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What Reformers Don’t Understand: “The Process of Little Things”

By dianeravitch
March 8, 2017 //
6

Reformers have grand ideas for shaking up the system. Blowing it up. Changing everything. Blowing up teacher education. Imposing national standards overnight. Turning schools into teacher-proof institutions. Teaching children the habits of highly effective scholars (age 7).

But, writes David Greene and Bernie Heller, teachers understand that real change is not in the Big Things. Real change happens because of “the process of little things.”


The reform of education is focused on the big changes as opposed to understanding that change is a step by step process. The educrats are playing for the big moment, yet they fil to understand that they can’t pull big moments out of thin air, consequently, their “big moments” exist in vacuums, totally disconnected and disembodied from reality.

From teaching students to be better writers, better students and better thinkers, to mentoring teachers to be better at teaching, to helping players to become better hitters or shooters, it was and is always about starting at step one and moving forward, step by step.

The reformers and the experts want to be able to say they did big things, that they changed everything, the only problem is, you can’t start out “big” – you have to start with the little things, and string them all together.

Are there poor teachers? Of course there are. There were bad teachers when I went to school, there were bad teachers when you went to school. If I were to ask you how many good or great teachers you had all the way through your college career, how many would you be able to list? I’d guess three or four- if you were lucky. Despite that fact, you are still successful today, you still survived. Good and great teachers don’t grow on trees and they are not “developed” or created in special teaching programs or institutes.

Good or great teachers grow and develop through experience and experience takes time and patience. Step by step. Slowly, based on little things strung together. When you marry that time and patience to extraordinary passion, you have a good or great teacher. Perhaps that is why there are so very few of them….

Reformers are impatient. It is good to be impatient. But it is even better to understand the consequences of what you propose and preferably to live with them.

Making education work is NOT as hard and as complicated as it is being made out to be. Education used to be about asking students to reach a little further than they would be comfortable reaching for on their own. It used to be about making sure that when a student received a passing grade, it was clear that grade honestly represented a percentage that symbolized that he/she had completed in that class as opposed to that grade representing a percentage identifying a teacher as competent or incompetent- it still is. It used to be about how graduation symbolized the preparation to move forward as opposed to an empty symbol that “proves” the reform being enacted is valid and viable.

The truth is that long before common core learning ever occurred, there was learning and that learning produced the computer, iTunes, iPhones, innumerable apps, Kindle, space travel, HIV medicines, etc., etc. The truth is we must look to what has always worked- not just for a year or two, or until it could make some corporation or hedge fund a profit- but what has been true about education since Socrates and Aristotle- that education must be respected, and not simply treated as some political exclamation point inserted into some campaign speech, that everyone must see and recognize its value.

We must return to the idea that learning is extremely dependent on the desire or curiosity of the learner to want to go further, to want to know more, to challenge him/herself. We need to stop “looking for the next magic bullet” or the “next big thing”.

I suppose the reformers mean well, (but like they say, “The road to hell is paved with good intentions”). The fact of the matter is that just because they mean well doesn’t mean what they are doing is right, just as simply because people disagree with what the reformers are doing doesn’t make those who disagree the anti-education or anti-student devil.

As former public school students and an educators with close to four decades of experience, we know the value of education. We know schools matter in students’ lives. We know education is the great equalizer, and we know PUBLIC schools work. They are not perfect- they never were. Nothing is. We also know that many public schools work quite well, and that those labeled as dysfunctional or failing can again. The people criticizing and castigating them must put in the same amount of energy and effort and enthusiasm in looking at all thelittel steps necedssary in fixing them as they spend trying to shut them down.

Stop looking at the next big thing and look at the elephant in the room: The process of little things.

Categories Accountability, Common Core, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Education Reform, Privatization, Teachers and Teaching, Testing

Los Angeles: Final Results of the Voting

By dianeravitch
March 8, 2017 //
9

Final results are in for the LAUSD school board election, where the billionaires outspent everyone else in their attempt to grab control of the district and put at least half of the students into charter schools:

Monica Garcia, chief charter cheerleader, defender of John Deasy and enabler of the $1 Billion iPad debacle, defeated Lisa Alva and Carl Petersen, with 57% of the vote. A big loss for public schools.

Steve Zimmer, president of the board, came in first in his district with 47.5% of the vote and will face a run-off against the billionaire’s favorite, Nick Melvoin, who received 31.2% of the vote.

In District 6, charter teacher Kelly Fitzpatrick-Gonez came in first with 36.1% of the vote. She will face Imelda Padilla in the runoff, who received 31% of the vote.

Supporters of public schools have their work cut out for them to assure victories for Zimmer and Padilla in the runoffs.

Categories Billionaires, Broad Foundation, Charter Schools, Los Angeles, Privatization

Charter Advocates Slip Legislation Through Without Notice in Arkansas

By dianeravitch
March 8, 2017 //
16

The Trump-DeVos privatization agenda is moving fast in the Deep South, where some people long for the good old days of segregated schools.

In Arkansas, charter advocates said there would be no action on a bill to turn public facilities over to charters, then introduced the bill with no opponents present, and passed it without debate. Word is that the same legislation was introduced in Missouri, though I don’t yet official confirmation of that.

Click to access SB308.pdf

This bill requires local school districts to hand any underutilized buildings over to charter operators.

The charter operators get free public space that was paid for by local taxpayers.

This sounds ominously like ALEC at work. ALEC is a fringe-right organization that writes model legislation and gives it to its members (state legislators), who fill in the name of their state, and lobby for privatization and deregulation. The beneficiaries of ALEC legislation are corporations and alt-right folk.

ALEC opposes local control. It supports vouchers, charters, state takeovers of school districts, high-stakes testing, and opposes unions, tenure, and any rights for teachers.

No doubt the Walton family helped this legislation along, perhaps with the help of their paid-for academics at the University of Arkansas, endowed by the billionaire Waltons.

Categories ALEC, Arkansas, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Missouri, Privatization

SomeDAM Poet: Meet the New Boss, Same as the Old Boss

By dianeravitch
March 7, 2017 //
13

The Good Old Days

Don’t you miss the good old days?
The days of school deforming ways?
When Arne ruled with iron hand
With Common Core and test and VAM?
And Cuomo plotted night and day
The way to make the schools obey?
And Rhee was riding on her broom
And closing schools and spreading doom?
And charter schools in neighborhoods
Were popping up like shrooms in woods
And billionaires were here and there
And all about and everywhere?
Don’t you miss reformy times
Immortalized by someDAM rhymes?
Well, good old days of yesteryear
Have never left, are still right here
The good old days were never gone
The school deform lives on and on

Categories Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Charter Schools, Common Core, Corporate Reformers, Duncan, Arne, Education Industry, Education Reform, Privatization, Teacher Evaluations, Testing, VAM

Russ Walsh: Vouchers Are for the Rich, the Racists, and the Religious Right

By dianeravitch
March 7, 2017 //
12

Russ Walsh, literacy expert, describes the Three are of vouchers: They are for the Rich, the Racists, and the Religious Right.

http://russonreading.blogspot.com/2017/03/school-vouchers-welfare-for-rich-racist.html

Russ writes:

“Our new Secretary of Education, Betsy DeVos, is rich, white, and a proselytizing supporter of the Christian religious right. DeVos is also an outspoken champion of school vouchers. These two things are not coincidences. While voucher proponents will tell you, and some may even believe, that their push for vouchers is a push to make sure all children have the opportunity to get a great education, the real benefactors of school vouchers are the rich, the white and the religious right….

DeVos claims that voucher opponents are foes of change and champions of the status quo. I hope to show that it is the voucher schemes and the DeVos’ of the world who are championing the status quo – the status quo where the rich get richer and the poor get poorer as we see happening in this country right now.

“What are the problems with vouchers? Do vouchers achieve the supposed goal of improving educational opportunity for low-income and minority children? Many have cataloged the issues, but here is a quick list with some links for further reading.

*Vouchers do not improve student academic performance

*Vouchers do not improve opportunities for low-income children

*Vouchers lead to private schools of questionable quality

*Voucher divert public money to unaccountable private institutions

*Vouchers undermine religious liberty

*Vouchers do further harm to already struggling public schools

*Vouchers enable discrimination and segregation

So why the push for vouchers? Because vouchers are very good for the rich. If the rich can sell vouchers as the cure for educational inequality, they may be able to get people to ignore the real reason for public education struggles – income inequity. If the rich really want to improve schools, they need to put their money on the line. If the rich are really interested in helping poor school children they need to invest – through higher taxes (or maybe just by paying their fair share of taxes), not unreliable philanthropy, in improved health care, child care, parental education, pre-school education, public school infrastructure and on and on. This will be expensive, but we can do it if the wealthy would show the same dedication to the “civil rights issue of our time” with their wallets as they show to harebrained schemes like vouchers.”

Categories Betsy DeVos, Privatization, Racism, Religion, Vouchers

Paul Thomas: Unpacking the Lies Behind the “Failing Schools” Narrative

By dianeravitch
March 7, 2017 //
12

Paul Thomas of Furman University taught high school in rural South Carolina for 18 years before becoming a college professor. He happens to be one of the nation’s leading authorities on the effects of poverty on children and schooling. Recently, he has been writing about the flaws of education journalism.

In this post, he unpacks the claim that public schools are “failing,” that (some) charter schools have found the secret sauce of innovation, and that public schools are resisting change. He cites two paragraphs from a recent article in Education Week that embody what he calls a “self-fulfilling prophesy.” Open the link to read the two paragraphs.

The article he cites does not mention the names of the charter schools that have unlocked the magic of innovation and hold the key to reforming recalcitrant public schools if only they were willing to change. It would be good to know where they are.

Thomas says these are “post-truth” claims. He is right on the face of it. If I knew of five or ten or twenty schools that held the key to reforming all of American education, I would name them and give everyone their location so all the world could see their amazing success.

Thomas writes:

The paragraphs above traffic in very predictable nonsense—”innovative charter schools” and public schools and educators who actively resist change—that resonates only with those who have no real experience in public education.

This nonsense is driven by the self-proclaimed innovators, few of whom are actual educators, and embraced by the public, most of whom have been students in public schools, and thus, believe they know the system.

Let’s here, then, unpack the nonsense…

The Great Lie about charter schools versus public schools is very complex. The lie begins with the hollow use of “innovation,” a term that means nothing except in the sort of pyramid-scheme reality now promoted by Trump and newly minted Secretary of Education DeVos.

The lie then falls apart when you unpack the claim that innovative charter schools will save public education; we must ask, if bureaucracy and mandates are crippling public schools, and freedom to be innovative is the key to charter schools, why not just release public schools from the bureaucracy and mandates so that all schools are free to innovate?

The answer reveals the circular and misleading logic of the Great Lie that is charter innovation: For decades, school choice advocates have struggled against the public remaining mostly against school choice, mostly in favor of their local public schools (even when the public holds a negative view of public schools in general). How, then, could the public be turned against public schools?

The solution has been relentless and ever-increasing mandates that guarantee the self-fulfilling prophesy of public schools.

From SOE DeVos to the EdWeek narrative above, relentless education reform has resulted in creating public schools and teachers trapped in mandates and then criticizing them for not being innovative.

If innovation is really the solution to the problem facing public schools (and I suspect it isn’t), teachers need autonomy.

Yet, education reform has systematically de-professionalized teaching, systematically made teaching and learning less effective, and systematically overwhelmed schools with impossible demands so that the public sees only a failing system, one that the innovator-propagandists can smear as resisting change, refusing to innovate, and doomed to failure—with only innovative charter schools to save the day.

When we peel back the post-truth rhetoric, evidence fails to support claims of charter school success, and five minutes in a public school reveal that schools and teachers are not incapable of “imagin[ing] dramatic change,” but are blocked from practicing their professional autonomy by the exact forces accusing them of being against reform.

Public school teachers have never had professional autonomy, and most cannot even go to the restroom when they need to.

Spitting in the face of public school teachers as the paragraphs above do is the worst of post-truth journalism.

I have now spent about the same amount of time as an educator in K-12 public schools and higher education.

The professional autonomy gulf between the two is stunning.

K-12 public schools and teachers are scapegoats in a ridiculous political charade that depends on post-truth journalism and a gullible public.

There is nothing innovative about that.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Privatization

Mother Jones: Why Did Trump and DeVos Choose Florida as Their National Model for School Reform?

By dianeravitch
March 7, 2017 //
8

Kristina Rizga, the veteran education journalist at Mother Jones, explains why Trump and DeVos love Florida. Although the state has a constitutional ban on the use of public money for private and religious schools, although the state’s voters rejected Jeb Bush’s effort to change the state constitution in 2012, Florida has figured out numerous DeVious ways to circumvent the state constitution and the will of the voters.

Jeb Bush is the permanent state minister of education in Florida, and he loves school choice. He does not like public schools. The state has hundreds of charter schools, many of which are managed by for-profit entrepreneurs. The head of the education appropriations committee in the state senate is a member of a family that owns the state’s largest for-profit charter chain. But better yet, for the purposes of DeVos, who is a religious zealot, Florida has a tax-credit plan that funnels hundreds of millions of dollars to unregulated and unaccountable religious schools.

Rizga writes:

Tax credit scholarships provide a crafty mechanism to get around these obstacles. Tax credits are given to individuals and corporations that donate money to scholarship-granting institutions; if parents end up using those scholarships to send their kids to religious schools—and 79 percent of students in private schools are taught by institutions affiliated with churches—the government technically is not transferring taxpayer money directly to religious organizations.

While DeVos is best known as an advocate of vouchers, most veteran Beltway insiders told me that a federal voucher program is very unlikely. “Democrats don’t like vouchers. Republicans don’t like federal programs, and would rather leave major school reform decisions up to states and local communities,” Rick Hess, a veteran education policy expert with the conservative American Enterprise Institute said. “Realistically, nobody thinks they’ve got the votes to do a federal school choice law, especially in the Senate.”

This political reality is perhaps why Trump and DeVos are singling out Florida’s tax credit programs as a way to expand private schooling options. While Trump and DeVos have not specified what shape this policy might take at the federal level, most of these changes will come from the state legislators. Republicans have full control of the executive and legislative branches in 25 states, and control the governor’s house or the state legislature in 44 states. At least 14 states have already proposed bills in this legislative session that would expand some form of vouchers or tax credit scholarships, according to a Center for American Progress analysis. (And 17 states already provide some form of tax credit scholarships, according to EdChoice.)

This perfect storm for pushing through various voucher schemes comes at a time when the results on the outcomes of these programs “are the worst in the history of the field,” according to New America researcher Kevin Carey, who analyzed the results in a recent New York Times article. Until about two years ago, most studies on vouchers produced mixed results, with some showing slight increases in test scores or graduation rates for students using them. But the most recent research has not been good, according to Carey: A 2016 study, funded by the pro-voucher Walton Family Foundation and conducted by the conservative Thomas B. Fordham Institute, found that students who used vouchers in a large Ohio program “have fared worse academically compared to their closely matched peers attending public schools.”

Businesses make gifts to Step Up for Students. They get a tax credit. Step Up for Students gets a hefty cut of the take. It currently has about $500 million to use to fund vouchers for private and religious schools that the state does not regulate or supervise. The voucher-receiving schools report attendance, but are not subject to the state standards, curriculum, or tests, and they do not report on academic performance.

Categories Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Florida, Privatization, School Choice, Testing, Vouchers

Carl Petersen: Employees of Scandal-Ridden Celerity Charter Chain Donated to Monica Garcia, Their Cheerleader on LAUSD Board

By dianeravitch
March 6, 2017 //
2

Carl Petersen is running against Monica Garcia for the LAUSD seat in District 2. Garcia has long been one of the most vociferous and aggressive proponents of charter schools expansion in the district. So it is not surprising that she has received campaign contributions from the owner and employees of the Celerity Educational Group, the charter chain currently under investigation by the district and by the FBI.

Petersen is a father of five and an advocate for students with special needs.

Both Petersen and another candidate, Lisa Alva, received endorsements by the Network for Public Education.

If there is a runoff including Garcia, friends of public schools and public integrity should work hard to elect either Petersen or Alva.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Los Angeles, Privatization

Los Angeles Rocked by Another Charter School Scandal: State Awards Two New Schools to Ethically Challenged Charter Chain

By dianeravitch
March 6, 2017 //
8

The Los Angeles Times ran a first-page story about the latest charter school scandal, only a day before the school board election that will decide whether charter advocates will take control of the Los Angeles school board.

There will likely be a low voter turnout for this special election, and the question is turnout: Will enough parents vote to save their public schools, or will the profligate spending of the charter industry on propaganda and false attacks ads enable them to privatize the schools of half the students in the district? If the charter billionaires win, look for more privately run charters that produce incompetence, plunder, profit, and power for the elite.

The big story today is about Celerity Education Group, a charter chain that is thriving with public money. Its CEO is Vielka McFarlane.

In 2013, she earned $471,842, about 35% more than Michelle King, the superintendent of the Los Angeles Unified School District, makes today.

McFarlane was prospering, and it showed. She wore Armani suits, ate at expensive restaurants and used a black car service.

Financial records obtained by The Times show that, as Celerity’s CEO, she paid for many of these expenses with a credit card belonging to her charter schools, which receive the bulk of their funding from the state.

It could not be determined whether McFarlane, 54, ever reimbursed the charter schools for her credit card purchases. Neither she nor a lawyer hired by Celerity responded to requests for comment about the transactions.

At a time when charter school advocates are determined to increase the number of such schools in L.A., the story of McFarlane and the Celerity schools offers a case study of the growing difficulty of regulating them. The task of spotting and stamping out risky financial practices in charters largely falls to the school district’s charter schools division, which employs about a dozen people dedicated to monitoring the schools’ fiscal health.

But as the number of L.A. charter schools has grown to more than 220, enrolling about 111,000 students, oversight has become a challenge for district officials, who are at once competitors and regulators.

In 2012, L.A. Unified’s charter schools division made a routine request for financial records from the Celerity Educational Group.

When the school network’s credit card statements arrived that fall, many of the transactions had been blacked out. One page was nearly all black.

Concerned school district staff grew even more alarmed when they received the full records, which showed that McFarlane had paid for lavish meals and out-of-state travel on the nonprofit’s credit card.

In one month in 2013, she had spent $914 at the Arroyo Chop House in Pasadena, $425 at The Lobster, a seafood restaurant in Santa Monica, and $355 at Paiche, a now-closed Peruvian restaurant in Marina del Rey.

From the arrival of the credit card statements until 2015, when it refused to allow Celerity to open two new schools, L.A. Unified took a gentle approach to the charter group’s unorthodox practices. It sent notices urging the organization to institute tighter financial controls, but continued to renew the schools’ charters when they came before the school board.

L.A. Unified officials referred Celerity’s credit card transactions to the district’s inspector general, who eventually opened an investigation into the group’s finances. Then, in late January, federal agents from the Department of Homeland Security, the FBI and other agencies raided Celerity’s offices, as well as the headquarters of a related nonprofit, Celerity Global Development, and McFarlane’s home. The focus of the federal investigation is unclear, and the district’s inquiry is ongoing…

While the district investigated, Celerity went national, expanding into Ohio, Florida and Louisiana, where it operates four schools in addition to the seven it runs in Southern California. McFarlane launched Celerity Global Development, the parent company of the schools in her growing empire, and began offering herself as a consultant to other charter school leaders.

In 2015, McFarlane became the CEO of Celerity Global, an organization that took in millions of dollars in management fees from Celerity’s schools. But Global wasn’t just supporting the schools; it had the power to control Celerity Educational and could appoint and remove the school network’s board members.

The Celerity schools were often short on supplies, but McFarlane spent lavishly on herself and arrived at school in a chauffeur-driven limousine.

She told staff that education was a business. And she knew how to make money–for herself and her lavish tastes.

As the CEO of Celerity Educational Group — and now of Celerity Global — McFarlane steered hundreds of thousands of public dollars to several companies providing services to her schools. Those companies are registered to her, state records show, and list their addresses as either Celerity Educational’s or Global’s offices.

Celerity Educational Group’s check register for the 2015-16 school year shows payments totaling nearly $1 million to an information technology company called Attenture, a general contracting company called Celerity Contracting Services, and Celerity Development, a limited-liability corporation that buys properties and rents them to McFarlane’s charter schools.

The organization has also paid thousands of dollars to Orion International Academy, a private high school in Chino Hills that McFarlane founded in 2013, and where she is still the CEO.

The flow of money from the charter schools to Celerity Development is documented going back to 2011, when Celerity Educational Group signed a 10-year lease with the company, which at the time had only one owner — McFarlane. That made her, in effect, both landlord and tenant of the two sites in South L.A. on which she expanded Celerity Dyad Charter School.

McFarlane’s brother and son are on the company’s payroll. The financial entanglements among the many companies raise ethical and legal questions. Some quoted in the article suggest that there may be felonious behavior.

By late 2015, L.A. Unified officials decided they had seen enough.

Having concluded that Celerity’s financial issues had become too serious to tolerate, they recommended that the school board refuse the group’s request to open two new schools, and the board agreed. Celerity’s leaders appealed to the Los Angeles County Office of Education, which could have intervened, but chose not to.

“This is effective ongoing oversight,” Jose Cole-Gutierrez, the director of L.A. Unified’s charter schools division, said in a recent interview.

Not that it stopped Celerity’s Southern California expansion.

State law allows charter schools that have been denied at the local level to appeal to the state. Last November, over the objections of L.A. Unified and the county, the State Board of Education voted to let Celerity keep growing.

More public money will flow Celerity’s way this fall when it opens two new L.A. charter schools.

Question: In light of the FBI investigations, in light of the LAUSD investigations, in light of the concerns about conflicts of interest and self-dealing, why did the California State Board of Education overrule the LAUSD recommendation and the L.A. County Office of Education? Why did the State Board of Education decide that this charter chain should open two more charters before the investigations are completed? Why aren’t the legal authorities intervening to protect citizens and the law?

If you live in Los Angeles, vote tomorrow.

Vote for either Carl Petersen or Lisa Alva.

Vote for Steve Zimmer.

Do not vote for anyone endorsed by the California Charter School Association, which defends corporations like Celerity. Taxpayers should not pay for Armani suits, chauffeur-driven limousines, or expensive meals. Citizens should support those who want to strengthen and improve the democratically controlled public schools of Los Angeles.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Education Industry, For-Profit, Funding, Los Angeles, Privatization, Scandals Fraud and Hoaxes

Peter Greene: Corporate Reformers Launch Three New Websites

By dianeravitch
March 6, 2017 //
23

Are you missing Arne Duncan and John King? There are some nostalgia websites created just for you.

Just in case you don’t have enough to do, Peter Greene tells us about three new education-related websites launched by corporate reformers. Remember the good old days of Race to the Top, VAM, teacher-bashing, Central Falls, and lectures about bad teachers?

They are preserved on these websites.

One is called “FutureEd,” which Greene describes as a “new website with an old voice.” I love his illustration.

He writes:

There’s a new education reform website on the scene, another “new voice” representing a new thinky tank, slick and pretty and well-endowed and charter-friendly and made out of smooshed-together words. Welcome FutureEd

Much of the pitch is familiar. FutureEd is “grounded on the belief that every student should be effectively prepared for postsecondary learning and that performance-driven education systems have the potential to greatly improve student achievement.” And like all such undertakings, the site is intent on letting us know that they are totally independent and fair and balanced and in no way going to pursue a particular agenda…

If this all feel a little reformy, take a gander at the list of Senior Fellows, which includes Norman Atkins (Relay GSE), Steve Cantrell (formerly Gates Foundation), Marshall S. Smith (Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching), and Joanne Weiss (formerly New Schools Ventures Fund and Race to the Top apologist).

And then there’s the list of funders, which includes the Bezos Family Foundation, the Joyce Foundation, and the Walton Family Foundation.

So if you think this thinky tank does not have a love of charter schools and other reformy features built into its dna, I would ove to sell you a bridge.

There is an article defending the Common Core and its testing. There is one on how great teacher evaluation is going.

And the topper is an article knocking me for things I never wrote. As Greene points out, no one agrees with me all the time, and as I often say, I often don’t agree with me, and publicly don’t agree with things I wrote years ago. But, hey, take your best shot. I will survive, and furthermore, I will soon hit 30 million page views!

The other new education-related website is called “The Line.” Peter Greene writes that The Line is “Yet Not Another New Voice.”

Greene writes:

Apparently we are in the season of website launches. An outfit called FutureEd has entered the thinky tank and website world with a spirited return to the ed reform greatest hits of yesteryear. Refugees of the Obama education department have launched a website that is… I don’t know. Cementing their legacy? Shaping the narrative? Keeping a bunch of out-of-work pols busy?

And then there’s The Line.

The Line enters the interwebs with the umpty-gazillionth call for reasonable happy voices in the debate “written by education leaders for education leaders, that endeavors to encourage civil discourse and action around the most challenging issues facing K-12 education. Engagement and thoughtful debate isn’t a choice but an imperative to bettering pubic education. Leaders need a forum for the exchange of ideas and information – they’ll find that at TheLineK12.com. ”

Who has gotten a big fat check to make this new, slickly produced call for civil discourse a reality?

John Deasy.

Yes, the John Deasy whose failure as the superintendent of Los Angeles schools was spectacular enough to merit national press attention. Not that his failure there ended his career– his patron Eli Broad hired him for the Broad Faux Academy of You’re A Superintendent Because I Say So. And now the folks at Frontline Education have hired him to editor-in-chief his way through this operation.

The Line promises “an editorial advisory board of diverse backgrounds, politics and opinions” and it is true that the board runs the entire reform gamut from A to B. The group includes Andres Antonio Alonso (Havard GSE), Tommy Chang (Supt. Boston Schools), Charlotte Danielson (yes, that one), William R. Hite (Supt. Philadelphia Schools), Vicki Phillips , (calling herself an “education strategist” these days), Andrew Rotherham (Bellwether Partners), Frederic Hess (American Enterprise Institute), Paul Toner (Exec Dir, Teach Plus MA), and Tom Boasberg (Supt. Denver Schools). There are several Chiefs for Change, several Broad graduates, several consultants, some Harvard GSE grads, and some charter folks.

Greene summarizes the high and low points of the first appearance of The Line.

And he concludes:

The “issue” wraps up with Deasy waxing rhapsodic further on civil discourse in language that, like much of the site, seems as if it’s been tied to the rack and interrogated with extreme prejudice. Here’s a pull quote, presumably what they consider an exemplar of the site’s style:

“To bridge divide, I believe we must become more proximate to those we differ with cloaked in the very act of civil discourse.”

Sure.

We’ve wondered for a few years what would happen to reformsters when they approached the autumn of their careers. Apparently at least part of the answer is that they get together on websites where they play their greatest hits, like over-aged rock bands traveling the county fair circuit.

The third website is dedicated to the heroic adventures of Arne Duncan and John King. Remember them? Their website is called Education 44, to remind you of the good old days when the U.S. Department of Education was telling everyone how to fix their schools and how productive it was to fire principals and teachers, and close their schools for good. O the good old days!

Nobody tells it better than Peter Greene!

That’s right– a bunch of USED refugees have created a website as a monument to eight years of.. well, we’ll get to that. Of all these sites, Education44 most explicitly promises to keep its eyes on the rear-view mirror of education policy:

Under President Obama – the 44th President of the United States – the U.S. Department of Education worked to make America’s promise attainable for more students. The administration’s agenda focused on protecting access to a high-quality education for all students while reforming and innovating public education to produce greater equity.

Here you will find the legacy of the Obama administration’s work, and a balanced platform where you can learn about policies and ideas for improving public education.

That link takes you to our first legacy document– John King’s exit memo that attempts to sum up the many accomplishments of the Obama-Duncan-King Ed Department. Those missions that have been accomplished are:

1) Greater access to pre-school and more high school grads. Are the pre-schools any good? Did schools fudge numbers to get more “grads.” Oh, let’s just not talk about that.

2) Higher standards and better assessments. Oh, honey. Trying to take credit for Common Core without saying its name is ballsy, but dumb. Those standards were craptastic, and we’ll be years trying to undo the damage. And no– the assessments aren’t better, and the administration’s insistence on placing the Big Standardized Test at the center of the educational system will long stand as one of the most destructive, toxic, and foolish legacies of the administration.

3) More personalized learning through technology. Well, at least they admit that’s what they’ve been up to. It is a dead end–and an expensive one– so thanks, Obama, for that special gift.

4) Historic investments in higher education. Yeah available loans were increased, allowing even more students to go into debt. Hooray?

5) Early learning. Here they brag about the grants used to extend all of their bad educational ideas (standardization, test-driven ed, computer-based instruction) down to the 0-5 year old crowd. Admit it– you guys have no idea whether any of that resulted in actual learning or not. All we can be sure of is that it warped a lot of small children’s childhood while getting them a good head start on having their digital privacy violated.

6) Opportunity and success. This is super-vague, but I gather that they are pleased with ESSA (despite its punch-in-the-face to their department) and also, they are serving the hell out of underserved students. Somehow.

7) Innovation and evidence of what works in education. They have gathered evidence from grant-spurred programs that provide evidence of the evidence-based approach to education that really works, because they have evidence. Somewhere. Honest.

8) Support for education and the teaching profession. Oh, please. The last eight years were just as hostile to teachers and public education as any other years ever (with the possible exception of the next four years). You treated us like the problem, ignored our voices, and drove us out of the current and future profession. The department tries to get applause for its ambassador fellowship program that accomplished jack. Okay, not quite true– it made the department pat itself on the back for allowing a handful of teachers to come pretend to be listened to. Meanwhile, the department claims that we were all clamoring for better feedback on professional development. Incredibly, King gives them credit for pursuing the program of finding great teachers and moving them around to needy schools, a policy idea that never, ever actually happened anywhere (which is good, because it was a dumb idea). They would also like credit for “helping” the profession by meddling in college teacher prep programs. Dammit you guys– you were never our friends, ever.

9) Strong students support. Here’s a list of some grant programs. Whoop-de-doo.

10) Protection of student civil rights. It was one of their more creative approaches to strong-arming state and local ed leaders. Of course, in Trumpistan, there will be no such activity.

11) College affordability. Well, the department made a big fat ton of money on college loans, but I don’t think that much helped people who wanted to go to college.

Too darn bad that Race to the Top expended all of its $5 billion and left nothing behind. Not even a line in the sand. Nothing. And then there was that sad evaluation from the U.S. Department of Education that concluded that the $5 billion accomplished nothing at all. But let’s not talk about that. How we miss Arne and his regular lectures about how terrible our public schools are, how bad our teachers are, how dumb our students are, how awesome charter schools are, how everyone should be fired and replaced. O, Arne, we hardly knew ye.

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