Archives for category: Education Reform
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NC Sues US Justice Department; Justice Department Sues NC

By dianeravitch
May 9, 2016 //
17

Here we go again. Governor Pat McCrory of North Carolina is running for re-election this year. His government has repeatedly passed legislation that harms workers, immigrants, public education, higher education, and the environment, while cutting taxes for the rich and corporations. Anyone interested in learning how the Tea Party Republicans have damaged North Carolina is invited to read Altered State, which describes the radical changes of the past five years.

 

Since it is best not to talk about those things, McCrory and his Tea Party pals want to keep focused on their valiant effort to keep transgender women out of public restrooms. This “crisis” appears to have emerged only this year, since there are already many gender-neutral public restrooms in hotels and the airport.

 

The U.S. Justice Department told North Carolina that the law aimed at restricting the right of transgender people to use the restroom of their gender identity was discriminatory. Now McCrory can appear at the great restroom martyr, protecting little girls and women from sexual predators in the bathroom.

 

North Carolina announced today that it will sure the federal government.

 

The U.S. Justice Department is suing North Carolina. If the Justice Department prevails, North Carolina could stand to lose billions of dollars in federal assistance. This seems unlikely but not impossible.

 

Playing the bathroom card didn’t work for Ted Cruz. Let’s see if it works for McCrory and his fellow disrupters.

Categories Education Reform, North Carolina

Jonathan Lovell: Martin Luther to Walt Disney to Arne Duncan

By dianeravitch
May 9, 2016 //
25

Jonathan Lovell is a professor at San Jose State University in San Jose, California, where he supervises students who plan to teach high school English. In this post, he explains the evolution of educational thinking about the teaching of reading over the centuries and does it with wit and style. He also examines the likely impact of the Common Core standards. He notes that the same groups that helped write the standards are now writing the tests. Instead of making millions, they will make billions. Will standards, testing, and a standardized curriculum close gaps between different groups of students? Read on.

 

The post is brilliantly illustrated. I predict you will enjoy it.

 

The article appears in Engaging Cultures and Voices: The Journal of Learning Through Media, edited by Roy Fox and Lynn Chang, University of Missouri.

 

 

 

 

 

Categories Accountability, Common Core, Education Industry, Education Reform, Poverty, Testing

Parent: I Sent My Son to New Jersey’s “Best” Charter School, and I Regret It

By dianeravitch
May 9, 2016 //
34

Sarah Blaine invited a parent to tell her story on Blaine’s blog called “Parenting the Core.”

 

This is the story of Maatie Alcindor. When she moved from Cambridge to New Jersey to work in the pharmaceutical industry, she enrolled her son in a charter school that ended at grade 4. They loved that charter. She then searched out the best charter school in the area on the New Jersey education web site, which was said to be North Star Academy in Newark. She attended the mandatory parents’ meeting.

 

 

“And that is where the trouble began. From the very first meeting I knew something was not right. I did not like the way we were spoken to but I thought to myself… give them a chance. The successive meetings did not change my initial uneasy feeling toward the administration. We were given application packets and advised that we the parents had to drop off the completed forms. If not, the application would not be accepted. It was explained to us that if we were serious about our children’s education we would make the time to submit the applications ourselves. No other people would be allowed to deliver the packets for us. Even when parents explained that due to their work schedules it would be a problem to bring in the forms, NSA said no accommodations would be made. Imagine my irritation when I arrived at the downtown Newark location to submit my application and was told to just drop it in a bin (no one was there to confirm the submission). There was no reason to force parents to take time from work to simply drop an envelope in a tray; it was just a test of our commitment to follow the schools rules.

 

 

“We were told to expect 2-3 hours of homework per night and extensive homework packets during weekends and vacations. I expressed concern that the amount of work seemed a lot for an 11 year old child and left no time for other activities or family time. It was basically inferred that if I cared about my son’s future I would follow their program or find another school and watch him fail. Rules of conduct while in school were even more concerning.

 

“Throughout their day the students would get in trouble for such things as talking in the hallway, missing or incomplete homework, uniform pants not being the right shade of beige and the dreaded “not tracking the speaker with your eyes.” Yes, the children would get in trouble for not looking directly at the teacher during their lesson. Even during lunch there were more opportunities to get detention including talking too loud and talking when the principal entered the lunch room. They were expected to stop talking if the principal walked into the lunch room!!!!! Detention was usually an hour meaning that during the winter months the kids were let out around 4:30 or 5:00 pm which left them to navigate home in the streets of Newark alone by either walking or public transportation after dark….

 

 

“I hated the North Star model but I think if done right there may be a place for charter schools. North Star’s main issue was lack of engagement with the community. It was a school in the community but not of the community. To be honest it felt very racist though I do not think they thought of themselves as racists. The principal took on the air of an overseer, our children were no longer our own but property of NSA to be raised by their rules of behavior. On several occasions I witnessed the surreal scenes of all white “board members” that would come to visit the school smile as the children would beat the African Style drums to call every one to morning circle. The board members seemed very pleased to watch the call and response exercise as the white Principal walked around to check the uniforms of the school’s all black and Hispanic students. Later I asked the Principal why as American citizens the children didn’t just do the Pledge of Allegiance as in any other school? I was told mockingly, that since we were African Americans, the drums represented our history. I advised him that I went to school with predominantly Irish Americans and we never started the day with Celtic music or Toe Dancing. With only one black teacher on staff at the time I wondered who gave them their ideas.

 

 

“The idea of Charter school was appealing to me. We had such a great experience his fourth grade year at East Orange Charter School and we wanted more. North Star Academy was a nightmare and a decision I will always regret. In 2009, my son was part of the first eighth grade class to graduate from North Star Academy Middle School. That fall we moved to a different town but his four years at North Star had done its damage. My son’s freshman year in high school was very hard for him. In spite of the hours upon hours of homework that he endured at North Star Academy he did not have any real study or note taking skills. North Star normally gave them their notes and study sheets but did not allow for any independent thinking. For several years he had trouble engaging in class due to North Star’s passive learning style of teaching. Where North Star allowed for him to repeatedly take the same test over and over in order for them to record the most acceptable score, he was frustrated by the fact this was not the case at his new school.”

 

Her son is now in college. He had to unlearn the bad habits of passivity drilled into him at North Star to be able to think for himself.

 

Categories Charter Schools, Discipline, Education Reform

San Diego: Yes, the Superintendent DID Scale Back Testing!

By dianeravitch
May 8, 2016 //
25

A few days ago, I posted that Cindy Marten, the superintendent of the San Diego Unified School District, was cutting back on the time spent testing kids.

 
This was good news. But some folks are certain that there can never be good news and that I must have been hoodwinked. The usually insightful blogger Emily Talmadge insisted that I was wrong.  San Diego was not abandoning high-stakes tests, she wrote, it was buying into “competency based education,” in which children are continually assessed by computers. Emily said that if something sounds too good to be true, it probably isn’t.

 
I went to my sources in San Diego, and the good news is that San Diego is cutting back on testing   and it is not adopting competency based education.

 
Don’t take it on my word alone.

 
Take it from the teachers’ union, the San Diego Educators Association.

 
This is their response to the District’s decision to reduce testing:

 
“After months of organizing and working to educate San Diego Unified School District parents and leaders on the negative impacts of high-stakes testing, the educators of San Diego Education Association applaud the District for today announcing the significant reduction in the amount of District-mandated standardized tests.”

 
“San Diego’s educators are thrilled to learn that the District has listened to the concerns of nearly 7,000 educators who have said the current system of high-stakes testing is broken,” said SDEA President Lindsay Burningham.

 

“Today’s announcement from Superintendent Cindy Marten and SDUSD shows the power that educators and parents have when we stand up together to support the true needs of our students.”
I trust the teachers know what is happening in their own district.
Did Superintendent Marten’s cancel the tests mandated by the state and federal governments? No. She does not have the power to do so. But she canceled district assessments and data collections.

 

Marten notifies parents every year that they have a right to opt out of state testing. Does your superintendent do that?
The San Diego Union-Tribune wrote recently:
“At the start of the last spring testing window, Marten sent a letter parents that all but apologized for the tests. In February of last year, the San Diego school board adopted a resolution calling on Congress and the Obama administration to eliminate federally mandated testing requirements for third- through ninth-graders.”
Did your school district do that?
Emily, you are a bright and passionate educator. Take a trip to San Diego. Meet Superintendent Marten. Visit the schools. Talk to teachers. But go in the winter, when it is 10 degrees in Maine and 70 degrees in SD.
I promise you won’t be disappointed.

Categories Education Reform, San Diego, Standardized Testing, Testing

Ohio: Does Anyone Care About Public Schools?

By dianeravitch
May 8, 2016 //
20

Reader Chiara has often noticed that in her home state, Ohio, state officials seem to have forgotten that public schools exist, even though more than 90% are enrolled in public schools, not charters or voucher schools. Why does the schooling of the students in non-public “choice” schools obliterate any interest or concern for the vast majority of students? As she often points out, 93% of the children are in public schools, but state officials and the legislature focus exclusively on charters and vouchers.

 

 

Chiara makes the point:

 

 

“What’s great about living in a state where the government is captured by ed reformers is, 90% of education business conducted by publicly-paid employees focuses on charter and vouchers. Year after year, session after session, it’s “choice” but the “choice” is never a public school.

“They never seem to get around to doing anything for the unfashionable public schools. It’s remarkable how utterly and completely the favored sector dominates every aspect of the political maneuvering.
“If it wasn’t for testing, public school students would never be mentioned at all.”

Categories Charter Schools, Education Reform

Leonie Haimson: Can You Trust Computers to Grade Student Writing?

By dianeravitch
May 8, 2016 //
15

Leonie Haimson, parent activist, worked with a group of other concerned critics to review the explosion of computer-massessment, in particular, the scoring of writing.

 

“On April 5, 2016, the Parent Coalition for Student Privacy, Parents Across America, Network for Public Education, FairTest and many state and local parent groups sent a letter to the Education Commissioners in the states using the federally funded Common Core tests known as PARCC and SBAC, asking about the scoring of these exams.

 

“We asked them the following questions:

 

“What percentage of the ELA exams in our state are being scored by machines this year, and how many of these exams will then be re-scored by a human being?

 

“What happens if the machine score varies significantly from the score given by the human being?
“Will parents have the opportunity to learn whether their children’s ELA exam was scored by a human being or a machine?
“Will you provide the “proof of concept” or efficacy studies promised months ago by Pearson in the case of PARCC, and AIR in the case of SBAC, and cited in the contracts as attesting to the validity and reliability of the machine-scoring method being used?
“Will you provide any independent research that provides evidence of the reliability of this method, and preferably studies published in peer-reviewed journals?

 
“Our concerns had been prompted by seeing the standard contracts that Pearson and AIR had signed with states. The standard PARCC contract indicates that this year, Pearson would score two-thirds of the students’ writing responses by computers, with only 10 percent of these rechecked by a human being. In 2017, the contract said, all of PARCC writing samples were to be scored by machine with only 10 percent rechecked by hand.”

 

Haimson refers to research that demonstrates that computers can’t recognize meaning or narrative, although they admire sentence complexity and grammar.

 

This,she writes, means that computers will give high scores to incoherent but windy prose.

 

“The inability of machine scoring to distinguish between nonsense and coherence may lead to a debasement of instruction, with teachers and test prep companies engaged in training students on how to game the system by writing verbose and pretentious prose that will receive high scores from the machines. In sum, machine scoring will encourage students to become poor writers and communicators.”

 

Only five state commissioners responded after a month. They learned that the state commissioner of Rhode Island, Ken Wagner, testified that machine scoring was more valid and reliable than trained and expert humans.

 

Haimson concludes, quoting Pearson’s literature:

 

“Essentially, the point of this grandiose project imposed upon our nation’s schools is to eliminate the human element in education as much as possible.”

 

Read this well-documented article. It is up to parents to stop this headlong rush to the dehumanizing of education.

 

Categories Education Reform, Teachers, Technology, Computers, Testing

EduShyster: What Are the Differences Between Suburban Public Schools and Urban Charter Schools?

By dianeravitch
May 7, 2016 //
12

Emily Kaplan has written a guest column for EduShyster. Kaplan taught in a no-excuses charter school, and she now teaches in a suburban public school. Here she describes the differences, much of which hasty do with power. The suburban parents “own” their public school; the urban charter parents can stay in the school only if their child obeys directions and follows the rules.

 

Kaplan writes:

 

“Politically and financially, affluent suburban parents own their children’s schools. Parents of students at urban charters, however, better not push their luck. (They “won the lottery,” after all.) Suburban parents can question the system all they like; ultimately, they are the system. Charter parents are certainly not— and by questioning it, they have everything to lose. (The racial undertones of this environment—black parents should be grateful for the education these white educators so generously provide— are significant.) Unlike suburban students who attend district schools, students at urban charter schools can be expelled or pushed out— and no parent wants to be forced back to the district which drove them to enter the charter lottery in the first place.

 

“Urban charters wield this power to ensure compliance from students and parents alike. The strict discipline for which charters are infamous is applied to parents as well as their children. Unlike at suburban schools—where parents are welcomed to join the PTA, to volunteer, to lead projects, and to meet with an administration that must earn their support—parental involvement at many urban charters is as unidirectional as it is punitive. If a student accumulates enough behavioral infractions, for instance, he or she must serve an in-school suspension until the parent is able—on one day’s notice—to take time off of work in the middle of the school day to observe the child in class for an hour and a half. Teachers and administrators threaten students who break the rigid rules of the school with parental involvement: “If your behavior doesn’t get better,” they tell these five- and six- and seven-year-olds, many of whom come from families struggling to make ends meet, “your dad will have to keep missing work to come here. You don’t want him to be fired, do you?” Parents who do not comply are told that the school may not be for them.

 

“Take it or leave it, be grateful, kowtow: we know what’s best for your child.

 

“Ultimately, this serves no one.”

 

 

 

 

Categories Charter Schools, Education Reform, Parents

Steven Singer: Top 10 Reasons to Oppose Charter Schools

By dianeravitch
May 7, 2016 //
40

Have you ever wished you had a bullet list to explain succinctly why charter schools are a terrible idea? Steven Singer has created that list. He says that “school choice is no choice.” The school chooses the student, the student doesn’t choose the school.

 

Ask yourself: why do we need a dual school system? One gets to choose its students, the other must accept everyone.

 

What a bad idea!

 

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Education Reform

Florida: Charter Management Company Indicted for Criminal Fraud

By dianeravitch
May 7, 2016 //
9

A grand jury in Escambia County in Florida indicted Newpoint Education Partners and its vendors for fraud and other crimes. Newpoint Education Partners was created by former employees of Ohio’s controversial for-profit White Hat Management company.

 

“An Escambia County grand jury indicted Newpoint Education Partners and three other companies for grand theft, money laundering and aggravated white collar crime.

 

“Newpoint managed charter schools in Escambia County for 21st Century Academy of Pensacola. Last year, the Escambia County School Board revoked charters for Newpoint Academy and Newpoint High for grade tampering and misuse of public funds. All three Newpoint schools — Newpoint High, Newpoint Academy and Five Flags Academy — closed. The enrollment at the three schools totaled about 350 students.

 

“The grand jury alleges that Newpoint and its vendors fraudulently billed 21st Century Academy hundreds of thousands of dollars for supplies, equipment and services. Newpoint and its vendors allegedly laundered the proceeds of the thefts through multiple bank accounts to conceal the criminal activity.

 

“The source of the alleged laundered proceeds was charter school grant funds appropriated by the state for charter schools to use to procure supplies, equipment and services necessary for startup.

 

“I’ve prosecuted charter schools before, but not this particular type of scheme,” Assistant State Attorney Russell Edgar said. “I’ve prosecuted people involved with charter schools for committing theft of funds and prosecuted people for misusing children to work off campus during school, but this is the first time prosecuting a managing company.”

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corporate Reform, Education Reform, Florida, For-Profit, Fraud, Ohio

North Carolina: Attorney General Sues Charter Operator for Fraud

By dianeravitch
May 7, 2016 //
10

North Carolina  Attorney General Roy Cooper sued a charter operator who got $666,000 from the state to open a charter that closed after being open for only 10 days.

 

“Attorney General Roy Cooper is suing the managers of a failed Kinston charter school, claiming they inflated enrollment estimates to get state money for education services they did not provide.

 

“Kinston Charter Academy – which closed 10 days into the school year in September 2013 – got more than $666,000 in state money in August 2013, according to the lawsuit. The money was based on a projected enrollment of 366 students and was supposed to last until October.

 

“On Sept. 3, the school had 189 students. It closed three days later. The students transferred to other schools, and the lawsuit says the state had to pay twice to educate those students for three months.

 

“The suit, filed in Wake County Superior Court on Tuesday, claims that school CEO Ozie L. Hall Jr. and Demyra McDonald-Hall, his wife and board chairwoman, illegally obtained and misused state money. They knew the academy would not survive the 2013-14 school year, yet made imprudent or self-interested business transactions, and misled students by persuading them to enroll, the suit said.”

 

Mr. Hall said the suit was baseless and he will fight it. He is now running another charter school.

 

 

Read more here: http://www.newsobserver.com/news/politics-government/state-politics/article74020632.html#storylink=cpy

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Education Reform, North Carolina
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