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Jan Resseger: For-Profit MGT Did NOT “Turn Around” the Schools of Gary, Indiana

By dianeravitch
August 24, 2019 //
4

Jan Resseger noted that the Colorado state board of education awarded a contract to MGT Consulting based on their “success” in turning around the public schools of Gary, Indiana. She shows in this post that there was no turnaround.

She writes:

Colorado state school board members praised MGT’s record in the so-called turnaround of the only whole school district it has managed—for the past two years—in Gary, Indiana. The fact that MGT Consulting, a for-profit, was praised for work in Gary caught my eye. I have been to Gary, just as I have been to Detroit, whose public schools have shared some problems with Gary’s. Detroit’s school district was assigned a state emergency fiscal manager by former Governor Rick Snyder; in fact Detroit’s school district was assigned an emergency manager named Darnell Earley after he left Flint, where, as municipal emergency fiscal manager, he had permitted the poisoning of the city’s water supply. Fortunately Detroit’s schools have been turned back to the democratically elected local school board, which hired a professional educator, Dr. Nikolai Vitti.

And I have been to the cities in Ohio now in state takeover, and being operated by appointed Academic Distress Commissions. I am thinking of Youngstown, which in four years under an Academic Distress Commission and appointed CEO, has not turned around. I am thinking of Lorain, where outright chaos has ensued under an Academic Distress Commission’s appointed CEO, David Hardy. And I am thinking of East Cleveland, whose schools are just beginning the state takeover process, and ten other Ohio school districts—including Dayton and Toledo—being threatened with state takeover.

All of these Rust Belt cities and their school districts are characterized by economic collapse. They are industrial cities where factories have closed and workers moved away to seek employment elsewhere. When industry collapses, the property tax base—the foundation of the local contribution of school funding—evaporates, and as workers lose jobs or leave, local income tax revenue collapses as well…

In July 2017, the state took over the school district in Gary and turned the schools over to a private, for-profit management company: MGT Consultants. MGT hired Peggy Hinkley, a retired school superintendent to run the schools, but she resigned a little more than a year later. The Post-Tribune‘s Carole Carlson describes Hinkley’s tenure: “Hinkley served 14 months and ruffled the feathers of some elected officials who criticized her decisions, especially the closing of the Wirt-Emerson School of Visual and Performing Arts. When Wirt-Emerson closed in June (2018), it left the district with just one high school, the West Side Leadership Academy. It stoked fears of a continuing exodus of students who would leave for charter schools or other districts… Under Hinckley, Gary reached a deal resolving $8.4 million in back payroll taxes owed to the Internal Revenue Service. The IRS forgave a large portion of the debt, leaving the district with a $320,000 payment. The freeing up of the liens on buildings allowed Hinckley to list 33 vacant schools and properties for sale. By November, the district had accepted five offers, amounting to $480,000. More sales are still being weighed. In all, Hinckley erased about $6 million of the district’s $100,000 million in long-term debts and reduced its monthly deficit from about $1.8 million to $1.3 million… Academically, all seven elementary schools received Fs on state report cards this year.”

Clearly, in Gary, Indiana, MGT Consultants has not miraculously achieved the kind of quick school district turnaround Colorado’s state school board bragged about when it contracted with MGT to take over three school districts.

Read on to learn about the role of ex-Indiana superintendent Tony Bennett and the Corporate Reform-disruption-greed Movement.

Categories Accountability, Colorado, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Education Reform, For-Profit, Indiana, Lies, Privatization

Stuart Egan Fact-Checks Baker Mitchell: He Prevaricates

By dianeravitch
August 23, 2019 //
13

Stuart Egan read Baker Mitchell’s op-ed in the Wall Street Journal defending charters against critics who say they foster segregation, and he was flabbergasted.

Here is his post.

He includes Baker Mitchell’s Wall Street Journal article, fulminating against the critics.

Then he cites the ProPublica article, Lindsay Wagner’s reporting, and John Merrow’s commentary, all reinforcing that Baker Mitchell has made millions by operating four charter schools.

Then Stuart goes to the official North Carolina report card site to gather information about Baker Mitchell’s charters.

Three are overwhelmingly white; one is overwhelmingly black. In other words, this champion of charters, this man who told the world that charters do not promote segregation, is managing a charter chain that is highly segregated. Furthermore, contrary to what he claimed in his article, his schools do NOT outperform local public schools.

Baker Mitchell prevaricated Bigly.

Someone should tell the Wall Street Journal to do their own fact-checking.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Education Industry, For-Profit, Lies, North Carolina, Privatization, Segregation

Bob Shepherd Channels The Donald, #45

By dianeravitch
August 15, 2019 //
52

 

Bob Shepherd, all-around educator, assessment expert, curriculum expert, teacher, author, wrote a brilliant parody of a Trump rally. Read it here.

Incoherent stream of consciousness. Fourth grade vocabulary. Boasting. Narcissism. Replaying moments of triumph over his enemies. Crowd size. The biggest. Bullying.

Bob Shepherd also commented here about how Trump would act if he were a student in high school.

Trump is just like the high-school kid who throws spitballs or knocks someone’s books off a desk or otherwise disrupts class every time the teacher’s back is turned. He screws up his ugly, orange face and continually makes racist, anti-immigrant statements; stokes anti-immigrant feeling among white supremacists; and puts forward racist, anti-immigrant policies, but he usually stops short of the most bald racist language, preferring, instead, racist policy accompanied by dog-whistles. Then, after making some racist attack–telling congresswomen of color to go back to their countries, for example–he will, just like that high-school kid, deny, deny, deny. Trump: I am the least racist person. High-school kid: What? I didn’t do nothing.

Immaturity and disingenuousness. Not the qualities of a statesman, but those of a demagogue. “Hate has no place in America,” the Hater-in-Chief said this morning. That’s true. That’s why he should resign. And then be placed in detention.

 

Categories Education Reform, Lies

Arizona: Legislators Are Trying to Sneak a Voucher Bill Through. Stop Them!

By dianeravitch
May 2, 2019 //
2

Last fall, the voters of Arizona rejected vouchers by an overwhelming vote.

But the Koch brothers and devious Doug Ducey are not giving up. They slipped through an innocuous bill to thwart the will of the people.

Stop them!

From: “Save Our Schools Arizona” <info@sosarizona.org>
Date: May 1, 2019 at 8:16:11 PM MST
To: “Barbara Veltri” <barbvbtv@aol.com>
Subject: 🚨🚨🚨 Red Alert: Stealth bill SB 1349 needs IMMEDIATE opposition
Reply-To: info@sosarizona.org
SB 1349 “Family College Savings Program” sounded innocent, and flew right under our radar. But when we took a closer look, we realized this program was introducing vouchers by another name.  

We are asking for IMMEDIATE action, since this bill has already passed Senate and House and is now back in the Senate for conformity review. We have only ONE chance to kill this bad bill.

  1. Call your Senator and ask for a NO vote on the conformed SB 1349
  2. Use “RTS 2.0” to enter AGAINST SB 1349 (Request to Speak → My Bill Positions → Enter Bill Number, select bill, then click AGAINST)

This bill creates a new way to siphon tax dollars out of the state’s general fund by incentivizing Arizona families to spend their 529 savings on K-12 private school tuition and expenses (up to $10,000 per account per year!) instead of saving for college, as the accounts are intended.

To add insult to injury, the bill could drain up to $438K annually from the general fund (and therefore our public schools), according to the state’s own nonpartisan fiscal review board.

This is NOT fiscally responsible and harms our public schools.

Thank you for your activism!
The Leadership Team

Save Our Schools Arizona
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PO Box 28370
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Categories Arizona, Betsy DeVos, Corruption, Education Industry, Education Reform, Koch Brothers, Lies, Privatization

Trump Hits a Milestone: More Than 10,000 Lies!

By dianeravitch
April 29, 2019 //
45

The Washington Post FactChecker Glenn Kessler and his team announced today that Trump had passed a total of 10,000 lies. That is a record, even for him! And he still has another 20 months to go in his term!

It took President Trump 601 days to top 5,000 false and misleading claims in The Fact Checker’s database, an average of eight claims a day.

But on April 26, just 226 days later, the president crossed the 10,000 mark — an average of nearly 23 claims a day in this seven-month period, which included the many rallies he held before the midterm elections, the partial government shutdown over his promised border wall and the release of the special counsel’s report on Russian interference in the presidential election.

This milestone appeared unlikely when The Fact Checker first started this project during his first 100 days. In the first 100 days, Trump averaged less than five claims a day, which would have added up to about 7,000 claims in a four-year presidential term. But the tsunami of untruths just keeps looming larger and larger.

It seems that the longer he is in the White House, the easier it is to say whatever he wants, without bothering to discern whether it has any factual basis.

Also, he has gotten rid of anyone who restrained his impulse to lie or distort the facts, like General Kelly.

About one-fifth of the president’s claims are about immigration issues, a percentage that has grown since the government shutdown over funding for his promised border wall. In fact, his most repeated claim — 160 times — is that his border wall is being built. Congress balked at funding the concrete wall he envisioned, and so he has tried to pitch bollard fencing and repairs of existing barriers as “a wall.”

Trump’s penchant for repeating false claims is demonstrated by the fact that The Fact Checker database has recorded nearly 300 instances when the president has repeated a variation of the same claim at least three times. He also now has earned 21 “Bottomless Pinocchios,” claims that have earned Three or Four Pinocchios and which have been repeated at least 20 times.

About a fifth of his lies are told at his campaign rallies, where he gets up without a speech and riffs on whatever crosses his mind, whatever makes him angry, free associates about his enemies and critics and alleged accomplishments.

When the president of the United States lies wantonly and when he calls the press “the enemy of the people,” you can see we are on a downward trajectory in which there are no truths and no objective facts, whom do you believe? George Orwell wrote about this phenomenon.

Orwell wrote in his essay, “Looking Back on the Spanish War”:

I know it is the fashion to say that most of recorded history is lies anyway. I am willing to believe that history is for the most part inaccurate and biased, but what is peculiar to our own age is the abandonment of the idea that history could be truthfully written. In the past, people deliberately lied, or they unconsciously colored what they wrote, or they struggled after the truth, well knowing that they must make many mistakes; but in each case they believed that “the facts” existed and were more or less discoverable. And in practice there was always a considerable body of fact which would have been agreed to by almost anyone. If you look up the history of the last war in, for instance, the Encyclopedia Britannica, you will find that a respectable amount of the material is drawn from German sources. A British and a German historian would disagree deeply on many things, even on fundamentals, but there would still be a body of, as it were, neutral fact on which neither would seriously challenge the other. It is just this common basis of agreement with its implication that human beings are all one species of animal, that totalitarianism destroys. Nazi theory indeed specifically denies that such a thing as “the truth” exists. There is, for instance, no such thing as “Science”. There is only “German Science,” “Jewish Science,” etc. The implied objective of this line of thought is a nightmare world in which the Leader, or some ruling clique, controls not only the future but the past. If the Leader says of such and such an event, “It never happened” — well, it never happened. If he says that two and two are five — well two and two are five. This prospect frightens me much more than bombs — and after our experiences of the last few years that is not such a frivolous statement.

Categories Fake News, Fascism, Lies, Trump

Carol Burris: Why Charter Schools Are Unnecessary

By dianeravitch
April 14, 2019 //
13

 

Carol Burris is the executive director of the Network for Public Education. She is a lifelong educator, first a teacher of Spanish, then an award-winning principal of a high school in New York.

She writes here to explain briefly why charter schools are unnecessary and are not public schools.

“When I was a high school principal, I also ran an alternative school called The Greenhouse. It was small–its average enrollment was 17 students. The students were older–juniors or seniors–who were credit-deficient or who, for personal reasons, needed an alternative setting.

“Greenhouse saved lives and reduced our dropout rate to less than 1%. It was run (and is still run) by a wonderful teacher, Frank Van Zant. I gave Frank ample resources with teachers from South Side going to the school to provide content instruction for one or two periods a day. I trusted him and gave him freedom. It has (and still has) a full-time social worker. Hours for students were more flexible. Instruction was small group. I called the Greenhouse a delicate ecology. I was careful to place in the program only those students who really needed it.
“Our students on suspension also benefitted. They would receive instruction there at the end of the day so that they were well educated and counseled when out of school and could more easily transition back.
“All of that innovation and I did not need “a charter” to do it. The ultimate authority was the School Board. The kids who graduated received a South Side diploma. In fact, by the time I left, 100% graduated with a NYS Regents diploma.
“I am weary of hearing that charter schools are public schools. That is a lie.  Public schools are governed by the public, not by a private corporation.
“Charter advocates will say Wisconsin has “public charters” because they are authorized by the school district. However, all of those district authorized schools, thanks to Scott Walker,  are now run by for-profit or nonprofit corporations. Publicly-governed charter schools without a private board are not allowed.  I do not believe there is even one public charter school–that is a charter school run by an elected school board–in the United States. Is there one left?”
Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Hoax, Innovation, Lies, Privatization, Walker, Scott, Wisconsin

Tennessee: Showdown Over Vouchers

By dianeravitch
April 11, 2019 //
18

 

Governor Bill Lee has proposed a voucher program. Teachers and parents are outraged. —but not enough of them.

When the bill moved from the House to the Senate,  the number of vouchers were doubled to 30,000.

The money for vouchers will be subtracted from public schools, which educate 90% of the children of Tennessee. Expect more segregation, more bigotry, more children taught by uncertified teachers, more state-sponsored ignorance of science and history. Expect budget cuts in public schools, larger classes, no money for higher salaries, layoffs for teachers, school nurses, librarians, counselors, the arts.

Betsy DeVos visited Tennessee last week to promote vouchers, and she flatly lied about Florida’s test scores, which are mediocre. She claimed that achievement in Florida had gone up because of the $3 billion that the state spends each year on vouchers and charters. Not true. Surely she is well aware of the voucher studies in D.C., Milwaukee, Ohio, Louisiana, and Indiana showing that students who use vouchers do no better or much worse in school than their peers who remain in public schools.

Florida’s performance on NAEP is mediocre, except for fourth grade, where scores are artificially inflated by the state policy of holding back low-scoring third graders.

Quote of the day:

“‘We don’t have the luxury of worrying about a handful of children,” said Knox County teacher Lauren Hobson, speaking to another crowd assembled by the Tennessee Democratic Party. “We have to worry about the 90% of the children across the country left in schools with us.”

“Hobson and other critics believe underfunding is the real battle in public schools.

“‘Our legislators actually have a constitutional duty in Tennessee to maintain and support a public education,” she said. “They have no duty to support private education.’”

Read that last line again. She is right. Republican legislators in Tennessee, Florida, Indiana, and other states are ignoring their constitutional duty “to maintain and support public education,” not private schools.

 

Categories Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Florida, Lies, School Choice, Separation of church and state, Tennessee, Vouchers

Sally Yates: Barr Should Release Mueller Report in Full, Without Redactions

By dianeravitch
March 31, 2019 //
66

 

Sally Yates was Deputy Attorney General from 2015-2017. In this article in the Washington Post, she argues that Attorney General William Barr should release the full Mueller Report as soon as possible, without redactions.

She writes:

“America’s justice system is built upon one thing — truth. When witnesses give testimony, they are sworn to tell “the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.” The word “verdict” derives from the Latin term “veredictum,” meaning “to say the truth.” Special counsel Robert S. Mueller III, a public servant with impeccable integrity, was entrusted to find the truth regarding Russian interference in the 2016 election and has spoken through a comprehensive report that details the facts that he uncovered.

“Yet a week after Mueller issued his report, we don’t know those facts and have only been provided with Attorney General William P. Barr’s four-page summary of Mueller’s estimated 400-page report. It is time for the American people to hear the whole truth. We need to see the report itself.

“First, as the attorney general’s letter to Congress notes, the Mueller report “outlines the Russian effort to influence the election and documents crimes committed by persons associated with the Russian government in connection with those efforts.” Congress has a solemn responsibility to protect our democracy. Without access to the full factual record of what the special counsel uncovered, it cannot fulfill that mandate. As you read this, the Russian government is undoubtedly hard at work to undermine our next election. Each day that passes without Congress having access to the full Mueller report is a day that Congress is prevented from doing its job of keeping our elections free from Russian espionage efforts.

“Second, Barr’s letter leaves important questions unanswered concerning what then-candidate Donald Trump and his associates knew about Russian interference, and how they responded to Russian overtures to assist the campaign. While Barr’s letter states that the investigation did not establish that the campaign reached an agreement with the Russian government to take actions to impact the election in Trump’s favor, it reveals that the campaign did field “multiple offers from Russian-affiliated individuals to assist the Trump campaign.” Yet President Trump and others have repeatedly claimed that they had no contact with Russians, or knowledge that Russians were acting to assist his campaign. Moreover, the Trump campaign did not bring the Russian outreach to the attention of law enforcement but secretly allowed a foreign adversary’s assistance. Remarkably, after the release of the Barr letter — which makes it undeniable that the Russians were seeking to help the Trump campaign — the president still denies it. Why?”

Nor can Congress or the public make an informed judgment about Trump’s role in obstructing Justice without seeing the report.

Barr should not take it upon himself to redact (delete) the passages of his choosing.

Categories Education Reform, Lies

Right-Wing Blogs Spread Lies about AOC Appearance in Jackson Heights Public Education Forum

By dianeravitch
March 21, 2019 //
82

I wrote a post about my very pleasant experience meeting the wonderful, charming, brilliant Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in Jackson Heights, and I described her as “warm, comfortable in her skin, somewhat taken aback by her sudden fame, and unpretentious.” I said that she paid attention, and that she came to listen and learn. Everyone at the meeting was thrilled to meet her, and she took the time to shake hands, take selfies, and give generously of herself to all of the people who crowded in to meet her. She is a superstar, deservedly.

I noted that “It was a bit jarring to hear AOC say that she was treated in the Yorktown schools as in need of remedial education because she was Hispanic, not mainstream, but, she said, “a-high-stakes standardized Test” revealed she was in the 99th percentile. No one stopped to point out that she could not be referring to any high-stakes test used for accountability purposes because they don’t rank by percentile. They classify students as 1, 2, 3, or 4. Her teacher must have given her a no-stakes individual test that produces a percentile ranking for diagnostic purposes. Well, she can’t know everything about everything. None of us do.” I was not criticizing her but pointing out that she probably took an Iowa test or some other kind of test that gives percentile rankings, which NCLB tests do not. When you are a student, when you are in elementary school, you are not likely to know what kind of test you are taking, whether it is an Iowa test or a Pearson test or some other kind of test.

Imagine how surprised I was to see that a number of right-wing blogs claimed that I accused AOC of “lying.” Nothing could be further from the truth.

This one is titled “Ocasio-Cortez Lied About Her Test Scores to a Public Education Group.”

This was picked up by another blog.

And yet another blog, which attacked me too, for my writings about Afrocentrism from nearly 30 years ago.

And yet another blog, called “Liberty Redux.”

This one was titled “Did Ocasio-Cortez Lie about Her Test Scores at Anti-Charter School Rally?” 

This was repeated by another blog.

Probably it is continuing to spread through the fevered nether regions of the blogosphere, where mud-slinging is commonplace.

All of them made the false claim that I accused AOC of lying, which I did not. I said that she may have confused one kind of test for another, which is a mistake that any elementary school child might make. That is not a lie. NCLB state tests are not reported in percentiles, but as 1, 2, 3, 4, or below basic, basic, proficient, advanced.

All of these blogs somehow managed to find unflattering pictures of AOC, which is not easy because she is a very beautiful young woman.

Let me say this as clearly as possible so there is no misunderstanding.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez DID NOT LIE ABOUT HER TEST SCORES. AOC said that some of her teachers believed she was in need of remedial education until she took a standardized test in which she scored in the 99th percentile. I believe her. She is a brilliant young woman.

Her honesty, her integrity, her sincerity, and her genuine concern for other people shines through her.

I am old enough to be AOC’s grandmother, and I am proud to have met her. She is a shining example of the best in America.

The people who write these mendacious, lying blogs do not have the credibility to shine AOC’s shoes.

They are liars.

They are sycophants of the far-right.

They can do me a favor and not read my blog in the future.

They are spam and they will stay spam.

 

 

 

Categories Accountability, Education Reform, Lies

Paul Thomas: The Big Lie About the “Science of Reading”

By dianeravitch
February 20, 2019 //
94

 

Paul Thomas of Furman University in South Carolina reminds us that “the crisis in reading”  is a staple of American educational history. Every generation complains that young kids are not learning to read.it began long before Rudolf Flesch’s best seller “Why Johnny Can’t Read” in the 1950s.

Jeanne  Chall, Reading specialist at Harvard and experienced kindergarten teacher, explored the mystery of reading in her book “Learning to Read: The Great Debate,” 1967, where she recommended early use of phonics, them a transition to engaging reading.

The National Reading Panel (1997) popularized the idea of a “science of reading,” and the myth refuses to die.NCLB codified it into law, but the “crisis” persisted.

Thomas exposes The Big Lie.

Mississippi is the latest example of a state falsely claiming that it has used the “science of reading” to raise scores.

Mississippi hasn’t broken the code. Neither has Florida.

Thomas writes:

“The “science of reading” mantra is a Big Lie, but it is also a huge and costly distraction from some real problems.

“Relatively affluent states still tend to score above average or average on reading tests; relatively poor states tend to score below average on reading tests.

“Some states that historically scored low, under the weight of poverty and the consequences of conservative political ideology that refuses to address that poverty, have begun to implement harmful policies to raise test scores (see the magenta highlighting) in the short-term for political points.

“It is 2019. There is no reading crisis in the way the “science of reading” advocates are claiming.

“It is 2019. Balanced literacy is the science of reading, but it is not the most common way teachers are teaching reading because schools are almost exclusively trying to raise scores, not students who are eager, joyful, and critical readers.

“It is 2019. Political and public efforts to do anything—often the wrong thing—so no one addresses poverty remain the American Way.

“It is 2019. It is still mostly about poverty when people insist it is about reading and reading policy.”

 

 

 

 

Categories Accountability, Lies, Mississippi, NAEP, NCLB (No Child Left Behind), Research
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