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John THOMPSON: DeVos Energizes New Push for Vouchers in Oklahoma

By dianeravitch
January 9, 2017 //
11

John Thompson, historian and teacher, teaches in Oklahoma.

 

He writes:

 

“National readers will be shocked, shocked, to hear that the nomination of Betsy DeVos marks the beginning of a new school privatization campaign in the red state of Oklahoma. Seriously, as each of our state’s school systems are attacked, we must share those experiences in order to inform our collective responses.

 

“On the eve of the November election, Oklahomans had reason to be optimistic about rolling back test-driven, market-driven reform and, perhaps, starting to restore massive cuts to the education budget. But, out-of-state “dark money,” funded a last minute, post-fact advertising campaign which defeated a state question which would have raised teacher salaries. Betsy DeVos’ American Federation for Children poured money into legislative races, often funding the opponents of teachers who were running for office.

 

“Trump and DeVos reenergized true believers in vouchers. A Republican legislator said that last year’s effort to expand vouchers was defeated by just a few votes, but “the time is now” for a new campaign. Even our most reasonable congressman, Tom Cole, says of DeVos, “She is an advocate of charter schools, vouchers, opportunity scholarships and homeschooling. … Her steady leadership and depth of knowledge will be fundamental in improving our nation’s education system.”

 

“The editorial page of Daily Oklahoman has long given a platform to test-driven, competition-driven reformers, but now it offers a nonstop supply of national and local corporate reformers offering commentaries such as, “Paul Greenberg: Betsy DeVos is a Fighter and a Winner.” Another guest commentator, Benjamin Scafidi, claims that it is the increase of administrative spending, not budget cuts, that created our state’s crisis. Since 1992, the number of Oklahoma students has increased by 35% more than the number of teachers, but administrative costs have grown by $225 million per year. Scafidi claims that that money could have funded a teacher pay raise of more than $6,000 – or it “could reduce class sizes by giving a $7,000 scholarship to more than 36,000 students, thus allowing them to attend the school of their family’s choice.”

 

“Scafidi claims to have evidence that it wasn’t state and federal mandates (like requiring millions of dollars of computer systems to keep score of test score growth in order to fire teachers) that caused all of the administrative increases. (emphasis mine) He claims that his charges would be provable if the government would release more data. Since evidence for this rightwinger’s assertion isn’t available, readers are merely supposed to trust the editorial’s title,” Economics Professor: Non-teaching Staff Surge Prevented Oklahoma Teacher Pay Raises.”

 

“Before the election, there was reason to hope that Oklahoma’s primitive A-F School Report Card could be made less destructive. Even Mike Petrilli (who the Oklahoman cites as a traditional conservative who praises DeVos) admitted that the old grade card wasn’t reliable because it was based on proficiency rates, and they “are strongly correlated with student demographics, family circumstance, and prior achievement.” The answer, said Petrilli, is “growth measures that instead track the progress of all pupils [and] therefore do a better job of capturing schools’ effect on student achievement.”

 

So, what happens when the new A-F Report Card uses the growth measures that the Oklahoman editorial page praised?

 

The Oklahoman now (incoherently) editorializes against the growth model that it previously supported: “In plain English, that means specific target goals for black and white students refer primarily to middle- and upper-income families, not children living in poverty. Thus, schools would have lower academic goals for middle-class minority students than for comparable white students based solely on race.”

 

“So, what can Oklahoma educators and patrons anticipate, and what lessons apply to other states? In our extreme mess, teachers must compete with other state employees who have gone for years without a raise. Due to budget cuts, state employees are “nearly 24 percent below the market rate for similar positions in the public and private sector.” Last year’s budget cuts were so severe that 113 Oklahoma City Public School System principals have gone public with their opposition to the ways that reductions were implemented. Teachers are complaining that conditions are worse than during the “Great Recession” and, perhaps, even the meltdown which occurred during the crack and gangs years when deindustrialization spun out of control and the banking system collapsed. End of the semester resignations are pouring in.

 

“And now the state faces close to a $900 million shortfall for next year! (It’s so bad that the Republicans are calling for a tax on tattoo parlors and car washes, even though they won’t consider the restoration of progressive taxation.)

 

http://newsok.com/article/5531318?slideout=1

 

http://newsok.com/oklahoma-budget-hole-nearly-900-million/article/5531558

 

“And that brings us to the national lessons. Since No Child Left Behind, and especially during the last 8 years, even many Democrats have pushed an anti-teachers union agenda. Mass school closures and charterization have eliminated good-paying jobs for support staff, as they drove unionized teachers from the profession. Who knows how many presidential votes were lost in Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin because loyal Democrats lost their jobs due to mass charterization demanded by reformers such as Democrats for Education Reform?

 

“Other states will face differing and similar challenges as DeVos leads a new choice campaign. During the last year, I believe, many Oklahoma business conservatives finally started facing up to the fact that so-called “high-performing, high-poverty” charter schools wouldn’t dare take over the type of high-poverty neighborhood schools that we have in Oklahoma City. Proposals for mass conversions of traditional public schools by “public” charter schools would result in thousands of “disconnected youth,” high-challenge students pushed out by charters. Our conservatives had been realizing that a return to the 1980s, with crowds of jobless youths walking the streets during the school day, would not be good for business.

 

“DeVos offers a larger arsenal, however, and it has emboldened privatizers. Now, high-poverty neighborhood schools can supposedly be replaced by private as well as public charters, vouchers, and homeschooling, with all of those options enhanced by expanded virtual school options. And the new spin is that choice will actually help public schools weather the budget crisis!?!?

 

“This brings us to another national lesson. Whether we’re speaking about DeVos’ acolytes or more establishment-type reformers like Mike Petrilli, corporate reformers don’t need no stinkin’ facts; they just need more post-fact headlines condemning public schools, and legislatures devoted to shrinking government to the point where it can be strangled in the bathtub. As test-driven, competition-driven reform cripples teachers and public sector unions, resistance to the right wing legislative agenda will become more difficult.

 

“We can also expect more crocodile tears editorials as Social Darwinism undermines the education, health, and economic futures of poor families. They will be mourned as the victims of unions, educators, and Democrats who ____. That blank will be filled in by whatever spin pops into commentators’ heads.”

Categories Betsy DeVos, Oklahoma, Vouchers

John Thompson: We Can’t Let Betsy DeVos Destroy Our Public Schools

By dianeravitch
December 11, 2016 //
19

John Thompson is a teacher and historian in Oklahoma.

 

 

As the Daily Oklahoman’s Ben Felder explains, “Education savings accounts (ESAs) and vouchers have not been easy sells, including in the GOP-controlled Oklahoma Legislature.” Until this November, the same argument which defeated vouchers last year would have seemed to be persuasive. Our schools have been clobbered by a 27% decrease in per-student funding and they can’t stand a further reduction. Even a month ago, a grassroots coalition of educators and families appeared ready to send more teachers to the legislature, and to pass SQ 779, which would have raised teachers’ wages.

 

http://newsok.com/oklahoma-school-voucher-advocates-see-a-political-opening/article/5529475

 

Then a well-funded and false advertising campaign helped derail the teacher raise, and Betsy DeVos’ the American Federation for Children, “spent nearly $170,000 in Oklahoma campaigns this year, often in opposition to public school teachers who were also running.” So, Felder now reports, “last month’s election results on both the national and state level have some school choice advocates seeing a political opening.” He cites Republican Sen. Kyle Loveless, “‘There is definitely going to be some movement on education savings accounts this next year in Oklahoma … Last year we were a couple of votes short in the Senate but I think we picked those seats up this year.'”

 

In addition to American Federation of Children’s money, a series of Indiana corporate reformers have repeatedly come to Oklahoma and pushed the DeVos/Trump/Pence agenda. So, it is doubly important that Oklahoma legislators, like their counterparts across the nation, become aware of what former Gov. Mike Pence and the $1.3 million that DeVos and her political action committee poured into Indiana have bought – and at what price.

 

Chalkbeat Indiana’s Nicholas Garcia, in “Six Things to Know about Indiana’s School Voucher Program, A Possible Model for Ed Sec Nominee Betsy DeVos,” explains that “the number of students using vouchers rose from 3,911 in 2011, when the program launched, to 32,686 in 2016.” Originally, vouchers were pushed as a way to help poor students in failing schools, but “a growing portion of Indiana voucher users are from middle-class families, and growth has been greatest among suburban families.” Now, “60 percent of Indiana voucher users are white, and about 31 percent are from middle-income families — not exactly the student population that struggles most in the state’s schools.”

 

http://www.chalkbeat.org/posts/in/2016/11/30/six-things-to-know-about-indianas-school-voucher-program-a-possible-model-for-betsy-devos/

 

Even more disturbing is the way that vouchers have grown into a greater threat to the financial stability of schools, “In 2011, just 9 percent of voucher users had never before gone to public school, Chalkbeat reports, “That was true for more than half of students using vouchers in 2016. So, Indiana isn’t offering an escape from failing schools but a subsidy for many who would never attend a public school.

 

Moreover, researchers at Notre Dame University conducted a long-term study which found that “students who switched from traditional public schools to Catholic schools actually did worse in math.” They also increase student mobility which undermines student performance.

 

Of course, student performance outcomes aren’t the outcomes that motivate many voucher advocates. DeVos has said that her goal is not to “stay in our own faith territory,” but to “advance God’s Kingdom.” As Politico’s Benjamin Wermund reports, DeVos sees school choice as a path to “greater Kingdom gain.”

 

http://www.politico.com/story/2016/12/betsy-devos-education-trump-religion-232150

 

Given the importance of religious issues in the voucher fights, an analysis by Mother Jones’s Stephanie Mencimer is timely. She found that, “Pence’s voucher program ballooned into a $135 million annual bonanza almost exclusively benefiting private religious schools–ranging from those teaching the Koran to Christian schools teaching creationism and the Bible as literal truth–at the expense of regular and usually better-performing public schools.”

 

Mencimer looked into the 316 schools receiving vouchers and she could only find four that weren’t religious. However, she found curricula that teaches creationism and Biblical stories and parables as literally true. Mencimer learned:

 

Among the more popular textbooks are some from Bob Jones University that are known for teaching that humans and dinosaurs existed on the Earth at the same time and that dragons were real. BJU textbooks have also promoted a positive view of the KKK, writing in one book, “the Klan in some areas of the country tried to be a means of reform, fighting the decline in morality and using the symbol of the cross to target bootleggers, wife beaters and immoral movies.”

 

Moreover, Mother Jones cites a young Muslim student who attended a voucher school for about eight weeks, “as he bounced around several schools on his way to becoming radicalized. In September, he was indicted for providing material support to terrorists after allegedly trying to join ISIS.”

 

Mother Jones further describes the deplorable student performance of many voucher schools. In 2015, less than 9 percent of the students at a Horizon Christian Academy campus passed the state standardized tests in math and English. And it adds telling details to the Chalkbeat Indiana’s narrative. Mother Jones found:

 

Some of the fastest growth in voucher use has occurred in some of the state’s most affluent suburbs. The Center for Tax and Budget Accountability, a Chicago-based think tank, recently concluded that because white children’s participation in the voucher program dwarfed the next largest racial group by 44 points, the vouchers were effectively helping to resegregate public schools.

 

It’s bad enough that Trump seeks billions of dollars to fund vouchers. But, especially in poor states and districts, the DeVos/Trump/Pence policy could be worse than anything previously imagined. Not all states and school districts that have been targeted by Amway billionaire Betsy DeVos are as vulnerable as those in Oklahoma, but as a recent NPR report explains, there are plenty of other systems that are already overwhelmed.

 

KOSU’s Emily Wendler and WBUR’s Tom Ashbrook, in “Public School Funding at a Loss, in Oklahoma and Elsewhere,” started a national tour of under-funded and challenged school systems to first answer the question “How Low Can a State Go?” and still educate its kids. Second, it asks what effect DeVos will have on these underfunded systems.

 

http://www.wbur.org/onpoint/2016/11/30/oklahoma-schools-four-day-weeks

 

Other states have taken the route pioneered by Kansas, Michigan, and Oklahoma and deliberately starve their governmental services. This new voucher campaign, combined with public and private charters, and virtual schools could push many of those states across a “tipping point,” and creating new lows in public schooling, constitutional democracy, and common decency.

Categories Betsy DeVos, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Oklahoma, Privatization, Vouchers

Peter Greene: Tulsa Adopts a “Teach Like a Robot” Program

By dianeravitch
October 9, 2016 //
24

Peter Greene learned that the Tulsa public schools have adopted a program to standardize teaching by putting a little microphone in teachers’ ears through which they can get real-time coaching. The superintendent in Tulsa is Deborah Gist, a reformer who was previously State Commisssioner of Education in Rhode Island, where she achieved plaudits from President Obama and Arne Duncan for supporting the mass firing of the entire staff of Central Falls High School.

Tulsa public schools invited the press to see a demonstration of scripted teaching.

“The press were there to watch Remote Control Scripting in action because they had been invited there by Tulsa Public Schools and the company TPS hired to provide this program. It’s the same company that put Berard through her paces– CT3 (The Center for Transformative Teacher Training). They are partners with all the cool kids– Success Academies, Teach for America, Aspire, and many other charter schools….

“No Nonsense Nurturing has been around forever, but previously we’ve called it “tough love” or “taking a hard line” or even “acting like an emotionally-withholding, borderline-abusive jerk.” I have never seen nor read of an example of it that doesn’t make me immediately think “this is no way to treat human beings.”

“Real-Time Coaching, the part that got all the press attention in Tulsa, is actually Real-Time Scripting, and like scripting, it has no place in a classroom. Ever. No child should ever, ever have a teacher whose answer to, “Why are we doing this?” is “Because the voices in my head tell me to.”

“The real time nature of the coaching is actually a bug, not a feature. If I’m coaching another teacher, after I’ve watched the lesson, I’ll need at least a few minutes to reflect. In the real time moment, I’m pretty much limited to the instant thought of What I Would Do, or, if I’ve been trained in a particular method, the One Correct Response to that situation. Either response devalues and dismisses that teacher’s own teaching voice.

“It’s just silly to say that there is One Correct Way to teach a particular lesson, irregardless of the teacher or the class involved. It makes no more sense than saying there is One Correct Way to be a spouse, irregardless of who is your partner.

Borrero defends CT3 practices by saying, “Our programs were developed through careful analysis of high performing teachers’ practices in schools serving traditionally disenfranchised communities across the country; all of our work is rooted in building positive life-altering relationships with youth and their families.” But it is hard for me to imagine how Real Time Coaching could possibly help accomplish any such thing.

“Standardizing and human behavior is the worst kind of folly. To fit in such a system requires the practitioners to be less themselves, less real, less human. It is a favored dream of people who are too small to comprehend the vast variety of human experience and behavior, too scared to face anything but the narrow sliver of possibilities they feel prepared to master, or too morally impaired to respect the independence and autonomy of other human beings.

“Good teaching exists at the intersection of the material, the humanity of the teacher, and the humanity of the students in the room. Additionally, that intersection is influenced by a background of previous experience, current events, and the feelings of the moment. It cannot be standardized any more than a marriage or a child or a pancake or a planet can be standardized. And it can’t be attempted because it shouldn’t be attempted.

“I have no doubt that buried here in there in the real-time scripting and the no-nurturing nonsense, there are occasional nuggets of useful information or technique. But it is saddening to see CT3 still successfully peddling their wares. Nobody needs to teach like a robot.”

This program is a vivid demonstration of lack of respect for teachers. It strips them of both their professionalism and their dignity.

Categories Accountability, Corporate Reform, Oklahoma, Teachers and Teaching

John Thompson: What’s Behind the “Third Wave” of Resegregation

By dianeravitch
July 9, 2016 //
25

John Thompson, teacher and historian in Oklahoma, writes here about the resurgence of segregation in America’s schools.

He writes:

Are we heading into another resegregation era? A half century ago, at least in terms of urban education, “White Flight” gave Jim Crow a new lease on life. Then, Reaganomics subsidized more “suburban flight” as “Supply Side Economics” provided subsidies for moving good-paying jobs from cities to the exurbs. This further stimulated the “Big Sort,” or resegregation based on personal preferences. Segregation by choice, this time accompanied by gentrification and competition-driven corporate school reform, fired a second shotgun blast at inner city schools; this occurred as the Rightwing accelerated the destruction of our industrial base, and they were followed by New Democrats seeking to “end of welfare as we know it.”

Research by Cornell’s Kendra Bischoff, Stanford’s Sean Reardon, Ann Owens of the University of Southern California, and others raise the specter of a third wave of resegregation. Bischoff and Reardon recall that income segregation increased by 4.5% per decade since 1970. It has accelerated greatly since 2007. By 2012, more than 1/3rd of families in large metropolitan areas lived “in neighborhoods of concentrated affluence or concentrated poverty,” as “middle-class neighborhoods have become less common.” Moreover, Bischoff further explains why this segregation is so damaging to schools, “Local environments are important for children’s early and adolescent development, so the more polarized communities become, the more unequal the opportunities available to high- and low-income children.”

Reardon and Ann Owens add nuance to the sorry tale that we’ve always known – how flight from desegregated urban schools played a huge part in dividing modern America against itself. In doing so, it severely damaged our social and physical environments and our physical as well as moral health. Owens finds “that neighborhoods in the 100 largest cities became steadily more isolated by income between 1990 and 2010–but the segregation was driven by families with school-age children.”

She explains:

Whenever we talk about neighborhood and school segregation, they really go hand-in-hand. … There’s really a feedback loop, and it’s often framed as, we can never have integrated schools while we have segregated neighborhoods, but the flip side is true, as well. As long as schools are unequal and linked to neighborhoods, that’s going to play a big role in neighborhood segregation.

Reardon uses a massive Stanford database to analyze “16 different facets of racial segregation: school and residential isolation, segregation within and between districts, racial or socioeconomic isolation, and differences in how likely students are to be exposed to students of particular races or socioeconomic groups.” He shows how the racial achievement gap is not just a legacy of discrimination, personal racism, and poverty. Reardon explains:
Even after you control for kids’ family backgrounds, it’s quite clear in the data. … it’s something about school quality–not only about racial segregation, but about the fact that racial segregation in America almost inevitably leads to these kind of disparities in [students’] exposure to poverty and differences in the kinds of resources that schools have.

My Oklahoma City provides a clear illustration of the patterns these scholars document – of the devastation produced by Jim Crow, the Big Sort, and the devotion to personal choice, as well as our failure to face the moral facts of segregated life. The metropolitan area spreads over 621 square miles. The sprawl created a culture dominated by the automobile, and the resulting social and health care costs. Once a sturdy, frontier culture characterized by neighborliness, Oklahoma City became increasingly obese, isolated and susceptible to the politics of fear. Faced with desegregation orders, the Oklahoma City Public School System (OKCPS) immediately lost nearly half of its 75,000+ students. Now, the OKCPS is an underfunded, 86% low-income district which competes with 26 other school systems.

As Steve Lackmeyer’s Daily Oklahoman in-depth analysis, “Unsustainable,” explains, “After decades of sprawl, Oklahoma City officials know something must change.” Lackmeyer describes the way that previous forms of school choice drove the most destructive patterns of mindless geographical expansion. Developers would overbuild apartments on the edges of the city limits, outside the OKCPS boundaries. Then, to paraphrase one businessman, apartment growth “on the fringe” prompted expansion “beyond the fringe.” These complexes then deteriorated into violent and chaotic eyesores, undermining the quality of life in the areas that became inner-ring suburbs. This nudged the affluent further out into exurbs and school systems serving concentrations of children from extreme privilege.

It’s no surprise that developers overbuild apartments in those areas. Parents make the safest decisions for their own children, as opposed to what would be a best for society as a whole. Sean Readon’s database shows that the average OKCPS student’s test scores are about 2-2/3rds years behind the average student in Edmond, the rich suburb just to the north. However, these outcomes are explained by the deficits children bring to the school, not the quality of classroom instruction. Adjusting for socio-economic factors, student performance increases at very similar rates in the OKCPS and Edmond. (Both are below the national mean, however.)

It’s great that business and political leaders now understand that Oklahoma City must control suburban sprawl as it creates an even more vibrant downtown. But, we should not repeat the sins of the past and promote this third wave of segregation in the central city. There is no reason to believe that charter schools could provide a better education for the children of the Millennials who are moving into the central city. But, today’s developers, who criticize their predecessors for promoting destructive suburban sprawl, often embrace charters in the belief that they are a better “brand.” The worst example of this short-sightedness is the once-secret plan to create up to ten new charters, including a ring around downtown. Its advocates claim to believe that they could find high-performing charters that would not push out harder-to-educate children.

Of course, the new charters designed for upwardly-mobile professional families would not be “No Excuses,” teach-to-the-test schools. A new charter conversion law would allow a long list of institutions to sponsor selective and niche schools – even without the consent of teachers and patrons. The goal would be a “Portfolio” model like New Orleans. The reward and punish behaviorism of KIPP would be subsidized by turning the nicest buildings serving 100% low-income, predominantly black students over to that charter. The poorest children of color, special education students and English Language Learners, and survivors of extreme trauma, would be rejected from both the new charters designed for privileged families and the higher-poverty No Excuses schools. They would not be welcome in affluent charters. And, those that would be unwilling or unable to put up with the endless hours of nonstop teach-to-the-test at KIPP and other higher-poverty charters would be pushed out of the buildings that once housed their neighborhood schools.

In other words, Oklahoma City is just one example of today’s corporate reformers selectively learning the lessons of history. Segregation is awful for children and other living things. Integration is crucial to success in the 21st century, and urban revitalization is necessary to recruit the children of the suburbs and exurbs back into the city center. But, business leaders remain oblivious to the damage done to poor children by segregating them into charter schools.

There is a serious danger that the federal government, and top-down reformers who used the stress of high stakes testing to overcome the stress of the poverty which undermines student performance, will refuse to heed the lessons of history. Families with choices were bound to flee the bubble-in malpractice which corporate school reformers incentivized, prompting more separation. The market-driven reformers also used the stress of competition between charters and neighborhood schools, and the segregation which inevitably resulted, to supposedly reverse the legacy of Jim Crow. It will be even worse, however, as the failure of test-driven, competition-driven reform becomes apparent to corporate reformers, if they continue to respond by doubling down on charter schools and ignoring the ways that they contribute to resegegration.

Categories Oklahoma, Segregation

Tulsa: Gist Raises Salaries for Administrators, Not for Teachers

By dianeravitch
July 8, 2016 //
7

You may remember Deborah Gist, who was previously Superintendent of Schools in Rhode Island, where she approved the mass firing of all the staff at Central Falls High School and became a hero of the corporate reform movement. TIME magazine named her one of the most important people of 2010 for her “courage” in firing so many educators at once.

Gist is now superintendent of schools in Tulsa and a member of Jeb Bush’s Chiefs for Change. She recently announced a massive reorganization that involved firings, pay raises, pay cuts, but no pay raises for teachers.

Needless to say, teachers were not happy.

[Gist] said the district eliminated 175 jobs and created 73 new ones – some at higher, some at lower salaries – but, overall, the change, she said, will shift almost $4 million back into schools.

But the head of the teachers union, Patti Ferguson Palmer, complains about the priorities of the spending.

“The teachers are going to have extra students in their classrooms. We, of all people, get that people deserve more money when they take on more responsibility…When so many of these people were already making six figures, and they’re getting a raise…to someone making $32,000, $33,000, and their kids are on food stamps, it makes it look like they’re not appreciated,” she said.

The swing in salaries was, in some cases, more than $20,000 up and down.

Gist said no amount of saving on the administrative side would significantly change teachers’ salaries, but the changes made so far would make a dent in savings.

“In all these cases, it’s resulting many millions of dollars in savings for Tulsa Public Schools,” she said.

Categories Oklahoma, Teacher Pay

Oklahoma: Teachers Fight Back! 40 Run for Office!

By dianeravitch
July 1, 2016 //
8

NPR reported on a new, smart wave of activism in Oklahoma: 40 teachers are running for office this year. They are running because they want to increase funding for the public schools. Most are Democrats, but some are Republicans and Independents. One of the candidates is Oklahoma’s Teacher of the Year for 2016.

This is great news! The best way to change the legislature is to run for a seat at the table.

Getting elected to the State Senate or Assembly (or whatever it is called in your state) is far more powerful than posting a petition on change.org or holding a rally to get the attention of the legislators.

If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em, and change the face of the legislature.

Go, Oklahoma teachers!

Categories Funding, Oklahoma, Teachers

John Thompson: Two Years in a KIPP Blue Ribbon School

By dianeravitch
June 17, 2016 //
17

John Thompson, teacher and historian, writes here about KIPP in Oklahoma City. Will Oklahoma City surrender its public school to corporate charter chains?

Thompson writes:

A deeply emotional battle has erupted in Oklahoma City after its KIPP Reach Middle School attempted to take over the Martin Luther King Elementary School building, while promising to serve the entire neighborhood. OKC’s KIPP has no experience with pre-school through 4th grade instruction, but it promised to send its school leaders to Success Academy for guidance!?!? The charter not only has a much lower percentage of low-income students than OKC’s neighborhood middle schools, (76% vs 90+%) but it serves about 40% as many special education students as MLK. It co-locates with Moon Elementary where 21% of the students are homeless, and it would take over MLK where 17.2% are homeless. Only 1% of KIPP’s students are homeless.

After 15 years, KIPP has not been able to expand its student population beyond 300, but it now wants to quadruple its student body to 1200. It cites its 2012 Blue Ribbon School award as evidence that the No Excuses middle school could become a neighborhood pre-k to 8th grade school without pushing out excessive numbers of high-challenge students. Ironically, KIPP’s Blue Ribbon School application offers an overwhelming case against their attempt to take over an entire feed group.

2014-2015 STATISTICAL PROFILE 1-28-16 (2).pdf

Click to access 2011-2012%20STATISTICAL%20PROFILE%20pdf.pdf

Click to access ok2-kipp-reach-college-preparatory-school.pdf

In August, 2010, 285 students enrolled in KIPP. In October, 81% of its students were low-income, and 11.6% were on special education IEPs. By the spring, however, only 226 remained to be tested, which represented the loss of 1/5th of the students. Ten students, or 10% of the tested students, were alternatively assessed, meaning that they were on special education IEPs. So, at first glance, KIPP’s claim to accept the “same” students would seem to be an exaggeration, but it could not be seen as irrational. But, what did the other grades look like?

By 8th grade in 2011, however only 32 students were tested, and only 22 of them were eligible for free and reduced lunch! Only three special education students remained to be tested. And this was not an unusual year. The Blue Ribbon application provides data for 2006 through 2011, and it reveals a clear pattern. During those years, on average of nine 5th graders were on IEPs. By 8th grade the average number of tested IEP students was 1.4%! From FY2007 to FY2011, KIPP did not report a single 7th or 8th grade student on an IEP who passed an end-of-the-year math or reading test.

The next year, however, this attrition story got even worse. Using data from the Office of Civil Rights on FY 2011-2012, the Center for Civil Rights Remedies’ “Charter Schools, Civil Rights, and School Discipline” listed OKC’s KIPP as the charter school with the nation’s 3rd highest percentage of black suspensions. KIPP now claims that it made a reporting error, and that it actually suspended 45%, not 71% of its black students. However, KIPP has not questioned the OCR’s report that 100% of KIPP’s special education students were suspended that year (for a 126% suspension rate), as six of that small cohort was expelled; half of the students who were arrested were on IEPs.

Charter Schools, Civil Rights and School Discipline: A Comprehensive Review — The Civil Rights Project at UCLA

http://ocrdata.ed.gov/Page?t=s&eid=246435&syk=6&pid=2000

By the way, there is an interesting epilogue to those two years. In 2012, KIPP’s normative attrition rate of 15% to 18% rose to 26%. Given the secrecy of KIPP’s effort to expand dramatically and to participate in a mass charterization campaign in Oklahoma City, the chronology is confusing, but at some point KIPP set a goal of reducing its black suspension rate to 25%. So, it doesn’t seem to be a coincidence that KIPP changed from a school which typically had a low-income rate exceeding 80%, which reported that 9% to 13% of incoming students were on IEPs, to one that starts the year as a 70% to 77% low-income school where as few as 5.6% of students are on IEPs. I guess that KIPP decided that if it couldn’t be so free to push out higher-challenge students that it should avoid enrolling them at the beginning.

Click to access KIPP_2015_ReportCard_KIPP_Reach_College_Preparatory.pdf

Categories Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Democracy, Education Industry, Oklahoma, Privatization

Good News! Oklahoma Eliminates VAM!

By dianeravitch
May 25, 2016 //
11

The Oklahoma legislature passed a law eliminating student test scores as part of teacher evaluation. Hawaii did the same last week. Bit by bit, the most ill-advised, costly, and demoralizing part of Race to the Top is being rejected by the states. It has no research base. Researchers find that measuring teachers by their student scores is unreliable, unstable, and varies by the composition of the class. Its biggest contribution to American education has been to drive out good teachers and create s teacher shortage.

 

House leaders unanimously passed a bill Wednesday that eliminates the requirement to use student academic growth in Oklahoma’s teacher evaluation system.

 

House Bill 2957, which is estimated to save Oklahoma school districts millions of dollars and the Oklahoma State Department of Education more than $500,000, has been sent to the governor’s desk for signature.

 

“Amid this difficult budget year when public education has faced a variety of challenges, House Bill 2957 is a true bright spot of this year’s legislative session,” State Superintendent of Public Instruction Joy Hofmeister said. “By giving districts the option of removing the quantitative portion of teacher evaluations, we not only increase local control but lift outcomes by supporting our teachers while strengthening their professional development and growth in the classroom.”

 

Also praising the bill for its return to local decision-making was Rep. Michael Rogers,R-Broken Arrow, HB 2957’s House author.

 

“This legislation will return flexibility back to the districts on their evaluations while developing an individualized professional development program that will help all of our teachers and administrators,” he said.

 

HB 2957 removes the controversial and mandated Value-Added Measures – which tie a teacher’s performance rating to student test scores — from OSDE’s Teacher and Leader Effectiveness evaluation system and effectively eliminates the requirement that evaluation scores be used to terminate teachers. These quantitative evaluation tools will become optional for districts upon the governor’s signature.

 

Sen. John Ford, R-Bartlesville, who co-authored the bill, said the legislation has been long overdue.

 

“After gathering input from a variety of stakeholders through a lengthy and thoughtful review process, we feel that HB 2957 promotes increased reflection and professional growth for teachers and leaders,” Ford said. “Now is the time to support the teachers in Oklahoma’s public education system by focusing on an evaluation system that places professional development first.”

 

Farewell and good riddance!

 

 

– See more at: http://m.examiner-enterprise.com/news/local-news/lawmakers-pass-teacher-evaluation-changes#sthash.xJo33ldE.dpuf

 

 

Categories Accountability, Education Reform, Oklahoma, Race to the Top, Teacher Evaluations, Testing, VAM (value-added modeling)

John Thompson: What’s the Matter with Oklahoma?

By dianeravitch
May 16, 2016 //
20

John Thompson, historian and teacher, lives and writes in Oklahoma, where he has a first-hand view of the assault on the public sector.

 

Most of my professional friends are focused on What’s the Matter with Oklahoma? Our state followed the rightwing playbook described by Thomas Frank’s What’s the Matter with Kansas?, and we face a series of worse case scenarios as the legislature and the governor avoid dealing with the $1.3 billion budget hole that was created by the Kansas playbook.

 

 
Being an educator, I worry just as much about the neo-liberal and liberal school reforms that have been imposed from above; these corporate school reformers are taking advantage of the potential catastrophe produced by the rightwing, and are kicking teachers, unions, and public schools while we are down. So, I was commiserating with a veteran progressive about a seemingly arcane quandary about how to communicate with professionals and philanthropists who should be on our side. My friend turned me on to Frank’s new Listen, Liberal or Whatever Happened to the Party of the People?.
http://www.listenliberal.com/

 
I can say enthusiastically that my friend was right about Listen, Liberal. But, I have to say reluctantly that Frank has nailed the reasons why so many neo-liberal Democrats have become some of public education’s worst enemies. I wish it weren’t true, but Frank pulls together the various strands of the story of how so many liberals have abandoned poor students of color, leaving them to the mercies of those who would shrink government to a size where it could be “strangled in the bathtub.”

 

Tragically, technocrats in the Obama administration, the Gates Foundation, and other “venture philanthropists,” doubled down on the teacher-bashing and union-bashing while coercing states into adopting most or all of the corporate reform agenda.

 
Franks doesn’t deny that the Republicans, who represent the “One Percent,” are worse. Democrats, however, have abandoned “the People,” as we became the party of the “Ten Percent.” Frank explains how the Democrats have become devoted to elite professionals, and how they have created a “second hierarchy” based on “credentialed expertise.” He borrows the words of David Brooks, the conservative whose initial support of President Obama was described as a “bromance.” Brooks praised Obama for the way he staffed his administration with like-minded professionals and creating a “valedictocracy.” In doing so, Franks explained why it is so hard for educators to get the Ten Percent to listen to why they should stop supporting corporate reformers and edu-philanthropists who are treat our students like lab rats in ill-conceived and risky top-down experiments.

 
The specific problem which baffled me was the question of why can’t we persuade more philanthropists who support early education and other humane, science-based pedagogies to distance themselves from “brass-knuckled” philanthropists who fund its opposite – the test, sort, reward, and punish school of reform. Perhaps today’s advocates for pre-kindergarten and wraparound services don’t know that neo-liberal, output-driven reformers used to ridicule those policies as “Excuses!” and “Low Expectations.” The idea that poverty, not “bad” teachers, is the enemy has long been derided by those test-driven, competition-driven reformers. Why is it that supporters of early education and/or full-service community schools, which are based on the idea that teaching in the inner city must become a team effort, will often go along with mandates for soul-killing, bubble-in accountability and attacks on unions?

 
The Obama administration, as well as so many other Democrats seeking a “Third Way,” have convinced themselves that “college can conquer unemployment as well as racism, … urban decay as well as inequality.” Had these professional elites shared on-the-job experiences with working people, or even listened to fellow professionals who study economic history, perhaps they would have subjected their assumptions to an evidence-based cross examination. But, without a basis in fact, they bought the reform spin and the claim, “If we just launch more charter schools, give everyone a fair shot at the SAT, and crank out the student loans” that education “will dissolve our doubts about globalization.” The person who may have drank the biggest dose of their Kool Aid, former Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, said it worst, “What I believe – and what the president believes, is that the only way to end poverty is through education.”

 
Perhaps because I have been such an Obama loyalist, I’ve ducked the hard realities which Frank lays out. “To the liberal class,” he observes, “every big economic problem is really an education problem.” Obama’s education policy may have increased segregation, undermined the teaching profession, broken the morale of many educators, and benefitted rightwing union-haters, as it drove down student performance, but it can’t face up to these facts because, “To the liberal class this is a fixed idea, as open to evidence-based refutation as creationism is to fundamentalists.”

 
Frank explains why my efforts to reach out to our erstwhile allies (who may still ally themselves with unions and educators on progressive social issues while attacking the teaching profession) haven’t gained traction. The seemingly weird idea that education reform can defeat poverty is “a moral judgment handed down by the successful from the vantage of their own success.” Frank then concludes with a bluntness that I wouldn’t dare express on my own. The Ten Percent’s prescription for better teaching as the cure for poverty is “less a strategy for mitigating inequality than it is a way of rationalizing it.”

 
Arne Duncan’s and the Obama administration’s reign of education policy error is the culmination of more than a generation of Democratic fidelity to the “learning class.” Under the names of neo-liberalism, futurism, the Democratic Leadership Council, and New Democrats, they have assumed that “wired workers” were destined to dominate the 21st century and both parties had to “compete single-mindedly for their votes.” President Clinton propelled the party down a path which ignores working people and less-respected professionals by assembling an administration with a “tight little group of credentialed professionals who dominated his administration.” It was a political monoculture where “almost everyone agreed” with their technocratic, meritocratic mentality.

 
Then, the Obama administration put this “professional correctness” on steroids. It forgot that “the vast majority of Americans are unprofessional: they are managed, not managers.” So, “Team Obama joined the fight against teachers unions from day one.” This became nearly inevitable as his administration was staffed by people “whose faith lies in ‘cream rising to the top’ (to repeat [Jonathan] Alter’s take on Obama’s credo)” and “tend to disdain those at the bottom.”

 
Sadly, Frank doesn’t have concise solutions. He provides little hope that accountability-driven school reformers will hold themselves accountable for either the education debacle they choreographed or for abandoning the overall fight against economic inequality. Frank mostly urges us to speak truth to our party’s power. He also makes a great case that the Democrats rejection of populism is “a failure for both the nation and for their own partisan health.”

 
Perhaps I’m being naïve, but I also find hope in listening to President Obama who re-found his voice after the 2014 election. And, in the short term, we must support Hillary Clinton, and hope she takes heed of the message delivered by Bernie Sanders and Listen, Liberal.

Categories Corporate Reformers, Duncan, Arne, Obama, Oklahoma, Unions

Oklahoma: Educators Running for Office to Stop Budget Cuts

By dianeravitch
April 25, 2016 //
2

I love this story.

 

In Oklahoma, an unusual number of educators have filed to run for elective office to stop budget cuts.

 

Some got tired of being ignored by their representatives and decided it was time for an educator to run against them. They refuse to meet the needs of schools and children, so educators are stepping forward.

 

That’s action!

Categories Budget Cuts, Education Reform, Oklahoma, Politics
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