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Spread the word: Stop School Closings!

By dianeravitch
September 18, 2012 //
1

A note from a friend:

Attached you will see our media advisory that we are just about to get out. We are part of a national alliance of youth, parent and community groups who have joined to fight against school closures. We believe they have displaced our communities, in some places like Chicago increased the violence and are a violation of our civil rights.

Cities like Detroit, Chicago, NOLA, Boston, Philly just to name a few will ride to D.C. on what we are labeling our “Journey for Justice”. 500 youth and parents will converge on D.C. on the 20th of September and send a message to the President and Duncan.

Can you help us? We are really trying to get the #journey4justice hashtag to trend. We have already begun to tweet using it and are working to create a strategy behind this. We have a powerful video of rallies and protests over the years from different cities around school closure. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o6X5rRI7MyE&feature=youtu.be

Would love any ideas you might have about getting others to participate on Twitter or FB?

Zakiyah Ansari
Advocacy Director
ALliance for Quality Education
 
233 Broadway
New York, NY 10279
212 328 9266
917 309 5742
 
Twitter @zansari8
 
Human progress is neither automatic nor inevitable… Every step toward the goal of justice requires sacrifice, suffering, and struggle; the tireless exertions and passionate concern of dedicated individuals.
Martin Luther King, Jr.

Categories Corporate Reformers, Education Reform, Parents, Privatization, Students

Why She Quit Teaching

By dianeravitch
September 15, 2012 //
9

I hate to see anyone give up when they love their work. When you read this essay, however, you will undertand why the pressure got to be too much for this teacher.

Do you think we could persuade Bill Gates and Eli Broad and Arne Duncan to read it too?

Maybe they could help figure out how to keep people like this teacher in the schools. We need her.

We don’t need people taking potshots and making her job harder.

Categories Parents, Teachers and Teaching

Why Big Business Intervened in Chicago with an Ad

By dianeravitch
September 14, 2012 //
13

I received an email from a parent who is also an educator in Chicago. She wondered about the identity of a group called Education Reform Now, which placed ads in the local media undermining the teachers’ strike. ERN is part of a group called Democrats for Education Reform. DFER is funded by Wall Street hedge fund managers who support charter schools, privatization, and using test scores to evaluate teachers. It is interesting that the charter schools they promote are often (depending on state law) exempt from test-based evaluation. Oh, and 88% of all charters are non-union.

She writes:

Greetings Ms. Ravitch,

I write this letter to you with both excitement and disappointment in my heart. I am sure you are well aware of by now of the strike/battle over the fate of our children and public education that is currently taking place between the Chicago Teachers Union and the City of Chicago. I write this letter not as an educator, but as a parent with children in the public school system here in the city who is infuriated that my children, other children and tax paying citizens are having their civil rights infringed upon through the bullying tactics of our mayor, CPS and big business moguls of this country.

I have been extremely active in the process of fighting against the unfunded longer school day put upon us by the mayor, fighting for an elected representative school board and now walking the picket lines and taking information to the streets and the people regarding the issues that the union is truly bargaining for for our students and teachers. My children have been in the streets along side me as well. I have utilized this opportunity as a teaching moment because I understand the importance of teaching our children, our future, true democracy in action.

My excitement comes from not just the part I play in the process, but more importantly the role and witnessing of the process by children. We talk about the importance of providing a comprehensive education to our children and that we are a “democratic society”; but based on what I am witnessing now brings me to what has has me disappointed and incensed.

Yesterday I watched a television ad paid for by Education Reform Now Advocacy that ran on our local ABC station channel 7. The ad blared carefully selected quotes taken from stories in the Chicago Sun-Times and the Chicago Tribune against the union, the teachers and the strike. It ends with the narrator quoting from the Sun-Times that “a deal is within reach, all CTU has to do is grab it”.

The content from both media outlets is based off of mis-information that is simply not true. This is a strike that is, in fact, long over due. Contrary to what the city wants everyone to believe, this is a strike to take back the fate and control of our children’s education. The city and big business are combining efforts and dollars to dismantle the union, and to pit parents and communities against teachers and our children so that they can continue to create standardized testing factories. They aim to turn our students into consumers of a privatized, on-line product that produces data and dollars so that the rich can continue to become richer.

This is both disgraceful and disrespectful and therefore, I am making a plea to you to support our union, our children and the people of Chicago by helping to shed light and expose the bullying tactics of big business in their continued attempt to dismantle unions and privatize education in this country during the time of our fight.

Thank you in advance for your attention and support! Please feel free to contact me if you have any questions or comments.

In Solidarity,

Tonya Payne
Parent/Educator

Categories Charter Schools, Chicago, Corporate Reformers, Democrats for Education Reform, Parents

Do Testing and Accountability Promote Critical Thinking?

By dianeravitch
September 12, 2012 //
29

Jan Carr, an author of children’s books, is a dedicated public school parent. She wrote a post wondering why the powerful elites in our society are so obsessed with testing and data. She wondered why they care so little for developing critical thinking.

Jan wrote: “I’ve been a scrappy public school mom for 12 years and counting, and I’ve watched the increasing encroachment of the data and accountability business, which would have our kids prepping for and taking deadening tests at every turn, and our teachers endlessly graded and derided for test results that are a meaningless distraction from real learning. A rich and full education digs deeper; it’s inextricably entwined with books, literature, writing, and the life of the mind; it develops critical thinking.”

I read her latest post and asked Mike Petrilli of the conservative Thomas B. Fordham Institute to respond to it. I have known Mike for many years, and I hold out hope that someday he too will evolve and renounce the reforms he now champions. I think this will happen when his own children encounter them, as Jan Carr’s did.

I invite readers to comment on this discussion.

This is Mike’s commentary:

Dear Ms. Carr,

I enjoyed reading your post about critical thinking; it sounds like you and your son have been lucky to have had some very talented teachers.

l’ve never met Bill Gates, or Eli Broad, or Michael Bloomberg, or Rupert Murdoch; I can’t speak for what lies in their hearts. But I find it very unlikely that they don’t want children to “think critically” because they want to produce a generation of drones. I know that sort of rhetoric is common on the left (including from the late Howard Zinn) but to believe it you have to also believe that Barack Obama, the late Ted Kennedy, the liberal icon George Miller, and countless other liberal supporters of education reform are also out to unplug our children’s minds. That doesn’t pass the “critical thinking” test.

What motivates these folks, as I understand it, is an earnest belief that in today’s knowledge economy, the only way poor kids are going to have a shot at escaping inter-generational poverty is to gain the knowledge, skills, and character strengths that will prepare them to enter and complete some sort of post-secondary education–the pathway to the middle class. And that while reading and math scores don’t come close to measuring everything that counts, they do measure skills that have been linked to later success in college, the workplace, and life.

I suspect that all of these men would like to see students engaged in more of the kind of critical thinking that you describe, and that’s one reason many support the move to the more rigorous “Common Core” standards for English Language Arts and math. The ELA standards, in particular, are designed to push students toward this sort of complex thinking.

The testing movement has caused a lot of harm, I agree, in terms of narrowing the curriculum and encouraging bad teaching. Moving to better standards and tests is one way to address that. But by throwing out the baby with the bathwater we risk going back to the days when poor and minority kids were held to very low expectations–and their achievement plateaued as a result.

In the last two decades, poor and minority kids have made two grade levels of progress in reading and math, according to the National Assessment of Educational Progress. The hope–and it’s really only a hypothesis at this point–is that those greater math and reading skills will help a generation of kids do much better in college and the real world than they otherwise would have. The question for educators and reformers is: How do we keep the good that’s come from testing and accountability while eliminating the bad?

Mike Petrilli

Categories Accountability, Broad Foundation, Common Core, Corporate Reformers, Education Reform, Gates Foundation, Bill Gates, NCLB (No Child Left Behind), Parents, Poverty, Students, Testing

How Some African American Leaders Went Wrong on Reform

By dianeravitch
September 12, 2012 //
2

Karran Harper Royal is a leader of Parents Across America.

She lives in New Orleans, where she went to public schools. Her child attends a charter school.

She spoke at the SOS 2012 meeting in Washington, where she analyzed why some African American leaders and civil rights figures got on the wrong side of education reform.

The video was made by Norm Scott, retired NYC teacher, leader of the Grassroots Education Movement, and producer of the celebrated film “The Inconvenient Truth Behind ‘Waiting for Superman.'”

Categories Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Reform, New Orleans, Parents

A Parent Reviews the Parent Trigger Movie

By dianeravitch
September 9, 2012 //
6

It seems as though all the really big publicity for the anti-union, anti-public school film “Won’t Back Down” is coming from parents and teachers. Here is a review by a parent.

But that really isn’t so, as NBC’s Education Nation is making a big deal of it, and will have a private screening at the New York Public Library for the upper crust. And you can bet that all the corporate funded activists who want to privatize public education will try to turn this into the fiction version of “Waiting for Superman.” Well, same producer, same goal.

This writer, who was president of her school’s PTA, says the movie demonizes the union. She wonders how the actors–who all belong to the Screen Actors Guild–feel about making a movie that attacks another union.

She writes:

I am all for parent power.  I am all for getting rid of the crappy, demoralizing teachers who should not be allowed to step foot in a classroom.  But, this movie made me sad.  I was really hopeful in the beginning of the film because it was about teachers and parents working together – not something you usually see in movies.  This wasn’t some public school movie where the wide-eyed liberal white teacher swoops in to the minority student school and teaches them violin and magically makes their lives better.  We don’t need any more of those either.  But, this was really a giant anti-union propaganda film that missed the mark.  And that’s too bad because it had the chance to really say something about how parents and teachers can make change – and how hard it really is to find great leadership, and what can happen if we put kids first.  There was NO mention of lack of funding at the school by the way, or lack of professional development for teachers, after school programs, etc.  Seems if you just hang lots of butterflies in the hallway and paint the halls you make a great new school.  That’s an insult to all the parents and teachers who really do work their butts off to make their schools better everyday.

But then, what would you expect from a movie funded by Philip Anschutz, a billionaire who funds anti-public school think tanks and other causes whose goal is to decimate the public sector and privatize everything?

 

Categories Corporate Reformers, Parent trigger, Parents, Unions

Parents Make a Difference!

By dianeravitch
September 9, 2012 //
2

Last spring, Jeb Bush and Michelle Rhee tried to push the phony “parent trigger” legislation through the Florida legislature. It seemed to be a slam-dunk, since the legislature is controlled by Republicans and the governor is Republican, and the skids were greased to turn more public schools over to the charter corporations. These corporations give generous campaign contributions, so the table was set to add to their portfolios.

But they forgot about the parents, the alleged beneficiaries of the “trigger.”

Florida parent organizations turned out in force to oppose the “trigger.” They knew what the game was, and they knew it was not for their benefit that Bush and Rhee and ALEC were so eager to “empower” them with the ability to give their public school to a corporation. The Florida PTA and groups like Testing is Not Teaching, Fund Education Now, and 50th No More opposed the “trigger.”

Parents made a difference. They understood that the goal of the “trigger” is to shoot public education in the heart. They convinced enough Republican senators to vote against the bill that it ended in a 20-20 deadlock in the state senate. Of course, the forces of greed will return again, but parents will organize again.

Parents in Chicago are organizing to support the Chicago Teachers Union. One group, the parents of the 19th Ward, have been outspoken. I got this email today:

I wanted to share this post, which was written by Nellie Cotton, an involved Chicago Public Schools parent, an activist who speaks truth to power in a snap, a strong CTU supporter and a woman I am so happy to call my friend. Nellie has agreed to let me forward her post. I think it speaks to the experience a lot of parents have had in CPS, but not a lot have taken up the cause as brilliantly as Nellie.
 
Maureen Cullnan
19th Ward Parents
I was just thinking of how I became involved in all this and of all the wonderful people who have helped me become empowered. Please forgive me for rambling.
 
All this first started about three years ago when due to budget cuts, we were going to lose positions. One of those was an exceptionally gifted and beloved teacher, Miss Susan Cummings. Miss Cummings is simply amazing as a teacher. Her love of teaching and her “spark” are palpable. I felt helpless. Not knowing what to do, I approached my LSC for guidance, only to be told this happens, nothing you can do against CPS and, by the way, “Where were you when this issue first came up? “
 
I could not let this rest. My daughter Cecilia (she was Miss Cummings’ student)  and I went door to door with a petition demanding her position not be cut. We collected 261 signatures and went to a board meeting to present them, sent copies of the  same stuff every Tuesday and Thursday to our congressman, House Speaker Michael Madigan, and to Mayor Daley. I went to the monthly CPS school board meetings. Then one day as I had given CPS CEO Ron Huberman my weekly packet, I coincidentally met that dynamo ,Karen Lewis. She was president-elect of the CTU and she introduced me to Jesse Sharkey, who took my information and urged me to join CORE, any parent groups, or my LSC because “Parents and teachers must work together to be effective.” 
 
I knew then she was a dynamic force. 
We are grateful we still have our Miss Cummings!
  
Fast forward to Mayor Emanuel pushing longest day on CPS schools. Again I was shot down by my LSC, as this was a done deal, I was told. CPS had several staff people come talk to the parents and tell them it was a done deal, accept it.  
 
I couldn’t!  I knew better.  
 
My mother picketed and boycotted in order to get a high school built in Pilsen.  I had been active in keeping Pope John Paul II school open!   Again I started with petitions, signs and red bows on trees. I asked to use Lawler Park to have an informational meeting and, honestly, did not have a real grasp on all the issues at the time.  I was struggling with medical issues, my Mom was terminally ill, and I was just going on faith. 
The day of my meeting, I realize now that I had no grasp of the issues. I was going on moxie alone. I was so blessed to have Maureen and Christine contact me out of the blue and take time to do a presentation on the issue at hand. I was blown away. They came armed with information and passion. They are incredible! Through them and because of them,  I have met so many other fantastic people that are affecting positive changes and inspire me every day. Wendy Katten, Erica Clark, Kelly, Jennie, Becky, Laura and Jimmy, The 19th Ward Parents,  I am proud to know you, you guys ROCK! And so many others …
 
If nothing more,  this journey has afforded me the opportunity to meet such incredible people. Thank you for advocating for what truly matters!
 
Nellie Cotton
CPS parent
Categories Bush, Jeb, Chicago, Education Industry, Florida, Parent Groups, Parents, Unions

Two Moms Terrify DFER and StudentsFirst

By dianeravitch
September 4, 2012 //
23

What are DFER and Students First afraid of?

Activist moms denied admission to events at the Democratic National Convention

 

Contacts:  Pam Grundy, 704-806-0410, shamrockparent@earthlink.net

Carol Sawyer, 704-641-2009, carolsawyer1@gmail.com

 

For the second day in a row, at the Democratic National Convention in Charlotte, N.C., a handful of moms bearing flyers and large yellow pencils made out of pool noodles were denied admission to an event sponsored and/or featuring the corporate-focused education “reform” groups Democrats for Education Reform (DFER) and Students First, headed by Michelle Rhee.

On Tuesday, Carol Sawyer and Pam Grundy, co-chairs of the locally based MecklenburgACTS.org, had signed up in advance for what was billed as a DFER “Town Hall,” and received confirmation of their registration. An hour before the program was scheduled to begin, they stationed themselves outside the entrance and distributed flyers to other attendees which questioned the effectiveness of DFER’s strategies for improving education.

Shortly before the event was to begin, Carol went to take her seat. But she was told at the door that she would not be allowed in, even though she had a confirmed registration. The reason she was given was that the MecklenbugACTS representatives were discouraging people from attending. This was patently untrue, as Carol and others were in fact directing attendees towards the entrance, which was somewhat complicated to locate.

The denial at the Students First event the previous day more closely resembled a comedy of errors, as Pam described in a Parents Across America blog post following the events.

“We find it somewhat amusing that these well-funded groups seem to regard us as such a threat,” Carol observed. “But more important, we are troubled by the way that these forums on education – a subject which is so essential to our children’s and our nation’s future – seem to be so thoroughly orchestrated that they leave no room for real debate or discussion. Many, many Democrats agree with us on issues of high-stakes testing, treatment of teachers and rampant privatization. We call on President Obama to use his influence to open up the debate to other voices and other points of view.”

 

Categories Democrats for Education Reform, Parents, StudentsFirst

Parents in Charlotte to Protest Film and DFER

By dianeravitch
September 3, 2012 //
7

A press release from Parents Across America:

MecklenburgACTS/PAA to protest film/DFER event & Present Positive Education Reforms at DNC

 

For immediate release: September 3, 2012

Contact: Pamela Grundy, 704-806-0410, shamrockparent@earthlink.net

Members of MecklenburgACTS.org and Parents Across America will be rallying and distributing literature at two events associated with the Democratic National Convention here in Charlotte.

 

We will call on President Obama and other Democrats to reject the ineffective “reform” measures being pushed by well-heeled organizations such as Students First and Democrats for Education Reform, and instead join parents and education experts in support of a more proven, community-based set of changes.

 

As the Charlotte Observer and the Huffington Post have noted, Democrats differ significantly over ways to improve the nation’s schools. We will be highlighting this debate.

 

On Monday, we will be at the Students First-sponsored showing of the controversial movie “Won’t Back Down” at the Epicenter complex, 201 E. Trade St., from 12:30 to 1 p.m.. Although several of us signed up to see the movie and attend the discussion some weeks ago, we were informed early this morning that we would not be admitted. So we will make our case outside.

 

On Tuesday, we will be at the “Town Hall” sponsored by Democrats for Education Reform at the Knight Theater, 4:30 S. Tryon St., from 12:30 to 1:30 p.m.

 

We will present the following statement:

 

Our Children Need Education Reforms that Work

 

 

Students First, Parent Revolution and Democrats for Education Reform are pushing for education policies that have no track record of success:

 

• An expansion of high-stakes testing that turns schools into testing factories and drives families and top teachers away from public education.

 

• Relentless charter school expansion even though charter schools regularly perform less well than comparable public schools.

 

• School closings which disrupt families and communities and send most students to schools that perform no better than the ones they left.

 

• Parent trigger laws which divide parents and have yet to improve a single school.

 

We’ve seen here in Charlotte how these policies destabilize communities, anger parents and demoralize our best teachers. We call on President Obama and other Democrats to reject these policies and join parents and education experts in support of a more positive set of changes that includes small classes, a well-rounded curriculum, more meaningful parent involvement and greater investment in teachers andfamilies.

 

For REAL solutions visit MecklenburgACTS.org and ParentsAcrossAmerica.org.

Categories Democrats for Education Reform, Parent trigger, Parents

Philadelphia’s Astonishing Decision

By dianeravitch
September 2, 2012 //
11

According to this article, Philadelphia will spend an additional $7,000 per student to open many new charter schools. It will cost the district $139 million over the next five years.

24% of the district’s students are currently in charters. The School Reform Commission, acting on the advice of the Boston Consulting Group, wants to increase that proportion to 40%.

What is the record of charter schools in Philadelphia to date?

Does the business community and civic leadership remember what happened the last time that Philadelphia adopted privatization? Or did they forget?

Philadelphia has been under state control for years. No one is pushing for privatization but the elites who don’t send their children to public schools in Philadelphia.

Maybe the state and the School Reform Commission should let the citizens take charge of their schools and find out what the parents and citizens of Philadelphia want to do with their schools and their children.

Categories Boston Consulting Group, Charter Schools, Parents, Pennsylvania, Philadelphia
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