Archives for category: Innovation
« Older Entries

What Should Mayor Mamdani Do to Improve NYC’s Public Schools?

By dianeravitch
December 26, 2025 //
16

Bob Lubetsky and Bill Stroud are veteran leaders of the New York City public schools. They have sound advice for incoming Mayor Zohran Mamdani. The new Mayor will be sworn in on January 1. He promised, during his campaign, to eliminate the autocratic mayoral control imposed in 2002. Will he?

They wrote:

Zohran Mamdani’s election as Mayor of NYC represents a new way of thinking about New York City’s life and  its inhabitants, as well as the policies a candidate should represent to achieve office. In short, Mr. Mamdani has disrupted and dislocated all of the tried and true shibboleths of politics: a Muslim can’t be elected in a heavily populated Jewish city; a democratic socialist will be opposed by the monied interests who will  support other candidates and, most damning of all, the claim that he must be a closet communist. Zohran has proven his opponents wrong on all counts!  There is much to be learned – not only for politicians – but for all who must choose between continuity or disruption, between challenging orthodoxy and change. 

 The New York City Department of Education has been mired, for as long as anyone can remember, in a hierarchical framework that assumes greater intelligence and ability resides in those at the top of an organization. Although there was a period of improvement in high school graduation rates with the small schools movement, such a bureaucratic structure has demonstrated over and over again that it is incapable of igniting enthusiasm from teachers nor the continuous advancement of student achievement. 

Given Mayor Mamdani’s campaign focus on democracy, the appointment of a Chancellor will be an indication of commitment. The campaign of Mayor Mamdani has disrupted and challenged our beliefs about what can be accomplished. 

 It is time to disrupt the structure of the DoE and reinvest teaching with the excitement and energy that comes from schools dedicated to the pursuit of knowledge and the development of students’ potential to be powerful citizens. The Department of Education can identify pockets of outstanding schools in every part of New York City. What it is not able to accomplish is to excite the public about what is happening in all of its 1800 schools, whether pre-K, elementary, junior high or high school. The time is right for a reorganization capitalizing on the era that has put to lie the beliefs and assumptions of those who believe improvement will occur when we get just the right individuals at the top to lead a fiercely bureaucratic organization – that what we need is the right kind of smart, capable people.

The mayoral election has both excited the voters and put to rest many of the tired ideas of what is possible (more than 2 million votes were cast in the Mayoral election, more than any time since 1969!) We believe that the time is now for creating a government that seeks to better meet the needs and desires that are different from past administrations.

Disruption and not continuity must become the modus operandi of the new administration.  It is time to dismantle the old bureaucracy and develop more democratic structures and methods of decision-making. Those closest to the work should have the ability to make decisions based on high quality evidence gleaned from accomplished educators and the research community. The command and control structure that dominates the NYCDOE needs to be put to rest.

 Both of us have worked as educators outside the US and have led schools in NYC and been central office administrators.  We have seen up close the consequences of a hierarchical educational structure and have supported schools within highly bureaucratized and closely monitored educational systems.  

It is clear to us that control is often illusory and always inimical to innovation.  In a school system that has achieved recognition not for its accomplishments but because it is among the most segregated school systems in the US, which currently has 150,000 homeless students, essentially flat NAEP scores over nearly 50 years, a disillusioned teaching staff, a host of alienated and disaffected students and parents, and a wide swath of special education students whose basic educational needs have not been addressed, NYC requires something new and different. A reinvigorated Department of Education whose disruption will help educators focus on the real work of education, which is, as Socrates wrote long ago—”the kindling of a flame, not the filling of a vessel.”

Disruption aimed at reinvigorating teaching with the energy and enthusiasm that brought wide-eyed, devoted young people into the teaching profession can return excitement to the profession and to the classroom.  Once again education will echo the words of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.: “The function of education, therefore, is to teach one to think intensively and to think critically. But education which stops with efficiency may prove the greatest menace to society. The most dangerous criminal may be the man gifted with reason, but with no morals.”  What disruptive framework will inform and guide the next Chancellor so as not to disappoint yet again? 

 Considering what recommendations we would offer to Mayor Mamdani as he considers whom to appoint as the new NYC public schools Chancellor, we would seek a candidate who believes in the following 5 Core Ideas and can begin the planning/implementation process on day one. These ideas and their implementation needs to be carefully planned and implemented so that they stimulate considered discussion within the Department focused on how to implement the five specific strategies identified below. 

1.   Deepening and Strengthening Democracy, one of the guiding principles of the Democratic Socialist Party of America, but also a foundational principle of countries that identify themselves as democratic.  If democracy is truly to guide our behavior, then democracy should be evident inside the central office and throughout the system, most especially in the institution in which students and their teachers spend most of their waking hours.  The specific structures and nature of these relationships and practices need to be worked out in each school, but the overall guiding principle must be the inclusion of all in the school community and the classroom, and the specific role that each will play in achieving the goal of deepening and strengthening democracy at the school level.  Democracy should also characterize relationships throughout the system and structure of the Department of Education.  The old command and control model of decision-making needs to be put to rest, finally.

2. Invert the Pyramid of decision-making so that decisions are made by those closest to the work. Classroom teachers must be at the core of decisions about what occurs in the classroom. No longer should institution-wide formulas apply to all classrooms and schools, as decision making regarding teaching methodologies and curriculum will reside with teachers. All resources must be directed towards supporting students and the classroom teacher. The goal of all those involved in supporting and assisting teachers must be to provide assistance and useful, timely research information to support classroom decisions, including recognizing state mandates, as well as learning about the latest research findings relevant to classroom instruction and school organization.

3. Decentralize the NYC Department of Education and establish a Zone of Innovation. The current central office staff of more than 2,000 needs to be reduced and repurposed to support school-level decisions. Schools should be organized into Zones of Innovation consisting of 20 schools. Membership would be by application, (with approval by the school community,) and would receive a financial incentive to support efforts at meeting the democratically developed goals for each school. Each 20 schools would continue to be supported by already existing structures, but over time, these structures would be modified so as to be more aligned with a vision of all schools becoming part of a Zone of Innovation. Membership in the Zone would be phased in over time with the specific determinants of membership to be determined.

4. Dissemination of Innovation through a new Division of Research & Innovation. A new Division of Research & Innovation would be formed for the purpose of identifying best practices and new research findings (preK-12) identified to support the work of schools. Learnings from these experiences would be disseminated through a system-wide structure that would advertise such innovations and seek feedback. The fact that the largest school system in the US does not have an effective research division is an embarrassment.

5. Portfolio Assessment would become the preferred assessment model. Assessment of students, in order to be valid, needs to be curriculum based. Such an approach would allow schools and teachers to recapture the original meaning of Assessment, a word derived from the Latin Assidere meaning to “sit beside.” Standardized tests need to be deprioritized to rethink curricula and testing as a form of pedagogy, thereby reducing the pressure that comes with these Assessments so that the original meaning can be recaptured as teachers sit with students to learn and explore together. The research findings on the impact of a student’s socio-economic background on paper and pencil test scores is clear (see for instance “The Pernicious Predictability of State Mandated Tests of Academic Achievement in the United States.” https//doi.org/19.3390/educsci14020129). Among the alternatives to test based accountability –The New York Performance Standards Consortium (https://performanceassessment.org ) has permission to administer only one Regents exam for its 38 member schools – English – and to use Performance Based assessment in all the other Regents tested areas; the assessment system used by the International Baccalaureate Schools is another performance based system. There are numerous other examples worth investigating.   

New York City’s embedded and seemingly intractable educational issues – the hyper segregation of schools, the embarrassingly awful services provided to students with special needs; the abandonment of child-centered teaching in favor of teacher dominated strategies that have little or no research basis; the decontextualized pursuit of facts rather than the more difficult and potentially contentious issue of promoting understanding; structures and pedagogy that better meets the needs of our other-than-English speaking students; the substitution of a narrow form of vocational education as a solution to our current economic crisis and rising youth unemployment, to name but a few – can successfully be addressed with the restructuring and repurposing of the DOE. 

What we have outlined is but a beginning. The dawning of a new day will begin when Mayor Mamdani takes office but must be reflected in how the institutions under his control are organized, how they interact with others, whether they promote change or tinkering at the edges, and whether they truly are democratic.  The early signs point to a very different way of organizing and thinking about the work of governing New York City.  We are hopeful that the ideas presented herein will stimulate discussion and reconsideration of how the NYC Department of Education can become a beacon of light and hope for all of New York City and perhaps beyond its borders.  

-Bob Lubetsky 

-Bill Stroud

Bob Lubetsky is a former teacher and high school principal who led a NYC alternative school that has been replicated throughout Europe.  He previously worked as a central office administrator for the NYC Department of Education and also has experience as a teacher and staff developer in Europe and Africa.  He has also worked at the NYC Leadership Academy and was previously Program Director of the Educational Leadership Program at CCNY.

Bill Stroud is a former teacher who founded two high schools in New York City and was a central office administrator.  He has been a staff developer in 6 countries outside the US where he is much sought after as a staff developer because of his experience. 

Categories Democracy, Education Reform, Innovation, New York City

NPE Releases a New Report on Charter Schools and Their Lack of Accountability

By dianeravitch
December 8, 2025 //
5

I was present in the very beginnings of the charter school movement. I advocated on their behalf. I and many others said that charter schools would be better than public schools because they would be more successful (because they would be free of bureaucracy), they would be more accountable (because their charter would be revoked if they weren’t successful), they would “save” the neediest students, and they would save money (because they wouldn’t have all that administrative bloat).

That was the mid-1980s. Now, more than 35 years later, we know that none of those promises were kept. The charter lobby has fought to avoid accountability; charters pay their administrators more than public schools; charters demand the same funding as public schools; the most successful charters avoid the neediest students; and–aside from charters that choose their students with care–charters are not more successful than public schools, and many are far worse. Charters open and close like day lilies.

This week, the National Center of Charter School Accountability, a project of NPE, published Charter School Reckoning: Part II Disillusionment, written by Carol Burris. This is the second part in a three-part comprehensive report on charter schools entitled Charter School Reckoning: Decline, Dissolution, and Cost.

Its central argument is that a once-promising idea—charter schools as laboratories of innovation—has been steadily weakened by state laws that prioritize rapid expansion and less regulation over school quality and necessary oversight. Those policy and legislative shifts have produced predictable results: fraud, mismanagement, profiteering, abrupt closures, and significant charter churn. The report connects the above instances with the weaknesses in state charter laws and regulations that enable both bad practices and criminal activity. 

As part of the investigation, the NPE team scanned news reports and government investigative audits published between September 2023 and September 2025 and identified $858,000,000 in tax dollars lost due to theft, fraud, and/or gross mismanagement.

The report contrasts the original aspirations of the charter movement with today’s reality, shaped in large part by the intense lobbying of powerful corporate charter chains and trade organizations. It also examines areas that have received far too little attention, including the role of authorizers and the structure and accountability of charter-school governing boards.

It concludes with ten recommendations that, taken together, would bring democratic governance to the schools, open schools based on need and community input, and restore the founding vision of charter schools as nimble, community-driven, teacher-led laboratories grounded in equity and public purpose.

This new report can be found here.

Part I of Charter Reckoning: Decline can be found here.

 

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corruption, Democracy, Disruption, Education Industry, Ethics, Failure, Fraud, Funding, Innovation

Peter Greene: A Major For-Profit Chain Implodes

By dianeravitch
August 7, 2025 //
11

Peter Greene writes in Forbes, where he is a columnist, about the failure of a major for-profit chain, the kind that will enjoy the benefit of voucher programs.

Ray Girn graduated from the University of Toronto in 2004 with a BS in Psychology, then went to work in LePorte Schools, a chain of Montessori schools in Southern California. By 2010 he was CEO of the chain and, in his telling, raised a “nascent family business” into “what became North America’s largest Montessori network.” He also met his wife, Rebecca.

Just three years ago, Higher Ground was calling itself “the future of education.” A promotional video touted “a mission to redesign education from the ground up” with a mixture of “rigor and individualization” across its family of 150 schools. Now most of those schools have been shuttered by foreclosure, and the company has filed a pre-arranged Chapter 11 bankruptcy plan.

In 2016, the Girns launched Higher Ground Education in Austin, Texas. The mission, said Girn, was to “mainstream and modernize Montessori education through extending its principles across infancy and into high schools.” Rebecca was the Chief Programs Officer and General Counsel.

Higher Ground grew both through acquisition and creation. It was the parent group for Guidepost Montessori, a huge network of Montessori schools located across the US and in some overseas locations. The Academy for Thought and Industry, later rebranded Guidepost Academy, that promised “a school dedicated to a union of classical and Montessori approaches to education: a classical liberal arts emphasis on history and great books, and a Montessori emphasis on independence and agency.”

Higher Ground drew the attention of venture capitalists. HGE created their own program for certifying Montessori teachers (MACTE accredited). They acquired a variety of other businesses, including Tinycare, Neighborschools, FreshGrade, and, the remains of AltSchool, the San Francisco-based tech-based microschool start-up that was drawing glowing reviews in 2015, but by 2019 was instead drawing headlines like Fortune’s “How an Education Startup Wasted Almost $200 Million.”

In 2022, Girn announced that he was launching a Montessori think tank called Montessorium. The result was a business that calls itself “Montessori all grown up.” The Montessorium initiative is headed up by two other Austin entrepreneurs. Matt Bateman also came from LePorte (Girn appears to have brought several LePorte folks with him) and was Higher Ground’s Vice President of Pedagogy; currently his LinkedIn profile lists his occupation as Philosopher (self-employed).

The other Montessorium leader in MacKenzie Price, an education entrepreneur who has been trying to expand her network of cyberschools into other states. Her signature business is 2HourLearning, which promises that students can get a full education in just two hours a day with a computerized tutor. Montessorium promises to “combine the full suite of Montessori practices and hands-on materials with a state-of-the-art personalized learning software platform.”

The HGE network of schools was also growing. In 2018 HGE operated 12 schools; by 2022, the number was 101, and by 2024, HGE had 150 schools in its stable. And yet, Higher Ground was in trouble.

The story continues if you open the link to read the article at Forbes, in full.

Categories Charter Schools, Education Industry, Failure, Innovation

U.S. Secretary of Education Linda McMahon on the “Final Mission”

By dianeravitch
March 4, 2025 //
9

Former entertainment entrepreneur Linda McMahon is now U.S. Secretary of Education. She released her first statement, reiterating Trump’s attacks on “diversity, equity, and inclusion,” as well as “gender ideology” (I.e. recognizing the existence of ONLY the male-female binary and not recognizing those who are LGBT, such as Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent, who is openly gay).

McMahon’s views are closely aligned with those of Moms for Liberty. Check out the website of the America First Policy Forum, where McMahon was chair of the board.

This statement was released by the department’s press office.

SPEECH

Secretary McMahon: Our Department’s Final Mission

MARCH 3, 2025

Secretary Linda McMahon

When I took the oath of office as Secretary of Education, I accepted responsibility for overseeing the U.S. Department of Education and those who work here. But more importantly, I took responsibility for supporting over 100 million American children and college students who are counting on their education to create opportunity and prepare them for a rewarding career. 

I want to do right by both. 

As you are all aware, President Trump nominated me to take the lead on one of his most momentous campaign promises to families. My vision is aligned with the President’s: to send education back to the states and empower all parents to choose an excellent education for their children. As a mother and grandmother, I know there is nobody more qualified than a parent to make educational decisions for their children. I also started my career studying to be a teacher, and as a Connecticut Board of Education member and college trustee, I have long held that teaching is the most noble of professions. As a businesswoman, I know the power of education to prepare workers for fulfilling careers. 

American education can be the greatest in the world. It ought not to be corrupted by political ideologies, special interests, and unjust discrimination. Parents, teachers, and students alike deserve better. 

After President Trump’s inauguration last month, he steadily signed a slate of executive orders to keep his promises: combatting critical race theory, DEI, gender ideology, discrimination in admissions, promoting school choice for every child, and restoring patriotic education and civics. He has also been focused on eliminating waste, red tape, and harmful programs in the federal government. The Department of Education’s role in this new era of accountability is to restore the rightful role of state oversight in education and to end the overreach from Washington. 

This restoration will profoundly impact staff, budgets, and agency operations here at the Department. In coming months, we will partner with Congress and other federal agencies to determine the best path forward to fulfill the expectations of the President and the American people. We will eliminate unnecessary bureaucracy so that our colleges, K-12 schools, students, and teachers can innovate and thrive. 

This review of our programs is long overdue. The Department of Education is not working as intended. Since its establishment in 1980, taxpayers have entrusted the department with over $1 trillion, yet student outcomes have consistently languished. Millions of young Americans are trapped in failing schools, subjected to radical anti-American ideology, or saddled with college debt for a degree that has not provided a meaningful return on their investment. Teachers are leaving the profession in droves after just a few years—and citing red tape as one of their primary reasons. 

The reality of our education system is stark, and the American people have elected President Trump to make significant changes in Washington. Our job is to respect the will of the American people and the President they elected, who has tasked us with accomplishing the elimination of bureaucratic bloat here at the Department of Education—a momentous final mission—quickly and responsibly. 

As I’ve learned many times throughout my career, disruption leads to innovation and gets results. We must start thinking about our final mission at the department as an overhaul—a last chance to restore the culture of liberty and excellence that made American education great. Changing the status quo can be daunting. But every staff member of this Department should be enthusiastic about any change that will benefit students. 

True change does not happen overnight—especially the historic overhaul of a federal agency. Over the coming months, as we work hard to carry out the President’s directives, we will focus on a positive vision for what American education can be. 

These are our convictions: 

  1. Parents are the primary decision makers in their children’s education. 
  2. Taxpayer-funded education should refocus on meaningful learning in math, reading, science, and history—not divisive DEI programs and gender ideology. 
  3. Postsecondary education should be a path to a well-paying career aligned with workforce needs. 

Removing red tape and bureaucratic barriers will empower parents to make the best educational choices for their children. An effective transfer of educational oversight to the states will mean more autonomy for local communities. Teachers, too, will benefit from less micromanagement in the classroom—enabling them to get back to basics. 

I hope each of you will embrace this vision going forward and use these convictions as a guide for conscientious and pragmatic action. The elimination of bureaucracy should free us, not limit us, in our pursuit of these goals. I want to invite all employees to join us in this historic final mission on behalf of all students, with the same dedication and excellence that you have brought to your careers as public servants. 

This is our opportunity to perform one final, unforgettable public service to future generations of students. I hope you will join me in ensuring that when our final mission is complete, we will all be able to say that we left American education freer, stronger, and with more hope for the future.

Sincerely,

Linda McMahon
Secretary of Education

Categories Bigotry, Billionaires, Censorship, Civil Rights, Curriculum, Education Industry, Equity, Extremism, For-Profit, Funding, Gender, Home Schooling, Ignorance, Innovation, Privatization, Racism, Religion, Segregation, Teachers, Vouchers

Peter Greene: The Ultimate AI School Offers 2 Hours of Instruction Daily!

By dianeravitch
January 29, 2025 //
10

Somebody has figured out how to make a pile of money with a bright and shiny innovation: AI. Artificial Intelligence. Two hours of AI daily is all the students need.

Ah, innovation! We can never have too much innovation! But is two hours daily enough instruction?

Peter Greene explains it all here:

MacKenzie Price has made headlines with a charter school that uses two hours of AI instead of human teachers, then expanded that model to cyber schools under the “Unbound Academic Institute” brand. Now she is awaiting approval from the Pennsylvania Department of Education that would bring that same cyber charter model to cash in on the commonwealth’s already-crowded, yet still profitable, cyber school marketplace. 

Price, a Stanford graduate now living in Austin, Texas, started her entrepreneurial journey with Alpha Private Schools. In this glowing profile from Austin Woman, Price tells the origin story of Alpha Schools, starting with her own child:

“Very early on, I started noticing frustration around the lack of ability for the traditional model to be able to personalize anything,” she recalls. “About halfway through my daughter’s second grade year, she came home and said, ‘I don’t want to go to school tomorrow.’ She looked at me and she said, ‘School is so boring,’ and I just had this lightbulb moment. They’ve taken this kid who’s tailor-made to wanna be a good student, and they’ve wiped away that passion.”

Price, who has no previous experience in education, launched Alpha Schoolsabout a decade ago, powered by a model that she soon spun off into its own company – 2 Hour Learning. She has thoughts about how long education needs to take, as she told Madeline Parrish of Arizona Republic:

“When you’re getting one-to-one personalized learning, it doesn’t take all day. Having a personal tutor is absolutely the best way for a student to learn.“

The snake oil pitch is even more direct on the company’s website:

“School is broken, and we’re here to fix it. 2 Hour Learning gives students an AI tutor that allows them to: Learn 2X in 2 Hours.”

The personal tutor in this case is a collection of computer apps. After two hours at the computer, students spend the rest of the day pursuing “personal interests” and joining in life skills workshops. There are no teachers in Alpha’s schools, but “guides” are on hand to provide motivation and support. Tuition at most of the Alpha campuses is $40,000 a year. 

As Price tells an “interviewer” in one paid advertorial:

“Yes, it’s absolutely possible! Not only can they learn in two hours what they would learn all day in a traditional classroom, the payoffs are unbelievable! My students master their core curriculum through personalized learning in two hours. That opens up the rest of their day to focus on life skills and finding where their passions meet purpose. Students love it because it takes them away from the all-day lecture-based classroom model. Instead, my students are following their passions.“

Price has been clear that “AI” in this case does not mean a ChatGPT type Large Language Model, but apps more along the lines of IXL Math or Khan Academy’s Khanmigo, that pitch themselves as being able to analyze student responses and pick a next assignment that fits, or perhaps recommend a video to explain a challenging point. 

If that seems like an extraordinary stretch, Price has decided to go one better and turn that model into a virtual charter model. How that model would manage the “personal interest” afternoon structure is not entirely clear; one application promises “a blend of scheduled live interactions and self-managed projects.” As the application promises, “No Teachers, Just Guidance.”

And that model is the one Unbound wants to bring to Pennsylvania.

AD 4nXfGgeXQpbIX5l2StEZdpx2eH4vwKETBKdz1qjeGnn04aytVoJbFB1iPPMZKRq iE1czT0pZIoKNaXoqRgR908i2Z2Maw2VI9H6wJjOOeX6joh 6feLuAF1GcoLq 4eRF0e0DUzjekhHonThDi6AJn4?key=Zh58BXstnzJkvLRwAUAZj59 - Bucks County Beacon - Texas Businesswoman Wants to Open AI-Driven, Teacherless Cyber Charter School in Pennsylvania

The model looks to be a highly profitable one. While MacKenzie Price is the public face of the company, with a big social media presence, at least some of the business savvy may come from Andrew Price, MacKenzie’s husband and co-founder of the business. Andrew is the Chief Financial Officer at Trilogy, Crossover, Ignite Technologies, and ESW Capital. 

Crossover recruits employees, particularly for remote work. ESW is an private equity firm for one guy –Joe Liemandt, who made a huge bundle in the tech world; Leimandt also owns Trilogy. In 2021, Price’s boss was expressing some interesting thoughts about white collar jobs, as quoted in Forbes:

“Most jobs are poorly thought out and poorly designed—a mishmash of skills and activities . . . poor job designs are also quickly exposed with a move to remote work“

In 2023, Liemandt was found slipping a million dollars to Republican Glenn Youngkin’s gubernatorial campaign, via Future of Education LLC, formed just the day before the donation. It turns out the address of that group was the Price home ; MacKenzie had launched the Future of Education podcast in February of 2023 (though her LinkedIn dates it to August).

All of this interconnectedness is part of how the game is played. The Unbound application to open a cyber charter in Pennsylvania includes: 

“In support of its operations, Unbound Academy will collaborate with 2hr Learning, Inc. to deliver its adaptive learning platform, while Trilogy Enterprises will manage financial services, and Crossover Markets, Inc. will assist with recruiting qualified virtual educators.“

In Pennsylvania, it’s not legal to run a charter school for profit. But the law says nothing about running the school as a non-profit while hiring other for-profit organizations to handle the operation of the school. In Unbound Academy we find the Prices hiring themselves to operate the school. And they’re not done yet. 

YYYYY, LLC. will be the general and administrative service provider.

The President and Director of YYYYY, LLC. is Andrew Price. According to the application, YYYYY,LLC will provide a start-up donation for Unbound and then serve as its management organization. 

The application was filed by Timothy Eyerman, the Dean of Parents at Alpha Private Schools.

So we have a total of five organizations involved in the proposed school, all tied to MacKenzie and Andrew Price, and all proposing to pass a pile of Pennsylvania taxpayer money back and forth.

And what a pile of money it is.

Categories Disruption, Education Industry, Innovation, Technology

“Dear Mr. Trump: I Love Your Plan for the United States of Canada!”

By dianeravitch
January 24, 2025 //
37

John Manley was a deputy prime minister and minister of finance in Jean Chrétien’s government in Canada.

He loves Trump’s idea of uniting Canada and the United States. Democrats should love it too. Republicans would never again win the presidency!

“I am so excited about this, Mr. Trump – I can already see the 60 little maple leaves on the flag with 13 stripes!”

His article appeared in The Globe & Mail, a major newspaper in Canada.

Dear Donald Trump,

My mentor and former boss, prime minister Jean Chrétien, has dismissed your suggestion that Canada and the U.S. merge.

Don’t despair. My point of view differs somewhat from his (sorry, Boss). I think we may be able to make this work if Canadians fully understand your proposal.

Imagine what the “United States of Canada” could be. We would marry American ingenuity and entrepreneurship to Canada’s natural resources, underdog toughness and culture of self-effacing politeness to create a powerful, world-dominating country.

We would be the largest land mass in the world. We would be self-reliant in every respect (food, energy, minerals, water). We would attract the world’s most talented people. We would truly be “the best country in the world,” to use Mr. Chrétien’s words, and would dominate international hockey competitions. Your idea is truly brilliant.

As you know from your corporate experience, for any successful merger, the devil is in the details, but I have some suggestions.

First, Canada could never simply be the 51st state. Canada consists of 10 states (we call them “provinces”) and three territories. Each of our provinces exists for historical reasons and citizens feel a deep loyalty to their province.

So we would need to be the 51st to 60th states. With two senators for each state, of course. Our 20 senators will no doubt bring fresh ideas to the institution that will help make the United States of Canada truly great!

Some issues that cause division and frustration in your country are considered settled by political parties of all stripes in Canada, so I suggest adopting Canadian consensus in the interest of making this deal work.

For example, there is no argument in Canada over women’s reproductive rights. There! That hot-button issue is resolved for you! (You can thank me later.)

All Canadian politicians support our single-payer health care system because no one is refused treatment for their inability to pay and no one goes broke because they suffer a catastrophic illness. In effect, all of our citizens have lifetime critical illness insurance provided by the government. And while it’s expensive, our system costs considerably less than yours, with 100 per cent of the population covered! Your citizens will love it, I promise.

I would also observe that Canadians have long preferred to live with many fewer firearms than are tolerated in the United States. The result is a drastically lower rate of deaths and injuries caused by gun violence in Canada. Our gun laws would make the country safer than it is, and safer is definitely greater!

We have some other innovations that you may wish to consider. Our Canada Pension Plan, equivalent to your Social Security, is fully funded and actuarially sound. This requires higher contributions, but it pays off with solvency. I believe your Social Security runs out of money in the near future. (That’s not great, is it?)

Lower personal income taxes paid in the U.S. are a great attraction. But our programs to support both seniors and young families to reduce the worst cases of poverty among them help make society more cohesive and fair. That’s one of the reasons our taxes have been higher.

Oh, and we must consider how we fund government expenses. We’re struggling to bring our deficit back down, but it wasn’t that long ago (2015) that our budget was effectively balanced. In fact, for more than a decade prior to the global financial crisis, Canada ran surplus budgets. In addition to spending discipline, our national value-added tax, the GST, was key. You definitely want to adopt that! In fact, you will love it! (Canadians don’t love it, but their governments do. And it beats borrowing money from the Chinese.)

There are many smaller details that I am sure we can work out. You will enjoy the simplicity of the metric system for weights and measures, for example. Oh, but we’re not crazy, you can keep yards for football! And you will love that sport even more when you play it on a bigger field with only three downs.

I am so excited about this, Mr. Trump. You are truly a visionary leader to have come up with this idea. I can already see the 60 little maple leaves on the flag with 13 stripes! I am ready to throw myself into this great project of making the United States of Canada great again! (Oh, that’s too long. Let’s just call our new country “Canada.”)

Respectfully, as I dislodge my tongue from my cheek,

John Manley

Categories Democracy, Humor, Innovation, International, Trump

Chris Tomlinson: Texas Republicans Want to Drive Out Free-Thinkers. They Will Be Sorry.

By dianeravitch
November 30, 2024 //
10

Chris Tomlinson is an opinion writer for The Houston Chronicle and one of the best critics of the state’s loony leadership. In this column, he warns of the perils of pushing out the free-thinkers. As Forrest Gump famously said, “Stupid is as stupid does.”

He writes:

Texas lawmakers are targeting colleges and universities in the next culture war battle, putting our most vital economic drivers at risk.

Our public universities are why Texas outperforms, whether it’s petroleum engineering at Texas A&M, electrical engineering at UT-Austin or transportation at Prairie View A&M University. Multi-disciplinary research universities produce diverse workforces and innovative entrepreneurs that benefit state and local economies.

The right-wing thought police, though, are fed up with freethinkers. Recent laws and proposed bills aim to restrict what ideas faculty and students can explore. The brightest minds will not stick around if the GOP limits intellectual freedom.

Republicans spent the 2023 legislative session protecting white supremacy by attacking programs intended to help historically under-represented students succeed. GOP lawmakers worried that fragile white students may feel uncomfortable discussing the nation’s history of slavery and oppression.

State Sen. Brandon Creighton, a Conroe Republican who leads the Senate Education Committee, passed a law banning diversity, equity and inclusion programs at public universities. In a stunning example of Orwellian doublethink, Creighton said his law would boost diversity.

However, when UT Austin complied with Senate Bill 17, a third of the 49 people laid off were Black, even though African-Americans make up only 7% of employees. Roughly three-fourths of the employees let go were women, though they make up just 55% of the total staff.

Across all campuses, the University of Texas System eliminated more than 300 jobs to comply with the law, arguing it was a cost-saving measure.

“Why is it that you must save costs on the backs of Black and brown employees and female employees?” Texas NAACP President Gary Bledsoe asked.

Not only do Republican leaders want to wipe out programs trying to reverse the lingering effects of white supremacist rule, but they also want to stop research into how racism and bigotry have harmed our society.

The Texas A&M University System Board of Regents, appointed by Gov. Greg Abbott, recently cut 52 academic programs, including global culture and society, LGBTQ studies, global health, Asian studies and a certificate in performing social activism in the College of Performance, Visualization and Fine Arts. Regent Michael J. Plank echoed UT officials, saying the board has a duty to “eliminate waste.”

Across the country, conservatives are using “cost saving” as a fig leaf for suppressing ideas they don’t like. For example, A&M had only offered the LGBTQ studies minor for three semesters before declaring it wasteful.

The University of North Texas made 78 changes to its course schedule, removing words such as race, gender, class and equity from titles and descriptions, the Dallas Morning News reported. Freedom of speech group PEN America accused university leaders of abusing SB17.

“UNT seems to be arguing that the principle of academic freedom only exists when state law allows it,” Jeremy Young, PEN’s Freedom to Learn project director, said. “This ludicrous interpretation effectively nullifies academic freedom as a protection against government censorship, setting a perilous precedent for higher education institutions across Texas and potentially beyond.”

Texas A&M and UNT may have only been obeying in advance of more restrictive laws to come.

“While DEI-related curriculum and course content does not explicitly violate the letter of the law, it indeed contradicts its spirit,” Creighton said during a Texas Senate Higher Education Subcommittee hearing. “The curriculum does not reflect the expectations of Texas taxpayers and students who fund our public universities.”

Newly elected state Rep. Carl Tepper, a Lubbock Republican, has introduced a bill requiring the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board to calculate a ratio of student debt to annual salary for every degree or certificate offered. The board would then assign a rating: reward, monitor, sanction or sunset. The goal is to shut down programs in the latter categories.

Learning for learning’s sake would not be tolerated under House Bill 281.

Political leaders have long interfered with colleges and universities. Texas lawmakers started using professors as political scapegoats within three years of establishing UT. Institutions have long offered tenure to protect underpaid professors from political interference.

Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick has repeatedly said he wants to ban tenure and make it easier to remove professors who teach or study ideas the Legislature doesn’t like.

Unsurprisingly, two-thirds of the 950 Texas faculty surveyed by the American Association of University Professors said they would not recommend teaching in Texas to colleagues.

Texas Republicans may feel a mandate to drive free thinkers out of public universities, but Texas employers looking for an educated workforce will pay the price.

Categories Accountability, Censorship, Creativity, Extremism, Higher Education, Ignorance, Innovation, Texas

Chicago: Community Schools Are a Better Strategy than “Education Reform”

By dianeravitch
June 19, 2024 //
31

Jeff Bryant, veteran education journalist, writes here about the success of community schools in Chicago, in contrast to the failed ideas of “education reform.” The latter echoed the failed strategies of No Child Left Behind and Race to the Top: testing, competition, privatization, firing staff, closing schools, ranking and rating students, teachers, principals and schools based on test scores. So-called “education reform” created massive disruption and led to massive failure.

Bryant describes the evolution of community schools in Chicago, led by grassroots leaders like Jitu Brown, where parents are valued partners.

Bryant writes:

“Until now, we haven’t even tried to make big-city school districts work, especially for children of color,” Jhoanna Maldonado said when Our Schools asked her to describe what Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson and his supporters have in mind for the public school system of the nation’s third-largest city.

Johnson scored a surprising win in the 2023 mayoral election against Paul Vallas, a former CEO of Chicago Public Schools (CPS), and education was a key issue in the race, according to multiplenewsoutlets. Maldonado is an organizer with the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU), which is reported to have “bankrolled” Johnson’s mayoral campaign along with other labor groups, and Johnson is a former middle school teacher and teachers union organizer. What Johnson and his supporters are doing “is transforming our education system,” Maldonado said. There’s evidence the transformation is sorely needed.

For the past two decades, Chicago’s schools experienced a cavalcade of negative stories, including recurring fiscal crisis, financial scandals and mismanagement, a long downward slide in student enrollment, persistent underfunding from the state, the “largest mass closing [of schools] in the nation’s history,” and a seemingly endless conflict between the CPS district administration and CTU.

Yet, there are signs the district may be poised for a rebound.

“The people of Chicago have had enormous patience as they’ve witnessed years of failed school improvement efforts,” Maldonado said. “And it has taken years for the community to realize that no one else—not charter school operators or so-called reformers—can do the transformation. We have to do it ourselves.”

“Doing it ourselves” seems to mean rejecting years of policy and governance ideas that have dominated the district, and is what Johnson and his transition committee call, “an era of school reform focused on accountability, high stakes testing, austere budgets, and zero tolerance policies,” in the report, “A Blueprint for Creating a More Just and Vibrant City for All.”

After experiencing more than 10 years of enrollment declines between 2012 and 2022, losing more than 81,000 students during this period, and dropping from its status as third-largest school district in the nation to fourth in 2022, CPS reported an enrollment increase for the 2023-2024 school year. Graduation rates hit an all-time high in 2022. The number of students being suspended or arrested on school grounds has also declined significantly. And student scores on reading tests, after a sharp decline during the COVID-19 pandemic, have improved faster than most school districts across the country. Math scores have also rebounded, but are more comparable to other improving districts, according to a 2024 Chalkbeat article.

Johnson and his supporters have been slowly changing the district’s basic policy and governance structures. They are attempting to redefine the daily functions of schools and their relationships with families and their surrounding communities by expanding the number of what they refer to as “sustainable community schools.” The CPS schools that have adopted the community schools idea stand at 20 campuses as of 2024, according to CTU. Johnson and his transition committee’s Blueprint report has called for growing the number of schools using the sustainable community schools approach to 50, with the long-term goal of expanding the number of schools to 200.

The call to have more CPS schools adopt the community schools approach aligns with a national trend where several school districts, including big-city districts such as Los Angeles and New York City, are embracing the idea.

Community schools look different in different places because the needs and interests of communities vary, but the basic idea is that schools should address the fundamental causes of academic problems, including student health and well-being. The approach also requires schools to involve students and their families more deeply in school policies and programs and to tap the assets and resources available in the surrounding community to enrich the school.

In Chicago—where most students are non-white, more than 70 percent are economically disadvantaged, and large percentages need support for English language learning and learning disabilities—addressing root causes for academic problems often means bringing specialized staff and programs into the school to provide more academic and non-academic student and family services, often called wraparound supports. The rationale for this is clear.

“If a student is taken care of and feels safe and heard and has caring adults, that student is much more ready to learn,” Jennifer VanderPloeg the project manager of CPS’s Sustainable Community Schools told Our Schools. “If [a student is] carrying around a load of trauma, having a lot of unmet needs, or other things [they’re] worrying about, then [they] don’t have the brain space freed up for algebra. That’s just science,” she said.

“Also important is for students to see themselves in the curriculum and have Black and brown staff members in the school,” said Autumn Berg, director of CPS’s Community Schools Initiative. “All of that matters in determining how a student perceives their surroundings.”

“Community schools are about creating a culture and climate that is healthy, safe, and loving,” said VanderPloeg. “Sure, it would be ideal if parents would be able to attend to all the unmet needs of our students, but that’s just not the system we live in. And community schools help families access these [unmet] needs too.”

Also, according to VanderPloeg, community schools give extra support to teachers by providing them with assistance in all of the things teachers don’t have time to attend to, like helping families find access to basic services and finding grants to support after-school and extracurricular programs.

But while some Chicago educators see the community schools idea as merely a mechanism to add new programs and services to a school’s agenda, others describe it with far more expansive and sweeping language.

“Community schools are an education model rooted in self-determination and equity for Black and brown people,” Jitu Brown told Our Schools. Brown is the national director of Journey for Justice Alliance, a coalition of Black and brown-led grassroots community, youth, and parent organizations in more than 30 cities.

“In the Black community, we have historically been denied the right to engage in creating what we want for our community,” Brown said.

In Chicago, according to Brown, most of the schools serving Black and brown families are struggling because they’ve been led by people who don’t understand the needs of those families. “Class plays a big role in this too,” he said. “The people in charge of our schools have generally been taught to believe they are smarter than the people in the schools they’re leading.”

But in community schools, Brown sees the opportunity to put different voices in charge of Chicago schools.

“The community schools strategy is not just about asking students, parents, and the community for their input,” he said. “It’s about asking for their guidance and leadership.”

It Started with Saving a Neighborhood

Chicago’s journey of embracing the community schools movement has been long in the making, and Brown gets a lot of credit for bringing the idea to the attention of public school advocates in the city.

He achieved much of this notoriety in 2015 by leading a hunger strike to reopen Walter H. Dyett High School in Chicago’s predominantly African American Bronzeville community. Among the demands of the strikers—Brandon Johnson was a participant in the protest when he was a CTU organizer—was for the school to be reopened as a “hub” of what they called “a sustainable community school village,” according to Democracy Now.

The strike received prominent attention in national news outlets, including the New York Times and the Washington Post.

But Brown’s engagement with the community schools approach started before the fight for Dyett, going back almost two decades when he was a resource coordinator at the South Shore High School of Entrepreneurship, a school created in 2001 when historic South Shore International College Preparatory High School was reorganized into three smaller campuses as part of an education reform effort known as small schools.

Brown was responsible for organizing educators and community members to pool resources and involve organizations in the community to strengthen the struggling school. He could see that the school was being “set up,” in his words, for either closure or takeover by charter school operators.

“School privatization in the form of charter schools was coming to our neighborhood,” he said, “and we needed a stronger offer to engage families in rallying to the school and the surrounding community.”

Brown pushed for the adoption of an approach for transforming schools that reflected a model supported by the National Education Association of full-service community schools.

That approach was based on five pillars that included a challenging and culturally relevant curriculum, wraparound services for addressing students’ health and well-being, high-quality teaching, student-centered school climate, and community and parent engagement. A sixth pillar, calling for shared leadership in school governance, was eventually added.

After engaging in “thousands” of conversations in the surrounding historic Kenwood neighborhood, where former President Barack Obama once lived, Brown said that he came to be persuaded that organizing a school around the grassroots desires of students, parents, teachers, and community members was a powerful alternative to school privatization and other top-down reform efforts that undermine teachers and disenfranchise families.

Brown and his collaborators recognized that the community schools idea was what would turn their vision of a school into a connected system of families, educators, and community working together.

Open the link to continue reading this important story.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Chicago, Closing schools, Community Schools, Competition, Corporate Reform, Education Reform, Failure, Innovation, NCLB (No Child Left Behind), Privatization, Race to the Top, School Choice, Standardized Testing, Teacher Evaluations, VAM (value-added modeling), Vouchers

Watch A Remarkable Interview of Former Ambassador Michael McFaul

By dianeravitch
March 11, 2024 //
4

I have recently been watching online interviews conducted by veteran reporters at The Washington Post.

The best of them so far was the interview of Michael McFaul, former Ambassador to Russia by David Ignatius.

McFaul speaks with great authority about Alexei Navalny, Vladimir Putin, and the war in Ukraine. McFaul talks about the importance of passing new aid to Ukraine and appeals directly to Speaker Mike Johnson to let the funding bill come to a vote.

Ignatius asks him what additional sanctions might be imposed on Russia to deter its brutal invasion of Ukraine. He says the U.S. and Europe should transfer to Ukraine the billions of Russian assets that are now frozen.

When asked about the future of Russia, McFaul says that Russia is in decline now because it has driven out a million of its “best and brightest,” who have fled to other countries. If Putin had turned to democracy in 2000, he said, Russia would now be one of the richest nations in the world.

Michael McFaul on Russian presidential election and Alexei Navalny’s legacy  

The death of Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny has sparked worldwide condemnation and renewed questions about political freedom in Russia. On Monday, March 4 at 1:00 p.m. ET, former U.S. ambassador to Moscow Michael McFaul joins The Post’s David Ignatius to assess Navalny’s legacy, Russia’s upcoming presidential election and the ongoing war in Ukraine.  

By Washington Post Live

https://www.washingtonpost.com/washington-post-live/2024/03/04/michael-mcfaul-russian-presidential-election-alexei-navalnys-legacy/

Download The Washington Post app.

Transcript: World Stage: The Future of Russia with Michael McFaul

https://www.washingtonpost.com/washington-post-live/2024/03/04/transcript-world-stage-future-russia-with-michael-mcfaul/

Categories Freedom, Freedom of Speech, Freedom of the Press, Innovation, International, Justice

Arnold Hillman: How to Reform NAEP Scores: A Satire

By dianeravitch
July 15, 2023 //
18

Arnold Hillman is a retired educator who spent his career in Pennsylvania and retired in South Carolina. Bear this in mind when you read his satire. Must be the SC water.

The decline of both reading and math scores on the NAEP national test is a harbinger of a predictive outpouring of solutions to the problem. That has been the standard for the last 100 years of public education. We typically find panaceas to “fix” problems in education.

Here is a very simple one. Until the beginning of the 20th century, education was rather simple- teach reading, writing and arithmetic. On the side you might provide vocational programs. However World War I provided us with a look into the future.

Many of the conscripts in the American army were seen not to be physically fit. That was a danger in a war. There was no part of the constitution that mentions education. The idea of a healthy mind and healthy body was promulgated by none other than John Dewey. World War I was an instigator, and schools took up the mantle.

That’s how things change in education. The nation needed more scientists to combat Russia’s preeminence in space and so Congress passed the National Defense Education Act (NDEA). I know that you are getting the idea now. If you live long enough, you will see even more of these things.

Now, how will the decline in these scores be cured by those with the money to do it. Seems like administrations these days are not in the business of fixing education. You can tell by all ofthe news about investigations, indictments, Russian problems and all sort of other adjuncts to those happenings. So then, who or what will come through to help us climb out of this educational abyss?

Lets try this on for size. How about the Broad Foundation. Let’s give them leave to train all of the school superintendents in the nation. That’s only 13,452 school district superintendents. With all of the resources available to the foundation, this could be accomplished in the wink of an eye (see the movie “I Robot” for a reference).All problems of reading and math will follow the same successes that the Broadies have had in all of the places where they have been installed as superintendents. That’s for sure.

Let then have the voucher folks come up with the plan to take over public schools and do their level best to cherry pick the students that they will help. There will certainly be some unintended consequences, such as massive dropouts, higher crime rates, more unemployment and many other charming things.

These voucher folks have a way with statistics. In their first year of operation, math and reading scores will soar. All students will be on grade level in reading and all of them will be up to fractal geometry, after surpassing the highest scores ever on the NAEP test.

Another challenger will be the charter school folks. All schools could be “charterized” and escape from the silly laws that restrict public schools in their education of kids. Since charters do not have to have all certified teachers, that will be a great advantage. We can then dismiss those pesky teachers who have not been doing a good job anyway.

There would not be any responsibility for those charters to have any parental involvement. Parents or guardians will only know what is going on when their child gets a report card.

Huge management companies will continue to “buy up” these charters and run them for profit. The movement to make these charters non-public has already happened in the Washington state Supreme Court. It has decided that Charter Schools were not, in fact, public schools.

Think of all the improvements that charter schools have made across the country since their inception in Minnesota. We can have a myriad of online charter schools which will definitely improve reading and math scores, especially in kindergarten.

We are fortunate to have a parents group that is very interested in improving education by going onto the nation’s school boards and making things so much better when they are there. Incompetent administrators are fired by the dozens and reading and math scores have already risen as a result of these actions.

The premiere group is called “ Moms for Liberty.” Not sure why there are no Dads included. There must be a Title IX reason. These folks have the kind of enviable clout that gets these students on their way to improving their math and reading scores.

With “Moms for Liberty” in charge, schools will have the advantage of being close to those who lead our country. They are proud to have national figures, some even running for President, who will make sure the schools are doing the right thing.

Then we have a group that includes some very wealthy folks. Some of them are anonymously giving funding and directions to those who were described earlier. They are famously supporters of vouchers, privatization of public schools, charters and the like. They support parent groups like “Moms for Liberty.” Their aims are certainly to help students improve their reading and math scores. We will call them, for better or worse, “ The Billionaire Class.”

With all of these folks helping out, how long do you believe it will take for our youngster’s math and reading scores to soar?

Categories Billionaires, Broad Foundation, Corporate Reform, Education Reform, Humor, Innovation, NAEP, Standardized Testing
« Older Entries