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What Is Happening in Detroit?

By dianeravitch
August 26, 2012 //
4

I received the following comment with links from a reader. Does anyone reading this blog have knowledge of what is happening in Detroit and what is happening now that the “emergency manager” law is under court review?

The following two links show what is happening in Detroit right now. I find it interesting that the first link (which is to the later article), has comments to the effect that the two sides are committed to working together (presumably for the benefit of the students), yet the second link (which was posted a few days earlier) shows exactly the opposite. I so wish these adults would quit acting like three year olds.

http://www.detroitnews.com/article/20120826/SCHOOLS/208260307/DPS-interim-superintendent-waiting-for-PA4-defeat

http://www.detroitnews.com/article/20120824/SCHOOLS/208240360

By the way, is there any indication of what actual class sizes will be in DPS this year?

Categories Detroit, Michigan

Here is My Interview on CNN

By dianeravitch
August 22, 2012 //
36

Many readers have contacted me to ask why CNN has not posted Randi Kaye’s interview with me, rebutting Michelle Rhee’s assertions.

This reader, Michael Brocoum, made a copy of the interview and posted it on Youtube. Here it is.

As I mentioned in an earlier post, the interview began with a question about the National Assessment of Educational Progress (you will note that it is misspelled by CNN as the National Assessment of Educational Process). I don’t recall the precise wording, but the question went like this:

“You claim that test scores on NAEP are at their highest point in history, but how do you explain that the scale score for fourth grade reading is only 221? That’s 221 out of 500. That’s less than 50%. Isn’t 50% a failing grade?”

I then tried to explain that scale scores don’t work like that, that the question itself was a completely erroneous interpretation of scale scores. NAEP has a vertical scale, and scale scores in the 4th grade are lower than in the 8th grade. They can’t be converted into a grade in the way that Randi Kaye asserted, although they are useful as measures of progress.

Consider this: the average scale score for 4th grade is 221, but students scoring at the 90th percentile–our top students–have a scale score of 264. By Randi Kaye’s fallacious reasoning, they are failing too! In 8th grade reading, the students at the 90th percentile had a scale score of 307 (on a scale of 500). She would convert that to a grade of 61, which is borderline failing.

Wouldn’t you think that the editor or research staff at CNN would have prevented Randi Kaye from making such absurd assertions?

But it was of a piece with all the questions that followed. I felt as if I were being interrogated by someone who worked for StudentsFirst, not by a reporter seeking to ascertain either my views or the basic facts.

Rhee said at the outset of my interview that the answer to what she thinks is the terrible performance of our schools is merit pay. So Randi Kaye drilled in on that with two questions (one of them was dropped from the show before it aired). She ended up with a quote from someone named Lucas who said he wanted merit pay. That wasn’t exactly definitive, since I was able point out that merit pay has been tried again and again and has always failed to make a difference.

Categories Corporate Reformers, Michigan, NAEP, Privatization, Ravitch, Diane, Rhee, Michelle, StudentsFirst, Teachers and Teaching, Testing

What Happens Now in Detroit?

By dianeravitch
August 3, 2012 //
4

The Michigan Supreme Court decided that the petitions for a referendum on the emergency manager law are valid, and the referendum will happen in November.

In the meanwhile, the judges said, the EM’s powers are suspended.

Detroit has an emergency manager. What happens there, this teacher wonders:

(I’m a teacher in Michigan.)  It also leaves hanging what will happen to Detroit Public Schools, which are currently being run by an Emergency Financial Manager.  The EFM fired all teachers (requiring them to reapply for their jobs), imposed a 10% pay cut on all teachers, removed class size maximums from the contract (allowing up to 60 students per class at the secondary level), and more.  Since these measures were imposed under a law which has now been suspended and whose fate won’t be decided until well after the new school year begins, what will happen?  Will the measures be abrogated as if they never existed?  What happens to the salary of the EFM?  Will he have to pay it all back? (I have my doubts there, but wouldn’t that be nice?)  If the EFM isn’t allowed to work for three months and quite naturally finds other work and the public–heaven forbid–votes to keep the law, will the district hire a new manager or try to bring back the old one?  This will be interesting to see played out, but it’s disgusting that this legal footwork is dancing on the backs of our children.

Categories Budget Cuts, Detroit, Michigan

Michigan Court OKs Referendum on Emergency Manager Law

By dianeravitch
August 3, 2012 //
3

Opponents of Michigan’s emergency manager law want the law repealed as anti-democratic.

Well, it does allow an appointed person to overrule any decisions made by elected bodies, which does seem anti-democratic on its face.

They gathered 200,000 signatures, 40,000 more than the law requires to get a referendum on the ballot.

Supporters of the emergency manager law argued that the petitions were in the wrong font size and should be tossed out!

In a split decision, the Michigan Supreme Court decided that the petitions were valid, and the referendum will take place in November.

In the meanwhile, it said, the power of the emergency managers is suspended.

This leaves a big question mark hanging over two districts where the emergency managers decided to close the public schools and hand them over to charter operators.

Categories Charter Schools, Michigan

Privatization, Profits, and Politicians

By dianeravitch
August 3, 2012 //
8

A reader noted the similarity between Governor Chris Christie’s plan to privatize low-performing public schools, and Governor Rick Snyder’s reform plan in Michigan. Other readers have commented on the irony of conservative Republican governors–allegedly committed to small government–aggressively using the powers of government to undermine local control and privatize schools.

The similarity goes beyond Christie and Snyder. The same ideas–privatize low-performng schools, close low-performing schools–are embedded in Race to the Top, also in the Boston Consulting Group’s plan for Philadelphia, the Mind Trust plan for Indianapolis, the Bloomberg reforms in New York City, Mayor Frank Jackson’s plan for Cleveland. None of these plans ever works, other than by pushing out the low-performing kids and sending them to other struggling schools. It makes you wish that these guys would take a peek at evidence or actually care about the kids. And it also makes you wonder why none of them ever has an original idea. They just copy one another ad infinitum. And the more they copy stale, failed ideas, the more they praise themselves as “innovators.”

When you see how popular these ideas are among conservative Republicans, it shows how far to the right the Republican party has gone, when the principle of profit trumps the principle of local control and respect for tradition:

This sounds very eerily the same as what Gov Rick Snyder has already done here in Michigan. The Educational Achievement Authority (EAA) is set to operate the lowest performing 5% of Michigan schools starting in the 12-13 school year. Here is a quote from the michigan.gov website explaining the EAA ” It (EAA) will first apply to underperforming schools in Detroit in the 2012-2013 school year and then be expanded to cover the entire state.” Is this not a state takeover?
Categories Boston Consulting Group, Michigan, New Jersey, Philadelphia, Privatization

Why the ACLU Is Suing Michigan

By dianeravitch
August 1, 2012 //
2

The ACLU has filed suit against the agencies and people who, they claim, have failed the children of Highland Park. This is one of three districts where a state emergency manager was sent to take charge because of fiscal distress. He shut down the public schools and will turn the students over to charter operators. In this letter, the state’s ACLU director explains why it is suing:

The Detroit News’ July 16 editorial, “ACLU’s Highland Park lawsuit blames wrong defendants,” woefully missed the mark. The News says that the ACLU should have sued only the local school board for having failed the children of Highland Park.

The truth is, there’s plenty of blame to go around. That is why we sued the state, the district, its emergency manager, the state superintendent, the State Board of Education and the state Department of Education. All have failed the children of Highland Park. And all have a legal and moral responsibility to help craft a solution.

Governance of the district may be one important issue, but it is not the only one. The same amount of attention, or more, should be paid to the kinds of programs and academic interventions needed to remedy a district where 90 percent of the students, by 11th grade, are not reading proficiently and 100 percent are failing science and social studies, as measured by the Michigan Merit Exam.

The News never explains howchanging the governance structure would cure all these ills. The children in this district cannot read and there are no plans or programs in place for September when they return. A clear and specific commitment to begin the turnaround now by the state would go a long way in making certain that whoever runs the schools will be held accountable for delivering basic literacy skills.

State law is very specific: “A pupil who does not score satisfactorily on the 4th or 7th grade [MEAP] reading test shall be provided special assistance reasonably expected to enable the pupil to bring his or her reading skills to grade level within 12 months.” No entity charged with educating Highland Park’s children has taken on the educational deficiencies there in any meaningful way.

One of our clients, a seventh-grade student in Highland Park, struggled to write this sentence: “You can make the school gooder by geting people that will do the jod that is pay for get a football tame for the kinds mybe a baksball tamoe get a other jamtacher for the school.”

Although he attends school regularly, he only reads at a first-grade level. He has not been diagnosed with any special learning disability. He has never received any individualized reading intervention or remedial instruction. We should all be asking — how can this be?

This student’s community is in desperate need of intervention programs and education reform policies that put the best interests of the child front and center. And at the end of the day the buck should stop with the state, which is charged, under the constitution, with “maintaining and supporting a system of public education.” It should stop with the district, which is charged with implementing that system. It should stop with the emergency manager who, we understand, is working on a part-time basis in a district whose phones aren’t getting answered. It should stop with the teachers, and the unions, and the parents.

Our lawsuit therefore asks that both state and local officials get to work right away. We ask that they use research-based methodologies to improve basic literacy skills. We ask that they put trained teachers in the classrooms. We ask that they provide each child with the books they need. We ask that they provide safe and clean classrooms, bathrooms and hallways. We ask that they make a determined effort to help every child achieve reading and math literacy.

Rather than play the blame game, The News would better serve its readers by covering stories that show that all children can learn if given the right tools.

Kary Moss is executive director of the ACLU of Michigan.

From The Detroit News: http://www.detroitnews.com/article/20120730/OPINION01/207300302#ixzz228K2kqoj

Categories Accountability, Education Reform, Michigan

Why the School Marketplace Fails

By dianeravitch
July 29, 2012 //
9

A reader responded to a post about Michigan with the following comment.

I perked up because I was reminded of something I heard on CNN recently. Fareed Zakaria was interviewing Steven Rattner about hedge funds, equity investors, and outsourcing. Zakaria asked why so many capital investors end up sending jobs overseas, and Rattner answered very concisely. He said, and I paraphrase, “in a global economy, capital always seeks to lower costs. In a competitive marketplace, if you can’t cut costs, you go out of business. The name of the game is who can cut costs the most.”

What does this mean in an education marketplace? The school that can lower its costs the most wins. How do you lower costs? You increase class size and/or hire the least experienced, low-cost teachers.

So, the “winner” is the school with the largest class sizes and the least experienced teachers.

But these are not the factors associated with quality education. This would not describe the education at our nation’s elite schools, like Sidwell Friends, where the Obama daughters are enrolled, or at Exeter or Groton or Deerfield Academy, where so many of the corporate reformers send their children.

Snyder’s proposal to improve education by maximizing parental choice implicitly rests on the Adam-Smith-”invisible-hand” doctrine — that is, in a free market, the sellers who offer the best product will survive while the sellers who offer inferior products will fail.However, the invisible hand only works when the market works. As commenters have noted in responses to recent posts in Diane’s blog, there are major market failures in the school-choice marketplace, particularly in the low-SES/inner-city areas.Most buyers (parents) have little/no accurate information regarding the quality of competing schools and no practical way of obtaining accurate information.Similarly, many/most buyers (parents) do not know what mix of educational services would best serve their particular children’s education needs — i.e., strict vs. relaxed discipline, whole-language vs. phonics reading instruction, 1 well-paid experienced teacher or 2 poorly-paid inexperienced teachers/class; lots of computerized instruction vs. minimal computerized instruction.For even the most concerned, well-educated parents, the school choice decision would be largely a crapshoot and would probably be driven by factors unrelated to school quality — i.e., neighborhood rumors, where the children’s friends are going, ease of transportation.And, in low-SES areas (the only areas where we’re seriously concerned that school quality is too low), many of the parents will be relatively unconcerned with the school choice decision and virtually none of the parents will be well-educated. So, the school choice decisions of most parents in these areas will be entirely a crapshoot with the result that, in these areas, there is no reason to believe that Adam Smith’s invisible hand will operate — that is, there is no reason to believe that the schools chosen by the parents will be the schools that offer the best product.

For these reasons, under Snyder’s proposal, there is a strong incentive for a school to minimize operating costs and little incentive for a school to improve instructional quality, particularly in low-SES areas. We’ll see an explosion of low-cost, low-quality for-profit schools serving the low-SES areas providing an inferior educational product while making a high profit margin.
Categories Charter Schools, Economy, Education Reform, Michigan, Vouchers

Governor Rick Snyder’s Plan

By dianeravitch
July 25, 2012 //
15

Governor Snyder’s plan for education in Michigan sounds just like Romney’s and Bobby Jindal’s.

The money should follow the student anywhere and everywhere, to any vendor of education services, regardless of who owns it or manages it.

So, students may take their money to private schools, to hawkers of services, to online courses, whatever. Welcome to anyone who wants to start a school and collect public money.

That is a plan to undermine public education, and the rightwing knows it. That’s their goal.

Education costs won’t go down without increasing class sizes, and the way that will happen is by shifting more dollars to online schools of dubious quality.

It may be worth pointing out that this is not the formula of any high-performing nation in the world.

An editorial writer for the Detroit Free Press sees an issue with the Snyder approach. His column is called “It’s Time to Reshape Public Education.” My suggestion, take care not to destroy it. The entrepreneurs who will flood the new marketplace will care more about their bottom line than about children. Surely, Governor Snyder knows that. This is the governor’s prescription for education spending:

“Any time, any place, any way, any pace.”

It’s a catchy way of saying state money should follow students through all kinds of educational options, from traditional neighborhood schools to charters and online coursework — whatever best enables the student to learn.

Snyder calls it “unfettered flexibility” and hopes to foster more “free market ideas for public schools in Michigan.”

Sounds good, but let’s make sure we have quality controls in place for educators who want to set up shop here and take in our tax dollars.

And let’s not leave decisions about learning entirely up to the students. A few may do just fine taking a physics class online at 2 a.m. from a teacher based in Arizona. But most will probably be better served by a little more structure — and a mandatory gym class.

Categories Accountability, Education Industry, Education Reform, For-Profit, Michigan, Privatization

Michigan Plan to Defund Public Education

By dianeravitch
July 18, 2012 //
15

Michigan Governor Rick Snyder has his own plan to hack away at the foundations of universal, free public education.

He is vying to be one of the national leaders of the education reform movement.

Like Bobby Jindal, his Southern counterpart in the far-right of the Republican Party, Snyder would love to offer vouchers but the Michigan state constitution doesn’t permit it (neither does the Louisiana state constitution, but who cares when you are a reformer?). Leaving constitutional niceties aside, Snyder wants to promote, encourage, expand, and fund with taxpayer dollars anything that is not a public school.

Governor Snyder wants to reshape the state’s school finance system so that public money “follows the child,” instead of just automatically going to public schools. This is part of the rightwing agenda to defund public education, cloaked in alluring terminology. The governor has created a panel to figure out how to make this happen.

He won’t come right out and say (reformers never do) that public education is bad, instead he will parrot Michelle Rhee’s absurd claim that public education is rigged to support “adult interests,” not the needs of children. I think what that means is that people who work in public schools get paid for doing so, which shows how selfish they are.

Far better, in the eyes of this education reformer in Michigan, to allow public money to go to for-profit corporations who put children first or anywhere else where there are no unions.

This is one of the peculiar views of the reformers in Michigan. It released a memo saying “the existing School Aid Act of 1979 generates $14 billion for public education, but the group believes that the existing law “serves the interest of legislators and representatives of the educational interests who control the education system, it is generally inaccessible to the general public.”

See the reasoning: That $14 billion now spent on public schools for all is controlled by “the educational interests” who “control the system” and it is not really for “the general public.” Get that: the money spent for public education is not for the public.

So if you follow the logic here, what is needed is more school choice, with money not targeted to any particular district or any particular school. No student would be assigned anywhere, and any choice the student or family made would be accompanied by state funding. Needless to say, that includes online learning and charters. Be it noted that Michigan has a very large for-profit charter sector; somewhere between 70-80% of its many charters operate for profit.

The governor wants funding to be allocated to “proficiency-based funding instead of “seat time” requirements,” which means that testing will be the sole criterion of education value. This again is a green light for the online corporations, because students can pass the state tests on computers and won’t need to go to a brick-and-mortar school at all.

And of course, we can’t have “reform” without “innovation.” In this case, the governor wants “A system that embraces innovative learning tools and reflects changing from a static approach to education delivery to one responsive to individual learning styles.” There we go again: code words meaning that we don’t want public money to pay for the current status quo system of public education, which is “static,” but to pay for online delivery system where the computer can adjust to “individual learning styles.” Apparently that is something that individual teachers, mere human beings, can’t possibly do. Only computers can do that.

And most certainly the governor wants to allow “nonpublic and homeschooled students maximum access to public education resources within the constraints of the state constitution.”

There you have it, folks, Governor Rick Snyder’s plan to reform public education by funding everything other than public education.

Categories Charter Schools, Education Industry, Education Reform, For-Profit, Jindal, Bobby, Michigan, On-Line Education, Privatization

Who Should Save Detroit?

By dianeravitch
July 17, 2012 //
4

Detroit’s state-appointed emergency manager is not only increasing the number of privately managed charter schools, but has imposed a contract that will permit class sizes of 41 in grades K-3 and 61 in grades 6-12.

This is a disgrace, as the children of Detroit are being sacrificed to save money.

Frankly it is strange that the district schools will be replaced by charter schools, because charter schools in Detroit underperform in comparison to the district schools.

As the public schools are strangled and as the emergency manager literally drives children out of them and into the charter schools, the question arises as to whether public education will survive at all in Detroit. Or will the public schools be the dumping ground for the children rejected by the charters? Does the state have an obligation to maintain public education?

In Highland Park, the ACLU is suing the district and the state of Michigan for failing to meet educational standards.

A reader who identifies him/herself as “labor lawyer” answers the question.

If, as seems likely, Detroit lacks the $ to support minimal standards in its public schools, Michigan should step in with supplemental funding. The state created the city and delegated to the city the state’s obligation to educate the children. If the state’s creature (the city) cannot meet its delegated obligation, the state should be held accountable. Viewed in constitutional terms, Michigan is obligated under the 14th Amendment’d Equal Protection clause to treat each citizen more or less the same. By delegating the education responsibility to Detroit and then standing by while Detroit underfunds education (either by political choice or fiscal necessity) and other Michigan communities adequately fund education, Michigan is denying the children in Detroit equal protection.At the federal level, a “no child left behind” concept — if applied literally rather than figuratively/politically — suggests that the federal govt should step in to provide additional funding where a city/state cannot afford to adequately fund the public schools. But don’t hold your breath waiting for the Republicans (or the Obama/Duncan Dept of Ed) who love NCLB to put their $ where their mouths are and actually spend some federal $ helping the Detroit children who are being left behind.

A second comment by Labor lawyer:

The Detroit teachers union, the Detroit NAACP, and/or an adhoc group of Detroit parents (perhaps a city-wide PTA organization) would be the logical plaintiffs for such a lawsuit against the state of Michigan alleging the 14th Amendment equal protection violation. The federal obligation is political, not legal. It would be a real stretch to convince a court that the 14th Amendment’s equal protection clause requires the federal govt to insure that a state provides at least minimally-adequate funding for each student (the 14th amendment requires a state to treat its citizens equally and requires the federal govt to treat US citizens equally but does not require the federal govt to force the states to treat their citizens equally) + the amount of federal $ spent on K-12 education is such a small percentage of the total K-12 spending that differences in federal funding between Detroit and other cities would not rise to the level of a federal equal protection violation.

A third comment from same:

Unfortunately, the battle against most of the corporate education reform has to be fought politically rather than legally.

Detroit (and some other inner-city school systems) are extreme examples where the school funding is collapsing relative to funding elsewhere in the state — usually due primarily to collapsing inner-city property values/property taxes.

In other words, the equal protection violation arises due to unequal funding. If the per pupil funding is roughly equal between two school systems in a state (or, more precisely, if the two school systems each provide enough per pupil funding to meet a minimally-adequate standard), it’s extremely difficult to argue that the manner in which the $ is spent creates an equal protection violation. If School System A decides to spend its $ on charters or vouchers and School System B decides to spend its $ on neighborhood public schools, the courts will see this a policy decisions properly committed to the elected officials rather than an equal protection violation.

Always happy to get free legal advice!
Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Detroit, Education Reform, Michigan
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