At a time when the White House is a source of vulgarity and racism, it is inspiring to read about the young children who entered a contest to display their understanding of Dr. King’s message as it applies today.
I have a dream. My dream is that these young people will spend an hour in the White House tutoring Mr. Trump.
A few years ago, I read a wonderful book titled “The Spirit Level: Why Greater Equality Makes Societies Stronger” by Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett. I strongly recommend it to you.
Their thesis is that the societies with the greatest equality are happier and healthier. As inequality grows, so do social problems that cost huge amounts of money to address. But nothing succeeds like equality. That is not to say that societies need to have everyone with exactly the same amount of everything. But that societies should aim to reduce inequality of income and wealth to the greatest extent possible. In 1960, the average CEO made 50 times the wages of the average worker. Today, the average CEO makes 271 times the wages of the average worker.
The concentration of wealth in the hands of a tiny number of people erodes the foundations of our society. It creates grievance, rage, depression, poor health, poor schooling, stagnant opportunity, overuse of drugs, addiction, suicide, and a sense of hopelessness. As inequality grows, our optimism about our society and its future declines.
The wealthiest 1 percent of American households own 40 percent of the country’s wealth, according to a new paper by economist Edward N. Wolff. That share is higher than it has been at any point since at least 1962, according to Wolff’s data, which comes from the federal Survey of Consumer Finances.
From 2013, the share of wealth owned by the 1 percent shot up by nearly three percentage points. Wealth owned by the bottom 90 percent, meanwhile, fell over the same period. Today, the top 1 percent of households own more wealth than the bottom 90 percent combined. That gap, between the ultrawealthy and everyone else, has only become wider in the past several decades.
The tax bill just passed by the Republicans in Congress without a single Democratic votes will deepen that inequality.
It will provide windfall gains for corporations and real estate investors (like Donald Trump).
The Republicans say the tax cuts for the top 1% and for corporations will create jobs and raise wages. But when the Washington Post polled the nation’s 20 largest corporations, most of them said they planned to pay dividends to investors.
A commentary in Fortune magazine said that corporate tax cuts were likelier to benefit shareholders than workers.
Some argue that corporate tax cuts lead to wage and job growth because they encourage corporations to invest in additional capital. But if companies are unwilling to invest in today’s environment—with extraordinarily high after-tax corporate profits and low interest rates—it is unlikely they will do so after a corporate tax cut.
Evidence from 2004, when a repatriation holiday allowed corporations to bring back overseas profits at a lower rate, provides a good case study. The 15 companies that brought the most profits back to the U.S. used them to buy back shares instead of boosting investment, and actually ended up cutting jobs and slightly lowering their research and development spending.
The tax cut does nothing to enhance income equality or wealth equality. It is simply getting worse.
The persistence of poverty in the United States directly affects schools. About half the children in the U.S. public schools qualify for free or reduced price lunch. Poverty is the most significant cause of poor academic performance. Children who are poor are less likely to have good medical care, good nutrition, and live in a safe neighborhood in a good home.
If we want to make America great again, we should revive the goals of the New Deal. A society where people are free from want and fear.
This is not a good Christmas present.
A few days ago, I wrote a post speculating about whether Common Core had caused the decline in forth grade reading scores on the latest international test.
David C. Berliner, one of our nation’s most distinguished social scientists, wrote to say that Common Core is not the culprit; demographics is.
I stand corrected.
He writes:
It may be, as you posit, that the introduction of the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) had its effects on our PIRLS scores. But before you or any others of us worry about our latest PIRLS scores, and the critics start the usual attacks on our public schools, remember this: Standardized Achievement Tests are quite responsive to demographics, and not very sensitive at all to what teachers and schools accomplish.
With that in mind, let’s ask first what the average score for the USA was in comparison to a few other nations that we often think of as high performing nations. On the paper and pencil version of PIRLS 2016 the USA achieved a score 549. (There was also an e-version of the test reported separately, but nothing in that analysis contradicts anything I say below) Singapore, however, scored 576, Hong Kong scored 569, and Finland scored 566. Clearly these other nations exhibited considerably higher scores than did the USA. Our public schools would seem to be doing something wrong. Perhaps it is related to the introduction of the CCSS. But since demographics are powerful influences on Standardized Achievement Test scores, let’s break down the US PIRLS scores by some of the demographic information that we have available to us.
First, we can note that Asian Americans scored 591. That is, our Asians beat the hell out of Asian Asians! Since the vast majority of Asian Americans go to public school it would appear that there isn’t much of anything wrong with the public schools they go to, nor can the curriculum in use in those schools be bad, even if it is the CCSS. And from Asian American achievement in literacy, we must acknowledge that the skills of their reading teachers appear to be more than adequate.
White kids in the USA, taken as a group, are generally wealthier than non-whites. How did white kids do on PIRLS? They scored 571, close to Singapore, and better than Hong Kong and Finland. Since white kids make up something like 50% of the public school population of the USA, we can say that about half of our school kids, about 25 million or so, are, on average, high performing students in the area of reading—whatever the method chosen to teach them.
How do kids in schools where there is little poverty do on PIRLS? The data tell us that in schools where there are fewer than 10 percent of the students on free and reduced lunch, students had a score of 587—handily beating Singapore, Hong Kong, and Finland. In fact, even higher average scores were found in in schools that cater to upper middle-class kids, schools where the poverty rate is between 10 and 24 percent. That very large group of American public school kids scored 592, handily exceeding the schools that serve even wealthier families, and easily beating the two Asian nations and Finland. Furthermore, there was also a group of kids from schools where 25 to 50 percent of the kids were considered to be in poverty because they were eligible for free and reduced lunch. These were schools that clearly do not cater to the very wealthy. Yet they scored 566, the same as Finland, a nation we always look up to and one with childhood poverty rates of about 4%.
So why did the USA, overall, look mediocre in score and rank on this test? I think it is for the same reason that we always look mediocre in score and rank on PISA! It’s our social and economic systems, not our schools, that cause lower scores than is desired by our nation.
Poor kids in general, but often Black and Hispanic kids in particular, do not grow up in the same kinds of stable families and secure neighborhoods that are more likely to nurture higher levels of school achievement. It’s not America’s schools that are a problem: its America’s social, economic, and housing policies that are our educational problem. While Singapore and Hong Kong both have disturbingly high poverty rates, compared to Finland, both are so small that poor and rich live in proximity to each other. Thus, there is a lot more mixing of children from different social classes and ethnicities than is true in the USA, where income determines housing and housing determines schooling. Here, schools that predominantly serve poor and minority kids, and schools that predominantly serve wealthier kids, are the rule, not that exception. It seems clear to me that those demographic realities are the predominant determinants of scores on Standardized Achievement Tests—be they domestic (NAEP, ACT, SATs) or international (PISA, PIRLS).
So, if we want better scores on such tests, we need to get off the backs of teachers and schools. Our teachers and schools are presently educating a high percentage of our kids to very high levels of literacy. But that is not true for another high percentage of our kids. What we need to help those kids is to exert a lot more influence on our nations politicians to give us the equitable society that will promote higher achievement for all our citizens.
David C. Berliner
Regents’ Professor Emeritus,
Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College,
Arizona State University,
Tempe, AZ 85287
Please watch this two-minute video of John Kuhn, Texas Superintendent, who tells the story of two adjacent school districts, one rich, one poor. He explains with eloquence and passion why schools should be equitably funded and how unjust it is to fund schools differently and expect to get the same results.
This video is part of a series of short videos produced by Michael Elliott for the Network for Public Education.
Please watch it, tweet it, share it on your Facebook page, and wherever else you reach your friends and acquaintances. Send it to everyone you know.
Kuhn is powerful and eloquent on behalf of children, communities, public schools, justice, and equity.
The Global Education Monitoring Blog just released a bulletin about the risks of school choice. The blog is published by UNESCO, which the Trump administration recently abandoned.
Be that as it may, its conclusions are evidence-based. The full report, which is linked on the blog offers extensive documentation and references.
The overall conclusion:
In the last three decades, reforms rooted in the school choice logic have been implemented in more than two-thirds of OECD countries, for instance. Across the 72 systems participating in PISA 2015, the parents of around 64% of students reported that they had at least two schools to choose from for their children.
However, a closer look at the evidence suggests that school choice often doesn’t work as it’s meant to, and can in fact increase inequalities and undermine quality education…
The main criticisms of market-oriented policies are that they benefit wealthier schools, families and communities, increasing inequality and segregation…
Studies have repeatedly shown that school choice benefits wealthier families, while further marginalizing disadvantaged parents and schools…
School choice is meant to strengthen accountability but often concentrates disadvantaged students in disadvantaged schools…
All these concerns indicate that governments should be extremely cautious in pushing forward reforms that promote an education ‘market’, as school choice may actually have negative effects on the quality and equity of education.
New York has had a long running court battle over equitable funding. The plaintiffs seeking additional funding have won in court, but the legislature and the Governor have ignored the rulings and owe the urban districts $5.5 billion.
Yesterday the Education Law Center won another judgment in court, this time on behalf of the state’s “small cities.” Will the legislature and Governor obey the court ruling?
IN SMALL CITIES FUNDING CASE NY APPELLATE DIVISION COURT UPHOLDS CAMPAIGN FOR FISCAL EQUITY
ORDERS TRIAL COURT TO MAKE DETERMINATION REGARDING FUNDING NEEDS OF SCHOOLS
October 26, 2017
New York’s Appellate Division Third Department issued a groundbreaking ruling today in Maisto v. State, a challenge to inadequate school funding for students in eight New York “Small Cities” school districts.
The Appeals Court unanimously reversed the trial judge’s ruling, which dismissed the case without examining the extensive evidence presented during the two-month trial in 2015. The Court reaffirmed the framework established in the Campaign for Fiscal Equity (CFE) rulings for analyzing claims of violations of New York’s Education Article. The Court made clear that in school funding cases, the trial court must examine the evidence regarding deficiencies in essential education resources, or inputs, student performance, or outcomes, and whether a lack of funding is a causal factor in resource deficits and low outcomes.
The Appeals Court remanded the case to the trial court for specific findings on inputs and causation for each of the eight Maisto districts: Jamestown, Kingston, Mount Vernon, Newburgh, Niagara Falls, Port Jervis, Poughkeepsie and Utica.
Highlights of the Appellate Division ruling include the following:
1. The trial court erred by refusing to apply the CFE standards and failing to examine the extensive evidence presented for each district regarding inputs, outputs and causation;
2. On remand, the trial court must consider a broad range of inputs necessary for a sound basic education, including not only teachers and instrumentalities of learning, but also class size and supplemental services, such as academic intervention services, extended learning opportunities and social workers.
3. The proper standard for establishing causation on remand is whether the plaintiffs showed that increased funding can provide inputs that yield better student performance, evidence the State’s own experts conceded for every district.
“This is a great victory for the 55,000 children in the eight districts, and for children across New York State,” said Greg Little, Education Law Center’s Chief Trial Counsel and lead counsel in the Maisto trial. “The abundant evidence showed massive deficiencies in basic educational resources that deprived these needy students of their constitutional rights. We are confident that after considering the evidence on remand, the court will vindicate the rights of the students in these impoverished districts.”
Billy Easton, Executive Director of the Alliance for Quality Education, said, “Once again, a court has upheld the rights of students to a sound basic education. We hope the legislature and Governor will take heed of this decision, the second in two months, and finally make CFE’s decade-long promise a reality, without further delays or the need for further court cases. New York cannot sacrifice another generation of children to political or legal gamesmanship.”
In addition to ELC’s Greg Little, David Sciarra and Wendy Lecker, the Maisto school children are represented by Robert Biggerstaff and David Kunz in Albany, and Robert Reilly and Megan Mercy of the NYSUT General Counsel Office.
More information about the Maisto case is available here.
Press Contact:
Sharon Krengel
Policy and Outreach Director
skrengel@edlawcenter.org
973-624-1815, x 24
John King, who served as Secretary of Education after Arne Duncan departed, went to the Cleveland City Club to praise high-stakes testing as the route to equity and civil rights. He spoke highly of No Child Left Behind and its successor, the federal Every Student Succeeds Act.
He is so wrong. Not just wrong, but misinformed, misguided, and ignorant of facts and evidence about the injurious effects of high-stakes testing on children, teachers, schools, and education. When you read things like this, you remember how the Obama administration sold public education out and paved the way for Betsy DeVos.
All that testing, he said, raises test scores.
Clearly, he never read the report of the National Academy of Sciences (2011) “Incentives and Test-Based Accountability in Education.”
I recommend that King read Daniel Koretz’ new book: “The Testing Charade: Pretending to Make Schools Better.” Koretz shows that high-stakes testing produces score inflation, teaching to the test, cheating, and loss of instructional time for non-tested subjects.
Someone should explain Campbell’s Law to John King. Whenever high stakes are attached to a measure, it corrupts the measure as well as the social process that is being measured. That means that when you attach high stakes to tests, you can no longer trust the test results and you mess up what is being measured.
Tests are normed on a bell curve. Every bell curve has a top half and a bottom half. The most advantaged kids cluster in the top half. The most disadvantaged kids cluster in the bottom half. Could someone explain to John King that standardized tests never produce equity? That they measure gaps without reducing them? That they discourage children who are told year after year that they didn’t meet the standard? How does it promote equity to rely on a tool that is designed to measure and reproduce inequity?
The first thing to say about Pai Sahlberg is that you should read his superb book “Finnish Lessons.” It is the living evidence that we in the U.S. have lost our way. After reading that book, I had the chance to visit Finland for a few days, and the luck to have Pasi as my guide. Imagine a country whose schools have no standardized testing, where teachers are trusted and well prepared, where schools are architecturally impressive, where the emphasis is on the well-bring of children, not test scores; where creativity and the arts are encouraged; where all education, including graduate school, is tuition-free.
I will assume you have read that book. Now you should read Pasi’s short book of advice for education leaders, which elaborates on four ideas. They seem simple, even obvious, but they are not.
Here is Pasi presenting in a small session at Teachers College, Columbia University, just a week or two ago.
The first big idea is that all children should have ample time for unstructured play. In Finland, every hour includes 15 minutes of recess. This not only gives children a break, it gives teachers a break.
The second big idea is that small data, the information gathered by teacher observations, has more value than Big Data, the collection and analysis of large quantities of information that often invades privacy and typically provides correlations, not causation.
The third big idea is the importance of equitable funding, sending money where it is needed most.
The fourth big idea is to beware of urban legends about Finland. Finland, for example, does not recruit the best and the brightest into teaching. It selects those with the strongest commitment to the life of a teacher. There is no Teach for Finland.
It is a short book. Only about 90 pages. It is refreshing. It will remind you about what matters most. Clears away the foggy thinking that is now common among our political leaders.
Governor Sam Brownback of Kansas nearly bankrupted the State with his theory that cutting taxes would cause a huge economic boom. Taxes were cut but there was no boom. Meanwhile, the schools of Kansas were underfunded.
The state Supreme Court ordered the legislature to fix school funding. The legislature tinkered. Back and forth. Yesterday the Kansas Supreme Court ordered the legislature again to meet their constitutional obligation to fund the schools.
“The ruling also ordered a fairer distribution of state funding, to ensure that students in poor districts have the same educational opportunities as their peers in wealthier communities.
“The majority of justices supported giving the Legislature until June, but no more time than that, for a final fix on state funding of schools.
“That will give lawmakers, who will reconvene in January, a full regular session to try to come up with a school-finance law that meets court requirements, negating the need for a special session.
“The court is ordering that a new funding law be crafted before April 30 so there’s time for the justices to review it before the annual budget and the schools’ money runs out.
“Once legislation is enacted, the State will have to satisfactorily demonstrate to this court by June 30, 2018, that its proposed remedy brings the state’s education financing system into compliance with Article 6 of the Kansas Constitution regarding the violations identified, i.e., both adequacy and equity,” the court ruling said.
“After that date we will not allow ourselves to be placed in the position of being complicit actors in the continuing deprivation of a constitutionally adequate and equitable education owed to hundreds of thousands of Kansas school children.”
“Three of the seven justices – Lee Johnson, Eric Rosen and Dan Biles – wrote or joined in dissents saying they want the Legislature to have to move faster.
“I would direct the State to tell us no later than the end of this year precisely how the legislature intends to fix its years-long breach of the Kansas Constitution,” Johnson wrote.
“The case, called Gannon v. Kansas, has been going on since November of 2010.
“On Monday, the court specifically held that a school-finance law the Legislature passed earlier this year is unconstitutional.”
Read more here: http://www.kansas.com/news/local/education/article176605486.html#storylink=cpy
The addition of Neil Gorsuch has given conservatives the decisive edge on the Supreme Court that they have sought for many years.
The Janus case is likely to slash the resources of unions. Another case will be a setback for minimum wage workers, those who labor for $7.25 an hour.
These cases together will widen economic inequality and shift greater power to corporations.
“The Supreme Court on Thursday agreed to hear a case that could deal a crushing blow to organized labor.
“It was one of 11 cases the justices added to the court’s docket from the roughly 2,000 petitions seeking review that had piled up during the court’s summer break.
“In the labor case, the court will consider whether public-sector unions may require workers who are not members to help pay for collective bargaining. If the court’s answer is no, unions would probably lose a substantial source of revenue.
“The question was before the justices last year in Friedrichs v. California Teachers Association, and they seemed poised to rule against the unions when the case was argued in January 2016. But the death of Justice Antonin Scalia the next month resulted in a 4-to-4 deadlock.“
The minimum wage case may inflict devastating harm on low wage workers.
Slate reports:
“In recent years, the nationwide Fight for $15 movement has succeeded in persuading several states and cities to raise their hourly minimum wages well above the federal minimum of $7.25. But the effort to ensure a living wage for workers may be headed for a serious setback in the U.S. Supreme Court. Depending on how they rule in a case set for argument next week, the justices could make it much more difficult for millions of workers to secure even the meager wages guaranteed by existing federal law.
“On Monday, the day that kicks off the Supreme Court’s new term, the justices will hear arguments in three consolidated cases with far-reaching implications for wage-earners. The cases—Epic Systems Corp. v. Lewis, Ernst & Young LLP v. Morris, and National Labor Relations Board v. Murphy Oil USA, Inc.—are all about whether employers have the right to compel workers go through onerous individual arbitration proceedings in order to bring labor law claims. If the justices answer that question in the affirmative, then the affected workers will—as a practical matter—find it nearly impossible to win back pay in cases involving wage law violations.
“In the typical case involving wage law violations—such as when a firm makes employees work off the clock, pays less than the minimum wage, or fails to pay extra for overtime—plaintiffs bring what’s called a collective action (similar, but not identical to, a class action) in order to recover back pay from a common employer. Each worker’s claim might be worth only a few hundred or few thousand dollars, but when the defendant is a large firm with lots of similarly situated employees, the collective action might be worth millions. So while virtually no lawyer would want to take on an individual case on behalf of such a plaintiff, it’s much easier to find competent counsel to litigate a potentially more lucrative collective action.
“To pre-empt this possibility, more and more firms are inserting individual arbitration clauses into employee contracts. These clauses require employees to pursue workplace-related claims before private arbitrators rather than in federal or state court. These clauses also, critically, require employees to pursue their claims individually rather than through collective actions.”
These are victories long sought by the most reactionary elements of the most powerful elites in America. ALE, the Koch brothers, the DeVos family, and all those collectively known as “Dark Money” are close to achieving one of their most cherished goals, the victory of capital over labor.
