I was invited by the Bill Moyers’ show to write the section on education for President Obama’s State of the Union address. Not to write what I think ke WILL say, but what I think he SHOULD say.
Read it here
and please add your comment.
Archives for category: Privatization
Why do we have public schools? Would we be better off, as certain reformers now think, if everyone had school choice and went to a charter or used a voucher to go to a private or religious school?
Do we need public schools?
I asked Carol Burris, principal of South Side High School in Rockville Center, New York, how she would answer these questions.
How would you answer?
This is what Carol wrote:
“When I think of the purpose of public schooling I always think of Dewey’s famous phrase that is stenciled into the entrance wall of Teacher’s College ““Schools are the fundamental method of social progress and reform” (Dewey,1897). I believe that these words are as true today as when they were first included in John Dewey’s “Pedagogic Creed” .
“There is a compact that exists between a community and its public school. It is a promise that the school will teach every child that passes through its doors—poor children, affluent children, children with disabilities and children who show great academic promise. The common public school is required to teach the easy to teach and the difficult to teach. The common public school is there for the student with strong parent advocates and for the child who is, for all practical purposes, alone.
“Most important of all, it is where such children meet and sit side by side in classrooms, on bleachers and in cafeterias. They learn from each other as surely as they learn from their teacher. That social learning is also what gives rise to the promise of social progress and social reform.
“I attended a private high school where I met children who looked like me, thought like me and prayed liked me. It was a good school, but I did not have as rich an experience as the public school students who attend my school. There were no students with substantial learning disabilities in my high school. It was a test-in school so no one struggled with academics. Only two of the students who attended were Black, and none of the students were poor. There was learning that I missed during my teenage years. I am glad we sent our daughters to public school.
“Charters and privates are not designed to serve all students—they are designed to serve students who are more like each other than not. Although there may be some diversity, those who are truly different either never apply, are never accepted or are counseled out. . One has to only look at New York City Schools, which are becoming more segregated and stratified by income than ever before, to understand the outcome of charters, selection policies and choice.
“We can take the easy road that leads to improvement for some kids at the expense of others, or the more difficult road that will improve education for all kids. Without vibrant, supported public schools, the second option does not have a chance.”
Carol
The Village Voice has a fascinating article about the battle between the charter schools that moved into the gentrifying neighborhood of Williamsburg in Brooklyn and the parents who resisted.
The “Superman” story goes out the window. The schools are not broken, and parents are not crying out to be “saved” by Eva Moskowitz and her husband, each of whom has their own charter.
The narrative of “Won’t Back Down” is turned upside-down, because in this case it is the parents trying to save their neighborhood public school who won’t back down.
And the tabloids claim that the unions-must-be-behind-it-all doesn’t explain why parents are up in arms.
This is a fresh take on a story that matters in cities across the nation.
The Forward Institute sent me their latest study of charter school performance compared to public schools in Milwaukee. Here is the takeaway: There is no significant difference between the performance of public schools and charter schools. However, public schools in Milwaukee are more successful with the poorest students than are charter schools. None of this matters to Governor Scott Walker and the Republican-dominated legislature, which is intent of privatizing more schools, regardless of evidence.
Here is a link and a synopsis:
Milwaukee and statewide school districts show a significant correlation between the level of Economic Disadvantage and Report Card scores. The higher the level of poverty, the lower the Report Card scores. The plot also shows charter schools at the lowest income levels having lower scores than their public school counterparts – consistent with the statewide data. There is a difference in the data, however – one not addressed by charter school advocates.
In the statewide data, charter schools have a significantly higher percentage of low-income enrollment than public schools (43.6% Charters, 32.7% Public). In Milwaukee, public schools have a greater percentage of low-income enrollment than charter schools (88.5% Charters, 95% Public). (Low income is defined in this study as schools with ED enrollment higher than 48.9%. Middle income is ED enrollment of 30.4% to less than 48.9%. High income is ED enrollment less than 30.4%).
Based on the statewide outcome, we would have expected Milwaukee charter schools to perform better on the Report Cards in the lowest income group than public schools – having a lower percentage of high poverty schools. That is not the case. Figure 3 shows that in the middle and low-income groups, charter schools scored lower than public schools in Milwaukee.
At the very least, based on the standard deviation, charter schools scored no better than public schools in Milwaukee. This would suggest that in spite of MPS traditional public schools having more schools with high ED enrollment than charter schools, they are still scoring no worse than their non-traditional charter school counterparts.
The data does not support the claim that Milwaukee Charter schools outperform traditional public schools. At the very least, the difference is not statistically significant. At the most, the mean Report Card scores indicate that Milwaukee Public Schools are outperforming their Charter School counterparts – particularly in the schools of highest poverty. In Racine, the highest poverty RUSD schools are performing on a par with statewide Charter Schools, and only slightly lower than statewide Public Schools.
*Note – Our data considers any non-traditional charter school as defined by DPI as a “Charter.” This includes non-instrumentality and instrumentality (but non-traditional) schools.
Leonie Haimson, who leads Class Size Matters in New York City and was a co-founder of Parents Across America, has worked with other parents and with educators to compile a comprehensive list of corporate reform organizations and to identify the lingo of the reformers. She asks your help in reviewing the list and letting her know about errors and omissions.
Review the list of organizations and definitions. You can let her know your thoughts at the email she provides or in your comments here.
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Many parents, teachers and concerned citizens are confused by the superabundance of well-funded advocacy organizations, consulting companies, and research groups promoting the corporate education reform agenda. These groups adopt a free-market approach to education reform by expanding privatization through charters, vouchers and online learning, judging schools and teachers through standardized test scores, and advocate for the Common Core standards. In order to be helpful, we have prepared a list of such organizations, along with their prominent staff, boards and funders, many of whom are interlocking. Many of these groups are the beneficiaries of the Gates, Broad and Walton Foundations.
This is a working document, and if you see an organization mistakenly included here, or you have suggestions for other changes, please email us at info@classsizematters.org with your comments.
One can also tell if an organization is allied with the corporate reform movement by its rhetoric. For example, the use of such buzzwords as “transformational”, “catalytic”, “innovative”, “great teachers”, “bold”, “game changer”, “effective”, “entrepreneurial”, “differentiated instruction”, “personalized learning”, “economies of scale”, “informational text”, “instructional efficiency”, “college and career ready”, and/or the term “disruptive” used in a positive sense provide clues that the organization or individual is associated with the corporate reform movement.
Other evidence of such an alignment may be if an organization uses “Children First ” or “Students First” or “Kids First” in its title, along with a claim that they represent the interests of children rather than adults (i.e. teachers); or if they have the propensity to attack anyone who disagrees with their policy agenda as defending the status quo. Also indicative of corporate reform leanings is stating that “education is the civil rights issue of our time” and/or the tendency to use the word “crappy” (a descriptor used frequently by Michelle Rhee of StudentsFirst and Joe Williams of Democrats for Education Reform.)
The use of the above buzzwords is replete, for example, in this recent press release from the Pahara Institute, an organization funded by the Gates Foundation. The Institute announces that they are awarding salary enhancements to a long list of “fellows”, including Joe Williams of Democrats for Education Reform, James Merriman of the NY Charter Center and Joel Rose of the New Classrooms (formerly the School of One), who head corporate reform organizations included in our list. The Pahara press release uses the word “reform” nine times, “transformational” six times; “entrepreneurial” four times, and the word “bold” twice, in a little over two pages.
Another good example of the rhetoric of corporate reform is this memo from the Broad Foundation, proposing a new program to highlight their cadre of “change agents”, who will “accelerate” the pace of “disruptive” and “transformational” change; who are “bold, visionary leaders with a proven history of breakthrough reforms” and an “aggressive reform agenda”, including “entrepreneurial founders and CEOs of revolutionary CMOs [charter management organizations] or non-profits.”
Yet another example of this overheated but essentially empty rhetoric is a report hyping the Rocketship chain of charters: “Rocketship’s differentiated staffing model offers further opportunity for transformative innovation.” Here transformative innovation appears to mean parking kids in front of computers for two hours per day to save money on staffing.
Often this agenda offers a simplistic, yet strangely contradictory set of positions:
- Teacher quality is paramount, and yet schools should be able to get rid of experienced teachers in favor of Teach for America recruits with five weeks of training, most of whom will last only two years.
- There is a need for differentiated instruction so each child can receive individualized feedback, but the smaller classes that might make this possible should not be considered, and instead, class sizes should be increased to save money and to create greater “efficiencies.”
- Personalized learning will instead be achieved through software programs and online learning, though real personal contact will be lessened or entirely taken out of the equation.
- Schools must adopt the Common Core standards to encourage higher order critical thinking and writing, but their success in reaching these goals will be measured through standardized tests taken and scored by computers.
- Districts should lengthen the school day or school year, but they should also lessen the emphasis on “seat time” to allow students to get through school more quickly.
- For traditional public schools, there is a need for standardization, including prescribing 50-70 percent “informational text” in assigned reading; at the same time, deregulation through the proliferation of autonomous and privately managed charter or voucher schools should occur, with little or no rules attached.
- Parental “choice” is encouraged, by expanding the charters and voucher sector, but when hundreds or even thousands of parents vehemently protest the closing of their neighborhood public schools, or demand smaller classes, their choices are ignored or rejected with the claim that they are not educated enough to understand what’s at stake.
- Teachers should be “empowered” through online learning, and the profession should be “elevated” and “respected”; but when teachers overwhelming oppose merit pay, the use of test scores in evaluation systems, or insist that the best way to improve their effectiveness and actually “empower” them would be to reduce class size, their views are cast aside.
If you have more examples of corporate reform rhetoric or systemic contradictions, please leave them in comment section below. Please also take a look at our corporate reform spreadsheet, offer your observations, and let us know if we should make changes by emailing us at info@classsizematters.org. Thanks!
A reader offers his observations:
Charter Schools, a failure that cannot be measured.
January 12, 2013 by Joe Hernandez
As I drive happily and optimistically through our South Florida roads, I can’t fail to notice the familiar signs we are all accustomed to viewing, the burger chains, gas stations and the strip malls. As an educator and more specifically, a school psychologist, something catches my eye in a decrepit, run down strip mall, a charter school. I pull in, curious, as to what this school has to offer, as it looks like any other store I could walk in, including an adult book store a few hundred feet away and a gun shop to go with it! I ask the friendly young lady behind a window, what type of school is this? She happily explains that this is a Kindergarten through Eigth grade charter school. Curiously, I ask where are the classrooms? She answers, they are behind that door, but I’m sorry, visitors are not allowed back there. So I ask, may I see the school counselor? I have some questions about enrolling my children here. The young lady quickly snaps back and says, “I am the school counselor”. Being of a mental health background I naturally ask, what experience do you need to be a counselor here? She quickly responds, none, that is just my title. I enroll students here. I only work part-time here. At this point, this so-called counselor is beginning to become suspicious of my intentions. So she asks, would you like to see our administrator? I answer no, not now at least, I am going to read the application completely first.
I settle down into what appears to be an old sofa of a doctor’s office, in fact, the whole charter school appears to be an old office renovated for educational purposes, complete with the obnoxious sliding glass window you need to knock on to get the attention of the office aide/school counselor to turn in your application. In the far distance, I can here the familiar laugh of children and a teacher screaming at the top of her lungs “shut up”. I look around the small waiting room, and I cannot help to notice a young lady wringing her hands, with an impatient look. Next to her, is a stack of papers and a textbook. Curious, I ask her, how do you like this school? She quickly responds that she is very disappointed. Very disappointed I ask? Yes, she says, as she begins to recount how she arrived to this school. I was offered something called a McKay Scholarship where I could choose any school I wanted private or public. Acting naive, I asked, isn’t this a good thing? She answers back, well, on the surface, everything looks great. The school is small, the staff is friendly, and the students all have to wear uniforms. So what is the problem?, I ask. She quickly explains that in order for her “application” to be accepted she had to sign a waiver. A waiver I ask? Yes a waiver. You see, when my child was in public school last year, she was receiving special education services for her Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder. This school, like most other charter schools do not have the resources that public schools have. So you are required to sign a waiver stating that even though your child has “special needs” you agree that the school does not have to provide any accommodations. Surprised at this revelation, I asked the parent, and you agreed to this? Well, the school seemed so eager to please, I felt at ease that my child could learn here. So what are your plans, I ask the mother. I am going to ask the administrator if the staff could at least look at her previous year’s work and have some compassion. I looked back at her and asked, and when will the administrator see you? She snapped quickly, they told me in half an hour, but as you can see, you and I have been close to an hour here and there is no administrator in sight. I again ask naively, is this common? Oh, you don’t know? I said no, I am applying here. She looks at me straight in the eyes, think twice about the decision you are about to make. There is one administrator for the ten charter schools this company runs.
At this point, I had heard or you can say learned enough. I quietly exit the waiting room and venture to the back alley of the strip mall to see for myself what type of Physical Education field or playground this charter school had to offer. As I passed numerous, obnoxiously smelling dumpsters, I observed a fence, a 20 by 20 feet area approximately, that had a group of students doing some jumping jacks. There were no swings, slides, fields to run through, nada! Just concrete and space to do some kinesthetics!
By this time, my charter school curiosity had been fulfilled, I had seen enough what this “free, unregulated, market model” had to offer our children. I believe my experience with this randomly selected charter school, in a local strip mall may not be representative of all charter schools. I suspect that charter schools, located in our more affluent/wealthier neighborhoods run at a higher standard. Naturally, this defeats the notion of an “equal education for all”. Some may disagree with me and say, there is no more segregation in our education system. I beg to differ, charter schools are creating and contributing to what I call the new “socio-economic segregation” of our times. It is the cancer that is draining the resources of an education system, already stretched to its limits, and that has long been regulated to serve all of our children, hungry, poor, rich, disabled, gifted etc.
Joseph Hernandez, ED.S.
School Psychologist
Diana Rogers, a regular reader of the blog, writes about her experience and her school:
I’ve worked for twenty years in a district that has a wonderful staff. There have been a few unsuitable teachers throughout the years, and the administration had no trouble identifying them and getting rid of them; a few others who just needed a bit of guidance were mentored and became better teachers.
I know I have become a better teacher each year, and I have worked hard at becoming better–taken 65 semester hours of post-graduate work, attended numerous workshops and seminars, read professional books and journals. But more important, I learned from my students and their parents, and from my colleagues. I did not “peak” after a few years, but got better and better each year at understanding my students, being able to explain material to them in ways they could grasp and retain, and at knowing how to bring parents into the teaching team as their children’s biggest supporters.
I have done everything I have been asked to do. And so have the other teachers I know. I don’t see all these “bad” teachers that are always being talked about in the media. But in recent years we have been asked to do not only the stupid, but the downright impossible, and even the harmful. Yes we are getting demoralized, attacked from all sides by non-educators who think they understand education better than professional educators. On the whole, teachers are idealistic strivers who try to do everything they can to help their students succeed. I see this every day.
And now we have to waste time on endless testing, data compilation, test preparation, and changing our curriculum to align to the Common Core.
We have to worry about our contracted pensions being taken away from us.
We have to spend enormous amounts of time assembling a portfolio of evidence to prove that we are good teachers, and are even told not to expect to be rated as excellent as we were in the past and as our administrators know we are.
This time could certainly be better spent polishing and improving our lessons, researching materials and methods, or giving feedback to students. Even though I take stacks of work home nightly and spend a huge chunk of the weekend and much of my vacation time on grading, preparation, and other school-related work, there are still only so many hours in a day, and they are not enough to do what I am required to do without adequate resources or support.
The conditions teachers work under are not the fault of school administrators any more than that of the teachers. Administrators endure the same unreasonable pressures of impossible demands, unfair evaluations and limited resources as teachers do. They are caught up in the same effort to do what is being asked of them when what is being asked is not reasonable or right.
Schools will not become better if people like me and the many fine, experienced teachers I know are driven out by impossible demands, abuse, and loss of job and retirement security.
I want to believe that sensible thinkers will prevail and that the tide in this insidious madness of false “reform” will turn.
I cannot understand why there is not recognition and enormous public outcry against the dismantling of public education in our country.
I’m hoping that the harm being done by those whose interests are not the welfare of our country and its children will finally be understood and that people of good faith in the general public and in our government (if there are any left there who are not controlled by big money) will do what is needed to save public education before it is too late.
You may have heard that former Governor Jeb Bush regularly parades the “Florida miracle,” perhaps preparing for a 2016 run at the presidency. The formula, we hear, is testing and accountability, grading schools, charters and vouchers, and of course, online courses and schools.
This Florida teacher wrote a comment and gives a different view from the trenches:
I will go out on a limb here and argue that there IS no “Florida miracle.” I taught in a Miami-Dade high school for 6 years and I watched our school grade go from a C to a D back to a C, stay a C, and then up to a B…I think it was also an F at some point in there. During that time, did I see any change in the “quality” of student? Nope. Did I see any change in the quality of the teachers? Nope. Did I see any change in the quality of the coursework? YES. It went DOWN year after year, as more and more emphasis was placed on testing, and less and less on everything else. As end-of-course exams were introduced, the quality went down still further, as classes were disrupted even more for testing and test prep. And while the class size amendment was the one and ONLY good thing left in FL education, that too has pretty much gone out the window, at least in high school, as “core classes” were redefined to mean “FCAT classes.” My last year teaching (last year) I had up to 38 students in my French classes. The quality of my classes definitely went down, though not because I was lazy or incompetent or any of the other things teachers are called all the time…but simply because to keep a class of 38 from dissolving into chaos, you have to have a pretty teacher-centered class going on all the time. That is not ideal for a language class, but then again, neither is having a class of almost 40 kids all doing their own thing (which, as any teacher knows, means each one playing with a phone or worse).
There is no Florida miracle. Education has only gotten worse over the past few years, no matter how schools, districts and the state itself game the system. And, contrary to what the media will tell you, it is NOT teachers’ fault, unions’ fault, and I won’t even blame it on the kids or their parents this time. It is the fault of education “reform” led by Jeb Bush et al.
Want to know who is pulling the stings of he corporate reform movement?
Keep your eye on ALEC, short for the American Legislative Exchange Council.
This is a secretive group of about 2,000 state legislators, major corporations and far-right think tanks.
The goal of ALEC is privatization and advancing the interests of corporations.
ALEC drafts model laws and its members introduce them in their state, sometimes verbatim.
ALEC has model was for charter schools, vouchers, online charter schools, for-profit schools, and laws to weaken or eliminate collective bargaining, teacher tenure, and certification. It wants a free market.
Recently, ALEC debated Common Core and came close to passing a resolution opposing the standards as a federal takeover. But Jeb Bush intervened and persuaded his friends to remain neutral.
Some of the corporate sponsors dropped out last year because of ALEC’s sponsorship of the “Stand Your Ground” legislation in Florida, invoked by the man who killed an unarmed black teen.
Here is a list of ALEC’s education task force members.
You may see some of your state legislators on the list.
To learn more about ALEC, read this informative article by Julie Underwood, dean of the school of education at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
ALEC Exposed is the best website to learn about ALEC’s ambitious plans to privatize and deregulate many spheres of American society while benefitting big corporations.
When I blogged at Education Week, I wrote a post about ALEC. Its policy director wrote to say that President Obama shares many of ALEC’s goals. It is a strange time we live in.
Did you think that NCLB identifies only “failing schools” as failing schools?
Guess again.
Matt Di Carlo demonstrates that a school can get excellent gains year after year and yet still be a “failing school.”
When will Congress wake up?
