measure, Mernick says, because they were concerned their employer was not “actualizing its core values,” including the establishment of smaller classes and a personalized learning environment for its students, most of whom are poor and Latino or black. Mernick says that teachers who have signed on to the union effort want more input into decisions regarding curriculum and pedagogy. They’re also questioning how the school assesses their performance and discloses how it spends its funds. Making changes in these areas, Mernick believes, will help Alliance retain the kinds of qualified teachers it prides itself on hiring….
”
Of the non-Alliance schools, there were 11 where administrators held captive-audience meetings—one-on-one or group meetings called by management and held on company time and property, in which management is legally permitted to share anti-union opinions; 12 where teachers brought charges of retaliatory action or threats against teachers involved in organizing; and eight schools where administrators made jurisdictional or legal challenges intended to impede unionization. Schools in the Alliance network had incidents of all three, as well.
Captive-audience meetings are one of the most common experiences teachers reported. These meetings—long opposed by labor advocates, who argue that they give bosses undue power to pressure and coerce employees, who have no legal right to hold their own such meetings—are typically called by management in the period after teachers go public with a desire to unionize and before a formal union vote.”
Kevin Kumashiro is a professor of Asian-American Studies and a scholar of American education. You must read his book “Bad Teacher,” in which he dissects the corporate reform movement.
This important article–“When Billionaires Become Educational Experts”–describes the right wing foundations and business groups that are financing the war on public schools and their teachers. It will make you eager to read his book.
The Supreme Court ruled in 1974 (Bradley v. Milliken) that a court could not order desegregation across district lines. The case referred to Detroit, which was highly segregated. That put an end to the possibility of metropolitan districts like the one already established in Charlotte-Mecklenburg, NC. The children of Detroit were doomed to remain in segregated, underfunded schools in an increasingly impoverished district.
This article reports the findings of a study of the most segregating lines dividing the children of different races. http://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2016/08/where-school-district-borders-are-invisible-fences/497279/
[ALERT: I was just informed that Edbuild is funded by reformers who want to destroy our public schools. Keep that in mind as you read—DR]
“A few blocks away from Bernita Bradley’s house, the Detroit Public School district ends and the Grosse Pointe Public School System begins. The border is invisible, but with a 12-year-old daughter enrolled in DPS, the reminders for Bradley are impossible to ignore. Every student seems to have a Macbook. There’s the annual Grosse Pointe toy drive, which distributes free bicycles to kids who need them. And there are the parks with shiny new playground equipment, where parents routinely ask Bradley, “Do you live around here?”
“Ours are torn down and dilapidated,” Bradley says. “Just seeing theirs makes me feel bad.“
“According to a new report and interactive map by the education think tank EdBuild, the district border that Bradley navigates as a parent and an activist (she helped launch Enroll Detroit, which distributes information about school enrollment requirements to families) is the most income-segregating in the nation. The median property value in DPS is $45,100, versus $220,100 in suburban Grosse Pointe, and roughly half of the city student population lives in poverty, compared to one out of every 15 students across the district line—a difference of 42 percentage points. Local per-pupil public revenue is about the same, at around $4,650 per student, but that’s because Detroit now taxes properties at a rate of 8.7 percent each year to pay for its schools. This is 47 percent higher than the rate paid in Grosse Pointe, “where, it goes without saying, there are most likely no vermin carcasses under the desks,” says Rebecca Sibilia, the founder and CEO of EdBuild, in an email to CityLab.
“EdBuild’s report ranked the country’s top 50 segregating school-district borders. More than 60 percent of these borders are in Rust Belt cities in upstate New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, eastern Wisconsin, and Illinois, which have suffered from patterns of disinvestment similar to those in Detroit. As the city underwent decades of depopulation, hundreds of Detroit’s public schools closed, leaving properties abandoned and blighted. DPS now struggles with a budget deficit of nearly $300 million, along with frequent teacher shortages and staff walk-outs. Research shows that students coming from profound disadvantage need even more resources from schools than their wealthier peers to achieve equal outcomes—yet DPS cannot meet those needs, even with additional state funding.”
An analogy to the Gold Rush may be useful here: The claim stakers are the federal government and philanthropies that have staked out the Common Core for public policy. To work that stake, they incentivize states and school districts to mine the Common Core and get higher measured achievement. To do so, the miners need equipment. The vendors who sell the equipment profit in the short term, even if their tools rarely enable the miners to get the sought-after results. In essence, those who set directions for the Common Core and those who provided resources for its implementation have benefitted, even as potential benefits to schools, educators, and students are elusive, and the entire claim may ultimately be empty.
