Archives for category: Education Reform
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Reader: Does Funding Explain EWA Support for Common Core?

By dianeravitch
May 3, 2016 //
9

A reader of the blog who uses the name Democracy posted a comment in response to a post about the Education Writers Association. The post by testing expert Richard Phelps documented the extraordinarily one-sided agenda of EWA when presenting the Common Core.

 

Democracy explains the reason:

 

“I’ve been saying for a while now that education reporting is generally abysmal.

 

“The Education Writers Association claims that it provides ” high-quality education coverage.” Sometimes, it probably does. Many times it doesn’t come close.

 

“Which begs the question, why not?

 

“Perhaps it’s because it’s “generous support” comes from The Gates Foundation, the Dell Foundation, the Kern Foundation and the Walton Foundation, among others.

 

“The Gates Foundation is neck deep in education “reform,” corporate-style. SO are the others.

 

“For example, the Dell Foundation (think Dell computers) invests in charter schools and “data-driven education.” Its a primary backer of the National Math and Science Initiative (NMSI), along with ExxonMobil, Boeing, Lockheed Martin, the College Board, the Gates Foundation, and JPMorgan Chase. The NMSI tells us that “STEM education matters…our country’s student performance must improve in order for America to remain globally competitive.“ The problem, of course, is that it’s simply not true.

 

“The Kern Family Foundation is based on what it calls “the traditions of free enterprise…ordered liberty and good character.” The Kern Foundation applauds Arthur Brooks of the American Enterprise Institute for explaining in his book The Battle, that the “free enterprise is fundamentally a system of moral values such as honesty, courage, diligence, thrift and service to others.” Tell that to all of those who were hurt and cheated and swindled –– and left without homes and jobs –– because of the rampant fraud and corruption on Wall Street and in corporate boardrooms.

 

“The Walton Foundation focuses on “competition”, “charter school choice,” “private school choice,” and teacher effectiveness. It funds groups like Teach for America, the National Association of Charter School Authorizers and the Charter School Growth Fund. It is no friend of public education.

 

“If the EWA is to – in fact – provide “high quality education coverage” so that reporters can get the story “right” and help “to create a better-informed society,” then it may have to shed the money it rakes in from those who have a very different agenda.”

 

Follow the money.

Categories Education Reform

Sorry, It is NOT Teacher Appreciation Week

By dianeravitch
May 3, 2016 //
43

Yesterday I posted a tribute to teachers by John Ewing, on the assumption that this was Teacher Appreciation Werk. My error. President Obama renamed it Charter Appreciation Week.

 

A comment from reader Chiara:

 

 

 

“The Obama Administration turned Teacher Appreciation Week into Charter Teacher Appreciation Week:

 

“This week, we honor the educators working in public charter schools across our Nation who, each day, give of themselves to provide children a fair shot at the American dream, and we recommit to the basic promise that all our daughters and sons — regardless of background or circumstance — should be able to make of their lives what they will. ” [The President’s Proclamation]

 

“It’s appalling how completely in the tank they are. They really require some kind of intervention in DC, some input from someone who isn’t employed inside the ed reform echo chamber.

 

“I guess “testing season” is over and now that they’ve collected the data from public school students we won’t hear a word about public schools until it’s time to test again.

 

 

https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2016/04/29/presidential-proclamation-national-charter-schools-week-2016

Categories Charter Schools, Education Reform, Teachers

What Did Ted Cruz Do When Carly Disappeared?

By dianeravitch
May 3, 2016 //
11

Watch this video of Ted and Carly campaigning in Indiana. Hilarious. I hope she didn’t get hurt.

Categories Education Reform

Peter Greene: The PTA Sells Out (Again)

By dianeravitch
May 3, 2016 //
8

Big news! The National PTA has joined forces with the Data Quality Campaign! What does this mean for your child? Nothing good. They have agreed that all children are data points, whose data can be mined by corporate entities. Who are those guys (as Butch Cassidy once asked)?

 

Peter Greene explains it here. He explains what all of this means, but only the National PTA can explain why they have joined forces with the Inside-the-Beltway Crowd, who see children as abstractions.

Categories Data and Data Mining, Education Reform, Parent Groups

John Richard Schrock: Virtual Reality is not as Good as Reality

By dianeravitch
May 3, 2016 //
7

John Richard Schrock is a professor at Emporia State University in Kansas, where he teaches science and prepares science teachers.

 
———————————————————————————————————————————————-
Virtual Unreality

 
Headlines have declared that this spring has seen the breakthrough in “virtual reality” (VR) media. Facebook released the Oculus Rift headset on March 28. Right behind it was the HTC Vive and the SONY PlayStation VR.
The hype behind VR is that it creates an “immersive environment” similar to the real world. First pitched in the 1990s—VR was poor quality and an immediate failure. But this new technology has Goldman Sachs predicting the VR industry will become bigger than television in the next ten years.

 
The new VR systems provide goggles with high definition resolution and a flicker speed far beyond what the human eye can detect. This is combined with movement sensors that detect head tilt and give the wearer the impression that they are in a real visual environment. Stereo headphones provide directional sound. A person wearing this head mounted display can “look around” and believe that they are in an artificial world.

 
More advanced “haptic” systems add the senses of smell and touch, the later through wired gloves or other devices. The goal is to convince the user of their “telexistence” or “telepresence.” So far, all of these expensive headsets also require expensive and specialized personal computers.

 
The industry hype that these “virtual worlds” possess all of the qualities of real world interactions has not been lost on the educational futurists who can hardly wait to have the first school on their block to brag about having this advanced technology.
Unfortunately, this simulation technology is worse than useless. Besides being orders of magnitude more expensive than genuine learning experiences, it lacks three important properties that real experiences have: true interaction, test-truthfulness, and real consequences. We know this because computer simulations invaded our classrooms as soon as personal computers became commonplace.

 
They all claim to be “interactive.” This was printed on the label of every simulation from 8-inch floppy discs to current thumb drives and cloud-based media. But the “interaction” of typing a keyboard or clicking a mouse to crossbreed fruit flies is nothing like actually handling the real flies (and having most of them drown in banana culture). And while we may lift our kids into the “seat” of a video-arcade “racing car,” we certainly know not to accept this performance as readiness to drive a real car.

 
Only the real world provides “test truthfulness.” Cross a hundred generations of fruit flies with dominant and recessive traits in simulation and the 3-to-1 ratio comes out textbook perfect. Not so in the real world. The value of real labs and other real experiences is that there is variation from the norm. Sure you can “program in” the variation; but the students’ know that variation was scripted as well. The real world is not scripted.

 
“Real consequences” are vital to learning in the real world. Even the student who flunks out of high school is careful to drive on the right side of the road. Why? To not stay in the lane is to face the real consequences of crashing. Get “killed” in a videogame or VR simulation and you just quit and walk away.

 
We can blindfold students for a day and tell them that this is what it is like to be blind. But it is not! At the end of the day the student can remove the blindfold. The blind person cannot.
Woody Allen once said: “I hate reality, but it’s still the best place to get a good steak.”

 
Reality is also be best place to get a good education.

Categories Education Reform, Teachers and Teaching, Technology

EduShyster Interviews a Scholar of No-Excuses Charter Schools

By dianeravitch
May 2, 2016 //
51

EduShyster interviews Joanne Golann, a doctoral student and researcher in sociology at Princeton who spent 15 months in a no-excuses charter school, studying its culture. After participating daily in the life of the school, interviewing students, teachers, and administrators. She notes that the no-excuses charter is a model of strict obedience and conformity that is widespread and focused on test scores. Teachers impose the model because it assures them control. If they let go, chaos might ensue. They can’t take that risk.

 

EduShyster asked Golann to sum up her findings, and she said:

 

“I found that in trying to prepare students for college, the school failed to teach students the skills and behaviors to help them succeed in college. In a tightly regulated environment, students learned to monitor themselves, hold back their opinions, and defer to authority. These are very different skills than the ones middle-class kids learn—to take initiative, be assertive, and negotiate with authority. Colleges expect students to take charge of their learning and to advocate for themselves. One of the students I talk about in the article learned to restrain herself to get through, to hold herself back and not speak her mind. She ended up winning the most-improved student award in 8th grade for her changed behavior…,

 

 

“If we create an educational marketplace where success is measured by student test scores, perhaps it is not altogether surprising that we end up with a rigid school model that produces these test scores. What we don’t get is a model that teaches students how to speak up or even a model that leaves students feeling like they have had a positive school experience. While charter schools were originally seen as a way to innovate, a way for communities to develop schools that might better fit their students and families, what’s come to dominate the charter field are charter management organizations and this no-excuses model. For example, in Boston, one study found that 71% of the urban charter schools subscribe to the no-excuses model. Of the high-achieving urban charters, almost all are no-excuses schools. They’ve expanded rapidly because of the support of foundations and the US Department of Education. Some $500 million in private foundation money has gone into replicating these schools….

 

EduShyster ended the interview by quoting the last line of Golann’s paper:

 

 

“EduShyster: The last line of your paper is really powerful. In fact, I’d like to take this opportunity to read it aloud so that we can all go forth pondering the essential point you make. *If teachers and administrators committed as much effort to learning about students’ families and neighborhoods as they dedicate to raising test scores or managing behavior, they might discover new ways of instruction and management to get kids to and through college, and perhaps more importantly, prepare them to ‘be the change,’ as one Dream Academy leader described.”

 

 

Categories Charter Schools, Discipline, Education Reform, Research

Peter Greene on McKinsey Plan to Close Public Schools in Boston

By dianeravitch
May 2, 2016 //
17

Listen up, friends! Your own school district might hire McKinsey or Boston Consulting Group, and you need to know that they have a template for “right-sizing” the district. The template has nothing to do with improving education. It is all about cutting costs.

 

Fortunately for us, Peter Greene has read the 200-page document prepared for the Boston Oublic School district by McKinsey. Here are the highlights:

 

Close 30-40 public schools.

 

Cut back or eliminate special education by putting more (all?) students in inclusion classes.

 

Save on transportation costs by having children walk greater distances to catch a bus.

 

Increase revenues by having more students eat school food.

 

Centralize school lunches so everything is cooked in one place and delivered to schools.

 

Slash central office staff.

 

Outsource as many functions as possible. (This usually causes costs to rise, since private companies that win contracts have to show a profit.)

 

Here’s a thought. How about if a committee of educators get a $1 million contract to study the operations of McKinsey and suggest ways to save money. No more expense accounts.cNo more private offices. Share secretaries. Cut salaries to match teacher salaries. There must be many more ways to economize at McKinsey.

 

 

 

 

 

Categories Boston, Boston Consulting Group, Budget Cuts, Charter Schools, Closing schools, Education Industry, Education Reform

Wall Street Journal: Stop Picking on Charter School Philanthropists!

By dianeravitch
May 1, 2016 //
40

Who knew that the 1% were so sensitive to criticism?

 

This evening the Wall Street Journal published an article called “The Union War on Charter School Philanthropists.” In the eyes of the WSJ, charter schools are a blessing, and we should all be grateful to the wealthy philanthropists who help them multiply. And of course, the WSJ can’t imagine that anyone would oppose a private takeover of public schools except teachers’ unions.

 

The WSJ can’t admit that charters get high test scores by excluding students with disabilities, English language learners, and low-scoring students. Their secret sauce: attrition, exclusion, test-prep, robotic discipline. What the WSJ loves about charters is that more than 90% are non-union.

 

Here is is what the article says:

 

 

OPINION COMMENTARY

 
The Union War on Charter-School Philanthropists

 
The wealthy are giving millions to fix education, but their gifts draw fire from a predictable source.

 

 

By NINA REES

 
May 1, 2016 5:43 p.m.

 
If you heard that a group of philanthropists came together to donate millions of dollars to schools, you would probably consider it good news. Indeed, thousands of underprivileged kids will be helped by the $35 million raised for Success Academy charter schools at a charity gala earlier this month. But teachers unions detect a nefarious purpose.

 

This $35 million donation was “part of a coordinated national effort to decimate public schooling,” Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, wrote in an April 13 article at the Huffington Post. “Wealthy donors and their political allies,” she warned, are “pushing unaccountable charter growth in urban centers while stripping communities of a voice in their children’s education.”

 

Regardless of the political attacks, politicians and philanthropists must remain committed. Charter schools serve many underprivileged students: 56% are on free or reduced lunch and 65% are minorities, according to the National Center for Education Statistics. Because they are run independently of school districts and city bureaucracies, they have the flexibility to be innovative in the choices they offer to parents, providing services like extended-learning schedules and language immersion.

 

Charter schools are also closing achievement gaps. At Success Academy schools in New York, three-quarters of students qualify for free or reduced-price lunch and nearly all are minorities. In 2015, 68% of students scored proficient in reading and 93% ranked proficient in math. For contrast, only 35% of New York City students overall scored proficient in math. Their reading abilities were even worse.

 

This success translates to broad-based support. About two-thirds of public-school parents favor charter schools, according to a 2015 Phi Delta Kappa/Gallup poll. Support is especially high among low-income parents, according to a March survey commissioned by the organization I lead. Some 88% of parents who earn less than $50,000 a year would like to see more charter schools in their communities.

 

Union leaders haven’t always been adamantly anti-charter. Ms. Weingarten’s former boss and mentor Al Shanker is actually credited with proposing charter schools. Sharing his vision in a 1988 speech, he said, “There is a role in all this for the federal government, state government, the local government, the business community, and foundations.”

 

Today, 25 years after Minnesota passed the first charter-school law, nearly three million students attend about 7,000 charter schools in 43 states and the District of Columbia. Yet over one million students remain on charter waiting lists, meaning that additional schools can’t come soon enough. And because charters nationwide receive, on average, 72 cents for every dollar that district-run schools do, philanthropy is vital to expansion.

 

Philanthropists have always contributed to their alma maters and other civic institutions, but opportunities to support public education have been limited. Donors want their contributions to have measurable results, and few successful businesspeople would voluntarily send money to poorly performing district bureaucracies. Mark Zuckerberglearned this lesson the hard way when much of his $100 million gift to public schools in Newark, N.J., was frittered away.

 

Charter schools have changed the equation for wealthy donors aiming to improve education. In Los Angeles billionaire Eli Broad is backing an effort to raise $490 million to create 260 new charter schools for more than 130,000 students.

 

Yet entrenched interests seem more concerned about explaining away the failures of public schools than supporting innovative ways to help students learn. In Louisiana, Gov.John Bel Edwards threatened to severely limit the ability of the state board of education to authorize charter schools rejected by local school boards. This appeal role of the state board is important because it ensures that quality charter schools can open even if local politics prevent approval. Gov. Edwards’s proposal was defeated in the state legislature, but the episode demonstrated how a single official could jeopardize years of progress. New Orleans’s all-charter district has been catching up with the rest of the state and hasraised graduation rates by 10 percentage points over the past decade.

 

In Massachusetts, Gov. Charlie Baker is fighting to lift an arbitrary cap that limits the state to 72 charter schools. The Massachusetts Teachers Association is spending millions to keep the caps in place. This despite Boston charter-school students gaining 170 days of extra learning in reading and 233 days in math, compared with regular students, according to a report by Stanford University’s Center for Research on Education Outcomes.

 

Charter schools put high-quality education within reach of students without regard for family incomes. Policy makers and philanthropists should pay close attention to how these schools are revamping communities and attracting philanthropic investment to some of the neediest neighborhoods. Charters have the potential to revolutionize American education—but they will need support to do so.

 

Ms. Rees is president and CEO of the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools.

Categories Billionaires, Charter Schools, Education Reform

Our Blog Poet on the Secret of Success

By dianeravitch
May 1, 2016 //
3

From our poet, SomeDAM Poet:

 

 

“Pattern for Success”

 

Gates dropped out
Which bred success
Little doubt
That dropout’s best

 

Design a test
That none can pass
And Gates’ success
Is theirs at last!

 

 

Poet forgot to mention that the pattern works best if you have rich parents.

Categories Education Reform, Humor

Why Outsource Neighborhood Schools?

By dianeravitch
May 1, 2016 //
8

One of the disturbing aspects of the charter industry is the proliferation of corporate charter chains. Like Walmart, the corporate charters are not part of the local community. They do not answer to an elected board. “Ownership” is far away. If the corporation is dissatisfied with results, it will shut down and move elsewhere.

 

This article is not about schools per se, but it speaks to the same issues.

 

 

DAILY SLANT: Let’s support “locally grown” social services

 

By Nancy Wackstein

 

 

There is no trend more significant in today’s food and restaurant culture than “local.” There is a growing consensus that being a “locavore” and eating food grown, raised or produced locally – usually within 100 miles of the point of consumption – is good for local economies, good for health and good for the environment by reducing fuel consumption associated with transportation.

 

I would argue that it’s time to reorient New York City social services delivery back toward a locavore model as well: locally delivered, locally staffed, locally supported when possible – maybe even produced within one mile of the consumer! As with the food supply, there was a time not long ago when residents of a particular neighborhood knew their local social service agency and community center, whether a settlement house, a Y or a storefront information center. People looking for assistance did not have to travel out of their neighborhoods to get the help they needed, or to socialize, learn or simply have fun together. Nor did they want to.

 

Clearly, social services were locally sourced! And here, too, the benefits were obvious: familiarity and comfort, proximity and reduced travel time and continuity, sometimes over
generations.

 

A report released in 2015 by United Neighborhood Houses reinforced the importance of this local approach. The 3,000 settlement house participants who were surveyed reported a greater sense of “belonging” and “embeddedness” through participation at their local agency. In a huge impersonal city like New York, can anything be more important than creating and nourishing a sense of belonging? Through their local organizations, these participants also learned more about their own neighborhoods and how to help improve their communities by working together with neighbors they met there … “building community.”

 

However, as with the food industry, over the last few decades, “progress” and “modernity” overtook the social services sector. Nonprofit agencies were exhorted to model themselves on corporations: the only path to sustainability was through growth, and more growth. And a prevailing ideology emerged: scale automatically equals efficiency.

 

Agencies were urged to consolidate and merge so more people could be served and larger catchment areas covered, sometimes even borough-wide and citywide. Underpinning the growth and consolidation trend was often the belief that there just were just too many nonprofit providers resulting in redundant programming and overlapping areas of service – inefficiencies.

 

Trends in city government funding embraced and supported this ideology. Contracts for services began to privilege larger and larger social service providers in the name of efficiency.

 
Requests for proposals were designed to identify agencies that could serve larger geographic areas containing larger numbers of people. Why contract with 90 different smaller nonprofits when you could contract with five larger ones?

 

Wouldn’t doing so save the the taxpayers money?

 

“Progress” has brought us to 2016 New York, where ever-larger nonprofits dominate the landscape of social services delivery. Such agencies typically are the only ones who can produce the scale that government contracts increasingly require: the number of
individuals served, the geographic areas covered, the outcome data. And larger agencies typically are the only ones who can negotiate successfully with third-party payers like managed care companies for Medicaid funded services, signifying their ability to survive in the new reimbursement environment.

 

Have we created our own agribusiness right here in New York City that will inevitably drive out the family farms? And if so, what has been lost if we have? Will it even matter to consumers?

 

What is lost is that many local organizations with deep ties to their communities have been left out of the picture, denied the opportunity to compete for city and state contracts because they are too small or serve a particular niche population. Many newer organizations focused on a particular neighborhood or population simply can’t compete for contracts when these are conceptualized and structured by government agencies to serve vast citywide populations and areas. I believe this will matter tremendously to consumers because if these organizations fail to thrive, the people in those neighborhoods, and the communities themselves will be depleted.

 

In the food industry, when the niche producers began to disappear, our food became generic, homogenized and even flavorless. (Ever tasted those winter tomatoes?) The “local” movement then developed as a response to over-centralization, outsized scale and sameness.

 

If we don’t want local organizations with unique competencies and strong neighborhood ties to go the way of family farms, I believe it’s time to rethink service delivery. Yes, New
York City is huge, but it also is a city of unique neighborhoods that should and could be enriched by locally based and locally determined services.

 

Let’s not lose the niche, targeted services that respond to local needs. Let’s not lose the programs that grew up in neighborhoods because that’s what the neighbors said they wanted.
Let’s not make residents have to leave their neighborhoods to get help. Let’s invest in the “place-based” services that we know have always worked. By doing so, we will strengthen both individuals and communities.

 

I’ll eat to that!

 

Nancy Wackstein is the director of community engagement and partnerships at Fordham University and the former executive director of United Neighborhood Houses. This article was originally published by New York Nonprofit Media.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corporate Reform, Education Industry, Education Reform
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