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Michael Hynes: Where Did We Go Wrong?

By dianeravitch
January 13, 2015 //
18

Michael Hynes, who is superintendent of schools of the Patchogue-Medford (NY) district, writes in Education  Week that our nation may still be at risk. He believes the “reform” agenda of the New York Board of Regents is wrong and merely echoes the wrongheaded agenda of the U.S. Department of Education. How did we go so wrong, he wonders.

 

He writes:

 

As a school system seeks to progress one should often ask, “Is this best for kids?” I believe this question was never asked by the U.S. Department of Education or the New York State Education Department. They are paving a road as “we” drive on it. As this road is paved, we have little to no say as to the road conditions that we see ahead of us, how fast we are going and where our destination is.

 

I believe this is true at both the state and national level in relation to public education. Over the years I have seen many things come and go. It’s the perpetual pendulum of mandates, ideas, movements, etc. There are some things that are still around that I wish were gone, and some things are gone but I wish were still here. I won’t mention which things because it really is a matter of perspective. My perspective, my opinion. However; I believe it is a fact that public education is under assault and “we” are driving on a road that will lead to it crashing and crashing hard….As a superintendent it is imperative that I am accountable (for myself and others) as well as building up other people’s capacities to reach their potential. If an employee is not the right fit in my district, it is my job to find someone else who is. Every aspect of the Regents Reform Agenda has very little to do with child development and everything to do with the wrong drivers for improving schools.

My question is, how are they accountable?

 

Where did we go wrong, he wonders. He reviews the findings of the famous 1983 report “A Nation at Risk” and discovers to his surprise that it did not promote the road we are now on (though it may have focused too much on test scores as the ultimate gauge of “success”):

 

This document made recommendations to focus on curricula and learning from other advanced countries. What I found most interesting was that the report doesn’t mention anything about how schools should run and rarely makes any remarks about testing. I was surprised and found that extremely refreshing.

 

Furthermore, Dr. Hynes noted what was missing from “A Nation at Risk”:

 

When I read the recommendations, I found the following items absent:

*Test children into oblivion;
*Use tests from our children to grade and assess teachers and principals;
*Develop new standards that have very little input from the educators who will teach the new standards to our children;
*Do not trust teachers, principals, superintendents and school boards to make informed decisions about what is best for their children in relation to assessments, curricula and best practices at the local level;
*Ensure that state and federal government (Governor and President) has significant influence over teacher accountability systems and assessments. They should decide what is best for children in public education (even if their children don’t attend public school);
*Guarantee corporations will make billions of dollars in the age of compliance and testing

 

Is there an alternative to our present disastrous path? Dr. Hynes believes there is.

 

Some of us believe in trusting the local control of our school systems. I believe in the capacity building of our teachers individually and collectively. It’s about climate control within our schools and trying to work with the command and control mentality outside of them. State Education Departments should be working with school districts, not against them…. I believe the underpinnings of the New York Regents Reform Agenda have never been proven to work successfully AND longitudinally in any school district…. As Alfie Kohn stated, “The goal beyond testing is about building a thriving democracy. It is about helping each child reach his/her potential as a human being and learner.” Strip away the over-testing of students, tying student scores to teachers and principal evaluations, using the new poorly designed standards and the command and control mentality from our state and national education departments.

 

It seems the world of education is divided into two camps. Those who think we are on the wrong road, and those who say full speed ahead, regardless of the warning signs. Dr. Hynes is in the first camp. He is truly putting students first.

Categories Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Education Reform, Privatization, Testing

From a Teacher: Brace Yourself, Rhode Island!

By dianeravitch
January 9, 2015 //
21

A teacher in Connecticut, signing in as Linda, wrote the following comment:

 
Brace yourself Rhode Island…it is worse than you think. Hide your children and warn the teachers. He is coming to charterize, privatize, monetize your schools. See Pelto research here:

Gina Raimondo’s husband Andy Moffitt was Cory Booker’s roommate.
Moffitt is a member of Stand for Children Board of Directors

Moffit is a Senior Practice Expert and member of core leadership team for McKinsey & Company’s Global Education Practice.

“Since co-founding the Global Education Practice in 2005, Andy has worked with multiple large urban districts, state education departments and charter management organizations to markedly improve system performance and close achievement gaps.

He co-authored a recent book, Deliverology 101: A Field Guide for School System Leaders (Corwin Press, 2010), which describes key success factors and steps in driving results in global school system reforms.

Before joining McKinsey, Andy was an elementary school teacher in an inner-city school in Houston, Texas as a corps member of Teach For America.”

From my recent article in the Progressive:

The Corporate Education Reform Industry effort to buy control of Public Education

This year’s election season provided a series of textbook examples of how corporate education reformers used their personal fortunes to contaminate the democratic process.

Let’s begin with the little state of Rhode Island, where former hedge fund owner and charter school champion, Democrat Gina Raimondo was elected governor with 40 percent of the vote in a three-way race—one in which there was an unprecedented level of campaign spending.

Raimondo, who as Rhode Island’s state treasurer won national acclaim from conservatives for successfully dismantling the state employee pension fund, raised hundreds of thousands of dollars from donors associated with funding the education reform movement and profiting from the charter school industry. Her running mate, Cumberland Mayor Daniel McKee, one of the state’s most vocal supporters of charter schools, was elected lieutenant governor with help from many of the same donors.

Over the course of her gubernatorial campaign, Raimondo collected checks from many of the major players in the charter school and “education reform” movement, including donations from billionaires Eli Broad and members of the Walton Family. (The Broad Foundation and Walton Foundation, along with Gates Foundation, are the primary funders behind the overall education reform movement.)

Another billionaire, former Enron executive John Arnold along with his wife, not only donated directly to Raimondo’s campaign and her political action committee, called Gina PAC, but the couple’s $100,000 check made them the largest donors to the American LeadHERship Council, a Super PAC affiliated with Raimondo. The second largest donor to the Super PAC was Eli Broad with $15,000.

A proponent of doing away with public employee pensions, Arnold also donated as much as $500,000 to an advocacy group called Engage Rhode Island, which spent approximately $740,000 lobbying for Raimondo’s successful assault on public employee pensions. Over the past three years, the John and Laura Arnold Foundation has donated more than $100 million in support of charter schools and entities involved in the corporate education reform industry, including being one of the largest contributors to Jeb Bush’s Foundation for Educational Excellence.

Raimondo’s success in raising funds from the charter school industry includes at least $50,000 from the members of the board of directors of Achievement First, Inc., the large charter chain that recently opened a school in Rhode Island, adding to their existing schools in Connecticut and New York.

Jonathan Sackler, an investment manager and heir to the Purdue Pharma fortune, is not only a founding member of Achievement First, Inc, but a founder of a national charter school advocacy group called 50CAN. One of 50CAN’s related entities, 50CAN Action Fund, dumped $90,000 to run TV commercials to help Raimondo’s running mate win his primary race.

Categories Charter Schools, Education Industry, Pensions, Privatization, Rhode Island, Teach for America

Gary Rubinstein Explains To Joel Klein What is Wrong with the “Reform” Movement

By dianeravitch
January 9, 2015 //
16

Gary Rubinstein has written a series of letters to leaders of the “reform” movement. Some have replied. Up to this point, he wrote to people he knew during his years at TFA. Now he has started what (hopefully) will be a series written to “reformers I don’t know,” and he writes his first letter to Joel Klein, whose book he is reading. He patiently and civilly explains to Klein why the reform movement is floundering and foundering. He explains why TFA doesn’t make much difference; why merit pay doesn’t work; why ed tech is limited as a classroom tool; and why value-added measurement of teachers by test scores doesn’t work.

 

Since Gary has made a specialty of calling out inflated claims, he ends on this note:

 

 

The one that I really got you on was P-Tech. I wrote about how they only had a school average of about 30% on those tests. You thought this number was skewed by the fact that they require so many of their students to take the test so it is unfair to compare to a school where not so many kids take it. But when I dug deeper into the public data I learned that only 1.8% of the P-Tech students passed Geometry and 1.6% passed Algebra II. Even if every student in the school took those tests, that would be only about 5 kids passing for each test. That is really bad. P-Tech is a test score disaster. I know that you used it in the introduction to your book about how the choice to shut down a school and open another can lead to great improvement. In this case, this particular school hasn’t accomplished much. Yet, you defend this school so vigorously. Why? I think you would have more credibility if you were to admit that P-Tech is a disaster, at least when it comes to math Regents. When you give free passes to people you have relationships with — whether it is P-Tech or AP scores in Louisiana or KIPP schools in New Orleans that have low test scores — aren’t reformers supposed to be all about ‘increased autonomy for increased accountability’? When you selectively hold people and schools that you don’t have a connection to more strict accountability than the ones you do, I don’t respect that.

 

One of your friends and now a co-worker at Amplify is education reform celebrity Geoffrey Canada. I actually am very much in favor of wrap-around services as a way of helping kids overcome some of the out-of-school factors that serve as obstacles to their learning. Unfortunately when you look at the test scores at Harlem Children’s Zone, they are horrible. I know this may make it seem like wrap-around services are underrated, but in this case the poor test results are an example of a very badly run school, despite the wrap-arounds. I know this because a former student of mine who is now a very happy teacher at Success Academy spent her first miserable year of teaching at Harlem Children’s Zone. She said it was a very toxic environment where nobody in charge knew what they were doing. You surely know that Canada ‘fired’ two different cohorts of students since their bad test scores were, I suspect, dragging down his reputation. To throw away two groups of struggling kids is completely at odds with the sorts of things you write in your book about how all kids can thrive if permitted to learn in the right environment.

 

Finally, I’ve noticed many inconsistencies in many of your arguments. When critics say that graduation rate is up to back up their point that schools are not in crisis, you point to the flat long term NAEP scores to refute them. Then when critics say that New York City has not made great improvements during your tenure and use the lack of NAEP gains (that first test that was administered before you got there doesn’t count, you know!) you point to the increased graduation rate. I think you need to pick what metrics you think are valid and stick to them.

 

I hope Klein writes Gary Rubinstein a reply.

Categories Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Privatization, Technology, Computers, Testing

John Thompson in Oklahoma City: Parent Revolution, Go Home

By dianeravitch
January 8, 2015 //
2

John Thompson, teacher and historian in Oklahoma, describes the arrival of Parent Revolution operatives in Oklahoma City, come to sell the charter school snake oil. In the five years since PR managed to get legislation in California, only a handful of schools have been converted into charters, so apparently they started beating the bushes in other states.

 

Oklahoma has thus far escaped the promises and lures of chartering its cities to out of state entities.

 

Thompson writes:

 

I wish local charter leaders and philanthropists would disassociate themselves from the Parent Revolution and the agenda of competition-driven reformers. True believers that “the market” will magically solve education’s problems have spent hundreds of millions of dollars in failed experiments in Newark, New Orleans, Memphis and, now, Chicago and Boston. Last week, the secret $2.7 million corporate campaign for mass charterization of Los Angeles was revealed.

 

Those experiments mostly took bad inner city schools and made them worse. The one semi-success (New Orleans) spent incomprehensible sums of money, beyond anything we could conceive in Oklahoma, as it created a mostly all-charter system. It produced some gains through nonstop teach-to-the-test, but they came at the cost of pushing thousands of high-challenge students out of school and into the streets.

 

If we follow the Parent Revolution, we will be back to what we saw during the economic bust of the 1980s. OKCPS did its best, but our overwhelmed system had no chance of reaching the dozens of out-of-school kids who we used to see wandering through each of our high-poverty neighborhoods during the school days.

 

 

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

Jersey Jazzman on York City, Pa., and the Death of Public Education

By dianeravitch
January 7, 2015 //
7

Sorry I missed this great post when it came out in November. Jersey Jazzman, one of the nation’s best education bloggers, foretells the handover of the York City public schools to a for-profit charter chain and excoriates the state officials who are permitting this travesty to happen.

 

He digs into the stats on York City to show that it is performing about where you would expect given the socioeconomic disadvantage of its students. York City, he says, needs help, more resources, not a for-profit charter chain to siphon money out of its budget.

 

He writes:

 

Let’s recap:

Tom Corbett abdicated his responsibilities to the children of York and defunded their schools.
He sent in his personal hack to force the district to turn those schools over to a private, for-profit corporation through a shell non-profit.
The hack — as if he were a made man — told the district if they didn’t take his offer, he’d take over.
No one knows how much money the charter company is going to make on this deal.
Trust me, folks, we’re just getting started…

 

Meckley believes this plan is warranted because York’s schools aren’t performing up to snuff. But the truth is that they are exactly where we’d expect them to be, given the demographics of the city.

 

Do you want to see a photo of Jon Hage’s gorgeous yacht? Look here. He is the CEO of Charter Schools USA. The yacht was up for sale recently. He lives well. His business is very profitable with taxpayer dollars.

 

Jersey Jazzman asks:

 

And what kind of performance have the good people of Florida received for all of that money?

 
The chain was considered high-performing until this year. And on Tuesday the Orange School Board voted 7-0 to deny its applications for three new campuses.

 
Because charters are publicly funded per pupil, Charter Schools USA would receive about $27 million a year to run the three schools at capacity if approved.

 
“Their performance in Orange County is abysmally poor,” board Chairman Bill Sublette said of the Renaissance schools. “They’re underperforming the schools in the area that they’re drawing from. How can we look taxpayers in the eye and approve them?”
But Jonathan Hage, president and CEO of Charter Schools USA, said he is proud of all of the company’s schools, including Chickasaw.

 
“We do an excellent job over time, even with the lowest-performing students,” he said. “We knew we wouldn’t be able to turn those scores around in a year.” [emphasis mine]

 
JJ: I guess David Meckley knows better than the entire Orange School Board. Maybe CSUSA’s history in Indiana convinced him:

 
“The four takeover schools in Indianapolis lost huge numbers of students — between 35 and 60 percent at each school — between the start of classes in 2011 and when the takeover operators took over in 2012. Schools are mostly funded on the basis of their enrollment, so the departures came at a steep cost for the private operators.
On top of that, the takeover schools saw their share of a pot of federal funds for low-performing schools that is controlled by the state shrink as more state schools became eligible to claim that money. Tindley lost $212,000, and Charter Schools USA’s three schools lost more than $601,110 because of across-the-board reductions.
Together, the cuts have left takeover operators with much higher costs than they anticipated.
Sherry Hage, CSUSA’s chief academic officer, says the operator is planning to stick with its schools despite the costs. But for some, the price tag is proving too high. Earlier this month, Tindley shocked state education officials by threatening to pull out of Arlington shortly after the start of the school year unless the nonprofit could get $2.4 million in additional aid.”

 
– See more at: http://jerseyjazzman.blogspot.com/2014/11/york-pa-and-death-of-public-education.html#sthash.wCR7cUKg.dpuf

 

 

 

 

 

 

Categories Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Florida, For-Profit, Indiana, Pennsylvania, Privatization

Edward F. Berger Analyzes “the New Barberism”

By dianeravitch
January 6, 2015 //
16

In this post, retired teacher Edward F. Berger uses the words “barbarism” and “barberism” interchangeably, on purpose.

 

On one hand, he refers to the “barbarism” of allowing testing companies to serve as a sieve to separate children into those who succeed and those who are rejected.

 

On the other, he refers to the ideology of Michael Barber, who is chief advisor to Pearson and previously served in a similar role at McKinsey. Berger refers specifically to the writings of Peter Greene, the teacher-blogger who carefully dissected a recent Pearson statement on the future of education, with the corporation at the epicenter as the foremost testing corporation in the world.

 

Here is a sampling of Berger’s thoughts on “the new Barberism”:

 

Let’s agree to use simple terms to describe complex matters. Think of a sieve used for separating coarse, from fine parts of matter. Now imagine people who believe that running students through a sieve built of data will allow them to correct or remove unacceptable thinking – like getting rid of individuality, and those who think in ways that are not acceptable to those who are designing new standards for humankind. Barbarism: Selecting those who can be programmed (educated?) in a new world order, and re-programming those who do not fit through the data-screens they create….

 

Sieves are being designed to standardize and program children. The warp and woof of these techniques is made up of data threads used to identify children who will be shaped to fit a predetermined ideal of the perfect subordinated child/citizen (learner?) Sieves are being used to generate data to decide who will be accepted into the new order and those data-judged souls who must go through “customized” re-programming. No one is making this up. This is happening now.

 

Who designs the sieves? That’s easy: TEST DESIGNERS. When people have the power to design tests, they can force what is taught, in any way they choose. Sadly, there are still people who have not realized that tests drive curriculum – what is taught, what is left out, and what is fact-adverse. Teachers use tests to see if what they taught is what students learned. Now, corporations have made testing and curriculum design a multi-billion dollar a year business. They are so powerful they can force their products and their views on school districts, universities, departments of education, and the AMA and doctors – on all of us. Few question their motives or the Barbarism behind their hidden agendas. They make the tests secret so no organization can study them understand how they are used for inculcation.

 

Those who run these corporations have amassed great wealth and power. They are well aware that by writing tests and the curriculum to support the tests, and by using tests to collect data on every aspect of a child’s life, they can engineer a new order, a utopia they design and force into place. This is beyond fiction in any genre. This is the power and warped ideology they are forcing on America and much of the world. Focusing on the Common Core fiasco is but one example. Common Core forces machine language and thinking, instead of creative and original thought in all disciplines.

 

Will it work? Can they program young brains to do what they want while sorting out those who do not or cannot think their way? As we peruse their agenda and plan of attack, we ask, who would have to be re-programmed? Who would not be admitted into their utopia? Of course, Albert Einstein. As a child he did not do what was expected. He jumped over the limited thinking of his time. He would be data-judged by the new Barbarism, and rejected as untrainable.

Categories Education Industry, Privatization, Testing

Jersey Jazzman on Impoverished Camden, Where Charters Always Have Money

By dianeravitch
January 6, 2015 //
10

Camden, New Jersey, is one of the poorest cities in the state of New Jersey. The public schools are dilapidated. But charter schools are not dilapidated. Jersey Jazzman tells how one entrepreneur in Camden was able to raise $10 million through a bond issue to build a state-of-the-art facility, with a new cafeteria, science labs, a fitness center, and a health clinic.

 

He writes:

 

If you know anything about Camden and its schools, you’ll know that this is quite a story — a story that shows, once again, that charter schools play by a completely different set of rules, often to the detriment of public schools.

 

Let’s start with some background: I spent a lot of time last year telling the story of Camden’s LEAP Academy University Charter School and its founder, Gloria Bonilla-Santiago. The tale is long and twisted, but let me give the quick highlights:
Despite a track record of regularly missing Adequate Yearly Progress (and academic outcomes that even today lag compared to schools across New Jersey), LEAP was always a favorite of then-Acting Education Commissioner and school privatizing guru Chris Cerf:

 

*LEAP actually lost its tax-exempt status for a while in 2013 because it failed to file its tax returns. This was serious because $8.5 million in bonds had been issued from the Delaware River Port Authority for the school’s expansion. LEAP eventually got its tax-exempt status back, but not before blaming the debacle on the IRS.
*But the failure to file taxes for three years was the least of the questionable behaviors surrounding LEAP. The school illegally recruited athletes back in 2005, leading to a severe sanction from the NJISAA. The school engaged in unfair labor practices, leading to extraordinary levels of teacher turnover. LEAP had to repay the NJDOE when it used federal funds for non-allowable expenses. A LEAP employee filed a lawsuit, claiming he had been forced to do personal work for Bonilla-Santiago at her home (I can’t find any follow-up reporting on the status of this suit).
*But perhaps the biggest scandal coming from LEAP came from the Philadelphia Inquirer’s reporting on Bonilla-Santiago’s live-in boyfriend, Michele Pastorello:
When Camden’s LEAP Academy University Charter School compelled its new food-service management company to retain the school’s executive chef and give him a $24,000 raise, LEAP also had to pay a $151,428 penalty to its previous vendor, documents show.
Including Michele Pastorello’s new $95,000 salary, LEAP has spent nearly $250,000 this school year to keep him employed as executive chef. The position typically pays about $40,000, according to industry experts.
Pastorello is the live-in boyfriend of LEAP founder and board chairwoman Gloria Bonilla-Santiago. His raise, as well as the fee paid to the previous management company, Aramark, now are under review by the school’s board of trustees. [emphasis JJ]
Not surprisingly, a subcommittee of LEAP’s board found that nothing was wrong with this deal.

 

JJ adds, with careful documentation, comparing LEAP charter school to the Camden public schools:

 

LEAP serves a substantially different student body than the Camden Public Schools. We can argue about whether that’s acceptable or not, certainly acknowledging that LEAP’s student body has far more children in economic disadvantage than its suburban neighbors. But let’s get back to those bonds…

Because what I don’t understand is why there is plenty of money ready and available for charter schools like LEAP — which serves fewer children with special needs — to expand, while its neighboring public schools in Camden have to wait years just to get enough funding to keep from falling apart.

Why is Wall Street so eager to give a school like LEAP — a school with a history of not filing taxes, engaging in unfair labor practices, and paying favored employees far more than market wages — money with which to expand? So eager that, according to this Wall Street Journal story, LEAP is getting a remarkably good deal?
The school is paying a rate of 6.3% on longer-term debt. Comparable borrowing costs in 2009 were about 7.6%, according to the Local Initiatives Support Corp., which advises charter schools on finances.
Do you think that maybe the street came to a conclusion about LEAP? That maybe it doesn’t need to jack up interest rates for their bonds, because — as the school’s history shows time and again — it simply can do no wrong? – See more at:

 

 

http://jerseyjazzman.blogspot.com/2014/12/theres-always-more-money-for-charter.html#sthash.NcIzEwPK.dpuf

 

 

Categories Charter Schools, Education Industry, Funding, New Jersey, Privatization

New York Educators and Parents Strongly Object to Cuomo Agenda for Schools

By dianeravitch
January 5, 2015 //
22

New York State Allies for Public Education released a letter refuting Governor Andew Cuomo’s “Misguided Agenda” for public education.  NYSAPE consists of 50 organizations of parents and educators from across New York state.

 

 

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: January 5, 2015 (Revised Link)
More information contact:
Eric Mihelbergel (716) 553-1123; nys.allies@gmail.com
Lisa Rudley (917) 414-9190; nys.allies@gmail.com
NYS Allies for Public Education (NYSAPE) – http://www.nysape.org

Governor Cuomo’s Misguided Agenda is Harming Public Education

NYS Allies for Public Education (NYSAPE), a coalition of 50 groups statewide, has sent a letter to Governor Cuomo, responding to the questions posed in a letter from his office addressed to Commissioner King and Chancellor Tisch on December 18 and shared widely by the media.

It is evident that the Governor has a misguided agenda about the state of our public schools and what strategies should be used to improve them. In our letter, we challenge the current reform agenda and advocate for education policies that have been proven to work, based on evidence and experience.

“Governor Cuomo says his responsibility is to ‘represent the students’ and that he wants ‘to do the best we can for the students and for their education.’ If so, he should listen to parents throughout the state who truly want the best for their children and who believe that the policies he is proposing —to double-down on privatization, high-stakes testing, Common Core and data sharing—are severely undermining the quality of their schools,” Eric Mihelbergel, Erie County public school parent and founding member of NYSAPE.

 

Jeanette Deutermann, Nassau County public school parent and founder of Long Island Opt-Out said, “The letter claims that during the campaign, the Governor ‘spoke to New Yorkers all across the state that [sic] had many questions about…what we could do to fundamentally improve public education.’ We do not know to whom he spoke, but he clearly did not speak to public school parents, who in surveys and polls overwhelming reject the top-down policies from Albany that are leading our schools in the wrong direction. We urge him to hold town hall meetings throughout the state, to listen to parents and hear directly their views about a better course of action, based on sufficient and equitable funding, local control, diminishing the focus on privatization and testing, and treating their children as the valuable unique individuals they are, rather than test scores or data points.”

In our letter to the Governor, http://www.nysape.org/nysape-response-letter-to-governor-on-public-education.html, NYSAPE addresses issues ranging from charter school expansion, mayoral control, teacher accountability system, and the Common Core, to consolidation of districts and the selection process for the Board of Regents. Instead of harsh political rhetoric from Albany pushing privatization and high-stakes testing, New York students deserve support from elected and appointed officials who respect and understand what kind of support public schools need to succeed.
For example, NYSAPE’s response regarding charter schools notes that according to the 2010 amendment to the New York charter law, before charters are renewed or allowed to replicate, they must show they enroll and retain equal numbers of at risk students as the districts in which they are located, and yet neither the Board of Regents nor SUNY have ever rejected a charter proposal on these grounds – despite the fact that many charters have sky high student suspension and attrition rates. Neither SUNY nor the Regents have provided adequate financial oversight, and in 95 percent of charter audits, the State Comptroller’s Office has found corruption or mismanagement. Yet when the Deputy Comptroller wrote a letter to the state’s major charter-school regulators asking for stronger oversight, he received no response.
On the question of improving teacher quality, NYSAPE responds that since 2012, due to “reform,” teacher morale is at a 20 year low. New reports have shown that there have been dramatic drops in enrollment in teacher preparation programs—New York State experienced a 22% drop in two years. It is likely that the majority of that 22% were highly qualified candidates who had other career options. It is clear that the rhetoric of teacher evaluation and the assignment of blame to teachers have made teaching a less attractive profession. Moving teacher evaluation systems from the control of local boards of education to politicians in Albany has resulted in a dysfunctional evaluation system that goes against current research. Worst of all, it has created unintended consequences for students, as teachers are incentivized to drill students for the tests.
The parents and educators of New York want strong and appropriate learning standards with a focus on classroom learning not testing. Without equitable funding throughout the state, schools will continue to be at a disadvantage and not have the essential resources to help students meet their full potential. Local control has been eroded by those who want to privatize public education and destroy the most vital cornerstone of our democracy. NYSAPE and its allies around the state stand together for proven strategies to help all children succeed.

NYSAPE’s full response to the Governor’s questions was sent not only to Governor Cuomo but to every legislator in the State of New York as well as to the Board of Regents. You can find the full NYSAPE response here: http://www.nysape.org/nysape-response-letter-to-governor-on-public-education.html

Categories Charter Schools, Cuomo, Andrew, New York, Privatization, Testing

Teacher Ed: Help, ACLU! Get to the Bottom of Racketeering in Education

By dianeravitch
January 4, 2015 //
26

This is a comment by one of our frequent participants, identified as Teacher Ed:

 

Virtually every component of corporate “reform” imposed across this country is based on disasters that “reformers” have fabricated and tyrannical racketeering. Clearly, this is being done in order to privatize public education and raid tax dollars, while diverting attention away from the real disasters of poverty, a severe decline in the number of jobs with livable wages, a diminishing middle class and the inequitable distribution of wealth.

 

Are we supposed to wait until the perpetrators turn the screws and receive their dues for each part of this scheme before lawsuits can be filed? Is that how it works with the mob, too –payoffs have to be made first by victims before anything can be done about all the threats and dire consequences to result from not kowtowing to demands?

 

Is it possible to file a lawsuit that addresses virtually ALL of the components of the corporate “reform” business plan that is rapidly unravelling the fabric of American education? Maybe the ACLU could manage it, if only someone who cares would help fund it.

Categories Accountability, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Privatization

Larry Miller Reviews Kristen Buras’ Book on New Orleans Reforms

By dianeravitch
January 3, 2015 //
6

Larry Miller, an elected member of the Milwaukee school board and a member of the editorial board of Rethinking Schools, has written an excellent review and summary of Kristen Buras’ book–Charter Schools, Race, and Urban Space— about the privatization of public education in New Orleans. New Orleans has gotten an undeserved national reputation as “the answer” to struggling school districts. The establishment in many other urban districts are looking at New Orleans as a model, but it is a model of what NOT to do. As Buras tells it, the reforms in New Orleans dispossessed the black citizens of New Orleans and created great possibilities for white entrepreneurs. A teaching force that was 75% black was dismissed and replaced largely by white Teach for America recruits.

 

Milwaukee is one of the urban districts where the civic and business leadership is looking longingly at New Orleans. Perhaps Larry Miller can share Buras’ book with them.

 

Miller writes: “A major theme to her research is that the New Orleans RSD is a Southern strategy to use market-based reforms to give control of public schools, attended by Black children in Black communities and often taught by Black teachers, over to well funded white entrepreneurs.”

Categories Charter Schools, Education Industry, Milwaukee, New Orleans, Privatization
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