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

Laura Chapman: How the Gates Foundation Listens to Teachers

By dianeravitch
June 5, 2016 //
33

In her annual report, the CEO of the Gates Foundation admitted that mistakes had been made in the implementation of the Common Core. ” She promised to “double down” in the future and to listen to teachers. 
Laura Chapman describes how the Gates Foundation is listening to teachers: 

“The Gates Foundation offers up a lot of sweet talk about listening to teachers.
“The “listening” pitch is an excuse to get teachers’ emails. These provide teachers who cooperate in this deception with edited and hyped feedback designed to ensure any voices heard will be Gates-compliant. 
“Here is the link to one of the most recent “invitations.” It is one of many others that creates the illusion that “nobody knows teaching more than teachers.”
http://k12education.gatesfoundation.org/learning/nobody-knows-teaching-like-teachers/ 
“There are other initiatives to extract information from teachers and tell them what they should do and think. 
“In December 2015, the Gates Foundation solicited application for new positions. One was “an opportunity for a multi-talented strategist and communicator who will be responsible for managing and developing programming, partnerships and campaigns to support Teacher2Teacher including face-to-face experiences, integration of social media channels and other digital platforms, identification and management of key partnerships, and ongoing analysis to ensure that all efforts are meeting the needs of teachers. This Program Officer should be a team player, an experienced project manager, and have significant experience managing and integrating cross-channel campaigns and partnerships. Experience working across multiple teams in complex environments is preferable, as is demonstrated commitment to education and the values of the Foundation. This individual will work closely with the Teacher to Teacher working group, which spans different teams at the Foundation, and will provide the expertise and creativity to fuel community growth and engagement.”
“At about the same time, the Gates Foundation had a job opening for “program manager” of Teacher2Teacher. Teacher2Teacher was described as a portfolio of “Teacher2Teacher managed platforms.“ “The aim is to “grow” the portfolio through an annual marketing campaign to increase the engagement and connections among traditional and nontraditional “partners” and participants in Teacher2Teacher managed platforms. The manager will negotiate then oversee all contracts, communications, budgeting, and reporting. This position also requires monitoring the efficiency and effectiveness of all aspects of the program, internal and external. It includes a duty to work with Foundation staff on expanding the portfolio based on research and evaluation of marketing trends and other strategies to ensure the program is ‘cutting edge,’ especially in social media and digital activity.”
“The Foundation spawns initiatives and markets these as if the interests of teachers are a major concern. No so, by a long shot. The Gates Foundation pretends to listen while building a cadre of teachers who will comply with the Gates Foundation efforts to remove all remnants of independent professional thinking among teachers.
“http://k12education.gatesfoundation.org/teacher-supports/teacher-collaboration-leadership/teacher2teacher/
“http://www.teacher2teacher.education 
“Gates-loyal teachers are being cultivated in ways that distract attention from the longstanding role of teacher renewal, education, and advocacy offered by professional associations of teachers in specific subjects (e.g., National Council of Teachers of English) or grade levels (e.g., The National Association for the Education of Young Children).
“Here is an example of the Gates strategy of endless mission-creep.
http://teacher2teacher.education/ecet2/”

Categories Education Reform, Gates Foundation, Bill Gates

The Biggest Charter School Theft in Georgia History

By dianeravitch
June 5, 2016 //
16

Molly Bloom of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution writes here about the biggest theft in the brief history of charter schools in Georgia. That state is in the process of expanding the number of charters and is considering creating an “Achievement School District,” modeled on the failed ASD in Tennessee, in which low performing schools are turned over to charter operators.

Here is the story of Atlanta’s Latin Academy Charter School.

A $12,000 charge at a strip club. Thousands of dollars spent at Mercedes-Benz of Buckhead. ATM withdrawals of hundreds of dollars at a time.

The charges to Atlanta’s Latin Academy Charter School should have raised eyebrows. For the top state education officials and corporate executives on the school’s board, they should have set off earsplitting sirens.

Instead, the charges continued for years, siphoning more than $600,000 in taxpayer dollars that should have been spent on students.

Christopher Clemons, the school’s founder, has been charged with fraud and theft in the largest such case in Georgia charter school history.

Clemons left Atlanta after the losses were discovered.

He left a rented townhome strewn with Hermes boxes, lease paperwork for a new BMW, used boarding passes and a Rolex receipt.

He left the school so financially troubled that board members closed it.

He left nearly 200 children with few options.

And he left a cautionary tale for Georgia’s growing charter school movement. Latin Academy, with its all-star board and experienced leader, seemed on track to thrive. But behind that facade of apparent success, the school spent millions of tax dollars with little public scrutiny and operated with a lack of public input foreign to many traditional public schools.

Latin Academy’s academic performance ranked in the top 25 percent of all Atlanta middle schools in an area where neighborhood middle schools are better known for hallway chaos than academics.

Clemons is presently in jail in Colorado, awaiting extradition to Georgia.

In the last decade, the number of students in charter schools has tripled to 91,000, with more growth expected. In addition, the legislature allows entire districts to have “charter-like” freedoms, which means deregulation and freedom from oversight.

Expect more scandals, fraud, corruption, and theft. If men were angels, there would be no reason for oversight or regulations.

Could someone explain why deregulation is supposed to create better education?

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Education Reform, Fraud, Georgia, Privatization

Anthony Cody: The L.A. Times is Complicit in Failures of Gates Programs (Link Fixed!)

By dianeravitch
June 5, 2016 //
14

As readers know, the Los Angeles a Times published a scathing indictment of Bill Gates and his ill-fated forays into education policymaking. The Times noted Gates’ serial failures, one of which was his naive belief that teachers should be evaluated by the test scores of their students. This idea appealed to his technocratic, data-driven mindset.

Some cheered the Times’ about-face, but Anthony Cody did not. He argues that Los Angeles Times was complicit in some of Gates’ worst ideas, despite the absence of evidence for their likely success. It gave full-throated support to John Deasey when he ran the city’s public schools with a heavy hand and spent profligately on ed technology. While wiser heads were skeptical about Gates’plan to evaluate teachers by test scores, the Times decided to create its own test-based rating system and published the results.

Cody calls for accountability. The line between advocacy and reporting is thin, and he believes the Times’ reporters crossed it. They should have investigated the Gates’ theory, but instead they acted on it, assuming its validity.

Cody writes:


“I have a question related to journalistic integrity. How can the LA Times chastise the Gates Foundation – and their disciple John Deasy, without acknowledging their own embrace of Gatesian reforms? The LA Times did not just report on the issue – they created their very own VAM system, and criticized Los Angeles Unified for not using such a system to weed out “bad teachers” and reward those identified as “effective.” They were active advocates, instrumental in the war on teachers that has been so devastating to morale over the past decade.”

Categories Accountability, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Education Reform, Gates Foundation, Bill Gates, Los Angeles, Teacher Evaluations, Teachers and Teaching, Testing

Peter Greene: TFA ReInvents Itself, Again

By dianeravitch
June 5, 2016 //
17

Peter Greene comments on Teach for America’s latest effort to reinvent itself.

In recent years, there has been a sharp decline in people willing to enter the teaching profession, a product of constant teacher-bashing (see, e.g., Waiting for Superman, see also, Arne Duncan’s constant berating of those who teach). The number of applicants to TFA has declined as well, from 57,000 in 2013 to only 37,000 this year.

So TFA has a new pitch. Joining TFA isn’t about teaching so much as it is about other things that might appeal to candidates for recruitment.

TFA, always looking to keep itself a viable business, has a plan for combating the lag in applicants and selling the program to a new generation. Part of it is a tactical tweak– recruit students while they are underclassmen and no longer wait until they are seniors and know better and have a different focus. But that’s just procedure and not the heart of the new sales pitch.

The secret? Emphasize how Teach for America really isn’t about teaching at all.

Here’s a TFA rep talking at a recruitment event:

“We believe that this is far bigger than teaching,” Kimberly Diaz, of the organization’s D.C. regional office, told a group of prospective applicants from Georgetown and George Washington universities in April. They had just visited an elementary school in suburban Maryland and heard from alumni working outside of classrooms. “This is about dismantling systems of oppression.”

Far bigger than teaching. Your two years struggling in a sixth grade classroom will actually be part of dismantling systems of oppression (“No, Pat, I can’t help you with your algebra right now. I’m busy dismantling a system of oppression”)

Of course, if dismantling isn’t your thing, a day-long recruitment event offered college students other incentives.

Like resume-building. Just what you want from your child’s teacher; someone who is there to build her/his resume for a couple of years and then move on. Not.

Categories Education Reform

Education Expert Campbell Brown Blasts Mayor de Blasio and Defends Success Academy

By dianeravitch
June 4, 2016 //
66

Campbell Brown, education expert and former journalist, excoriates Mayor de Blasio for failing to allow Success Academy to run a $700,000 pre-K program without any oversight from the entity supplying the money: the city.

Despite the fact that other charters signed the city’s contract, Success Academy refused to sign and is now abandoning the pre-K program because it will not answer to the city.

You see, Success Academy is so successful that the city has no right to expect it to sign the same contract that every other pre-K provider signed.

Note: there are many statistics in this article, but don’t believe them. Brown has never understood the Common Core cut points, which are aligned with the NAEP achievement levels. She continues to assert that all children should reach the NAEP proficient level. As the governing board of NAEP says clearly, “Proficiency is not grade level.” She obviously didn’t read the many suggested articles, some posted on government websites, that would have made this comprehensible to her.

Categories Education Reform, Harlem Success Academy, New York City

A Teacher’s Advice on Graduation Day: What Matters Most

By dianeravitch
June 4, 2016 //
5

Kay McSpadden is a teacher and a journalist in North Carolina. This is the graduation day speech she would like to give to her students.

 
“It’s graduation season, when young people leaving high school or college are forced to listen to notable speakers give them advice. Those fidgety students probably don’t hear much, and who can blame them. They are more concerned about not tripping on the stage than Taking the Road Less Traveled.

 

“No matter. Most of those graduates already have learned in school what they need to know to succeed. I’m not talking about the academic course work they mastered or the career plan they have mapped out. I’m talking about character and citizenship—traits too many people abandon as adults.

 

“I’m a teacher, not a notable speaker, but here’s what I’d say to the graduates—and more importantly, to the adults who need a refresher—if I had the chance.

 

“Leave everything better than you found it. School is all about improvement, you and everything around you. You went from knowing little to knowing a great deal while you were in school. You helped your classmates ace a project and spurred your team to the finals.

 

“The contributions of past students—an engraved silver punchbowl from the Class of 1955 still in use at the prom, a statue of the school mascot on the front lawn—are reminders that everyone who passes here leaves a mark.

 

“Adults forget this. We deny the toll we take on the earth. We mortgage the future of our children in order to live expansive lives now. We go for days and weeks and sometimes even a lifetime without learning anything new. We bisect the world into Us and Them and harm our communities with judgment instead of justice.

 

“Keep a servant heart. Once you were a frightened freshman lost in the halls of your new school, miserable until an older student pointed you in the direction of your classroom or offered you a seat at the lunch table. Later, you were the one reaching out to the new kid on the team or the club or the council.

 

“I’ll show you the way,” you said, and you did.

 

“Continue to be kind and offer genuine friendship to the lonely fellow traveler. Call out the bullies and give witness to compassion. Model the inclusiveness you seek. Keep opening your heart and our eyes to those with no voice of their own.

 

“Take that commitment with you as you head into a world that sharpens plowshares into swords, that wields words like weapons. Be better than the adults who have forgotten the lessons of school—the value of diverse viewpoints, the strength in working together, the need to honor the past while accepting change. Remind us what good students know—that listening is the skill to master first.

 

“Make wisdom your long game. More than any success you can measure, wisdom should be your goal as you gain experience. Look at the adults who, like Shakespeare’s King Lear, grew old without growing wise. Practice reason and logic and empathy until they are second nature to you. Be a skeptic about all things—people’s motives, untested outcomes, your own assertions.

 

“Be humble about your successes and grateful for your failures. Your best teachers were your hardest, most exacting ones, and you learned to accept their critiques and applause with grace and humility.

 

“Never stop being a student, willing to learn and change, even when doing so is hard. Remember Socrates’ great lesson that “the unexamined life is not worth living,” and then go out and really live.”

Categories Education Reform

Congratulations to Luis Govea, Valedictorian of Irving High School in Irving, Texas

By dianeravitch
June 4, 2016 //
8

The Dallas Morning News wrote an editorial praising the valedictorian of Irving High School, in nearby Irving, Texas.

Luis Govea is the personification of the American dream. He came to Texas from Mexico in 2010, knowing only a few words in English. He is now the valedictorian of his class and has received a full scholarship to attend Stanford University.

When he first arrived in the U.S. from Mexico, Luis Govea knew only a few English words, including red, white, blue and apple.

Six years later, he’s been named Irving High School’s valedictorian and got to pick from full-ride scholarships from Yale, Harvard, Rice, Stanford, Dartmouth, the California Institute of Technology and Princeton.

“I applied and thought, ‘I got nothing to lose,’ ” said Luis, who will head to Stanford in the fall. “I never saw myself even last year choosing between those schools, and it’s a beautiful feeling.”

He won the scholarships through QuestBridge, a program that matches high-achieving students from low-income families with selective schools.

Luis is humble and self-effacing.

His personal motto:

“I hope someone sees my story, and it pushes them to try even harder,” Luis said. “Do your best; even if you fail, at least you tried. That’s my motto.”

He learned English by using the Rosetta Stone program on a school computer.

Irving High counselor Laura Zimmer said Luis’ parents have been instrumental to his success.

“I’ve never seen a student like him, and I’ve been teaching for 13 years,” Zimmer said. “When he got the letter from QuestBridge that day, he just sat there and he just cried because he was so happy. He’s not afraid of anything.”

Zimmer first met Luis during his sophomore year when he asked her for a list of clubs. He joined 20, from French club to Keep Irving Beautiful.

“He wants to be a part of everything, but he doesn’t feel the need to be in the limelight,” Zimmer said. “He’s very genuine, and he’s always smiling.”

Luis was on the academic decathlon team, and he was the first in school history to make it to the state competition, coach James Newman said.

“He never let any of us down, and then once he realized that we had complete 100 percent confidence in him, he took on the leadership role, especially this year as a senior,” Newman said. “It’s been an unbelievable journey with Luis, and I am so proud of him. I really am excited about this next chapter in his life.”

Luis is a National AP Scholar and has taken 20 AP exams, earning nine perfect scores of 5 and three scores of 4. He’s awaiting results of this year’s tests.

After poring over pamphlets, websites and lists of majors, Luis thought heavily about Princeton but changed his mind to Yale.

Then, late on May 1, the deadline to commit to a school, he was hovering over the “accept” button for Yale when a Facebook message popped up from a freshman at Stanford. They chatted for two hours, and Luis decided California was where he wanted to be — close to Silicon Valley.

Luis wrote at least 40 essays in the past year for scholarships on topics including chess, tacos, hamburgers, underwear, love letters and his journey from Mexico to the U.S.

He plans on majoring in bioengineering and computer science, and he said he hopes to become a researcher or a professor.

Next time you hear someone complaining about public schools, tell them about Luis. He came to Texas not speaking or reading English, and now he is first in his class at Irving High School, with a full scholarship to one of the nation’s greatest universities.

Categories Education Reform, Texas

Sign the NPE Action Proposal to the Democratic Party Platform Committee

By dianeravitch
June 4, 2016 //
38

The Network for Public Education Action Fund has drafted a proposal for consideration by the Democratic Party’s Platform Committee.

We call for the elimination of federal mandates for annual testing; for a declaration of support for public schools; for a ban on for-profit charters; for regulation of charters that receive federal funds to assure that they serve the same children as the public schools; for revision and strengthening of the FERPA privacy laws to protect our children’s data from commercial data mining; for full funding of special education; for support of early childhood education; and for other means of improving the federal role in education.

The proposal is in draft form. We will be making revisions. If you see something you think needs fixing, let us know.

Please read our draft proposal. And if you agree, add your name of our petition to the Democratic party. We plan to make the same appeal to the Republican party.

Both parties, we hope, will support the public schools, which educate nearly 90% of the nation’s children. Public schools are a bedrock of our society, in the past, now, and in the future.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Data and Data Mining, Education Industry, Education Reform, For-Profit, NPE Action Fund, Parents, Privatization, Resistance, Standardized Testing, Vouchers

Larry Cuban: What Has Done More to Improve Living Standards: Indoor Toilets, Air-Conditioning, or Smartphones?

By dianeravitch
June 4, 2016 //
39

Larry Cuban writes on his blog about the most important inventions that have raised our nation’s standard of living. He poses the question that is the title of this post. He supposes that most people would respond “the smartphone,” but they would be wrong. His post is an intriguing review of a book by economic historian Robert Gordon, who contends that the century from 1870-1970 experienced greater growth and innovation than the past half century.

Cuban summarizes Gordon’s central argument:

Thus, an unheralded, stunning century of innovation and economic growth produced the telegraph, phone, television, house lighting, automobile, airplane travel, and, yes, indoor plumbing. These inventions networked the home and workplace in ways that raised living standards and increased workplace productivity considerably. It was in that same century that medical advances reduced infant mortality and lengthened life of Americans dramatically.

The half-century since 1970 has surely seen innovations that have enhanced these earlier inventions but the template for economic growth was laid down for that fruitful hundred-year period. In past decades, new technologies have clearly expanded communication and entertainment, making life far more instantaneous, convenient and pleasurable. But social media, immediate communication, and constant access to photos, video clips, and films have not increased the standard of living as had the decades between 1870-1970.

Cuban then segues to a discussion of the current reform movement in education, which traces its roots to the 1983 report “A Nation at Risk.” That report was “driven by an economic rationale–the human capital argument–for improving U.S. schools” and embraced by policymakers, business leaders, and foundations. If we didn’t improve education dramatically, we would lose our competitive edge in the world economy. And thus was born the “reform movement,” in which governors and “reformers” sought to raise curriculum and performance standards for both students and teachers, increase testing, and create accountability frameworks that included rewards and penalties in subsequent decades….

The current reforms in education and the pressure to raise test scores on international tests have not increased economic growth, stimulated productivity, or reduced inequality, writes Cuban.

In other words, reforms aimed at getting U.S. students to perform better on international tests for the past three decades–think No Child Left Behind, expanded parental choice in schools, more computers in schools, and Common Core state standards–was of little influence on growing a strong economy, raising median income, or lessening inequality, according to Gordon. These reforms, while aiding low-income minorities in many instances, overall, contributed little to improving productivity or raising standards of living

Gordon’s book concludes, writes Cuban, with a list of ten interventions that could raise the standard of living, like raising the minimum wage. Of his ten interventions three have to do with education. They are:

“…investing in preschools, state and federal school financing rather than local taxes, and reducing student indebtedness in higher education. Not a word about the dominant school reforms in 2016–Common Core standards, standardized testing, technologies in schools, charter schools, accountability.

In questioning the dominant beliefs in current school reform as essential to economic growth, Gordon’s argument and evidence are useful to those politically active decision-makers, teachers, parents, and researchers who know that a democracy needs schools that do more than prepare children and youth for the workplace.

The paradox, as Cuban suggests, is that the more we focus on test scores and workplace readiness, the more we sacrifice civic values that may be of greater importance in a democracy.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Common Core, Corporate Reformers, Economy, Education Industry, Education Reform, Every Student Succeeds Act, NCLB (No Child Left Behind), Race to the Top, Testing

Special Education Teacher: Common Core, Please Leave My Students Alone

By dianeravitch
June 3, 2016 //
29

A reader writes:

“In the non-public special education field, we generally feel the residual effects of educational policies and changes. Right now we’re feeling the effects of Common core and PARCC and not in such a positive way. Common Core Standards “do not define the intervention methods or materials necessary to support students who are well below or well above grade-level expectations,” but our students with disabilities must participate at the same level and with the same rigor as their “non-disabled” peers in PARCC assessments.

 Our IEP’s must be standards-based, aligned to their grade level and our teaching must be aligned to the Maryland CCR Standards at the students grade level. The problem, however, is that the majority of our students are functioning 3 to 4 grade levels below their non-disabled peers and our teachers are struggling to help them acquire and demonstrate a few skills successfully. 

How then do we prepare our students effectively for an assessment that will test them on the very standards they fail to understand? Our students with ED, anxiety, depression, ADHD, and autism have already been formally tested by teachers and related services providers multiple times before even reaching PARCC season. When is enough enough? There has to be a better way to assess their learning.

Categories Common Core, Education Reform, Special Education, Testing
« Older Entries
Newer Entries »