Archives for category: Teach for America
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Teachers United Against TFA

By dianeravitch
May 4, 2014 //
12

The resistance to teach for America continues to grow. Here is another organization bringing together teachers against TFA.

Here is their Facebook page.

The leading group of college students organized to resist TFA and to foght for professional teachers is SUPE: Students United for Public Educatuon.

SUPE has a mission:

“Students United for Public Education (SUPE) evolved out of the work of college students involved in defending public education from its attackers. In particular, SUPE was founded to fill a void in the movement for public education — before SUPE, there was no national student organization devoted solely to this cause. Under the guise of “closing the achievement gap” and “school choice,” for-profit corporations and their political representatives have sought to privatize and sell off public education. SUPE understands that a profit motive cannot guarantee a good education. Instead, only a robust and well-supported public education system — along with the courage and will to directly confront problems of racial and economic inequality — can provide a quality education for all.

“SUPE is a community based organization because we believe that public schools are the heart of every community. We understand that in order for our goals to be reached, we must work with not only K-12 students, but parents, teachers, and community members as a whole. We are not here to tell any community or students what to do. Rather, we want to work with communities to find what their needs are, and have them lead the way in the struggle as we work as equals to organize the change they believe is best.”

Categories Resistance, Students, Teach for America

Teach for America: Is the Magic Gone?

By dianeravitch
May 3, 2014 //
47

This article in The Hechinger Report looks at the current turmoil surrounding Teach for America. It is sending young people to take jobs away from experienced teachers. There is a growing movement to resist TFA on college campuses, started by young people who aim for a career in teaching, not a bullet point on their resume. Meanwhile, the key staff jobs in Congress are held by former members of TFA, placed there strategically to protect TFA’s interests. And, most disturbingly, TFA has become the labor force for the privatization movement, the young people who staff privately managed charters. Not coincidentally, TFA is a favorite of the far-right Walton Family Foundation, which is devoted to vouchers and charters, while snubbing public schools.

 

Teach for America is a paradox. The young people who enter its program are idealistic, bright, and generally very admirable. The organization is cunning, ambitious, highly political, and supplying the cheap labor to privatize America’s public schools and undermine the teaching profession.

 

The young people who join TFA are eager to serve. The organization TFA seems remarkably self-serving.

 

Whereas TFA began with the promise of placing its inexperienced young teachers–fresh college graduates with only five weeks of training–where they were needed most, TFA is now sending its recruits to districts where they are not needed at all, where there are no teacher shortages, where experienced teachers are being laid off and replaced by the cheap labor of TFA. For policymakers, it is a calculated decision to save money. After all, few TFA will stick around long enough to earn a high salary or to qualify for a pension. Step by step, TFA is making the case that teachers need no preparation to be “great” teachers,, even though it is not true, even though no high-performing nation would place amateurs in the classroom as full teachers, even though their claim in effect says that there is no such thing as a teaching profession.

 

Perhaps it is no accident that the highest profile alums of TFA are leaders of the privatization movement, like Michelle Rhee, John White, Bobby Jindal’s Commissioner of Education in Louuisiana, and Kevin Huffman, Governor Haslam’s Commissioner of Education in Tennessee, and Erik Guckian, senior education advisor to far-right North Carolina Governor Pat McCrory.

 

With more and more alums and college students aware that TFA has become a pawn of the privatization movement, what will idealistic young people think of the organization in the future? Where did TFA’s idealism go?

Categories Teach for America

Mike Rose Has Six Questions for Arne Duncan about Teacher Education

By dianeravitch
May 2, 2014 //
45

Secretary Arne Duncan recently announced his plan to judge teacher education programs by their “results,” including the test scores of the students taught by their graduates. If the Ed Schools can’t produce teachers who can raise test scores, Duncan said, they should go out of business. Spoken like a true businessman.

Mike Rose, celebrated author and professor emeritus at UCLA, has six questions for Arne.

He writes:

Six Questions for Secretary Duncan

1. Will you be evaluating with the same metrics all teacher preparation programs, alternative as well as traditional, Teach for America as well as California State University at Northridge or UCLA?

2. If the Department of Education will use close to $100 million per year on grants to forward its agenda, where will that money come from? From other educational programs that serve needy populations? If so, what services or funding will be cut or discontinued because of this reallocation?

3. Policy formation emerges out of staff research, consultation with experts, and political deliberation. What research and consultation leads you to the current project? I ask because your statement about teacher preparation programs needing to improve “or go out of business” as well as your general approach echoes last year’s report from the National Council of Teacher Quality, a report that has been roundly criticized by a wide range of experts.

4. The National Academy of Education recently issued a comprehensive report on evaluating teacher education programs that recommends an approach very different from yours. Have you read it or consulted its authors?

5. There is an increasing number of respected scholarly organizations—the National Academies Board on Testing and Assessment, AERA, the National Academy of Education, the American Statistical Association—that are advising caution in the use of procedures like value-added to evaluate teacher effectiveness. These organizations point to technical, logistical, and conceptual problems in doing so. One conceptual problem imputing causality between teachers’ activity and a test score, for so many other variables come into play. Your stated plan will use student test scores to not only judge teachers, but also the institutions from which they come, introducing another level of questionable causal attribution in your model. You will have a putative causal chain that goes from the student test score to the teacher to the teacher’s training institution. How do you plan to address this basic conceptual problem?

6. The implication in your plan that bad schools will go out of business assumes that all prospective teachers are the economist’s idealized free agents who can go wherever a highly rated program exists. But a number of prospective teachers from lower income backgrounds do not have the finances to travel—or cannot travel because of family obligations and expectations. How will you address the possible unintended consequence of your program placing burdens on this segment of the population?

Thanks, Mike. If I hear from Secretary Duncan, I will post his answers.

Categories Duncan, Arne, Teach for America, Teacher Evaluations, Teachers and Teaching

Peter Greene Explains Why Cami Hates Democracy

By dianeravitch
April 30, 2014 //
16

Peter Greene, a man of infinite patience, watched a video in which Cami Anderson explains why she has the right to tell everyone in Newark what to do without listening to their opinions.

She compares herself to her sister, who is a surgeon. Her sister doesn’t ask the opinion of nobodies; she does what she has to do to save the patient’s life.

Greene points out to Cami that her sister is a highly trained professional who spent years learning her profession, whereas Cami’s five weeks of training in TFA is hardly equivalent. Furthermore, her sister operates with the consent of the patient and the patient’s family, and was not given consent to cut up the patient by Chris Christie.

The bottom line, Greene sees, is this:

“Democracy is stupid.

“Look, say the Reformistas. We are just better than you are. We are wiser, smarter, and just plain righter than the rest of you. So you should stop getting in our way. All of you lesser humans should stop insisting that you’re entitled to some sort of voice– you aren’t. Shut up, sit down, and let the superior humans take care of these difficult matters.”

Greene is not sure where Cami is, other than noting she is at Arizona State University/GSV. A few days ago, I wrote about the education “gold rush.” Cami is speaking to 2,000 entrepreneurs, hedge fund managers, and investors who are looking to make profits in education with the Next Big Thing. They paid $1,000-2,000 each to meet at the Phoenician Resort in Scottsdale. The meeting was co-sponsored by Global Silicon Valley, which leads the way in monetizing and privatizing education.

Categories Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, For-Profit, New Jersey, Teach for America

John Thompson: Who Does More Damage to Public Education: The Tea Party or Arne Duncan?

By dianeravitch
April 30, 2014 //
59

John Thompson raises a provocative and important question: who is inflicting more damage on teachers and students? Tea Party extremists like North Carolina Governor Pat McCrory or Secretary of Education Arne Duncan?

Thompson, a teacher and historian, describes the assault on teachers in North Carolina, whose governor and Legislature seem determined to destroy public education by expanding vouchers and charters and to dismantle the teaching profession by eliminating tenure, laying off teacher aides, and keeping salaries stagnant.

Thompson writes:

“Which sets of school reforms are inflicting the most damage on teachers and students? Has the right wing Tea Party’s most extreme assaults on public education hurt schools the most? Or, has the Duncan administration’s ill-conceived corporate reforms done the most harm?

“North Carolina was once touted as an exemplar of standards based reforms, and Wake County was praised for its socio-economic integration. Tea Party Governor Pat McCrory and Republicans are phasing out tenure and gutting salaries. As a result, mid-year teacher resignations in Wake schools have increased by an “alarming” 41% this school year. The number of resigning teachers who said they are moving to other North Carolina schools dropped, as there was an increase in teachers leaving for other states. Early retirements have tripled.

“The problem is so extreme that Doug Thilman, Wake’s assistant superintendent for human resources, said at a press conference, “Good teachers are having to make hard decisions to leave our classrooms for a better future somewhere else or in another line of work, in another profession – not in our public schools and not in our state.”

But then there is Arne Duncan’s mad idea that the way to “fix” schools is to fire half or all the staff.

Thompson writes:

“The mirror image of Wakes’ crisis is found in Chicago “turnaround schools.” Chicago’s Catalyst quotes Michael Hansen, senior researcher for the American Institutes for Research, who explains that the Duncan administration’s School Improvement Grant (SIG) are “under-researched.” High attrition following a turnaround has the potential to produce “more harm than help.” (emphasis by the Catalyst)

Ignoring educational research, these expensive turnaround campaigns begin with the mass dismissal of teachers. This immediately reduces the number of African-American teachers serving African-American communities, as well as reducing the experience levels of teachers. Catalyst reports, however, that “large chunks of the new staff–teachers who were hand-picked and spent weeks over the summer getting to know each other, becoming a team and learning how to spark improvement when the school reopened–leave within a few years.”

Catalyst reports “At 16 of the 17 schools that underwent a turnaround between 2007 and 2011, more than half of teachers hired in the first year of the turnaround left by the third year.” Moreover, “Among all turnarounds, an average of two-thirds of new teachers left by year three.” (emphasis in the original)

As the Consortium on Chicago School Research (CCSR) explains, such high levels of attrition is problematic because, “It can produce a range of organizational problems at schools, such as discontinuity in professional development, shortages in key subjects and loss of teacher leadership.”

I say that the answer to Thompson’s question is clear. McCrory is gutting public education in his state, and only in his state. Duncan’s idiotic idea of “turnaround” is harming schools and communities across the nation, laying off veteran teachers, reducing the number of African-American teachers, and generating harmful turmoil.

Let’s face it. Duncan has inflicted incalculable harm on public education, especially in urban districts. He became Secretary of Education after eight unsuccessful years as superintendent of schools in Chicago, which was and remains a low-performing district. He was unqualified to be Secretary of Education. In the past, we have had governors with no education credentials, but they at least had the good sense to recognize the reality of federalism, the limitations on their powers, and fact that control of education is a state and local function. Duncan has recognized none of these factors and has used federal funding to impose his will and his bad ideas on districts across the nation. It seems he won’t be satisfied until every teacher is inexperienced (preferably certified by Teach for America), every public school has been turned over to private management, every decision is tightly tied to test scores, and every teacher education institution is run by charter school teachers who grant advanced degrees to one another.

Duncan is a terrific basketball payer but a disastrous Secretary of Education. The real test of public education is whether it can survive two more years of his failed and harmful policies.

Categories Charter Schools, Chicago, Closing schools, Duncan, Arne, Education Industry, Education Reform, Privatization, Teach for America, Testing

EduShyster: A Letter to TFA in Newark Who Are Replacing Veteran Teachers

By dianeravitch
April 26, 2014 //
10

This post was written for EduShyster by guest blogger Owen Davis, a former corps member of Teach for America.

 

It is firmly tongue-in-cheek. He advises members of TFA headed for Newark not to back down.

 

So what that Cami Anderson, one-time leader of TFA-New York, plans to lay off 1,000 experienced teachers–most of whom will be black–and replace many of them with TFA?

 

He writes:

 

Your ability to shrug off the naysayers is what really astonishes me. So what if TFA is on average whiter than the teachers it will replace? What does it matter that TFA is a necessary ingredient in the charter stew that drowns traditional public schools – and that Newark’s current layoff plans stem directly from the diverting of district funds to charters? Who cares that 60% of NJ TFAers end up in that same charter sector, whose teachers are only 74% as likely to be black and half as likely to be Hispanic as in district schools? And the fact that half of TFA’s current teachers in Newark’s district schools landed in “renew schools,” where existing staff had to reapply en masse and where hundreds of educators were displaced?

 

He adds:

 

The Newark situation can’t help but stir recollections of your stalwart march into New Orleans in the decade after Hurricane Katrina, when the number of TFA first- and second-years shot up from 85 to over 400, while the proportion of African-American educators dropped from 73% to 49%. Or in Chicago, where your corps size grew by a third while fifty schools were closed and a thousand positions were cut – and where previous mass layoffs hit black and Latino teachers hardest. It’s in these dire circumstances that “doing nothing is not an option.”

 

The post is loaded with links. Read it and follow the links. Owen Davis’s advice to TFA: Don’t back down. Go right ahead and replace those experienced black teachers and see yourself as civil rights leaders.

 

Life is filled with ironies, is it not?

Categories Humor, New Jersey, Teach for America

Peter Dreier: Why Is Public Television Against Public Schools? CORRECTION!

By dianeravitch
April 11, 2014 //
13

Peter Dreier, a professor at Occidental College and fervent advocate for public education, asks why public education continues to lavish so much favorable attention in the leaders of the privatization movement while disregarding dissenting voices or–worse–treating our nation’s public schools shabbily.

He suggests that the Republican attack of public funding of PBS may have made the network dependent on the billionaires who favor privatization and view public schools with contempt.

With the sole exception of Bill Moyers, who has run programs about ALEC’s efforts to destroy every public service, and who recently interviewed me about the profit motive in the privatization movement, PBS has made no effort to investigate the assault on public education across the nation.

Dreier contrasts the lavish attention devoted to the privatization propaganda film “Waiting for ‘Superman,'” with the absence of attention to a remarkable new film celebrating the daily struggles of public schools in Pasadena, California. This film, “Go Public,” tells the true story of life in a public school. Will it appear on public television? That’s up to you.

The same might be said of “Rise Above the Mark,” another well-produced film that tells the story of real life in schools today and the insidious efforts to destroy public education by the powerful and complicit politicians.

David Sirota recently compelled PBS to return $3.5 million to billionaire John Arnold, who had underwritten a series on the “pension crisis,” an issue dear to him as a critic of defined benefit pensions.

Maybe Dreier’s critique will encourage PBS to give equal time to our nation’s public schools, not just their critics.

PS: I mistakenly attributed the article to another wonderful Paul–Paul Horton. Wrong! My bad!

Categories Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Gates Foundation, Bill Gates, Pensions, Rhee, Michelle, Teach for America, U.S. education

My Favorite Line from Arne Duncan: What is Yours?

By dianeravitch
April 5, 2014 //
93

For five years, I have listened to Arne Duncan lecture the American people about how terrible our public schools are.

 

He goes on at length about our ignorant students, our misguided parents, our ineffective teachers, our failing public schools.

 

In his eyes, we seem to be a nation of slackers, bums, ignoramuses, fools, and failures.

 

We know that he likes: charter schools, Teach for America, closing public schools and handing them over to corporate management, and “graduate schools” that have no scholars, no researchers, just tutors of test-taking skills. And of course, he loves the heavy emphasis on test-taking in places like Shanghai and Singapore. Test scores are his North Star. He wishes we could be like Shanghai, and that all our moms were “Tiger Moms,” cracking the whip over the children and making them get ready for the next test. All work, no play. He dreams of a new America of test-taking grinds. Arne Duncan is our Mr. Gradgrind, and if you don’t know who that is, google it.

 

Every once in a while, he launches a campaign calling for “R-E-S-P-E-C-T,” but no one believes him. They know it is just empty PR.

 

So, I wonder, what are the unforgettable phrases of Arne Duncan that will be his legacy, the words that encapsulate his unique combination of certainty and cluelessness.

 

Entry one must be his immortal comment about Hurricane Katrina, which caused the deaths of over 1,000 people and wiped out public education and the teachers’ union in New Orleans: He said that Hurricane Katrina was “the best thing that happened to the education system in New Orleans.” Forget the fact that the great majority of charter schools in New Orleans today are rated either D or F by the state of Louisiana (which favors them). According to Secretary Duncan, every major city needs a Hurricane Katrina or some other natural disaster to demolish public education and eliminate teachers’ unions so they can be replaced by privately managed charter schools and Teach for America. Of course, then Teach for America would have to train 1,000,000 teachers a year instead of only 10,000, and it would put an end to the teaching profession, but Arne hasn’t thought that far in advance.

 

Entry two was captured by Gary Rubinstein in this post on his blog: At Teach for America’s 20th anniversary celebration, Arne Duncan was a featured speaker. He told the story of a school that had only a 40% graduation rate. The school was shut down and replaced by three charter schools. One graduated all of its students, and all were accepted into college. Duncan said: “Same children, same community, same poverty, same violence. Actually went to school in the same building with different adults, different expectations, different sense of what’s possible. Guess what? That made all the difference in the world.” Gary pointed out that the students were not the same kids, and that the 107 who graduated were not the same as the 166 who started in the class. Yes, the graduation rate was higher, but it was not the 100% that Arne implied. And to make matters worse, the students at that particular “miracle school” had lower test scores than the Chicago school district. But Arne was trying to promote his theory that schools get better if everyone is fired and the slate is wiped clean.

 

Then there was the time last year when he sneered at parents in New York state who objected to the absurd Common Core tests as “white suburban moms who — all of a sudden — their child isn’t as brilliant as they thought they were, and their school isn’t quite as good as they thought they were.” He quickly tried to walk that one back, but it stuck. He deeply believes that our kids are dummies and their parents want to believe that they are smart when they are not. I guess you need to have a Harvard B.A. to be so arrogant about the brainpower of other people’s children.

 

My personal favorite occurred when he visited a charter school in Brooklyn. He told those assembled that the United States is facing both an economic crisis and an educational crisis. And then came this immortal line: “We should be able to look every second grader in the eye and say, ‘You’re on track, you’re going to be able to go to a good college, or you’re not,’ ” he said. “Right now, in too many states, quite frankly, we lie to children. We lie to them and we lie to their families.”

 

The claim that we are “lying to our students” or “we are lying to our children” is like a mantra for Arne, so that’s not new. What is special about this line is the idea that you should be able to look every second grader in the eye and be able to tell them that they are on track to go to a good college. Since I have a grandson who is in second grade, I know how absurd this is. I look into his eyes and I see a laughing, happy child. That’s what I want to see. Sometimes I see a sad child, and I want to know what’s wrong and can I help. I see a child who loves to read and loves to play. The last thing in the world that would occur to me as a parent, a grandparent, or an educator is to ask whether he was on track to go to a good college. I want him to be on track to be happy, healthy, curious about the world, eager to learn, and secure in the love that surrounds him.

Julian Vasquez Heilig collected his Top Ten of Arne’s Inanities.

The reality is that it is easy to find Arne’s clueless remarks. They occur whenever he goes off script.

 

What is your favorite Arne Duncan line? I have known almost every Secretary of Education since the U.S. Department of Education was created in 1980. I have never known one who had so little respect for students, educators, parents, school boards, or public education as our current Secretary. Nor have I known one who had so little understanding about what constitutes genuine learning. Not test scores, but a love of learning, a love of tinkering, a love of knowledge. It is innovation, creativity, imagination, curiosity, wit, and the pursuit of new knowledge that is the genius of our nation. Those who care not to preserve those essential aspects of education are not educators, but technicians, bureaucrats, and bean counters.

 

My wish: Arne Duncan should take the PARCC test for eighth graders and publish his scores.

 

Categories Charter Schools, Duncan, Arne, Education Industry, New Orleans, Teach for America

Walton Family Foundation Puts $164 Million into Privatization Movement

By dianeravitch
April 2, 2014 //
71

The Walton Family Foundation released its list of grantees in the education world, and once again, the foundation put its huge resources into privatizing American public education.

The billions that hard-working families spend at Walmart are used to support privately managed charters and vouchers and to undermine democratic local control and traditional public schools.

Some of the biggest recipients of the Walton family’s largesse are Teach for America (nearly $20 million), which staffs non-union charters; KIPP charter schools ($8.8 million); the Charter Fund, Inc. ($14.5 million); The Children’s Scholarship Fund (which gives our school vouchers) $8.56 million; and the California Charter School Association, $5 million. Parent Revolution got almost $2 million, the Black Alliance for Educational Options got $1.3 million.

Read the list and see who favors the privatization of public schools. Aside from a few dollars tossed to the Bentonville, Arkansas, public schools, it is a rogues’ gallery of privatization and teacher-bashing.

The Walton Family Foundation helped to underwrite the attack ads against New York City’s progressive mayor, Bill de Blasio, because he dared to turn down three charter school proposals. Two of the three schools did not exist, so no child was evicted. The third rejection was meant to stop the expansion of Eva Moskowitz’s charter school inside PS 149 in Harlem, which required the eviction of severely disabled students to make room for her desired new middle school. Apparently the theory of the billionaires is that students with high test scores deserve public space more than profoundly disabled students, who have lesser rights.

As a result of pressure by the billionaires, the legislature passed a budget that gutted mayoral control by saying that the mayor was not allowed to reject any charter approved by Bloomberg’s school board; that the mayor was not allowed to charge rent to charters, even though they had just won a lawsuit declaring that they could not be audited by the State Comptroller because they are not “a unit of the state”; giving charters the right to expand in any public school where they are now co-located, without regard to the needs of the children already enrolled in that school; and requiring that the city pay the rent of any charter that rents private space. So, with the help of the Walton Family Foundation, the charter schools, which are not public schools and are not subject to public audit, get free space and may kick public school students out of their buildings.

This was a shameful law, purchased by people of vast wealth. They are intent on busting unions, crushing the teaching profession, and harming one of our democratic institutions. Their maleficent influence is unchecked. The money they spend each year is meant to transfer public funds to private hands. They use their power to hurt the very people who have made them wealthy, destroying their communities at the same time.

The age of the robber barons is back.

Categories Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, For-Profit, KIPP Charter Schools, Privatization, Resistance, Teach for America, Vouchers, Walton Foundation

Will New Jersey Pay TFA for Inexperienced, Uncertified Teachers?

By dianeravitch
April 2, 2014 //
21

A resident in Néw Jersey, one of the nation’s highest-performing states, wonders why the Legislature might pay Teach for America to lease inexperienced, uncertified young recruits who promise to stay for only two years:

“Members of the NJ legislature are considering a bill that would allocate taxpayer funding for placement of Teach for America recruits into at-risk schools. TFA lobbied these legislators with “an idea” before anyone else could educate them on the topic.

“Public funding should not be used as placement fees for people with 5 weeks of training and no certification, and who can drop out after two years. This action is not building a base of experienced and credentialed teachers, AND it is siphoning public money from an already strapped public school budget.

“Please call Assemblyman Patrick Diegnan, Chair of the Assembly Education Committee, at
(908) 757-1677. Tell him you oppose A-2032 and hope he does not post it for a hearing in his committee.

“Spread the word.”

Categories New Jersey, Teach for America
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