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Jeff Bryant: How the Rich Get Richer by Destroying Public Schools

By dianeravitch
September 18, 2018 //
26

I think we are beginning to understand the real purpose of Corporate Reform. The 1% and their minions repeat ad nauseum that school choice will fix all education problems, lift the poor out of poverty, and no new taxes are needed. Indeed, they have pushed for tax cuts and cheered on deep cuts to public education. We are watching a generation of defunding public schools, refusing to invest in teachers’ salaries, and a massive transfer of resources from the public sector to private institutions.

Jeff Bryant explains it here.

“Recent news stories about wealthy folks giving multi-million donations to education efforts have drawn both praise and criticism, but two new reports by public education advocacy groups this week are particularly revealing about the real impact rich people have on schools and how they’ve chosen to leverage their money to influence the system.

‘The Education Debt’

“The first report, “Confronting the Education Debt” from the Alliance to Reclaim Our Schools examines the nation’s “education debt” – the historic funding shortfall for school systems that educate black and brown children. The authors find that through a combination of multiple factors – including funding rollbacks, tax cuts, and diversions of public money to private entities – the schools educating the nation’s poorest children have been shorted billions in funding.

“One funding source alone, the federal dollars owed to states for educating low-income children and children with disabilities, shorted schools $580 billion, between 2005 and 2017, in what the government is lawfully required to fund schools through the provisions of Title I of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act and the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act.

“The impact of not fully funding Title I is startling, the report contends, calculating that at full funding, the nation’s highest-poverty schools could provide health and mental health services for every student including dental and vision services, and these schools would have the money to hire a full-time nurse, a full-time librarian, and either an additional full-time counselor or a full-time teaching assistant for every classroom.

“State and local governments contribute to underfunding too by keeping in place tax systems that chronically short schools, particularly those that educate low-income students, mostly of color. Two school districts in Illinois are highlighted – one where 80 percent of students are low-income and gets about $7,808 per pupil in total expenditures, while another, where 3 percent of students are low-income, spends $26,074 per student…

“In the meantime, while the nation’s education debt expands, the accumulated wealth of the richest Americans continues to grow. During that time period the federal government was shorting schools billions, the personal net worth of the nation’s 400 wealthiest individuals grew by $1.57 trillion, the report notes.

“There is a direct correlation between dwindling resources for public schools and the ongoing political proclivity for transferring public dollars to the nation’s wealthiest individuals and corporations,” the report declares. “The rich are getting richer. Our schools are broke on purpose.”

This is the context for Bryant’s discussion of the NPE Action Report, “Hijacked by Billionaires.” The 1% buy control of state and local races so they can advance their tax-cutting, budget-cutting ideas and promote school choice.

“What motivates these wealthy people from exerting their will in the electoral process varies. They are bipartisan politically. Some are directly connected to the charter school industry. Others have expressed disdain for democratically controlled schools and argue, instead, for school governance to transfer to unelected boards. Some are motivated by their hatred of teachers’ unions. While others believe strongly that public education needs to be opened up to market competition from charters.

“But what billionaire donors all have in common, the report authors write, is their devotion to blaming schools and educators for problems posed by educating low-income children. Instead of using their political donations to advocate for more direct aid to schools serving low-income kids, wealthy donors “distract us from policy changes that would really help children,” the report argues, “such as increasing the equity and adequacy of school funding, reducing class sizes, providing medical care and nutrition for students, and other specific efforts to meet the needs of children and families.”

Their one unifying idea is lower taxes.

His third example is a new book about how predatory elites subvert democracy.

“Rich people are playing a double game,” writes Anand Giridharadas in his new book ‘Winners Take All: The Elite Charade of Changing the World.’ “On one hand, there’s no question they’re giving away more money than has ever been given away in history … But I also argue that we have one of the more predatory elites in history, despite that philanthropy.”

Categories Billionaires, Budget Cuts, Corporate Reformers, Democracy, Education Industry, Funding, Inequality, Inequity, Injustice, Philanthropy, Privatization

Lewis Hine, the Man Whose Photographs Ended Child Labor, and Reflections on Labor and Our Moment

By dianeravitch
September 3, 2018 //
34

Lewis Hine was the photographer whose work led to the passage of child labor laws.

Here are some of the photographs that touched the conscience of the nation and its leaders.

There was a time when our nation’s leaders had a conscience.

There was a time when Labor Day parades were a major event.

There was a time when labor unions provided a path to a secure, middle-class life for millions of people.

Now the parades have ended.

Now we have a new economic approach.

The rich get richer. Full employment. Stagnant wages.

The purpose of labor unions was to ensure that working people received a fair share for their contribution to their employer’s success.

Labor unions ensured that prosperity lifted up working people, not just shareholders, Wall Street speculators, and corporate owners.

We need them again. Working people need and deserve a collective voice. Now, more than ever it is time to spread the wealth, open new paths to the middle class, restore the dignity of work, and rebuild the hope for and the reality of a better life for all. To do that means to move away from the current emphasis on consumerism and libertarianism to a public philosophy that embraces the importance of the common good. That means a revival of the nearly forgotten concept of “We the People.” E pluribus unum. A shared destiny in which every life counts, in which we recognize our common humanity and our mutual obligations for one another, our brotherhood and sisterhood.

That won’t happen by wishing and hoping but by political action. It begins by voting out the agents of the current status quo. It must start now.

Categories Billionaires, Childhood, Economy, Inequity, Injustice

“School Choice Is the Enemy of Justice”

By dianeravitch
August 15, 2018 //
56

The editorial pages of the New York Times have been an echo chamber for school choice for years. The editorials regularly applaud charter schools as escape hatches from public schools and repeat the talking points of the billionaires and hedge fund managers who have gleefully replaced public schools with privately managed schools. I can’t recall an editorial that acknowledged the importance of rebuilding, revitalizing, and strengthening public education as a major responsibility of our society. I can’t recall one that criticized the onslaught of privatization against public education in our nation’s urban schools, where parents of color have lost not only their public schools, but their voice as citizens in creating public schools that serve the entire community. The editorial board has steadfastly ignored the coordinated and bipartisan assault on democratic governance of public schools in cities and states across the nation. The op-ed page, which was created to provide a space for views different from the editorial page has seldom challenged school choice orthodoxy. Almost every regular opinion writer has lauded the “miracle” of charter schools, including David Brooks, Nicholas Kristof, and David Leonhardt. The op-ed page recently included an article urging liberals not to give up on charters even though Betsy DeVos likes them too, even though they are segregated and non-union.

But now comes a new and welcome voice.

Erin Aubrey Kaplan writes that school choice is the enemy of justice. She has been selected as a regular opinion writer, which is more good news. She writes about her personal experience as a child in California, a state that is controlled by Democrats but purchased by the billionaires who sneer at public schools and want to replace them with charter schools. She reminds us that school choice was the battle cry of segregationists. In many states and cities, it still is.

Her article poses an essential question: Is public education, democratically controlled, still part of the social contract? And she writes that many white liberals, including Jerry Brown (and in New York, Andrew Cuomo) have said no.

She writes:

“LOS ANGELES — In 1947, my father was one of a small group of black students at the largely white Fremont High School in South Central Los Angeles. The group was met with naked hostility, including a white mob hanging blacks in effigy. But such painful confrontations were the nature of progress, of fulfilling the promise of equality that had driven my father’s family from Louisiana to Los Angeles in the first place.

“In 1972, I was one of a slightly bigger group of black students bused to a predominantly white elementary school in Westchester, a community close to the beach in Los Angeles. While I didn’t encounter the overt hostility my father had, I did experience resistance, including being barred once from entering a white classmate’s home because, she said matter-of-factly as she stood in the doorway, she didn’t let black people (she used a different word) in her house.

“Still, I believed, even as a fifth grader, that education is a social contract and that Los Angeles was uniquely suited to carry it out. Los Angeles would surely accomplish what Louisiana could not.

“I was wrong. Today Los Angeles and California as a whole have abandoned integration as the chief mechanism of school reform and embraced charter schools instead.

“This has happened all over the country, of course, but California has led the way — it has 630,000 students in charter schools, more than any other state, and the Los Angeles Unified School District has more than 154,000 of them. Charters are associated with choice and innovation, important elements of the good life that California is famous for. In a deep-blue state, that good life theoretically includes diversity, and many white liberals believe charters can achieve that, too. After all, a do-it-yourself school can do anything it wants.

“But that’s what makes me uneasy, the notion that public schools, which charters technically are, have a choice about how or to what degree to enforce the social contract. There are many charter success stories, I know, and many make a diverse student body part of their mission. But charters as a group are ill suited to the task of justice because they are a legacy of failed justice.

“Integration did not happen. The effect of my father’s and my foray into those white schools was not more equality but white flight. Largely white schools became largely black, and Latino schools were stigmatized as “bad” and never had a place in the California good life.

“It’s partly because diversity can be managed — or minimized — that charters have become the public schools that liberal whites here can get behind. This is in direct contrast to the risky, almost revolutionary energy that fueled past integration efforts, which by their nature created tension and confrontation. But as a society — certainly as a state — we have lost our appetite for that engagement, and the rise of charters is an expression of that loss.

“Choice and innovation sound nice, but they also echo what happened after the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court decision, when entire white communities in the South closed down schools to avoid the dread integration.

“This kind of racial avoidance has become normal, embedded in the public school experience. It seems particularly so in Los Angeles, a suburb-driven city designed for geographical separation. What looks like segregation to the rest of the world is, to many white residents, entirely neutral — simply another choice.

“Perhaps it should come as no surprise that in 2010, researchers at the Civil Rights Project at U.C.L.A. found, in a study of 40 states and several dozen municipalities, that black students in charters are much more likely than their counterparts in traditional public schools to be educated in an intensely segregated setting. The report says that while charters had more potential to integrate because they are not bound by school district lines, “charter schools make up a separate, segregated sector of our already deeply stratified public school system.”

“In a 2017 analysis, data journalists at The Associated Press found that charter schools were significantly overrepresented among the country’s most racially isolated schools. In other words, black and brown students have more or less resegregated within charters, the very institutions that promised to equalize education.

“This has not stemmed the popular appeal of charters. School board races in California that were once sleepy are now face-offs between well-funded charter advocates and less well-funded teachers’ unions. Progressive politicians are expected to support charters, and they do. Gov. Jerry Brown, who opened a couple of charters during his stint as mayor of Oakland, vetoed legislation two years ago that would have made charter schools more accountable. Antonio Villaraigosa built a reputation as a community organizer who supported unions, but as mayor of Los Angeles, he started a charter-like endeavor called Partnership for Los Angeles Schools.

“This year, charter advocates got their pick for school superintendent, Austin Beutner. And billionaires like Eli Broad have made charters a primary cause: In 2015, an initiative backed in part by Mr. Broad’s foundation outlined a $490 million plan to place half of the students in the Los Angeles district into charters by 2023.

“I live in Inglewood, a chiefly black and brown city in Los Angeles County that’s facing gentrification and the usual displacement of people of color. Traditional public schools are struggling to stay open as they lose students to charters. But those who support the gentrifying, which includes a new billion-dollar N.F.L. stadium in the heart of town, see charters as part of the improvements. They see them as progress.

“Despite all this, I continue to believe in the social contract that in my mind is synonymous with public schools and public good. I continue to believe that California will at some point fulfill that contract. I believe this most consciously when I go back to Westchester and reflect on my formative two years in school there. In the good life there is such a thing as a good fight, and it is not over.“

Categories Accountability, California, Charter Schools, Civil Rights, Education Industry, Education Reform, Inequity, Justice, Privatization, Racism, School Choice, Segregation , Racial Isolation and Integration

News: Trump Administration Abandons Affirmative Action

By dianeravitch
July 3, 2018 //
15

The Trump administration has officially abandoned affirmative action, having decided that African Americans and Latinos no longer need any additional breaks and can pull themselves up by their own shoelaces.

Trump forgot that his son-in-Law Jared Kushner was the beneficiary of affirmative action. As detailed by journalist Daniel Golden in a book about preferential treatment for rich boys, Kushner’s dad gave Harvard a couple of million dollars, although no one in the family ever went to Harvard. This cleared the way for Jared’s admission, who vaulted over better qualified applicants from the same high school. Golden’s Book is called “The Price of Admission: How America’s Ruling Class Buys Its Way into Elite Colleges—and Who Gets Left Outside the Gates.”

I’m not sure how Donald got into the Wharton School. It surely wasn’t grades or brains or even athletic skills (remember that the bone spur in his foot enabled him to avoid the Vietnam draft, his fifth deferment).

The story begins:

WASHINGTON — The Trump administration will encourage the nation’s school superintendents and college presidents to adopt race-blind admissions standards, abandoning an Obama administration policy that called on universities to consider race as a factor in diversifying their campuses, Trump administration officials said.

Last November, Attorney General Jeff Sessions asked the Justice Department to re-evaluate past policies that he believed pushed the department to act beyond what the law, the Constitution and the Supreme Court had required, Devin M. O’Malley, a Justice Department spokesman said. As part of that process, the Justice Department rescinded seven policy guidances from the Education Department’s civil rights division on Tuesday.

“The executive branch cannot circumvent Congress or the courts by creating guidance that goes beyond the law and — in some instances — stays on the books for decades,” Mr. O’Malley said.

The Supreme Court has steadily narrowed the ways that schools can consider race when trying to diversify their student bodies. But it has not banned the practice.

Now, affirmative action is at a crossroads. The Trump administration is moving against any use of race as a measurement of diversity in education. And the retirement of Justice Anthony M. Kennedy at the end of this month will leave the court without its swing vote on affirmative action and allow President Trump to nominate a justice opposed to a policy that for decades has tried to integrate elite educational institutions.

A highly anticipated case is pitting Harvard against Asian-American students who say one of the nation’s most prestigious institutions has systematically excluded some Asian-American applicants to maintain slots for students of other races. That case is clearly aimed at the Supreme Court.

“The whole issue of using race in education is being looked at with a new eye in light of the fact that it’s not just white students being discriminated against, but Asians and others as well,” said Roger Clegg, president and general counsel of the conservative Center for Equal Opportunity. “As the demographics of the country change, it becomes more and more problematic.”

The Obama administration believed that students benefit from being surrounded by diverse classmates, so in 2011, the administration offered schools a potential road map to establishing affirmative action policies that could withstand legal scrutiny. The guidance was controversial at the time that it was issued, for its far-reaching interpretation of the law. Justice officials said that pages of hypothetical scenarios offered in the guidance were particularly problematic, as they clearly bent the law to specific policy preferences.

In a pair of policy guidance documents, the Obama Education and Justice departments told elementary and secondary schools and college campuses to use “the compelling interests” established by the court to achieve diversity. They concluded that the Supreme Court “has made clear such steps can include taking account of the race of individual students in a narrowly tailored manner.”

The Trump administration’s decisions on Tuesday brought government policy back to the George W. Bush administration guidances. The Trump administration did not formally reissue Bush-era guidance on race-based admissions, but, in recent days, officials did repost a Bush administration affirmative action policy document online.

That document states, “The Department of Education strongly encourages the use of race-neutral methods for assigning students to elementary and secondary schools.”

For the past several years, that document had been replaced by a note declaring that the policy had been withdrawn. The Bush policy is now published in full, with no note attached. It reaffirmed its view in 2016 after a Supreme Court ruling that said that schools could consider race as one factor among many.

In that case, Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin, a white woman claimed she was denied admission because of her race, in part because the university had a program that admitted significant numbers of minorities who ranked in the top 10 percent of their class.

“It remains an enduring challenge to our nation’s education system to reconcile the pursuit of diversity with the constitutional promise of equal treatment and dignity,” Justice Kennedy wrote for the 4-3 majority.

The Trump administration’s plan would scrap the existing policies and encourage schools not to consider race at all. The new policy would not have the force of law, but it amounts to the official view of the federal government. School officials who keep their admissions policies intact would do so knowing that they could face a Justice Department investigation or lawsuit, or lose federal funding from the Education Department.

A senior Justice Department official pushed back against the idea that these decisions are about rolling back protections for minorities. He said they are hewing the department closer to the letter of the law.

He noted that rolling back guidance is not the same thing as a change of law, so that the decision to rescind technically would not have a legal effect on how the government defends or challenges affirmative-action related issues.

The move comes at a moment when conservatives see an opportunity to dismantle affirmative action.
Attorney General Jeff Sessions has said his prosecutors will investigate and sue universities over discriminatory admissions policies. And the conservative-backed lawsuit against Harvard is being pushed by the same group, the Project on Fair Representation, that pressed Fisher.

Categories Academic Freedom, Betsy DeVos, Civil Rights, Education Reform, Higher Education, Inequity, Injustice

G.F. Brandenburg: Why Are Charter School Operatives Picking the D.C. Chancellor?

By dianeravitch
July 2, 2018 //
6

Yesterday I posted G.F. Brandenburg on the same question. He posted a letter by a parent activist, who thinks the charter industry wants a chancellor on their side. She wrote: “the D.C. Public School Chancellor has absolutely no authority over any charter school in this city. The Chancellor cannot make any determinations on the siting of a school, the board composition of a school, the curriculum, staff or any other matter related to a charter.” Furthermore, charters can locate wherever they choose, even across the street from a public school.

If charters are competing with public schools, why do they get a large say in picking the chancellor who leads the other team?

Here is another post by Brandenburg, with the names of those on the search committee. He cites a post written by Valerie Jablow.

He adds:

“All told, of the 14 people on the selection panel, half have ties to charter and ed reform interests. And several were the source of thousands of dollars in campaign contributions for the mayor.

“[Confidential note to Mayor Bowser: Does this mean that if I and two of my DCPS BFFs donate $5000 to your current campaign, one of us will be named by you to serve on the charter board? I mean, this is the selection panel for the DCPS chancellor we’re talking about here! Why have any charter reps at all, as there have been zero purely DCPS reps. EVER on the charter board? Or is this all OK here because, um, well, because cross sector something something?]

“Then, too, of those 14 people on the selection panel, there are a total of 1 teacher; 1 student; and 4 parents, half of whom have ties to ed. reform and charter interests.

“The law regarding chancellor selection states (boldface mine) that “the Mayor shall establish a review panel of teachers, including representatives of the WTU, parentS, and studentS to aid the Mayor . . . in the selection of the Chancellor.” The law also says nothing about principals or officials from organizations unrelated to DCPS serving on the selection panel.

“Notwithstanding the (remote) possibility that the singular student and teacher selected for this panel have multiple personalities, the math here simply doesn’t add up: there are more than a hundred THOUSAND parents and students in DCPS and several THOUSAND teachers.

“And yet we have a rep from Friendship charter school on this panel and not even TWO DCPS teachers or students??

“Gees, Mayor Bowser: it’s nice that you’re soliciting limited feedback on the next chancellor from us unwashed masses, but can’t you dial back the public dissing?

“Amazingly, all of this is downright familiar in DC public education:

“For instance, several years ago the process to change school boundaries showed that people wanted, overwhelmingly, a strong system of by right public schools in every neighborhood.

“Since then, our city leaders have enacted policies and taken actions that ensure that remains a pipe dream:

“–Thousands of new seats have been created in the charter sector, with little public notification. (One–Statesman–will start this fall without any public notification or input whatsoever beforehand. Yeah: check out these public comments.) Without commensurate growth in the population of school-age children, the result is a declining share of DCPS enrollment–all without any public agreement whatsoever.

“–A closed DCPS school (Kenilworth) was offered to a charter school in violation of several DC laws, including public notification; RFO to other charter schools; and approval of the council. (I am still waiting for my FOIA request to DCPS about this to be answered, since no one on the council, at the deputy mayor for education’s office, or at DCPS ever answered my questions as to how this offer actually came about.)

“–A test-heavy school rating system was approved, which tracks closely with what our charter board uses, without any consideration for what the public actually said it wanted. (And with a private ed. reform lobbying organization phonebanking to ensure it got what it–not the public–wanted.)

“–Ours is a public education landscape in which wealthy donors set the conversation (watch the linked video starting at 1:21:25); determine the way in which schools are judged; and profit from it all, while the public is left far, far behind.

“–Despite clear data showing problems in both sectors for graduation accountability and absences, there has been little movement in city leadership to ensure both sectors are equally analyzed.

“In the same manner, in our new chancellor selection panel the public is disenfranchised and the law not followed, while personnel from private groups are heavily involved and stand to profit in a variety of ways.

“Hmm: Familiar indeed.”

Categories Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, District of Columbia, Inequity, Injustice

California: School Board Members Plead for Authority to Limit Charters Invading Their Districts

By dianeravitch
June 15, 2018 //
8

Three Bay Area school board members joined to write an article pleading for the authority to stop the invasion of charters into their districts, stripping them of resources and students and causing fiscal crises.

Judy Appel is a Berkeley Unified School Board trustee. Roseann Torres is an Oakland School Board director, representing District 5. Madeline Kronenberg is a West Contra Costa Unified School Board trustee. Assembly District 15 includes Albany, Berkeley, El Cerrito, Emeryville, Hercules, portions of Oakland, Piedmont, Pinole, Richmond, and San Pablo.

They wrote:

“As school board members in Oakland, Berkeley and West Contra Costa, we believe in the power of a public-school education. Public schools used to be a way up for students and our state once led the way. But now we’re falling behind the rest of the country.

“Shrinking budgets and resources are one of the biggest culprits and that’s because, in large part, of the proliferation of charter schools. As school board members, we’ve seen how charter schools threaten public schools and pose a risk to the equal opportunity that public schools should provide.

“As we see more charter schools opening, we’re calling on Sacramento to give school boards like ours more control over charters.

“Many may wonder how charter schools, which are marketed as a choice for parents in search of better options for their children, are putting students at risk. Independently run charter schools take precious per-student taxpayer funding from traditional public schools and aren’t required to deliver the same quality product.

“The Chronicle report earlier this month, “Study says Oakland school district lost $57.4 million last year because of charters,” is a dismaying affirmation of what we’ve seen happening to public education in our state. The study showed a net loss to the Oakland Unified School District of $57.4 million in the past school year alone. This is a district that was forced to cut $9 million from its operating budget halfway through the school year.

“Charter school advocates point to mid-year cuts in school districts like Oakland as justification of why parents deserve school choice. But the very existence of 40 charter schools in the city of Oakland alone denies our schools the funding they need to serve our students well. Increasing class sizes and decreasing investment in programs such as foreign language, arts and music classes, counseling and library services are directly the result of charter school expansion. The majority of Oakland’s charters were created during financial receivership, which seems to have created an opening for the proliferation of charter schools that sadly has not slowed down in the past decade such that each year about four to seven new applications arrive. Oakland is not alone. Not 10 miles away, the 12 charters in West Contra Costa Unified School District are causing similar pressures.

“Though charters take taxpayer funding from public schools, they aren’t held to the same transparency standards as our traditional public schools. For example, charter schools are not subject to open government rules. They often spend public dollars on charter management companies, which in turn have used their war chests to work against collective bargaining rights of educators and counselors, protecting the opaque budgeting in the schools.

“Charter schools also have the ability to turn away students, often refusing to educate our most needy students — those with disabilities, behavioral challenges, special needs or who are new to our country. Those students require more services and ultimately more resources from our schools.

“We believe that elected school boards, like the boards on which we serve, are very limited in their abilities to prevent new charter schools from coming into the district and taking per-pupil dollars. Not only are we unable to prevent charter schools from coming to our districts, we are required by law to provide the charter school free space.

“Charter schools do all of this — siphon public school funds, dodge transparency requirements, limit collective bargaining of educators, cherry-pick students and turn others away — with the claim of providing a superior public education. However, study after study shows that outcomes don’t differ between students who attend traditional public schools and charters. Instead, charters simply bleed public schools of precious resources, leaving educators and administrators to do more with less.

“In our Assembly district alone, we have some of our state’s best-resourced and most under-resourced schools. The funding structure is not serving California’s children fairly, and an entire generation of students will feel the effects.

“That’s not OK.

“Our Legislature must act. We need to give local school districts real control to reject charter school petitions. Legislators need to pass legislation to increase transparency and reporting of existing charters before we allow another one to open its doors. We are committed to equity in education, which means making sure that all of our students have equal access to quality education.”

Categories Accountability, California, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Inequity, Privatization

NAEP Results: Scores Mostly Flat, Gaps Widen

By dianeravitch
April 10, 2018 //
18

 

Education Week reports that NAEP results are flat, with few exceptions. The billions squandered on annual testing and Common Core Gabe produced meager change, especially for those already at the bottom. Achievement gaps widened.

With so little change, it is time—past time—to give serious attention to rethinking the federal testing juggernaut that began with No Child Left Behind, intensified with Race to the Top, and continues with the so-called Every Student Succeeds Act. The latest national results show that many children have been left behind, we are nowhere near “the top,” and every student is not succeeding.

In short, the federal policy of standards, testing, and accountability is a train wreck.

It is past time to stop blaming students, teachers, and schools, and place the blame for stagnation where it belongs: On nearly 20 years of failed federal policy based on failed assumptions.

 

Education Werk reports:

“Across the board, struggling American students are falling behind, while top performers are rising higher on the test dubbed the “Nation’s Report Card.”

“A nationally representative group of nearlyt Behind,  585,000 4th- and 8th-graders took the National Assessment of Educational Progress in 2017, the first time the tests were administered digitally. The results, released Tuesday, show no change at all for 4th grade in either subject or for 8th graders in math since the tests were last given in 2015. Eighth graders on average made only a 1-point gain in reading, to 267 on the NAEP’s 500-point scale.

“That meager gain in reading was driven entirely by the top 25 percent of students. During the last decade, 8th grade reading was the only test in which the average score for both high and low performers rose. By contrast, in math, the percentage of students performing below basic (30 percent) and those performing at the advanced level (10 percent) both increased significantly since 2007. The same pattern emerged in 4th grade math and reading.”

 

 

 

Categories Education Reform, Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), Failure, Inequity, NCLB (No Child Left Behind), Race to the Top

Johanna Garcia on “The Uncomfortable Truth About Testing,” an NPE Video in English and Spanish

By dianeravitch
March 4, 2018 //
12

 

Johanna Garcia speaks about “The Unconfortable Truth About the Tests.”

The videos were produced by professional videographer Michael Elliott, assisted by Kemala Karmen, on behalf of the Network for Public Education.

Please watch Johanna Garcia and share the videos widely through your social media networks.

 

Johanna Garcia: The Uncomfortable Truth About the Tests

Johanna Garcia: La Incómoda Verdad Sobre Los Exámenes

 

Watch here also: https://networkforpubliceducation.org/2018/03/10290/

Categories Accountability, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Inequity, Network for Public Education, Testing

Indianapolis: Why Are White Parents Afraid to Send their Children to School with Black Children?

By dianeravitch
March 1, 2018 //
12

Matthew Gonzalez and his wife decided to move from the suburbs to the city of Indianapolis to enjoy the arts and culture and other amenities found in cities. But what to do about school? Indianapolis has many magnets and a choice system that has exacerbated segregation. They are trying now to manipulate the choice system to promote integration.

But in the meanwhile, the Gonzalez family had to decide whether to send their child to a mostly black neighborhood school. They did, he had a great year, and then they jumped for one of the coveted magnet schools.

Read here to see how they wrestled with the dilemma.

Another reminder that segregation is a social construction, that it can be thwarted, and that prejudice comes in many forms.

Categories Indianapolis, Inequity, Racism, Segregation

Trump’s Appalling Nominee to Lead the Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department

By dianeravitch
February 3, 2018 //
8

 

If you want to put an end to civil rights enforcement in the nation, Trump has your guy to do it.

I received this mauling from CREDO ACTION.

“Don’t confirm Eric Dreiband as director of the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division.”

Dear Diane,

Tell the Senate: Don’t confirm Eric Dreiband as director of the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division

Donald Trump hates equality. When he promises to “make America great again,” he’s talking about undoing decades of civil rights gains and doing everything he can to institutionalize white supremacy and misogyny.

That’s why, when it’s time to appoint heads of civil rights offices across the government, he picks people who will undermine the very principles they are supposed to defend.

Eric Dreiband, Trump’s nominee to lead the Civil Rights Division at the Department of Justice is a perfect example. Instead of having years of experience defending civil rights, he comes with decades of work defending people and corporations accused of discrimination.1 We need to do everything we can to keep him from being confirmed.

Tell the Senate: Don’t confirm Eric Dreiband as director of the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division. Click here to sign the petition.

Our country’s civil rights laws are part of a generations-long effort to come to terms with and make amends for a country founded on both the systematic oppression and dehumanization of people of color and the misogynistic subjugation and disenfranchisement of women. The Civil Rights Division has a history of defending voting rights, holding rogue police departments accountable, fighting housing discrimination and ensuring equal rights in education. Eric Dreiband’s career has done the opposite. He defended:

The University of North Carolina over challenges to North Carolina’s anti-LGBTQ HB2;
A Catholic challenge to the Affordable Care Act’s birth control benefit;
Abercrombie & Fitch’s attempt to deny a Muslim woman employment because of her headscarf; and
R.J. Reynolds’ policy of weeding out job applications from “older” applicants.2,3
He also spoke out personally against the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, the Protecting Older Workers Against Discrimination Act and efforts to “ban the box” as a way to minimize discrimination against job applicants with criminal convictions.4

In advance of Dreiband’s committee hearing, Sen. Patrick Leahy said he “honestly couldn’t think of a more uniquely unqualified nominee to defend and enforce the core civil rights laws that codify the values of a just and tolerant society.”5 But Dreiband’s unique disqualifications are what make him a perfect choice for Trump and extreme right-wing Republicans who want to dismantle civil rights protections and use government to protect racists, misogynists, xenophobes and anti-LGBTQ bigots.

We have to put massive pressure on every Senate Democrat and any Republican with a conscience to block Dreiband’s confirmation.

Click the link below to tell the Senate: Don’t confirm Eric Dreiband as director of the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division:

https://act.credoaction.com/sign/Block_Dreiband?t=7&akid=27083%2E4147912%2EosCF3c

Thank you for everything you do,

Heidi Hess, Senior Campaign Manager
CREDO Action from Working Assets

Add your name:

Sign the petition ►
References:

Deena Zaru, “Civil rights activists raise alarm over Trump’s DOJ pick,” CNN, Aug. 14, 2017.
Tess Owen, “Trump’s civil rights pick has made a career fighting for corporate rights,” VICE News, June 30, 2017.
The Leadership Conference et al., “Oppose the Confirmation of Eric Dreiband to Serve as Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights,” Aug. 31, 2017.
Ibid.
Paul Gordon, “Republicans Advance More Dangerously Unqualified Nominees,” People for the American Way, Jan. 19, 2018.
photo: House Committee on Education and the Workforce Democrats

 

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Categories Bias, Civil Rights, Inequity, Injustice
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