Archives for category: Race to the Top
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What Is a Failing School?

By dianeravitch
September 1, 2012 //
19

After a decade of No Child Left Behind and three years of Race to the Top, officials are getting much better at identifying “failing schools.”

Now we know.

A failing school is one with low test scores and low graduation rates.

A failing school enrolls large numbers of students who are eligible for free or reduced price lunch (i.e., poverty).

A failing school enrolls large numbers of African American and Hispanic students.

A failing school enrolls large numbers of students who are English language learners and new immigrants.

A failing school has disproportionate numbers of students with disabilities.

Based on current federal policy, these are the ways to “turnaround” these failing schools.

Fire the principal; fire half or all of the teachers; turn the school into a charter school under private management; close the school.

What, specifically, is done to address the educational needs of the students? See previous sentence.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Reform, Federal Waiver, NCLB (No Child Left Behind), Race to the Top

NCLB Waivers and Junk Science in New York

By dianeravitch
August 31, 2012 //
8

Bruce Baker has another brilliant analysis, this time gauging the validity of school ratings just released by the state of New York. A thumbnail sketch: New York is stiffing its neediest schools and districts.

Here are the takeaways:

1. The waiver process is illegal. It is not the prerogative of any federal official–not even a cabinet member–to decide to disregard a federal law and to substitute his own policies for the ones in the law. If the law stinks, as NCLB does, revise it. That’s the way our legal system works. Once the precedent is set, any future cabinet member may decide to change the laws to suit his or her fancy. That’s wrong.

2. New York state released a list of schools in relation to their “performance.”  Surprise, surprise! Here is what Baker discovered:

Notably, schools in “good standing” are lowest BY FAR in % of children qualified for free lunch, percent of children who are black, or Hispanic, and are also generally lower in percent of children who are limited in their English Language Proficiency. Race and poverty differences are particularly striking!

In short, the Obama/Duncan administration has given NY State officials license to experiment disproportionately on low income and minority children – or for that matter – simply close their schools. No attempt to actually legitimately parse “blame” or consider the possibility that the state itself might share in that blame.

AFTER ALL, NEW YORK STATE CONTINUES TO MAINTAIN ONE OF THE MOST REGRESSIVE STATE SCHOOL FINANCE SYSTEMS IN THE COUNTRY! 

The third takeaway is that the state violates its own funding formula and underfunds all schools, but especially the schools that enroll the neediest students.

“…the current New York State school foundation aid formula is hardly equitable or adequate for meeting the needs of children attending the state’s highest need districts. But to rub salt in the wound – FOR THE PAST SEVERAL YEARS, THE GOVERNOR AND LEGISLATURE HAVE CHOSEN TO DISREGARD ENTIRELY THEIR OWN WOEFULLY INADEQUATE STATE AID FORMULA.

Even worse, when the Governor and Legislature have levied CUTS TO THAT FORMULA, they have levied those cuts such that they disproportionately cut more state aid per pupil from the higher need districts. As of 2011-12, some high need districts including the city of Albany had shortfalls in state funding (from what would be expected if the foundation formula was actually funded) that were greater than the total foundation aid they were actually receiving.“

Categories Budget Cuts, Cuomo, Andrew, Education Reform, Federal Waiver, New York, Race to the Top

“Everything You’ve Heard about Failing Schools Is Wrong”

By dianeravitch
August 25, 2012 //
6

That’s the title of an excellent new article by Kristina Rizga in Mother Jones.

Rizga spent a year embedded at Mission High School in San Francisco and got to know some of the students and teachers well.

According to the federal government, Mission High School is a “failing” school.

Rizga got there expecting to see “noisy classrooms, hallway fights, and disgruntled staff. Instead I found a welcoming place that many students and staff called “family.” After a few weeks of talking to students, I failed to find a single one who didn’t like the school, and most of the parents I met were happy too. Mission’s student and parent satisfaction surveys rank among the highest in San Francisco.”

She found a “failing” school where the majority of the 925 students are Latino or African-American or Asian-American, a school where 72% of the students are poor. She also discovered that 84% of the graduating class went on to college, higher than the district average.

But it is a failing school!

Of course, the feds would love to close the school and do a “turnaround.” But the principal, relatively new to his job, the teachers, and the students don’t want to lose their job.

If you need convincing that NCLB is a disaster for our schools, and that the “turnaround” demands of Race to the Top are equally harmful, you will enjoy this article.

It is the wisest in-depth journalism that I have seen on education issues in recent memory.

Categories California, Education Reform, NCLB (No Child Left Behind), Race to the Top

Judge Invalidates Florida Evaluations

By dianeravitch
August 24, 2012 //
28

This just in.

The Florida Education Association and two named teacher-plaintiffs sued to block VAM because the process is confusing and the state has provided inadequate guidance.

A judge agreed with the plaintiffs. The state education department will either appeal or have to redo the rules and clarify the way VAM is supposed to work.

This teacher-evaluation stuff is complex, poorly thought out, and endlessly divisive.

It is being foisted on states across the nation–thank you, Race to the Top–without any clear evidence that it works.

No one knows whether VAM identifies the worst teachers or those unlucky enough to get difficult students or those who are good at teaching to the test.

District after district will be thrown into unnecessary turmoil.

A few teachers will be thrown out, and they may not be the “bad” teachers.

And the cult of data worship will grow stronger.

 
 
Categories Accountability, Florida, Race to the Top, Teacher Evaluations, Unions

Will the Real President Obama Please Stand Up? UPDATE

By dianeravitch
August 23, 2012 //
23

Josh Greenman of the New York Daily News writes today that President Obama has been terrific on education reform issues: he has challenged teachers’ unions, pushed for merit pay, encouraged the expansion of charter schools, and used billions of dollars in stimulus funds (via Race to the Top) to promote an agenda that either President Bush would envy. In its editorials, the Daily News has stridently defended charters, testing, and accountability, and has led the charge against the teachers’ union. The billionaire owner of the Daily News, Mort Zuckerman, is on the board of the Broad Foundation, which avidly promotes school closings and privatization.

So imagine Josh’s disappointment that the President is now kowtowing to those teachers unions and saying that more money will solve the problems. He writes, “So count me disappointed that Obama is campaigning for reelection with education rhetoric that is ripped right out of a dusty old Democratic Party playbook.” Wow. A Democratic President actually sounding like a Democrat on education.

Josh wonders why the President doesn’t stick up for his strong testing-and-accountabiilty and school choice agenda. Why doesn’t he boldly admit that his program is not all that different from Romney’s? (There are two big issues where they differ: Romney supports vouchers, Obama doesn’t; Obama wants to help students with their crushing student loans, Romney doesn’t.) UPDATE: (One other major difference: Romney thinks anyone should be allowed to teach, without any certification or standards, and you can bet that he will continue the Republican assault on teachers’ unions.)

Josh implies that the President is reaching out to teachers and their unions and supporters of public education because–guess what?–it is an election year. With a few more eloquent speeches, maybe he can persuade them that his agenda has some resemblance to the traditional Democratic view that schools should have adequate resources, that teachers have a right to bargain collectively, that the federal government has a responsibility to promote equity (not competition), and that school choice is the rightwing plan to privatize the public schools.

Well, it is good to hear the rhetoric. That’s a change. We can always hope that he means it. But that, of course, would mean ditching Race to the Top and all that absurd rightwing rhetoric about how schools can fix poverty, all by themselves.

Categories Obama, Poverty, Privatization, Race to the Top, Unions, US Education, Vouchers

RTTT: More Lipstick on a Pig?

By dianeravitch
August 15, 2012 //
2

Larry Ferlazzo notes that the latest requirements for Race to the Top is just more lipstick on a pig.

By which, he means that when RTTT refers to “personalized learning,” what it really means is using online learning for adaptive testing.

That’s pretty much what the hawkers of technology mean too.

But teachers had something else in mind, something that would encourage students to explore and think and make their own decisions, not just answer test questions.

 

Categories Education Reform, On-Line Education, Race to the Top

The Reformers’ Game Plan

By dianeravitch
August 13, 2012 //
7

This reader offers a succinct summary of the reformers’ game plan. He might have added additional elements: a) budget cuts to disable public schools; and b) laws that remove accountability and transparency with privately managed charters; c) evaluating teachers on a bell curve, so that half will always be “below average,” thus creating a “crisis”; d) demanding 100% perfection, 100% proficiency and saying that anything less proves failure.

You can see it played out in state after state, especially in those with Republican governors, and in the pronouncements of the U.S. Department of Education, and it is fully developed in the Romney education agenda. They think that that private management of public education is the wave of the future, preferably it is generates profits for investors, and they are doing their best to make it happen:

First, the reformers have yet another scapegoat [to blame]  for poverty.  Now it’s the schools that are at fault, not the destruction of our social safety net, not the elimination of worker protections, not the imposition of fair taxation that enables the government to maintain our national infrastructure, and certainly not the actions of the 1% to extract all of the wealth of the U.S. economy for themselves alone.  We don’t need to fix the failed and irrational policies of the past thirty years.  No!  We just have to reform the schools with for-profit charters, voucher plans and virtual “distance learning” that just happens to divert more tax money to … wait for it … the 1%!

And of course, never mind how all of these reforms are failures.  By the time the public is fully aware of that fact, it will be too late to change and we’ll be on to the next scapegoat.

Second, this is just another impossible goal against which to conclude our schools are failures.  The logic here is brilliant:  Set the standard so impossibly high that the schools will be failures by default.  Keep the focus on the unions and test scores, so the public won’t make the real connections between the economics policies of the past three decades but instead will follow the reformers in blind rage.

Categories Budget Cuts, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, For-Profit, Privatization, Race to the Top, Teacher Evaluations, Vouchers

About Race to the Top for Districts

By dianeravitch
August 13, 2012 //
14

With the launch of Race to the Top for school districts, the U.S. Department of Education demolishes federalism,

Congress should de-fund the Race to the Top.

Arne Duncan has absolutely no justification for foisting his unfounded, evidence-free ideas on the nation’s school districts.

Should every school district look like Chicago, one of the nation’s lowest-performing districts, which he led for eight years?

A reader in Louisiana writes:

http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/campaign-k-12/2012/08/_the_money_will_be.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+CampaignK-12+%28Education+Week+Blog%3A+Politics+K-12%29#
MY COMMENT:
 
“The competition comes as the Education Department, which has focused on state-level reform in previous Race to the Top contests, switches gears and tries to use money to advance its education ideas at the local level. . . “
 
Translation – This RTTT motive, like the first RTTT initiative, is to bring about FEDERAL GOVERNMENT CONTROL of PUBLIC education which has served as a model of a democratic system of  taxpayer, voter, citizen local control by elected school boards. This FEDERAL GOVERNMENT CONTROL is covertly accomplished by requiring state, and now local, PUBLIC education systems to voluntarily, under the guise of “helping schools become engines of innovation” and similar crapola rhetoric, give up their control in order to gain desperately needed funding.
 
 The FEDERAL GOVERNMENT TAKEOVER is assisted by “reformers” who have infiltrated  state and local levels as “policymakers”  – school board members, legislators, state board of education members and most prominently Chambers of Commerce and other BUSINESS/CORPORATE interests.   Their primary role has been to convince the public that our public school system in toto is an abject FAILURE so as to open the dialogue  for replacement by “autonomous” CHARTERS and PRIVATE/PAROCHIAL SCHOOL VOUCHERS.  This under the guise of CHOICE. 
 
Interestingly, the U.S. Dept. of Ed under a DEMOCRATIC Administration in the interests of government control has teamed up with the REPUBLICAN corporate ANTI-GOVERNMENT takover in the interest of privatization.   Strange bedfellows.  This dichotomous relationship is bringing about what may predictably become the most destructive undermining of our Democracy that has ever taken place.
The U.S. Dept. of Education has NO AUTHORITY to dictate or influence state education policies such as curriculum and funding, but it believes it has found a way to circumvent that restriction by bribing states and now districts to bring about initiatives like the Common Core Standards, de-centralization of local school systems, budget decisions and teacher evaluations – to name a few. 
 
THE U.S. DEPARTMENT OF EDUCTION NEEDS TO BE CHALLENGED IN COURT FOR THIS EGREGIOUS OVERSTEPPING!!!!   WAKE UP AMERICA .
Categories Duncan, Arne, Race to the Top, U.S. Department of Education

Are Schools Like Sports Teams?

By dianeravitch
August 12, 2012 //
6

Yes, we are “racing to the top.” Has anyone defined “the top”? Who is “racing”? Racing to higher test scores? Who will cross the finish line first? Does the “race” have anything to do with education?

A reader writes today:

The peons are being thrown crumbs again today and the elites are watching them scramble to be the winner in the latest Race to the Top!
\”Race To The Top Competition Opens To School Districts For New Grants To Close Achievement Gap\” from Huffington Post
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/08/12/government-opens-competit_0_n_1769172.html?utm_hp_ref=education

They really do see this as a sports competition. In an interview in the Newark Star-Ledger published August 5th,
http://blog.nj.com/njv_editorial_page/2012/08/arne_duncan_better_education_s.html
Arne Duncan was asked:
Q. How important are the structural reforms, like promoting charter schools, when compared to personnel issues, just finding the best teachers and principals?
A. If you just had a lot of Michael Jordans, structure wouldn’t matter. But we don’t have enough Michael Jordans.
Categories Duncan, Arne, Race to the Top

Who Else Is Rolling Over in His Grave?

By dianeravitch
August 12, 2012 //
48

A reader, noting the plan to privatize 40% of the schools in Philadelphia, had this to say:

WILLIAM PENN is rolling over in his grave, I’m sure.

It occurred to me that :

John Dewey must be rolling over in his grave as he sees our national leaders using standardized tests to impose rankings and ratings on students, teachers, principals, and schools, while many abandon the arts to reach their targets.

Horace Mann must be rolling over in his grave as he sees corporations descending on the schools to make a profit and to privatize as many as possible.

Henry Barnard must be rolling over in his grave as he sees a Democratic governor in his home state of Connecticut handing public schools over to private managers and calling it “reform.”

Thomas Jefferson must be rolling over in his grave as he sees Bobby Jindal giving public funds to voucher students to attend religious schools in Louisiana.

Lyndon B. Johnson must be ruling over in his grave as he sees his beloved Elementary and Secondary Education Act, meant to equalize resources and help poor kids, turned into a club to impose testing and privately managed schools.

Martin Luther King, Jr. must be rolling over in his grave as he sees Wall Street hedge fund managers and billionaires say that they are leading the civil rights movement of our day, as they attack unions and privatize public schools.

Who else is rolling in their grave?

Categories Connecticut, Philadelphia, Poverty, Privatization, Race to the Top, US Education, Vouchers
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