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Resmovits: Texas Gets NCLB Waiver, But–Gasp!–Obama Goals Equally Impossible

By dianeravitch
October 13, 2013 //
19

I confess I have not followed all the twists and turns of the proposals to reauthorize the failed No Child Left Behind law. Almost everyone except its original sponsors agrees that it failed, yet Congress is locked into the same stale assumption that the federal government is supposed to find a magical formula to measure test scores and punish teachers, principals, and schools. Congress, in its wisdom, has forgotten that this school-level “accountability” didn’t exist until January 2002, when NCLB was signed into law by President George W. Bush. Having learned nothing from the failure of NCLB, they can’t now agree on what comes next.

In this story on Huffington Post, Joy Resmovits notes the irony that even Texas–yes, Texas–has asked for a waiver from the disastrous law that was foisted on the nation’s school by not only George W. Bush, and not only his advisers Margaret Spellings and Dandy Kress, but also Democrats George Miller of California and Ted Kennedy of Massachusetts.

Now, everyone laughs at the idea that 100% of students were going to be proficient by 2014. What a dumb idea to set an impossible goal. And how cruel to fire teachers and close schools that could not reach an impossible goal.

But look at this:

“Under the waiver, Texas will no longer subscribe to the much-derided “Adequate Yearly Progress” system that measures school performance and requires all students to demonstrate proficiency in reading and math by the 2013-2014 school year. Instead, it will use a new accountability system that expects 100 percent of students to be proficient in reading and math by the 2019-2020 school year.”

What’s this? The Obama administration expects “100 percent of students to be proficient in reading and math by the 2019-2020 year”?

Here we go again.

No nation in the world has 100% proficiency. Doesn’t anyone in DC have a fresh idea? Like one that has some connection to common sense.

Categories NCLB (No Child Left Behind), Obama, Race to the Top, Texas, U.S. Department of Education

A Science Teacher Writes to President Obama: Stop!

By dianeravitch
September 13, 2013 //
57

This letter was posted as a comment: “I just sent the
following post to the White House: Dear David Simas, I have
supported President Obama and the Democratic Party for some time.
However, I’m totally fed up and dismayed by Arne Duncan and the US
Department of Education’s assault on Public Education in America.
There are a lot of subjects I don’t have much in-depth knowledge
about. However, I have been a science teacher for the past 27 years
and I believe that I do know a little about educating children. I
want to tell you that the Race To The Top and it’s predecessor, No
Child Left Behind along with the excessive emphasis on Standardized
Testing are KILLING PUBLIC EDUCATION. “There are a lot of
experienced, knowledgeable, and well educated, respected educators
who are screaming at you to please stop this nutty policy which
includes Pay for Performance and the Common Core Curriculum. It is
certainly true that public education in America can be improved,
but not with the solutions that are now being implemented (without
documentation that they will actually work). “These thoughtless
policies are destroying communities, families, children and
teacher’s lives–all in the name of “improving education”. I now
believe that RTTT, NCLB, and the associated standardized testing
that now drives instruction throughout the country is doing greater
harm to our nation that George Bush’s War in Iraq. In its simplest
terms, children cannot be effectively educated by a top down,
force-fed curriculum. They hate it, get bored, and don’t see the
relevance of this test driven education to their lives. “Teachers
are not given the freedom to teach to the kids where they are and
build on their knowledge base. Curriculum content is dictated from
on high. This is the same concept that Joseph Stalin had in Russia
with his 5-year central economic plans. Didn’t work then, won’t
work now. “Educating children is a complex undertaking. It requires
two way, personal interaction between a teacher and student. If
class sizes are too large, that just can’t happen. If a teacher
cannot get his/her students interested and excited about learning,
educating the child is not going to be effective. There are 4 basic
ingredients to a good education: 1) Well trained and dedicated
teachers, 2) small class sizes, 3) adequate resources and a decent
environment to teach in, and 4) giving the teachers freedom to
teach. “Some will argue that this will just cost too much money and
that there are cheaper ways to educate kids. But it just ain’t so.
“Education is not about the money, it’s about the kids. It’s not
about international competition on standardized tests. Those tests
actually measure the wrong things anyway and cost waaaay too much
money. Public education is perhaps the most important bedrock
pillar that makes our nation great. Policies now being put in
place, including RTTT and Common Core Curriculum are destroying it.
Our children and our nation deserve better from you. I will no
longer support this President or the Democratic Party if they
continue on this self destructive path. “Al Tate
altate1122@gmail.com”

Categories Common Core, Democrats, Obama, Privatization, Race to the Top, Testing

Who Is Killing Democracy in Education?

By dianeravitch
September 9, 2013 //
35

Paul Horton, who teaches history at the University of Chicago Lab School, wrote the following essay for this blog:

“Democracy and Education: Waiting for Gatopia?

“John Dewey arrived at the University of Chicago in the middle of the Pullman strike. He wrote his wife, still in Ann Arbor, that he had met a young man on the train who supported the strike very passionately: “I only talked with him for 10 or 15 minutes but when I got through my nerves were more thrilled than they had been for years; I felt as if I had better resign my job teaching and follow him around until I got a life. One lost all sense of the right or wrong of things in admiration of the absolute, almost fanatic, sincerity and earnestness, and in admiration of the magnificent combination that was going on. Simply as an aesthetic matter, I don’t believe the world has seen but a few times such a spectacle of magnificent, widespread union of men about a common interest as this strike business.” (quoted in Westbrook, 87). This sense of “magnificent, widespread union” represented the definition of Democracy to Dewey; it was the very core of his writing, work, and public advocacy.

“Later, after he had moved to Columbia University in New York, he had a major disagreement with a very articulate student, Randolph Bourne, about the media pressure to get involved in WWI. Bourne argued then and later in an unfinished essay entitled, “War is the Health of the State” that states thrived on war because war consolidated the state’s power and allowed it to repress any kind of dissent. Dewey was an outspoken advocate of American entry into World War I, but began to question his support after seeing several of his colleagues at Columbia fired for their outspoken opposition to the War. These serious doubts turned into deep regret when he saw that the Espionage Act was used to repress freedoms of speech and press. Respectable citizens, including many thoughtful journalists and political leaders like Eugene V. Debs were routinely thrown into jail. His serious doubts began to trouble him more deeply as he witnessed the Federal response to the postwar Red Scare of 1919, when many American citizens were deported without constitutional due process. He was so disturbed by all of this that he helped found the American Civil Liberties Union that sought to protect due process and other constitutional rights. (Ryan, 154-99)

“From the early 1920’s forward, Dewey became a vocal and articulate public spokes person for Democracy in all American institutions. He founded and led an AFT local at Columbia and often spoke at labor and AFT functions. He believed with every cell of his body that American Schools had to be the incubator of American Democracy. As the shadow of fascism descended over Europe, he became a fellow traveller with the United Front to defend the world from an ideology that had nothing but for contempt for Democracy or any notion of an open society. For Dewey, education that allowed the organic evolution of free speech and the discussion and respect for all points of view in the classroom inoculated American students from the threat of fascism.

“If he were alive today, Professor Dewey would be shocked by what he would see. In part, Dewey’s whole philosophy of Education was developed to countervail the corrosive influence of capitalism on communities and the gross economic power of giant corporations. He sought to defend individual growth and creativity and nurture the sense of public responsibility that was under assault from the pulverizing individualism of the dominant ideology of big business backed Social Darwinism.

“Dewey’s vision is now a major target of major foundations that are funding the push to privatize American Education. Major Wall Street investors and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the Eli Broad Foundation, the Walton Foundation, and the Joyce Foundation, among others, are working together with the Obama Administration to destroy what is left of public education in this great country. Combined, these corporations control approximately 50 billion dollars in assests.

“I will not take the time here to unpack the strategic plan coordinated by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and three people within the Department of Education who have turn their strategic plan into a public policy called “The Race to the Top.” You should read Diane Ravitch’s new book to get a clear picture of how this has all been done very legally with the help of the best lawyers that money can buy, millions of dollars thrown at the Harvard Education Department, and with tens of millions of dollars to hire the best Madison Ave. Advertising and PR firms and the best web designers (go to “PARCC” or “Common Core” online). What you need to know is that none of the people behind this plan have any respect for public schools or public school teachers.

“Like Anthony Cody, I have been insulted several times by Secretary Duncan’s Press Secretary and friends of our president who are not open to any imput from experienced teachers. Indeed, I was the subject of a veiled threat from Mr. Duncan’s Press Secretary that I describe here: http://blogs.edweek.org/teachers/living-in-dialogue/2013/04/paul_horton_of_common_core_con.html.

“In another case, a good friend of the President told me when I protested the Chicago School closings: “who do you think you are kidding, only 7 or 8 percent of those kids have a chance anyway.” Several weeks later when I raised the same subject again, he gave me the Democrats for Education Reform standard line that inner city schools failed because teachers have failed. He was not interested in hearing about poverty and resource starving of schools. I called him on this. The first quote sounded eerily like what Mr. Emanuel communicated to Chicago Teacher’s Union President, Karen Lewis, in a famously closed door, expletive filled meeting.

“What all friends of public teachers and public Education need to understand is that Mr. Duncan and the Obama administration listen to no one on this issue. What Republicans and Tea Party activists need to understand is that this is not about Government corruption, it is about the fact that when it comes to Education issues, we do not have a government. Governments must read and respond to petitions: our Education Department does not seek to communicate with any citizens except by tweeting inane idiocies about gadgets and enterprise. What we have is the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation sponsoring the overthrow of the public school system to bulldoze a path to sell billions of dollars of product. Other companies like Pearson Education, McGraw-Hill and Company, and Achieve, Inc. are just coming in behind the bulldozers.

“We must teach the rest of our society that democracy still matters in schools and everywhere else. The time for talking is over! We need to get into the streets and get arrested if necessary. Most importantly every one of us needs to call the same senator or congressman every day until NCLB and RTTT are dead, Arne Duncan does not have control over a penny, and all stimulus money that has yet to be distributed, is given by the Senate Appropriations Committee to the districts around the country that are the most underserved to rehire teachers and support staff. Not a penny should go to charter school construction, IT, administration, or hiring consultants from the Eli Broad Foundation, the Gates Foundation, or McKinsey. Not a penny should go to Pearson Education, McGraw-Hill or any form of standardized testing. All state superintendents who took trips from any Education vendor should resign, and no state should hire an administrator or superintendent at any level who does not have proper accredited certification and ten years of exemplary classroom teaching.

“Now is the time to preserve the legacy of John Dewey and teach the rest of the country about Democracy in Education or wait like sheep for Gatopia to numb us all!”

Categories Broad Foundation, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Duncan, Arne, Education Industry, For-Profit, Gates Foundation, Bill Gates, Obama, Pearson, Privatization, Teachers and Teaching, Texas, U.S. Department of Education, U.S. education, Unions

Paul Horton: Stop the Devastation of the Common Core Tests!

By dianeravitch
August 7, 2013 //
21

Paul Horton teaches history at the University of Chicago Lab School, where President Obama, Rahm Emanuel, and Arne Duncan sent (or in the case of the mayor, send) their children. He is a passionate defender of common sense in education and an articulate critic of the current corporate reform movement. As a historian, he understands the nation’s historic commitment to support public education. He also understands that the Obama administration has abandoned any recognition of the historic principle of federalism that limits the U.S. Department of Education’s ability to direct or control curriculum and instruction. This letter was addressed to State Senator Kwame Raoul in Chicago.

State Senator Kwame Raoul

Suite 4000 Chicago, Illinois; 60654

August 6,2013

Dear Senator Raoul,

We know from every measure that the Wilmette-Winnetka, Niles, Hinsdale, and Naperville schools are excellent. They are the highest achieving public schools in the state of Illinois. Their average SAT and ACT scores and the percentage of students enrolled in AP classes, not to mention exemplary performance on AP tests, makes these districts respected by competitive colleges all over the country. Indeed, there is a national competition for graduates of these districts. Why do we need another measure that we cannot afford? Why are we going to pay Pearson Education millions of dollars for products that will force many exemplary schools to lower their standards?

You will see what a massive fraud the Common Core Curriculum is when these schools are forced to lower their standards to teach Common Core and then their achievement will be denigrated by invalid measures designed to make all public schools look bad. When the New York public schools were required to take Pearson Education developed tests this spring, dozens of exemplary schools and districts that have similar profiles to the Illinois public schools mentioned above, received substantially lowered school ratings. The same thing happened in Kentucky last year: scores went down in the best schools, and scores reflected preexisting conditions in underserved schools and communities.

Shame on the public officials of this country for turning their backs on the Northwest Ordinance, a document that precedes the Constitution in American history and law! The Ordinance made an historic commitment to public education. Federal and state governments have turned their backs on public schools because of their dependence on Wall Street funding for political campaigns. How can we allow this to happen?

If Bill Daley is the Democratic nominee for governor and he plans to support the current state school board, I will vote for the Republican candidate if the nominee will do something about Superintendent Koch, Common Core, and the PARCC assessments. Superintendent Koch received paid trips from Pearson Education and the state then hired Pearson to develop its Common Core standardized tests.

I am a life long Democrat whose family has proud connections to the Civil Rights movement in the South. This administration and its operatives like Mayor Emanuel, have all but abandoned the country’s historic commitment to public education. When will an element within the Democratic party of Illinois stand up for common sense in Education?

Senator Raoul, you have stood very bravely in defense of teacher pensions. Can you stand up for the teachers and parents of Illinois, and buck Mayor Emanuel, Secretary Duncan, and the Democrats for Education Reform who seem more interested in attracting Wall Street money to Democratic campaigns in exchange for support of school privatization? Alderman Burns (the President’s local political protégé) will not do so for obvious reasons. I hope that you will consider a run against the plutocrats who currently control the Democratic Party in Illinois. The citizens of Woodlawn where I live are sickened by what is happening to their neighborhood schools. An insurgent candidate for governor could gain the support of disaffected Democrats of many stripes.

All the best,

Paul Horton

History teacher

Categories Chicago, Common Core, Democrats for Education Reform, Duncan, Arne, Obama, Testing, U.S. education

Meet Betsy DeVos, a Leader of the Reform Movement

By dianeravitch
August 5, 2013 //
57

The bipartisan coalition determined to privatize American public education has a large tent indeed. It includes ALEC, President Obama, Secretary Duncan, Governor Bobby Jindal, former Governor Jeb Bush, Governor Scott Walker, and many more.

Not to be missed is Betsy DeVos, who founded the American Federation for Children and advocates tirelessly for vouchers. In 2012, AFS honored Scott Walker and Michelle Rhee. Here is an interview with Betsy DeVos.

Categories ALEC, Duncan, Arne, Michigan, Obama, US Education, Vouchers

Los Angeles Times: A Wise Editorial about NCLB and Race to Top

By dianeravitch
July 21, 2013 //
23

The Los Angeles Times published a first-rate editorial about the disastrous federal micromanagement spawned by NCLB. It also takes the Obama administration to the woodshed for its own misguided micromanagement of the nation’s public schools.

It says: “The nation is ripe for rebellion against the rigid law and the Obama administration’s further efforts to micromanage how schools are run.”

It adds:

“Passed in 2001, the No Child Left Behind Act used the leverage of federal education funding to push states into doing more for their disadvantaged, black and Latino students, whose academic achievement was appallingly low. Although public schools fall under state rather than federal purview, the rationale behind the interference was that because Congress provided some funding, it had an interest in making sure that the money was achieving its aims. That’s fair enough.

“Unfortunately, the punitive law ushered in a regimen of intensive testing and harsh sanctions against schools that failed to meet improvement markers that were extremely difficult to achieve, sometimes meaningless and often counterproductive. Later, the Obama administration added more layers of interference by pushing its own favored reforms — such as a common curriculum for all states and the inclusion of test scores as a substantial factor in teacher evaluations — in some cases in return for waivers on the No Child Left Behind requirements.”

The federal government was wrong to make scores on standardized tests the measure of all things. It was a colossal error. We didn’t need NCLB to tell us that poor and minority kids were not getting the same test scores as their advantaged peers. We knew that from state scores and SAT scores and multiple other sources. The issue was what to do about it. Congress decided that measuring the gap was reform. however, none of their “remedies”–enacted without any evidence–was effective. Twelve years after the law was enacted, none of the law’s so-called remedies has worked.

The fact is that no one–repeat, NO ONE–in Congress or the U.S. Department of Education (then or now) knows how to reform the nation’s public schools. Secretary Rod Paige didn’t, nor did Secretary Margaret Spellings. Certainly Secretary of Education Arne Duncan doesn’t. His Renaissance 2010 plan in Chicago was a much-hyped failure that has left the wreckage of lives and communities in its wake. Why was he allowed to turn Renaissance 2010 into Race to the Top?

The one-size-fits-all NCLB is wrong for most schools, and Race to the Top heaps on more punishments while blaming teachers for low test scores. This law and this program, and the thinking behind them, have diverted the public’s attention from the root causes of poor academic performance, which include poverty, segregation, and under-resourced schools. Instead of confronting root causes, our elites confront the failure of the NCLB regime of high-stakes testing by demanding more of the same and making the stakes higher for teachers and principals.

Kudos to the Los Angeles Times for recognizing that the federal government has overstepped the bounds of federalism, has imposed impossible mandates, and is out of its league.

The dilemma in framing the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act is that Congress can’t see beyond the narrow and punitive mindset of NCLB. It is locked into stale thinking. It refuses to see the disastrous consequences of both NCLB and Race to the Top.

Future historians will puzzle out why the Obama administration threw away the chance to bring a fresh vision to federal education policy and why it chose to tighten the screws on the nation’s schools and teachers and why it chose to lend its prestige and funding to the privatization movement.

In the future, I believe, the period that began in 2001 and continues to this day will be remembered as the “Bush-Obama era” in education. It will be recalled as a time when a liberal Democratic president watched in silence as states attacked the teaching profession, lowered standards for entry into teaching, enacted laws to end collective bargaining, authorized privatization with federal funding and encouragement, and passed laws permitting vouchers for private and religious schools.

Categories Corporate Reformers, Duncan, Arne, Education Industry, NCLB (No Child Left Behind), Obama, Privatization, Race to the Top

When This Reader Heard President Obama Discuss Trayvon Martin

By dianeravitch
July 19, 2013 //
83

A reader posted this comment:

“Listening to President Obama’s speech about Trayvon Martin in which he said regarding young black men,”And is there more that we can do to give them the sense that their country cares about them and values them and is willing to invest in them?” the thought struck me:

“How about not closing their schools and undermining their neighborhoods; how about providing them with an education like the one you want for your children; how about trying to do something about the poverty that they endure? How about standing with the people who helped to elect you with their votes and their belief in you rather than with the 1% whom you seem now to identify with in deeds if not in words.”

Categories Obama, Race to the Top

President Obama and the New Elitism

By dianeravitch
July 18, 2013 //
85

Paul Horton, a history teacher at the University of Chicago Lab School, wrote the following open letter to President Obama:

July 12, 2013

Dear Mr. President,

I am very concerned about how you decided to go the way that you did with your Education policies. I was recently told by a close friend of the yours that “Arne’s Team looked at all of the options” and decided to go with its current policies because they would get us where we needed to go more quickly than any other set of alternatives.” I was also told, “that not everybody could be in the room.”

The problem was that you did not listen to experience. The blueprint for Arne’s plan for stimulus investment that morphed into the Race to the Top Mandates featured advisers from the Gates and Broad Foundations, analysts from McKinsey consulting, and a couple of dozen superintendents who were connected, like Mr. Duncan, to the Broad Foundation. Most of those who were invited to advise you were committed supporters of heavy private investment in Education who favored high stakes testing tied to teacher evaluations. Most of these advisers also favored the scaling up of measurable data collection as a way to measure progress or lack of progress in American Education.

If you had listened to the leading experts on standardized testing and the achievement gap, you would have learned that your policies were and are bound to fail. Our former colleague here at the U of C, Professor Coleman, was the first to establish this empirically. You should also learn about Campbell’s Law.

On a more personal level, Mr. President, you consulted many of your contacts in Democrats for Education Reform, an organization funded mostly by Democratic leaning Wall Street investment firms. And you were also very impressed by the ideas and passion of a Denver charter school principal and Democratic activist, Michael Johnston.

Michael Johnston has good potential as a politician, but he is not a qualified adviser to the President on Education matters. His record in Education is manufactured to look good. Over forty percent of his miracle Denver charter school class that graduated 100% dropped out before their senior year. This is an advantage that most charter schools have over public schools. Teach For America, where Johnston cut his teeth, typically has a very narrow and skewed view of American Education. State senator Johnston’s efforts on behalf of immigrants and redistribution of education funding are admirable. But many of us have been fighting this battle for decades. Johnston has had every advantage, and he his heart is certainly in the right place..

Many thousands of us have been fighting this battle for thirty and forty years and we remain relatively poor, isolated from the centers of power where big bucks are easy to acquire. Many of us have devoted our entire lives to helping minority students, yet we are treated very badly by this administration.

Thousands of teachers possess the experience, training, and commitment to advise you on Education matters. But you choose to listen to those who went to places like Harvard, Yale, and Stanford who have two years of classroom experience. Commitment, I submit, is a very important word.

The true measure of one’s commitment to Education is one’s willingness to sacrifice one’s will to power and economic potential to be successful in the classroom. TFA kids who go back to grad school after two years in the classroom and buy into corporate education reform are embracing their will to power. Most of these kids tend to have every advantage to begin with, they get an Ivy League education, and they are ambitious young liberals. Rather than staying in the classroom and truly making a difference by developing their teaching skills over twenty or thirty years, can achieve administrative positions in the charter world that have far more economic potential than teaching positions by buying into the mantra of data-driven corporate reform lingo.

You have left thousands of us behind and allowed inexperience access to take charge. You and your administration have encouraged a “Cultural Revolution” in American education. You promoted your basketball buddy and very close friend of your campaign finance manager to be Secretary of Education. From where I stand, Karen Duncan would have been a much better choice for Education Secretary because she has much more experience working with kids in a school setting than her husband. She knows what makes a great teacher from personal experience as an exemplary teacher. She is also much smarter and much funnier than her husband.

Your policies represent a new elitism. You seem to think that: “if we can get these really smart Ivy League educated former TFA people in senior policy, superintendent, and administrative positions, then we can turn this whole thing around.”

This idea is arrogant beyond belief, the equivalent of the “best and the brightest” idea that drove us into the ground in Vietnam, only you have decided to do it in Education. Robert McNamara was brilliant, he had an analytical razor, but he lacked a moral compass and anything resembling empathy for the lives of those who were dying in a “winnable” war. Mr. Duncan has a great deal of empathy, but he his policies are misguided. Indeed, in my humble opinion, his department’s policies are an inarticulate mess. If he were ever asked the right questions under oath in senator Harkin’s committee, we could very well discover that his use of the authority of his office overstepped the legal parameters of the laws circumscribing federal involvement in the formulation of Education policy. Ms. Weiss and Mr. Sheldon III, two of Secretary Duncan’s advisors who worked for the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation prior to serving under Secretary Duncan, articulated what Mr. Gates wanted on his terms in exchange for tacit support for your campaigns. Several Wall Street investing firms also made it clear to you and to Mr. Emanuel that they were willing to support you if your Education policies encouraged private investment in charter schools.

You have bought into a corporate model of Education Reform: you seek to create competition among public and private schools, you encourage the “creative destruction” that your University of Chicago Business School buddies and Judge Posner love, and you seem to be gung-ho about selling off the public commons of American Education that were built with the sweat and blood of American farmers and workers. Do your policies work for young people who need stability in their lives? Creative destruction might benefit some kids (I was a military brat), but it probably does not benefit most.

Your Education policies embrace the management tactics of McKinsey Consulting that call for the firing of twenty to twenty-five percent of the teacher workforce every two years. You have said that Education should not “all be about bubble tests,” but your policies measure progress by bubble tests and they narrow the curriculum when they require standardized testing in some subjects, but not in others.

You campaigned on doing something about income inequality, but you and many of the mayors that you support are actively working to destroy what is left of the American middle class. Your Education policies work actively to destroy teacher unions. Many of your mayors and governors are working to bust teacher, hospital, public employee, firemen’s, and police unions.

What has happened to the Democratic Party when a foundational element of your education policy is to frequently vilify hundreds of thousands of effective and excellent teachers who have committed their lives to the classroom? You listen to people who are very smart and they seem to know it all. They are very polished presenters of themselves. Your policies favor this new class of ambitious young people who lack the commitment to kids to make a real difference where it is needed—in the classroom.

The question that all of you need to take a closer look at is how do we get and keep candidates who would be brilliant in any career into the classroom?

How do you increase the size of the quality teaching pool? The answers are there, and they don’t have anything to do with charter schools.

If Mr. Gates were really serious about Education in this country, he could invest in creating a system like Finland’s. The problem is that he is more interested in selling product than investing in four well qualified and well trained teachers in every classroom.

Progress in Education is not about buildings, it is not about technology: It is about human investment, not the expansion of markets.

President Obama, I have great respect for you. I have taught many of the young people who work for you. Ask your chef what a hard ass teacher I was. Please find the time to talk to committed teachers who have given their entire professional careers to improving Education in this country. This would require you to step outside of your comfort zone inside of Democrats for Education Reform and Teach for America circles. It will also require you to look beyond the mess that Ms. Weiss, Mr. Sheldon III, and Bill Gates have helped to create. It will require you to talk to Karen Duncan about teaching and schools rather than to Arne Duncan.

Please encourage senator Durbin and his committee to completely defund No Child Left Behind. Do you prefer to fund Pearson Education or allow thousands of teachers to be laid off? This is what it is coming down to. Will you allow the middle class to be further eroded? Or will you fight for the jobs of teachers? Will you reward Wall Street investors in Education and Bill Gates, or are you willing to fight for neighborhood schools and arts and humanities programs? Will you use Value Added Measures tied to standardized testing to further discredit teachers? Or will you begin to understand how complex real learning is, learning that can not be measured by “bubble tests.” These are your choices, Mr. President. Please look beyond your current Education advisors if you want to explore complex questions and solutions.

I would welcome the opportunity to discuss these and other issues with you.

All best,

Paul Horton
History Instructor
University High School
The University of Chicago Laboratory Schools

Diane’s correction:

A reader in Colorado sent the following correction to the above:

“Michael Johnston worked for a public school in CO: MESA Mapleton expeditionary school of the arts. Not a charter. Gary Rubinstein points out that Johnston s claim to fame–100% grads accepted to 4 year college —is a bit disingenuous. 77 10th graders morphed to 44 grads.”

Categories Broad Foundation, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Democrats for Education Reform, Duncan, Arne, Education Industry, For-Profit, Gates Foundation, Bill Gates, Obama

President Obama, Please Read This

By dianeravitch
July 9, 2013 //
33

This teacher in Pennsylvania wonders why President Obama is turning his back on the calamity facing students in Philadelphia.

Please send his comment to the White House. After years of budget cuts and layoffs, isn’t it time for action? The Obama girls attend a wonderful school with small classes, experienced teachers, arts, physical education, science labs, a library: shouldn’t everyone?

The teacher writes:

“I teach in suburban Philadelphia in a district which is managing to survive with cutbacks in programming and hiring under Governor Corbett, but my wife teaches in Philadelphia and is experiencing firsthand the devastating impact of the state and city leaders seriously shortchanging public education. In September she currently expects to return to a school with no assistant principal, no counsellor, no nurse, no aids, no librarian, and fewer teachers.

“While I expect the kind of indifference exhibited by our tea party Governor and legislature to public education, I am struck by the almost total dropping of the ball by our President and the Democrats on the issue of saving our schools, especially on behalf of the constituency which worked and voted for their reelection. Is this because the President and those around him making education policy have been bought off by the same education “reformers” who own Governor Corbett?

“I got my answer when I watched the “cutting edge classrooms” town hall for students which was sponsored by the Obama administration on June 6 after the President announced his plan to put more technology in our nations classrooms. Here is the link: whitehouse.gov/show-and-tell. This was billed as the National Show and Tell on connected classrooms. The host was a spokesperson for something called EdSurge and at approximately the 24 minute spot of the presentation she tells the assembled students that she wants them to believe she has a magic wand which could solve any problem in their schools and she invites responses. It is then that a student from Philadelphia explains that her district has a 300 million dollar deficit, that teachers and counselors are being laid off and that she wishes the magic wand would be used by the Obama administration to fix this crisis caused by, what the student refers to as the “Doomsday budget.”

“Incredibly the total response from the spokesperson is to say: okay, Philadelphia wants more funding for its doomsday “project”. That’s it. That’s all she wrote.

“As you said in your letter to the Education Secretary it is a national disgrace to allow the public schools to die, but as long as leaders are more beholden to the technology companies than the students, technology, not learning is what we will get.”

Categories Budget Cuts, Education Industry, For-Profit, Obama, Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Privatization

Teacher: Reflections on Deborah Gist’s New Contract

By dianeravitch
June 8, 2013 //
20

This post was sent to me by a teacher in Rhode Island who uses the nom de plume Horace Manic.

Mr. Manic writes:

The recent renewal of the contract of Deborah Gist, the Commissioner of Education in Rhode Island, brings to light some interesting political dynamics. Considering the recent, well-publicized conversion of Rhode Island Governor, Lincoln Chafee, to the Democratic party of President Obama, it is not a surprise that Gist was rehired – despite the pleas of teachers and student groups throughout the State. After all, Deborah Gist is the poster girl for the Broad Academy, one of the most well-financed and influential corporate reform organizations in the United States. Secretary of Education and Obama’s Chicago basketball-buddy Arne Duncan also came through the Broad Academy. Had the contract of Deborah Gist not been renewed, it would have been a symbolic rejection of Broad and the ideology of the reform organization – an ideology that has pervaded school districts throughout the United States through the placement of administrators in key posts.

One has to wonder what will be the political implications for Governor Chafee, who already lost his seat in the United States Senate when he was a Republican. Even though he was well-known in Washington as a moderate, if not liberal Republican (one of only a few Republican who voted against the invasion of Iraq), he lost handily to Democrat Sheldon Whitehouse in 2006 in a wave of rejection of the Grand Old Party. Four years later, having declared himself an Independent, he won a hotly contested three-way race for the Rhode Island Governorship. He was pushed over the hump after President Obama endorsed Chafee, thereby putting nails in the coffin of the Democratic candidate, Frank Caprio. Chafee also was aided in his win by the strong endorsement of Rhode Island’s most powerful teacher’s union, the NEARI. By supporting Gist, Chafee seemingly has alienated the teachers of Rhode Island. Resentment toward the Democratic Party has been expressed by union members across the state due to the punitive actions put in place as a condition of Race to the Top funding. Obama’s ardent support of Duncan, both of whom who supported the firing of an entire school faculty in Central Falls, has left Rhode Island teachers feeling like jilted lovers.

If his actions as of late are an indication, Lincoln Chafee does not plan to run for reelection. He has estranged himself from an estimated forty percent of his supporters in rehiring Gist. With Sheldon Whitehouse serving in the Senate for another five years, Chafee, perhaps, has his sights set on a post that will return him to Washington as part of President Obama’s team. He is not wanting for money as his wife is an heiress of the Danforth family, one of the wealthiest in Rhode Island. A return to Washington seems a likely route for the son of a popular Senator. Whatever the political future of Lincoln Chafee, he was not much concerned with the vote of the teachers of Rhode Island when he made the decision to reappoint Gist. It has been suggested that Chafee’s decision was a courtesy and will set up the departure of Gist by her own volition. Time will tell.

While Chafee’s moves have been evocative, another dynamic is playing out behind the scenes that few political junkies have claimed to comprehend. Deborah Gist’s other supporter is Jeb Bush, brother and son of Presidents of the United States. As a lynchpin member of Chiefs for Change, a collection of state leaders most closely associated with Jeb Bush’s Foundation for Educational Excellence and proponents of Bush’s views favoring high-stakes testing and privatization, Gist has supporters in Democratic and Republican camps. This brings into question the relationship between the Obama Administration and Jeb Bush. This collusion of leaders and parties seems to go beyond reaching across the aisle and political cooperation. After all, one day not far off, Jeb Bush will announce his candidacy for the Presidency.

How do Obama and Duncan view Chiefs for Change? Does Jeb Bush back the efforts of corporate form organizations like Democrats for Education Reform and individuals like Michael Bloomberg? How will the competition for votes, corporation funding, and union support affect the entangled relationships that corporate reformers like Deborah Gist have formed.

Recommendation: Don’t be near the fan in 2014.

Categories Bush, Jeb, Chiefs for Change, Obama, Unions
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