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What’s the Matter with Kansas? Parents Fight Back Against Massive Budget Cuts to Their Public Schools

By dianeravitch
June 12, 2016 //
12

Parents in Kansas are disgusted with Governor Sam Brownback’s massive budget cuts. The cuts were inevitable after Brownback and the legislature enacted the biggest tax cuts in the state’s history in 2012 and 2013. They must have been following the Reagan playbook of trickle-down economics, but it didn’t work. The State Supreme Court ordered the legislature to enact an equitable and adequate plan to finance the public schools.

And now parents are gearing up to fight for their public schools.

The struggle over school funding in Kansas reached a new crisis point when the State Supreme Court on Friday ruled that the Republican-dominated Legislature had not abided by its constitutional mandate to finance public schools equitably, especially poorer districts with less property wealth. The court, in an effort to force legislative action, reiterated a deadline that gave the state until June 30 to fix the problem or face a school shutdown.

The ruling exacerbated tensions over budgets enacted by Mr. Brownback and the Legislature that education officials say have led school districts to eliminate programs, lay off staff members or even shorten the school week….

Of even greater concern to many parents is a sense, they say, that the state leadership does not support the very concept of public education.

“People are saying, ‘This is not the Kansas I know,’ and ‘This is not the Republican Party I know,’” said Judith Deedy, who helped start the group Game On for Kansas Schools.

As in other states, the effect of reduced funding varies from one district to another. In poorer districts like Kansas City and Wichita, students are crammed into deteriorating buildings with bloated class sizes. One district in southeast Kansas, facing a budget shortfall, recently pared its school week to four days.

Parents who are Republicans feel betrayed by Governor Brownback and some plan to run against their incumbent representatives.

Educators are struggling to meet the needs of their students:


In Kansas City, school officials say they have been shortchanged by tens of millions of dollars over the past five years because the Legislature has not taken into account their needs when financing poorer districts like theirs. Ninety percent of the students in the Kansas City school district qualify for free or reduced-price lunch, and 40 percent are nonnative English speakers.

Cynthia Lane, the superintendent of schools in the Kansas City district, said preparations were underway in case schools are shut down, as the Supreme Court has threatened. Schools are usually busy during the summer months, with administrators and members of staff preparing for the upcoming academic year, she said. The first day of school is scheduled for Aug. 15.

“If we can’t pay bills, how do we keep our utilities on, how do we keep our security system on?” she said. “Folks are really frustrated and embarrassed that Kansas is the butt of jokes across the nation. He continues to say things are fine, when they are not fine.”

The Wichita School Board voted on May 18 to eliminate more than 100 jobs and to close an alternative high school, as part of efforts to trim about $18 million from the district’s budget.

At that meeting, Mike Rodee, the vice president of the board, blamed state officials for forcing budget cuts. “We need to look at all the people that are doing it to us,” he said at the school board meeting. “Our legislators, our government, our governor — we are the ones who are fighting to keep the schools alive, and they are fighting to close them.”

Some school principals say they are resigned to making do with what money they have. At Welborn Elementary School in Kansas City, classes are held in two aging buildings and students dash back and forth during the day. Teachers keep a watchful eye on them as they cross an active parking lot between the buildings.

“I don’t need much,” said Jennifer Malone, the principal, one recent afternoon. “I just want a building.”

Governor Brownback has called a special session of the legislature to enact a new funding formula. Just hope that he doesn’t fund the schools by cutting the universities or other public services.

Categories Budget Cuts, Funding, Kansas, Parents, Resistance

Julie Vassilatos: Who Owns the Chicago Public Schools?

By dianeravitch
June 11, 2016 //
13

This is one of the best posts ever, written by a Chicago public school parent and blogger.

Julie Vassilatos asks the question: whose schools? Who do they belong to? In Chicago, they are currently “owned” by the mayor and his hand-picked board. In other major cities, they are being given away to boards controlled by hedge fund managers, entrepreneurs, and corporate chains.

In Chicago, the mayor wants to cut the schools’ budget by 39%. Unimaginable!

Julie has a different understanding: These schools belong to US. They are OURS.

She writes:

The public schools belong to us. They are ours. In a very personal way, in a theoretical way, and in an actual, absolute financial way. Chicago Public Schools belong to us, the families who pay taxes to sustain them.

They do not belong to a handful of small-minded men who want to break them down, write them out of their budgets, and sever our communities from each other. They do not.

They. Are. Ours.

Our buildings, some of them historic, we have upheld and gardened and and repainted with our own volunteer efforts. We have papered their walls with our children’s art. We have forged relationships with our teachers, we have worked at this and so have they. We have struggled to get educational access for our special needs kids–struggled to create conditions in which our kid can learn despite draconian state-imposed limits, struggled together with our counselors and caseworkers and teachers and paraprofessionals.

We have chaperoned field trips and ridden on noisy bouncing buses, we have invented, organized, and staffed creative fundraisers, we have helped out in the classroom from stapling papers to reading to kids to finding and putting tennis balls on chair feet.

We have served on PTAs and LSCs, anxious and striving, weeping and sweating, laughing over shared meals and cheering over bake sale profits, working out and forging action on critical things like who our principal is and how we can best allocate our few paltry dollars.

In many cases our kids go to the same schools we went to, and our hearts can be filled with pride over this or with shame that they may be using the same textbooks we used. These schools are ours over generations.

These schools are ours. We pay for them. They are for our children and our society. They are not for the profit and manipulations of a ruler class, some of whom we elected in foolishness, and many of whom are appointed and about whom we have no say whatsoever. These educational overlords have shown that they do not care about our children’s educations. They care about their own children’s educations, as indeed so do we for our own children. It’s comfortable and easy for them, but the costs for this are high–a shrinking Chicago tax base, an exodus out of the city that will soon become a torrent, a generation of kids’ educations in jeopardy, and the moral cost of all the effort to maintain a lower class whose educational opportunities are denied.

Friends, readers, CPS parents, public school parents of the nation, hear this. Your school is yours. Our schools belong to us. Do not forget it. We have some power we need to retake here. We have a district to reclaim.

Categories Accountability, Chicago, Parents, Supporting public schools

Sign the NPE Action Proposal to the Democratic Party Platform Committee

By dianeravitch
June 4, 2016 //
38

The Network for Public Education Action Fund has drafted a proposal for consideration by the Democratic Party’s Platform Committee.

We call for the elimination of federal mandates for annual testing; for a declaration of support for public schools; for a ban on for-profit charters; for regulation of charters that receive federal funds to assure that they serve the same children as the public schools; for revision and strengthening of the FERPA privacy laws to protect our children’s data from commercial data mining; for full funding of special education; for support of early childhood education; and for other means of improving the federal role in education.

The proposal is in draft form. We will be making revisions. If you see something you think needs fixing, let us know.

Please read our draft proposal. And if you agree, add your name of our petition to the Democratic party. We plan to make the same appeal to the Republican party.

Both parties, we hope, will support the public schools, which educate nearly 90% of the nation’s children. Public schools are a bedrock of our society, in the past, now, and in the future.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Data and Data Mining, Education Industry, Education Reform, For-Profit, NPE Action Fund, Parents, Privatization, Resistance, Standardized Testing, Vouchers

Florida Teacher on the Pressure to Force Third Graders to Take the Test

By dianeravitch
June 3, 2016 //
12

I received this comment from a teacher in Manatee County:

Diane – I wanted to give you an update on yesterday’s story and some context about what teachers have been doing. The Florida Department of Education’s attorney has clarified that the portfolio option is available and must be allowed based on state statute. I suspect that the districts involved were encouraged to take the hardline position, particularly based on parts of an email from a DOE official (that the Manatee Superintendent released) which did imply that a test was required or the student would have to go to summer reading camp to build a portfolio. Now the DOE has “clarified” their position, stating that a district may not exclude any of the good cause exemptions (specified in statute) in their local policy.

The FEA Delegate Assembly recently passed a New Business Item advocating for a parent’s right to Opt Out, and the union has used that in lobbying efforts. At our latest Governance Board Meeting, President McCall hosted a panel discussion on Opt Out which included one of our attorneys, Cindy Hamilton from Opt Out Florida (https://www.facebook.com/TheOptOutFloridaNetwork/posts/1075887432465602) and Luke Flynt, our Secretary-Treasurer talking about the Opt-out movement and how complicated it is to be a teacher in this political environment. The FEA website has a statement about opt out with both warnings and information including links to the Opt-out groups. (https://feaweb.org/

The union has been consistent in warning teachers not to encourage opting out for the students and parents inside their classrooms because of state law, but we have also shared the complete statutes including all of the good cause exemptions to the required passing score on FSA. We have suggested that, as parents and citizens, teachers do not lose their first amendment rights, but they should be very careful about how and when they choose to exercise them. There is real concern that the department could go after teachers’ certificates if they advocate for opting out on school time or while acting in their employment capacity.

We have also had union leaders sharing the information provided by opt-out groups in their area, but they have also provided warnings about potential consequences particularly for 3rd grade students and for meeting graduation and scholarship requirements. The commissioner has stated several times that the state assessments are required by law, and that opting out is not allowed. She has also stated that parents who do not want to take assessments should find another place to educate their children.

Clearly, the great puzzle is why the Florida legislature is all for parent choice when it comes to “choosing” a school, but opposed to parent choice when it comes to complying with an order to take tests.

Categories Florida, Opt Out, Parents, Resistance, Students, Teachers

Florida: School Districts Threaten to Hold Back Students Who Opt Out

By dianeravitch
May 29, 2016 //
46

Two Florida school districts–Sarasota and Manatee–have warned parents their children will not be promoted if they opt out of state testing.

The only way to opt out of the state test is to take a state test before opting out. Alice in Wonderland?

 

 

Even students who have earned high marks all year will be retained in grade.

 

“Third-grade students in Sarasota and Manatee counties who refused to take the state’s standardized English Language Arts test and a subsequent alternative test will be held back, school officials say.

 

“District officials have contacted several parents saying that because their students opted out of taking the state test, called the Florida Standards Assessment, they must take an alternative test to progress from third grade to fourth. If students do not take the test, officials said they will have to repeat third grade.

 

“School districts across the state are wrestling with what to do with third-grade students who refused to take, or opted out of, the Florida Standards Assessments. A state statute mandates that students take the test, but vague language makes it difficult for districts to determine what alternatives can be used to promote a student — namely whether a portfolio can be used in lieu of the tests.

 

“Counties such as Pasco, Hillsborough and Charlotte have allowed students who took neither the FSA or the Stanford Achievement Test, 10th edition, to progress to fourth grade. But districts including Orange, Sarasota and Manatee require students who did not take the FSA or the SAT-10 to repeat third grade.”

 

The tests, with all their flaws, are more important in those counties than teachers’ assessments of their students or parental rights.

 

 

 

Parents have the right to choose a new school but not the right to refuse standardized tests.

Here is Peter Greene on the Florida testing mess.

Categories Florida, Opt Out, Parents

Texas Parents Sue State to Stop Use of Test Scores to Punish Students and Schools

By dianeravitch
May 26, 2016 //
6

A group of parents in Texas has filed suit against the state education agency to stop the use of this year’s scores to punish students and schools.

 

The legislature passed a law requiring the tests to be shortened, but the state education agency did not comply.

 

Its failure to abide by the law invalidates the tests, the parents believe.

 

Commissioner Mike Morath does not agree and intends to use the test results for accountability purposes, continuing the test obsession in Texas.

Categories Accountability, Education Industry, Parents, Testing, Texas

Chicago: Parents Stage a Billion-Dollar Bake Sale for the Public Schools

By dianeravitch
May 25, 2016 //
2

Guess who really puts children first? Their parents!

 

MEDIA ALERT: Wednesday, May 25th, 9:00 a.m.

 

Billion Dollar Bake Sale/Rally Demands Budget Solution; Sustainable Revenue for CPS

 

WHAT: Hundreds of CPS Parents from across the city are leading the first ever: “Billion Dollar Bake Sale/Rally” for Sustainable Funding to Save Our Schools. This demonstration will illustrate parents’ frustration and determination to keep the pressure on elected officials throughout the summer and demand appropriate and equitable funding for CPS schools.

 

The mock bake sale will include “$250K Clout Cakes,” “$100k nothing-but-crumb cakes,” “Overcrowded Cookie Jars,” etc. to illustrate how traditional methods of filling budget gaps, like bake sales, will no longer suffice. The rally/march will also include real time logging of 1000+ calls from parents to city/state representatives demanding that they put children before politics.

 

WHERE/WHEN: Wednesday, May 25th
9:00 a.m: Gathering at Thompson Center;
9:15 a.m: March to Dearborn and Madison
9:40 a.m: Rally/Press Conference at Dearborn/Madison (Across from Board of Ed)

 

WHY:
CPS plans to cut budgets by 25-30% after years of massive deficits that have gone ignored by state, city and CPS. Parents will announce plans for a summer full of public protests and events to keep the heat on for sustainable funding for Chicago Public Schools.

 

SPEAKERS TO INCLUDE:
Paris Shaw, parent Leif Ericson
Pastor Kristian Johnson, parent Ravenswood
Parent Jose Hernandez, Calmeca
Parent Tim Alexander, OA Thorpe

Photo opp: Hundreds of parents from around the city, creative signage, “baked goods” ie “$250k Clout Cakes,” Etc.

CONTACT:
Wendy Katten 773-704-0336

Categories Budget Cuts, Chicago, Parents

Education Writers Association Reviews Opt Out, Nationally

By dianeravitch
May 23, 2016 //
28

The Education Writers Association reviews the state of the opt out movement, nationally, presenting a variety of perspectives.  M

 

Once again, we hear the complaint that opt outs endanger the validity of the tests, but that’s nonsense if your concern is for individual living children, rather than data. No matter how many opt out, those who take the test will still get s score. The only thing that gets compromised is the ability to rank schools and districts on a bell curve. Tough.

 

 

Once again, we hear the complaint that opt out is concentrated among white families. So what? If families hate the over testing of their children, they should act on their concerns, whatever their race.

 

 

The article does not mention the reasons for lower rates of black and Hispanic participation in opt outs: fear that their school might be closed; fear of punishment; lack of information, which is spread through social media; and the Gates-funded disinformation campaign against opting out, which has misled some civil rights groups to support high-stakes testing that labels and stigmatizes children of color.

Categories Opt Out, Parents, Testing

Don’t Believe the New York Times’ Editorial about Remediation

By dianeravitch
May 12, 2016 //
71

Yesterday the New York Times published a bizarre editorial about remedial classes in college.

 

The editorial says that former Secretary of Education Arne Duncan was right when he said that the students who opt out are poorly educated, and their parents are “white suburban moms” who were disappointed to discover that their children aren’t so smart after all. Duncan always liked to say that America’s children had been “dummied down,” and no one was willing to tell the unpleasant truth but him.

 

The Times‘ editorial said that large numbers of suburban students need remediation when they get to college. This conclusion, it said, was based on a study by an advocacy group called Education Reform Now.

 

The editorial referred to Education Reform Now as a “nonprofit think tank.” ERN is nonprofit but it is certainly not a think tank. ERN is the nonprofit (c3) arm of Democrats for Education Reform (DFER), the organization of hedge fund managers that loves charter schools, high-stakes testing, and Common Core. It has a vested interest in saying that American public schools are failing, failing, failing so as to spur its campaign to privatize public education.

 

ERN sponsors “Camp Philos,” an annual affair where important political figures meet in the woods with hedge fund managers to figure out how to reform public schools that none of them ever sent their own children to. In 2014, its star education reformer was Governor Cuomo. At its 2015 meeting on Martha’s Vineyard, Mayor Rahm Emanuel was a keynote speaker, sharing his knowledge of how to reform public education by closing public schools en masse.

 

The staff director of ERN is Shavar Jeffries, who ran for mayor of Newark and lost to Ras Baraka. Jeffries was supported by DFER, which hired him after his loss.

 

Consider the board of directors. Every one of them is from Wall Street.

 

The authors of the report are staff members at ERN who come from public policy backgrounds.

 

Curiously, the editorial has a link to the words “Education Department,” but no link to the ERN policy brief.

 

The New York Times‘ editorial board has been a tireless advocate for the Common Core and for high-stakes testing. It has been a reliable cheerleader for the corporate reform. Its editorials show little understanding of the opt out movement or of the opposition to the Common Core standards. It is sad that the nation’s most prestigious newspaper so consistently distorts important education issues. It must be very distressing to the Times’ editorial board that the New York Board of Regents is now led by an experienced educator who does not share their zeal to tear down the nation’s public schools and abet privatization.

 

 

 

 

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Common Core, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Education Reform, Opt Out, Parents, Privatization, Testing

Denis Ian: The Revolt Against the “Know-It-All Class”

By dianeravitch
May 9, 2016 //
46

Denis Ian, a reader of the blog, has contributed several excellent comments which I have turned into post. Here is another that strikes a chord for its insight and thoughtfulness. American society has long been celebrated for individual freedom blended with civic responsibility. We take care of one another. We volunteer to help. We pitch in. But we don’t see why bureaucrats and legislators are forcing us to do things to our schools and our children that harm them. And we are responding.

 

 

Denis Ian writes:

 

 

Why should the parents of New York be out of step with what’s happening all across the nation?

 

Of course, this opt-out resistance is about education. But it’s also about what’s boiling folks from coast-to-coast … this never-ending, ever-intrusive, arrogant, and ruinous involvement of government to be front and center in the lives of every man, woman, and child.

 

This test-refusal effort is a scream at the federal and state governments to back off … retreat … and leave folks alone to craft the sort of society that will be … not the society envisioned by a few.

 

Parents want their schools back … among other things. This current effort … withholding kids from academic assessments … is way more complex than just a pile of lousy exams spawned by a wretched educational reform. That’s the surface stuff. The roots are much deeper. Only the daring will squint hard to see the links that are so obvious.

 

This society is set to explode … one way or another.

 

These tests are serious stuff for parents … and more serious stuff for children. This resistance has fired up lots of pretty ordinary folks into becoming very active managers of their own lives … and it will carry over into other issues soon enough. This election season is already the most bizarre of my long life … and it looks to get even more memorable in the months ahead.

 

Why? Because government … and a slender class of autocratic fops … has made it their business to be in everyone else’s business. We have these self-appointed wind-bags who have this neurotic, messiah complex that results in chaos for everything they touch.

 

They’ve ruined healthcare, border and homeland security, law enforcement, illegal immigration, the economy, education, and just about everything else they’ve knocked up against. Why are folks so surprised that people are fit to be tied?

 

The new Know-It-All class … the self-anointed oligarchs … have imposed their norms and values and programs and reforms with absolute ease over the last several years … but the breaking point is here. The signs are all about … just look at the sort of political figures who have captured the attention of the people. They’re not oligarchic types at all .. in fact, they’re the antidotes to the giant itch that troubles this nation.

 

The really amazing thing about this reform/test counter-action is the resistance to the resistance. The educational oligarchs … just like the social and political absolutists … will not admit what is underfoot. They will not concede that the agitation is THEIR fault … caused by THEIR ineptitude and THEIR arrogance. That is a sure-fire fuse that will easily flame up. Nothing pisses off good people more than being played for dummies.

 

And the people are plenty pissed off.

 

This moment … in education … is an early prelude to what’s in store for this political season. I’m certaint these parents … who stood tall for their children and their neighborhood schools … won’t vanish for a long while. They’re just warming up.

 

The oligarchs have blown it … big time. And it all began with the biggest dummy of all … Arne Duncan … that mother-bashing fop who lit that fuse.

 

This Duncan quote about suburban moms might be the most memorable educational gaffe of recent decades: ” … “their child isn’t as brilliant as they thought they were, and their school isn’t quite as good as they thought they were.”

 

Duncan is still in search of the world’s largest vacuum … but those words have stuck in the craw of every parent from Long Island to Los Angeles. And now those moms … and dads … are the first in battle against the snob class. And they’re winning.

 

Denis Ian

Categories Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Opt Out, Parents, Resistance, Testing
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