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Camika Royal Speaks Out

By dianeravitch
July 12, 2012 //
21

 

The other day I blogged about a TFA leader who spoke at the opening ceremonies of the TFA summer institute in Philadelphia. Before my blog was posted, the Youtube video was taken down.

 

Just a few hours ago, I received a tweet saying that Dr. Camika Royal had posted an article at Huffington Post. The article contained an explanation of what happened as well as the text of the video.

 

In the Youtube video,  Dr. Camika Royal was speaking to the recruits. She said some amazing things that were distinctly out of step with the customary “charters are better than public schools” and “TFA is better than veteran teachers” lines. She spoke of humility and respect. She spoke of the resiliency of Philadelphians (she is a native of the city). She spoke disparagingly of a “governor-appointed School Reform Commission whose latest reform plan is to educate by abdicating its responsibility for the schools that have been most difficult to manage.” Sounded like me, for a minute. Be careful.

 

She said, “Our schools are more than the lie of successful charters and failing district. Our educators are more than the false dichotomy of good versus bad, of us and them. By and large, educators here are not bad. Educators here are tired. Educators here are reform weary. Our students are more than test scores, graduation rates, and disciplinary issues. They are the babies that parents prayed for and over and read to and work for and dream about.” Sounds like me, again. I told you to be careful.

 

She said, “You have come to Teach FOR America, but in Philadelphia, that will only happen to the extent that you commit yourself to serving and learning. A teacher is a servant. And you are not here to save. You are here to serve.” That’s right.

 

In the written introduction to the speech, Dr. Royal says the following about Philadelphia today:

 

“By no means do I suggest that the public education system in Philadelphia, as it exists right now, works for the majority of the students who attend them or the educators who work in them. However, I do not think the solution to this multi-faceted, multi-layered behemoth conundrum is the plan to dismantle the School District of Philadelphia (SDP), to release the education of its students to charter management organizations as is being currently touted by the mayor, the School reform commission, and the former Philadelphia gas works leader turn chief recovery officer of SDP. I realize this view is contrary to those espoused by many neo-liberal education reformers, some of whom are also TFA alumni. And perhaps earlier in my career, I would have agreed with them. But I’ve done too much research on charter schools in Philadelphia and the history and sociopolitical context of schools in Philly to think that this plan will be effective in the long-run for students, families, educators, or communities. This current plan to dismantle the District is not reform. It is refuse. It places financial concerns and constraints over the educational needs of people who need education the most, and it is, therefore, political and unacceptable.”

 

Oh, my heavens! This woman is great! She tells the truth. She is not afraid. She doesn’t sell the party line.

 

Dr. Camika Royal, you are a hero! Thank you for speaking plainly and courageously.

 

PS: I wonder why Philadelphia is hiring TFA in the middle of a budget crisis as they lay off career teachers?

Categories Education Reform, Philadelphia, Teach for America TFA

Are Charter Schools Public Schools?

By dianeravitch
July 12, 2012 //
12

A reader from Pennsylvania asks whether charter schools are public schools if they seek to avoid transparency and if their teachers are not subject to the same evaluation scheme as public school teachers:

Charters insist on being called “public” schools.

Yet in Pennsylvania charters are in court trying to prevent laws requiring them to be transparent about their operations, as public schools are required to do.

The state legislature just passed a law requiring 50% of teacher evaluations to be based test scores. The law EXEMPTS charter teachers from this new evaluation system.

In the ALEC rush of legislation at the close of its session last week, a bill was introduced in the PA legislature to EXEMPT charters from the state’s Sunshine Law which requires public institutions receiving state money to be transparent about their contracts. It received 120 favorable votes in the House and failed by a few votes in the Senate.

In Philadelphia we have a charter operator, Universal, which was given Audenreid High School, which was made a charter as soon as a new facility was built at tax payer expense, operating for the past year rent and maintenance cost free. Next year they will have to pay $500,000 which just a quarter of the expense for rent and maintanence.  The SRC will cover the rest. This is in a School District which has a $265 million deficit, plans to close 65 public schools over the next few years, and is threatening to unilaterally cut the wages and benefits of public school employees.

So I take back what I said at the beginning of this thread. Charter schools are not open to public scrutiny.

Categories Accountability, ALEC, Charter Schools, Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Teacher Evaluations

About Those Superintendents on Broad Board

By dianeravitch
July 8, 2012 //
15

At the suggestion of a reader, I posted a list of the board of directors of a Broad Center for the Management of School Systems, dating from 2009. It included several school superintendents.

Readers have commented on the track record of the superintendents on that board.

Let’s see:

Joel Klein: Resigned in 2010, after NY State Education Department revealed  statewide score inflation and New York City’s celebrated test scores collapsed

Michelle Rhee: Resigned in 2010 after D.C. Mayor Adrian Fenty defeated, largely because of her divisive reputation

Arlene Ackerman: Resigned in 2011 in Philadelphia after tempestuous reign

Maria Goodloe-Johnson: Fired in 2010 in Seattle

Arne Duncan: His plan called Renaissance 2010 failed to lift Chicago public schools, now U.S. Secretary of Education

Margaret Spellings: Not a superintendent, but architect of disastrous NCLB

And to think that this is the organization that is training superintendents to “reform” urban education!

Categories Broad Foundation, Chicago, Duncan, Arne, Education Reform, Klein, Joel, NYC, Philadelphia, Rhee, Michelle

Where Does Arne Duncan Stand?

By dianeravitch
July 7, 2012 //
33

When John White was appointed to run the Recovery School District in New Orleans, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan called him a “visionary school leader.”

Now John White is doing the bidding of a Tea Party governor and leading the most reactionary drive in the nation to dismantle public education; to take money away from the minimum foundation budget for public schools and give it to voucher schools and charter schools; to give public money to small religious schools that don’t teach evolution; to strip teachers of all protection of their academic freedom; to allow anyone to teach, without any credentials, in charter schools; to welcome for-profit vendors of education to take their slice out of the funding for public schools.

I wonder if Arne Duncan still considers him a “visionary leader”?

I wonder what Arne Duncan thinks of the Louisiana legislation. I wonder why he has not spoken out against any part of it. I wonder why he is silent when Tea Party governors like Chris Christie attack the teachers of their state and try to take away whatever rights they may have won over the years. I wonder if he agreed or disagreed with the Chiefs for Change–the rightwing state superintendents–when they saluted Louisiana’s regressive legislation to take money from public schools and hand it over to private sector interests.

I wonder why he never went to Madison, Wisconsin, to speak out for public sector workers there when it mattered. I wonder what he thinks of the emergency manager legislation in Michigan, where state-appointed emergency managers have closed down public education in two districts and handed it off to charter operators. I wonder what he thinks about the Boston Consulting Group’s plan in Memphis to increase the proportion of students in privately managed charters from 4% to 19%. I wonder what he thinks about the Boston Consulting Group’s plan to privatize up to 40% of Philadelphia’s schools. I wonder what he thinks about the rollback of collective bargaining rights in various states or the removal of job protections for teachers. I wonder what he thinks about ALEC’s coordinated plan to destroy public education. I wonder what he thinks of the emerging for-profit industry that is moving into K-12 education.

He has many opportunities to express his views about the escalation of the war against public education and the ongoing attacks on teachers and their unions.

Why is he silent?

Just wondering.

Categories ALEC, Duncan, Arne, Education Reform, For-Profit, Jindal, Bobby, K12 Inc., Louisiana, Michigan, Philadelphia, Privatization

TFA Alum Criticizes Reform in Philly: Video Disappears

By dianeravitch
July 7, 2012 //
15

Dr. Camika Royal, a 1999 Baltimore TFA alum, recently spoke at the opening of the TFA training institute in Philadelphia and she gave the incoming TFA corps members a dose of hard-earned reality. Philly is a hotbed of corporate reform ideas right now, with a plan drafted by Boston Consulting Group to privatize as much as 40 percent of the public schools, cheered on the the wealthy and powerful local titans.

When I wrote this post yesterday, I was able to link to a YouTube video of the  speech. Gary Rubinstein, a critic of TFA and former TFA corps member, told me about the video. However, after Gary posted about it, it was mysteriously taken down and is now available only to those with “permission” to view it.

In her 7-minute speech, she told the new teachers, who were there to “make history,” to “save” the children and to “close the achievement gap,” some of what she had learned since teaching in Baltimore and earning her doctorate in urban education.

Here is a snippet of the speech, thanks to Gary Rubinstein. Gary has printed portions of the speech on his website. Originally, he had a link to the entire speech, but that is no longer available.

Dr. Royal said:

Recently, there has been a constant state of flux and reform producing lateral movement but little to lift us higher or take us forward.”

“The mayor appointed school board was disbanded and replaced with a governor appointed school reform commission whose latest reform plan is to educate by abdicating its responsibility for the schools   that have been most  difficult to manage.”

“It doesn’t matter what you see, or what you’ve read about schools and educators here, don’t believe the hype.  Our schools are more than the lie of successful charters and failing districts.  Our educators are more than the false dichotomy of good vs bad, of us vs. them.”

“By and large, educators here are not bad.  Educators here are tired.  Educators here are reform weary.”

“Our students are more than test scores, graduation rates, and disciplinary issues.”

“Our education is more than failure rhetoric and the achievement gap misnomer.”

It is a shame that someone felt the need to take down the video of Camika Royal’s speech. It shows a woman who thinks for herself and does not spout the party line. We all need more of that kind of independence and critical thinking.

Categories Education Reform, Philadelphia, Teach for America TFA

Keep Following the Money in Philly, part 2

By dianeravitch
July 6, 2012 //
3

The Citypaper in Philadelphia learned that the city’s major foundation (William Penn) is funding the privatization forces, and the foundation didn’t like it. It launched pushback in other media.

What appears to be unquestionably true in the offensive and counteroffensive is that powerful people are mobilizing to turn many public schools in Philadelphia over to privately run charters or even to voucher schools. This move was predictable in the wake of the report by the Boston Consulting Group, one of those big management consulting teams that prefers private management to public government control. Wherever you find the advice of Boston Consulting Group, you will find a plan to privatize public schools.

Despite loud public demonstrations in support of community schools, the wealthy philanthropists and businessmen of Philadelphia do not like to be thwarted. It annoys them when unimportant people who send their children to public schools have the nerve to oppose their plans to “save” those children. How dare they? Who cares what “the little people” say? Why don’t they just listen to their “betters”?

Categories Boston Consulting Group, Corporate Reformers, Education Reform, Philadelphia

Follow the Money in Philadelphia

By dianeravitch
July 6, 2012 //
9

One man and one foundation decides what’s good for Philadelphia. One sharp-eyed investigative reporter learned the details.

That foundation–the William Penn Foundation–used to be concerned about equitable funding for the children and public schools of Philadelphia.

No longer.

The William Penn Foundation brought in the Boston Consulting Group to develop a plan to redesign the Philadelphia school system, and that plan predictably involved a heavy dose of privatization. If you ask business consultants what to do, their answer is always the same: bring in private entrepreneurs who keep their eye on the bottom line, who look on children as a profit or a loss, not as if they were their own children.

The Boston Consulting Group’s “Blueprint” ran into heavy opposition from parents. But don’t expect the privatizers to quit. They have more aces up their sleeve.

Categories Accountability, Boston Consulting Group, Charter Schools, Education Reform, Philadelphia, Privatization

A Sickening Feeling in Philadelphia

By dianeravitch
June 19, 2012 //
1

I wrote a blog about the press for privatization in Philadelphia, and someone sent me the following email. For a minute, I felt as helpless as he does, then I took a deep breath, redoubled my resolve, and determined to fight back. We can’t let the elites take away what belongs to all of us.

He wrote:

I read your recent article about privatization in Philly.  Thanks for the support.  We need it.  You likened it to the nineteenth century when we were dependent on the largesse of the wealthy.  The current threat is even worse.  Organized money is picking over the carcass of public education.  Taxpayers pay taxes to enrich the already wealthy who have bought lobbyists and politicians.  Even the robber barons didn’t do that nearly as blatantly.  Sadly, we are losing ground and the end could come this summer.  As a “little person” I’ve done what little people can do.

Categories Education Reform, Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Privatization

What Do Graduation Rates Mean?

By dianeravitch
June 16, 2012 //
11

Everyone talks about high school graduation rates, but no one-including me–has any idea what they mean and what they really are.

We operate from the assumption that 100% of students “should” graduate from high school and excoriate the schools when the numbers are anything less. The assumption–which is wrong–is that we used to have high graduation rates but now we don’t. This is simply wrong. Over the course of the 20th century, graduation rates started from a very low point–less than 10% of young Americans finished high school at the beginning of the 20th century–and the rate rose steadily until it reached 50% in 1940. By 1970, it was 70%, and since then it has inched up.

Today, it is difficult to know what the graduation rate is because there are so many different ways of counting. If you count only those who graduate in four years, then it is about 75%. If you include those who graduate in August, after four years, it goes up. If you add those who took five or six years, it goes up more. If you add those who received a GED or some other alternate degree, it is up to 90%. (Aficionados of the issue can have fun poring over the latest federal data here).

These days, politicians play with the graduation rate to make themselves look successful (never mind the students). They lament the “crisis” in dropouts when they enter office, then crow at every uptick once they are in office to demonstrate “their” success.

Unfortunately, the pressure to raise the numbers typically overwhelms the standards required for attaining a high school diploma. When teachers and principals are sternly warned that their school will close unless they raise their graduation rate, they usually manage to raise their graduation rate without regard to standards. The usual gambit these days is called “credit recovery,” a phenomenon that was unheard of twenty years ago.

Credit recovery means simply that students can earn credits for courses they failed by completing an assignment or attending a course for a few days or weeks or re-taking the course online. As I wrote this week in Education Week, online credit recovery is typically a sham, a cheap and easy way of getting a diploma that was not earned. Students sit down in front of a computer, watch videos, then take a test that consists of multiple-choice questions, true-false questions, and machine-graded written answers. If they miss a question, they answer again until they get it right. Students can”recover” their lost credits in a matters of days, even hours. I wrote about online credit recovery as academic fraud in my EdWeek blog this week. Students realize quickly that if they fail, it doesn’t matter because they can get the credits in a few days with minimal effort. In this way, the diploma becomes meaningless, and students are cheated while the grown-ups fool themselves into thinking that they succeeded in raising the rates.

In this way, Campbell’s Law applies. When the pressure is raised high to reach a goal, the measures of the goal become corrupted.

The same number may be used either to bemoan a lack of progress or to claim victory. For example, the recent “Blueprint” created by a business strategy group for the school district of Philadelphia lamented that “only” 61% of its students attained a high school diploma in four years. At the same time, Mayor Bloomberg in New York City was delighted to report that the graduation rate was up to 65.5%, a figure that included summer school plus a heaping of credit recovery. The state of New York, which did not include summer graduates, put the actual figure at 61%, no different from the rate in Philadelphia. The state says that only 21% of students are “college-ready,” and the City University of New York–where most of the city’s graduates enroll–reports that nearly 80% require remediation.

So what is the real high school graduation rate? I don’t know.

Categories Accountability, Bloomberg, Michael, Campbell's Law, Education Reform, NYC, On-Line Education, Philadelphia

Does Public Education Matter?

By dianeravitch
May 28, 2012 //
12

Yesterday I wrote a blog about a tiny rural district in Idaho where the community did everything possible to support their school but it wasn’t good enough. The tax base was so meager that the school was in deficit, and budget cuts were putting the school in peril.

A reader commented that this was an instance where the district might benefit by abandoning its public school and turning it into a charter school. This, the reader said, would make It possible to leverage funds from corporate sponsors.

Another reader responded to the first one and wrote:

“If you turn your tax supported schools over to corporate sponsors, in the process you lose your local representative government.  The corporate sponsors control all aspects of your public school/s-plus they will train your children for whatever the global economy dictates.  I suggest, there will be no upward mobility for your children in that area of Kansas or anywhere else in the USA. These charter schools destroy the “American Dream”. There is an old song that goes something like this:  “I owe my soul to the company store”.  Don’t allow the multi national corporations to do this to our children and destroy their American Dream!  We must, if we are to prevail as a nation, at least give every child the equal opportunity to achieve in the American Dream.”

 “Charter/Choice/Voucher schools destroy the American Dream.  Not only that- they destroy representative government  e. g. local school boards and local representation.  This is taxation without representation.  We fought a war of independence for that principle.  Why have Americans forgotten that?”

I agree with this response. I have come to believe that there is a vital connection between the community and the school. If public policy severs that connection, it is an abandonment of democracy. And in the case of charters, now the fad du jour, it hands children over to wealthy benefactors or corporate interests. I don’t mean to suggest that either wealthy benefactors or corporate interests have evil intent, but that their interests may not coincide with those of parents and the community. Public schools are an instrument of democracy to the extent that they maintain a vital connection with families and their community.

In the past decade, there has been a strong effort to hand schools over to some powerful figure or authority to “fix” them. So we have seen mayoral control in some cities, where the mayor has (in New York City, for example) unlimited authority to do as he wishes without regard to community wishes. This is nothing more nor less than the elimination of representative government. The purpose is to establish autocratic rule, in which the voices of the community don’t count. Schools are closed no matter what their communities say. We have also seen state takeovers (as in Philadelphia and St. Louis) where the state is so ineffective that the public schools are made worse than before the state intervened.

Democracy is hard, but it is still the best form of government that we know. We destroy the notion of public education at our peril.

Categories Charter Schools, NYC, Philadelphia, St. Louis
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