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Ads for Scammed Academy Charter Schools

By dianeravitch
February 28, 2017 //
12

A former teacher at Success Academy charter schools–let’s call her Jane Doe–decided to use her talents as a graphic designer to create advertisements for the school where she had worked. For some reason, there are ads on billboards, in buses, and on subway trains urging students to apply to Eva Moskowitz’s Success Academy Charter Schools. This is odd because we have been told that there are long waiting lists. The waiting lists are so long that there must be a lottery. If there are long waiting lists, why are there ads to recruit students to apply? Maybe the purpose of the ads is to create a demand to exceed the supply? A marketing tool?

Jane Doe attached this comment:

I chose to respond to advertisements for Success Academy Charter Schools because every time I see those ads on websites or in subway stations, I wish they told more of the story. It’s not that the ads are based on lies; it’s true that “scholars” at Success in every grade have science class every day, it’s true that Success puts a lot of emphasis on parent/family engagement, and it’s true that the average kid at Success does much better on standardized tests than the average kid in a (non-selective) NYC public school. All of those things make it more likely for those kids to “succeed,” especially if your idea of success includes admission into a liberal arts college.

It’s also true that Success is funded in part by private donors like the Koch brothers and the family that owns Wal-Mart, because conservatives and big corporations have a vested interest in chipping away at public education. The high test scores are real, and they matter, but are they worth the pressure Success puts on its employees and its students? During testing season, the Success Network ships each school extra pairs of pants to keep on hand, because inevitably several third graders will be so scared to sacrifice test time for a bathroom trip, they’ll have an accident. There are countless tiny examples that illustrate this extreme environment, a few of which I chose for this assignment.

Families don’t pay for a Success Academy education. When I use the word scammed, I am not just talking about money, and I am not just talking about those who send their kids to Success. I’m talking about the whole country, because all of us are being scammed by Charter advocates like Betsy DeVos and Success CEO Eva Moskowitz. Neither Moskowitz nor DeVos has any actual experience in education, yet they’ve each made a wealthy career for themselves out of advocating for so-called school choice reform. The changes they seek put public schools at a disadvantage, as they are forced to fight with charters for space, funding, and high-engagement/high-resource families. Meanwhile, not all charters perform like Success. Some are much better, with more emphasis on social-emotional learning and less emphasis on strict behavioral expectations. Others, like those DeVos lobbied for in Detroit, have test scores similar to or worse than nearby public schools, with the same downsides of Success – no unions, poor treatment of special education students, and high suspension rates, to name a few.

Ultimately, my goal is for people to see a more complex picture of Success Academy. Education reform is a complex issue, especially when a person has their own kids in mind. But we need to talk about charters for what they are: a scheme to gradually privatize education to further benefit the ruling class. I hope that if and when a person sees my “ads” in conjunction with the original Success ads, it will give them a better picture of the motivations, complications, and realities of Success Academy schools.

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Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Education Reform, Harlem Success Academy, Privatization, Testing

NEPC Bunkum Award for Shoddiest Think Tank Report of 2016: And the Winner is…..

By dianeravitch
February 25, 2017 //
7

Every year the National Education Policy Center announces the winner of its not-at-all coveted Bunkum Award for the shoddiest think tank report of the previous year.

This year’s winner is the Center for American Progress, for its report purporting to show that the Common Core standards raise the achievement of poor students.


Winner of NEPC’s 2016 Bunkum Award\

BOULDER, CO (PRWEB) FEBRUARY 23, 2017

The 89th Academy Awards will be celebrated this weekend, which means it’s also time to announce the winner of the 2016 National Education Policy Center Bunkum Award. We invite you to enjoy our 11th annual tongue-in-cheek “salute” to the shoddiest think tank report reviewed in 2016.

This year’s Bunkum winner is the Center for American Progress (CAP), for its report, Lessons From State Performance on NAEP: Why Some High-Poverty Students Score Better Than Others.

To learn who our editors judged to be Bunkum Award-worthy, be sure to watch the 2016 Bunkum Award video presentation, read the Bunkum-worthy report and the review, and learn about past Bunkum winners and the National Education Policy Center’s Think Twice Think Tank Review project:

http://nepc.colorado.edu/think-tank/bunkum-awards/2016

About the Think Twice Think Tank Review Project:

Many organizations publish reports they call research – but are they? These reports often are published without having first been reviewed by independent experts – the “peer review” process commonly used for academic research.

Even worse, many think tank reports subordinate research to the goal of making arguments for policies that reflect the ideology of the sponsoring organization.

Yet, while they may provide little or no value as research, advocacy reports can be very effective for a different purpose: they can influence policy because they are often aggressively promoted to the media and policymakers.

To help the public determine which elements of think tank reports are based on sound social science, NEPC’s “Think Twice” Think Tank Review Project has, every year since 2006, asked independent experts to assess strengths and weaknesses of reports published by think tanks.

Few of the think tank reports have been found by experts to be sound and useful; most, however, are found to have little, if any, scientific merit. At the end of each year NEPC editors sift through the reviewed reports to identify the worst offender. We then award the organization publishing that report NEPC’s Bunkum Award for shoddy research.

Find Documents:

Press Release: http://nepc.info/node/8504

NEPC Review: http://nepc.colorado.edu/thinktank/review-CAP-standards

The National Education Policy Center (NEPC) Think Twice Think Tank Review Project (http://thinktankreview.org) provides the public, policymakers, and the press with timely, academically sound reviews of selected publications. The project is made possible in part by support provided by the Great Lakes Center for Education Research and Practice: http://www.greatlakescenter.org

The National Education Policy Center (NEPC), housed at the University of Colorado Boulder School of Education, produces and disseminates high-quality, peer-reviewed research to inform education policy discussions. Visit us at: http://nepc.colorado.edu

Categories Accountability, Common Core, Corporate Reform, Hoax, Research, Testing

Please Help Educate Betsy DeVos!

By dianeravitch
February 24, 2017 //
26

Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos repeats the hackneyed and erroneous claims that American public schools are failing.

She says the Obama ideas (testing, charters, and accountability) have failed, so she wants to impose her own ideas, which sound no diffferent from the failed ideas of the status quo.

American schools could use some support, not another four years of carping and disruption.

I explained in my book “Reign of Error” that the “Failing Schools” narrative is a hoax.

As of 2013, test scores on the federal tests called NAEP were the highest in 40 years of testing. For whites, blacks, Hispanics, and Asians.

The graduation rate was the highest in history, for all groups.

The dropout rate was the lowest ever recorded.

Scores on NAEP went flat from 2013-2015, possibly because of Common Core or because the test-and-punish approach had gone about as far as it could go. The flatline showed the failure of the NCLB-RTTT policies, not the schools.

We have the greatest economy in the world and the most productive workforce. Our public schools built our economy. Stop bashing our public schools, our teachers, and our students!

Please tweet @betsydevos and urge her to read “Reign of Error” or send her a copy.

I will send her an autographed copy.

Her address:

Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos
U.S. Department of Education
400 Maryland Avenue, SW
Washington, DC 20202

Categories Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Corporate Reform, Corporate Reformers, Graduation rates, Privatization, Reign of Error, Testing

DeVos to Conservative Conference: I Will Replace the Bush-Obama Failed Ideas with My Own Failed Ideas

By dianeravitch
February 23, 2017 //
41

Betsy DeVos gave a speech to the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), explaining that the programs created by George W. Bush and Barack Obama had failed, and she would replace them with her own ideas. She did not point out that her own ideas have failed too. Just look at the mess she has made of Michigan, where the state’s rankings on the federal test (NAEP) have plummeted, and where Detroit is a mess thanks to the miasma of school choice.


DeVos argued Thursday that education is failing too many students, pointing to “flatlined” test scores (presumably on the National Assessment of Educational Progress, also called the Nation’s Report Card) and more than 1.3 million youth who drop out of school each year. The Obama administration’s $7 billion investment in overhauling the worst schools, called the School Improvement Grant program, didn’t work, DeVos said, making reference to a study by the administration that found no increase in test scores or graduation rates at schools that got the money.

“They tested their model, and it failed miserably,” she said. She emphasized that she was not indicting teachers.

She has said that she wants to return as much authority over education as possible to states and districts, and intends to identify programs and initiatives to cut at the Education Department. She has also made clear that she intends to use her platform to expand alternatives to public schools, including charter schools, online schools and private schools that students attend with the help of public funds.

“We have a unique window of opportunity to make school choice a reality for millions of families,” she said. “Both the president and I believe that providing an equal opportunity for a quality education is an imperative that all students deserve.”

Her own model of vouchers has not a single success to its name: evaluations of voucher programs in Milwaukee, Cleveland, the District of Columbia, Louisiana, and Indiana have found no gains for the students enrolled in voucher schools. Parents are happier, but that’s not a good reason to destroy public schools.

The overwhelming majority of charter studies have found that charters perform no better than public schools unless they exclude children with disabilities, English language learners, and behavior problems. When the charters kick them out, they go back to the public school, which must take them.

Cybercharters have been proven to be disastrous failures in every state. In Tennessee, the Tennessee Virtual Academy is the lowest performing school in the state. Ohio boasts the cybercharter with the lowest graduation rate in the nation, called Electronic Classroom of Tomorrow.

DeVos does not have a single innovative idea. It is the same old retreads of the privatization movement.

I recommend that she read “Reign of Error: The Hoax of the Privatization Movement and the Danger to America’s Public Schools,” where I patiently demonstrated, using data from the U.S. Department of Education that American students as of 2013 had the highest test scores in our history–for all groups, white, black, Hispanic, and Asian; the highest graduation rates in history; the lowest dropout rates in history.

The scores flatlined from 2013 to 2015, and that may have been because of the application of the Common Core standards and the disruptions foisted upon the schools by Obama and Duncan for the past eight years.

DeVos has proven that she is unqualified to be Secretary of Education. She is not dumb, she is just ignorant. She should do some reading and break free of her ideological contempt for public schools.

Categories Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Charter Schools, Common Core, Corporate Reformers, Detroit, Education Industry, Education Reform, Michigan, Privatization, Testing

When Accountability is Both Unaccountable and Meaningless

By dianeravitch
February 22, 2017 //
20

Blogger Stonepooch.com explains why high-stakes tests do not provide accountability and undermine the very purpose of education. After a bit of digging, I learned that said blogger has been teaching middle school English for 30 years in public and private schools.

Here is an excerpt:

If you don’t count undeserving people in high places or a burgeoning education reform industry of paid tweeters, bloggers and think tank thinkers, high stakes testing, known ironically as accountability, is currently among the most unaccountable of unaccountable things in American education today. It is unaccountable in the very thing that it purports to account for: the measurement and evaluation of learning, teachers and schools. It does none of these things well.

The most obvious reason for this is that staked testing shifts the priority from what will help a child to what will help the adults that teach her. High stakes advocates will argue that a high stake is the best way to insure that adult and child concerns are identical. But, in practice, this turns out to be untrue. A high stake explicitly reduces the child to evidence of adult performance. Students aren’t first; scores are first.

It’s a simple arithmetic. Most skills in the Common Core (or local variant) are untested; a teacher is valued through skills that are tested. Therefore, tested skills are more important than untested skills regardless of their value to the student. A stake advocate may argue (disingenuously) that a good teacher will always prioritize the student’s need, and that may be true… but only if those needs are not in conflict with the goals established for them by the state. That would be silly.. possibly even insubordinate. A lesson that prioritizes untested skills and opportunities is of low priority interest to administrators and a risk for a teacher whose goal must be to prove her value each year. The best advice to is to remove untested content in order to produce better scores. Test advocates will argue… “oh, but there is all that other criteria that counts in teacher evaluation”, but this too is an invalid argument. Regardless of the quality of other measures, the ultimate measure of the school is in its scores. If test scores are high, the teacher has met the criteria that measures the district, school and principal.

If this sounds like a corruption of mission, it is, and there is loads of evidence that a high stake corrupts the mission of schools …whether through carrot and stick incentives which encourage unethical behavior (Washington DC and Atlanta), through the demoralizing impact of indiscriminate goal setting or through the valuing of students by their scores. This last is especially true for those schools that pick, choose and remove students at will. For such schools, a child who is unlikely or unable to meet a given criteria, or who develops or produces later than the mean, is a risk for all the adults working there. In essence, the state has defined every child as an added measure in support of the teacher, the school or the franchise.

Stonepooch goes on to explain that Eva Moskowitz’s Success Academy charter chain is a good example of the meaninglessness of high-stakes testing. Her students get high scores on state scores, but very few have ever won admission to a selective high school. Why? Preparing for one test does not prepare for other tests. The tests don’t measure anything of lasting importance.

Real accountability begins at the top, not the bottom. The people who control the money control policy. If they don’t like the results, they should change their policies or fire themselves. At the very least, they should take the tests they mandate and publish their scores.

Categories Accountability, Testing

My Appearance on the Tavis Smiley Show on PBS

By dianeravitch
February 17, 2017 //
32

Thanks to reader Cathere Blanche King for finding the link to my appearance on the Tavis Smiley show on PBS.

http://www.pbs.org/video/2365959312/

Tavis is a terrific interviewer, very smart, well-informed, and it was a great pleasure to talk to him. We taped the show on February 13, and it was released on February 17.

Categories Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Charter Schools, Privatization, Testing

A Mom in DougCo, Colorado, Asks for Help

By dianeravitch
February 13, 2017 //
18

This letter is an excellent description of the damage that so-called reformers do to good school districts. In this case, it is Douglas County, Colorado. I urge Amy to join the Network for Public Education, which will connect her to others in Colorado who understand the facade of reform that brings a wrecking crew into the district. Carol Burris will reach out to her.

Can you help?

Amy writes:

I’m a mom of two daughters in Highlands Ranch, CO (an affluent south suburb of Denver, which is heavily Republican). My school district (DCSD-Douglas CO School District) has been under siege since our local 2009 elections, when a majority of “Reform” candidates were elected from within our 7 district “boundaries”, and more in 2013. I admit, I voted for most of them, and I’m so sorry. I didn’t understand what the “Reform” movement was, or how it could dismantle an entire thriving and successful district so quickly.

Over the last 4 to 5 years, as I’ve watched the teacher’s union be dissolved, charter schools (from outside CO) invade and fail, and vouchers drain public money away from neighborhood schools. I’ve watched on-site school teachers/administrators who I have great respect and admiration for, either leave (for neighboring districts… they’re actually called “refugees” within the school systems), retire early, become fearful of speaking up, and sink into a slump of morale. I’ve never been a political person, and I’ve traditionally leaned conservative, but the last 4 years, I’ve become active with other parents in our district to stand up against this “reform” DCSD board agenda that has depleted and destabilized our local school system. We’ve gone from once being the top performing district in the state (attracting top educators/teachers), to having the highest teacher turnover in the state, and massive budget shortfalls.

The board’s pet project, creating the new C.I.T.E. teacher evaluation program, is a dismal failure, and has cost us as taxpayers millions. Our district’s legal fees over the last 8 years are staggering, not to mention millions in fines from the CO BOE, for non-compliant decisions of our Reform board directors. Bottom line… our district needs help.

This November’s election will give citizens the opportunity to replace several of the Reform board members, and despite our county being heavily Republican, I feel parent and teacher grass root groups have a chance. But my concern is that SO many residents in our county simply don’t understand the complexity, and direct links between these board members, and harm in our schools. I’ve been a (moderate) registered republican most of my life, but in this area, I’ve become pretty darn “liberal”, based on watching the impacts on my daughter’s schools, and researching “why”.

We are a county/district packed with “families”. Many Denver citizens have/had moved to our suburbs specifically to get into our school district. I BELIEVE, despite resident’s political identification, that this is an issue that can be persuasively won (taken back) in our county. However, during our last few election cycles, lobbyists, money, and out-of-state players seem to flood into our little district. I’ve come to realize Douglas County, CO, is somehow very important to much bigger players. A group called LPR (Leadership Program of the Rockies…

http://www.leadershipprogram.org ) has been a major influence on our district, and I’ve come to feel as though our local citizens are being manipulated by this group. More directly, by its members and graduates (the 4 remaining “reform” board members are all affiliated with LPR.) They and have even appointed/hired other LPR members to positions within the district… (I.e. the F-Time attorney recently hired to work in our school administration). Is it even normal for a previously highly successful school district to have a FT “in-house” attorney as a school district employee?

I’m really just one small person, and there are certainly others also advocating in my district who are much more knowledgeable about everything that has occurred over the last 10 years. I’m reaching out to you, because of what I’ve read about you, your passions, and your impressive educational and professional background. Do you have any insight or advice for how our grassroots citizens (who understand the need to stand up and “do something”) should proceed between now and the crutial elections this November? Specifically…

* what are the best and most effective ways to get our local community “aware” of these issues? (as many people just find the topic boring, and/or assume no matter who is elected, the “district” is bigger than any one board member)
* assuming we get local voters better educated, what practices result in getting them to ACT (I.e. voting; and potentially across their GOP “party” identifications, if only on this ONE local issue)?
* How do we find, solicit, and promote the best potential “anti-reform” school board candidates for this November’s local election? The “Reform” candidates in previous elections have come across as VERY intelligent, highly educated, and very “successful” people with high level jobs… even I incorrectly “assumed” (in prior elections) that these professional smart people (I.e. an attorney, a rocket scientist etc) would make logical good decisions for our kids and schools. Because they had very professional “day jobs”, and kids in our schools, I guess I assumed lobbyists or outside influences wouldn’t have much effect on them. Now I know each received sizable campaign donations from places like the local GOP party, and LPR sources.
* how can we most effectively raise money for our future candidates, to be able to compete against heavily funded “reform” candidates?
* Is it possible to keep these special interest and even “national” entities out of “our” small local elections?
Thank you for the important work you do. And if I don’t hear back from you, know you have inspired “little people” like me about the crutial importance of public education, and why we can’t treat it as a for-profit commodity.

Most Sincerely,

Amy Smith

Highlands Ranch, CO

Citizen and mom in the Douglas CO School District
YouCanReachAmySmith@gmail.com

PS: these are websites involved local parents and teachers have formed over the last few years…
Involved Douglas County teachers and Citizens…
https://www.facebook.com/groups/dc4publicedu/
SPEAK for DCSD…
https://www.facebook.com/SPEAK-for-DCSD-113649758761679/
Douglas County Parents…
https://www.facebook.com/DouglasCountyParents/

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Colorado, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Privatization, Testing

SomeDam Poet: What Children with Special Needs Really Need

By dianeravitch
February 7, 2017 //
18

Do you think that all children should reach the same high standards? If they don’t, is it the teacher’s fault for having low expectations?

“Zero accountofability”

Special needs includes the right
To test on Newton’s laws
Cuz everyone should test in spite —
And simply just because

Categories Accountability, Special Education, Testing

Susan Ochshorn: Listen to the Voices of Teachers of Early Childhood Classes

By dianeravitch
January 30, 2017 //
11

Susan Ochshorn of the ECE Policy Works writes here about the marginalization of those who teach early childhood. Governor Chris Christie defamed them as “babysitters.” No one asked for their expertise when the Common Core standards were written.

In this post, she describes a report released by “Defending the Early Years,” called “Teachers Speak Out.”

“The report highlights the concerns of early childhood teachers about the impact of school reforms on low-income children. Authors Diane E. Levin and Judith L. Van Hoorn culled their data from interviews with 34 educators in California, Florida, Illinois, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New York, Vermont, and Washington, DC.

“The link between socioeconomic status and academic achievement has been firmly established in research. According to the National Center for Children in Poverty, 47 percent of children under six years old lived in low-income families near or below the poverty line in 2014. The level rises to nearly 70 percent for Black and Native-American children and 64 percent for Hispanic youngsters. In a recent survey conducted by the Council of Chief State School Officers—which helped design the Common Core standards—teachers across the United States listed family stress, poverty, and learning and psychological problems as the top barriers to student success.

“Yet the mandates of the Common Core are exacerbating the problem. As Levin and Van Hoorn point out in the report’s introduction, “recent reforms…have been developed and implemented by people with good intentions but often little formal knowledge of early child development.” Those with the expertise now face a “profound ethical dilemma.” As top-down mandates dictate the teaching and assessment of narrow academic skills at younger and younger ages, early childhood educators are forced to do the “least harm,” rather than the “most good.”

“In an exchange at the [DeVos] hearing, between DeVos and Todd Young, a Republican senator from Indiana, she crowed about our “great opportunity…to really empower [teachers] in a new way to do what they do best.” She horrifies educators. They’ve been leaving the field, exhausted and dispirited, in record numbers. Respect for the profession and morale are at an all-time low, as teachers have picked up the slack for a society that starves its schools and communities, and blames them for all its ills. But out of this malaise, a new activism has emerged, with great energy dedicated to defeating her.

“Early childhood teachers—with some notable exceptions—have been missing from the action. The reasons are complex. This is a workforce that has long been marginalized, their work devalued, and expertise ignored….

“​As I read through the report, I kept underlining the quotes from the teachers, as if to amplify them, to lift them off the page. They’re struggling to honor early childhood’s robust evidence base, but they’re undermined by a lack of agency and autonomy:

“The trust in my expertise and judgment as a teacher is gone. So are the play and learning centers in my classroom. Everything is supposed to be structured for a specific lesson and rigidly timed to fit into a specific, tight, preapproved schedule.

“The negative impact of reforms on children’s development and learning can’t be overstated. Practice has become more rote, and standardized, with less time for deep relationships—among children, and between them and caring adults. We’re stealing the heart of high-quality early education, as the individual strengths, interests, and needs of children get lost:

“With this extreme emphasis on what’s called ‘rigorous academics,’ drills are emphasized. It’s much harder for my children to become self-regulated learners. Children have no time to learn to self-regulate by choosing their own activities, participating in ongoing projects with their classmates, or playing creatively. They have to sit longer, but their attention spans are shorter.

“The authors bring us into the classrooms studied by Daphna Bassok, Scott Lathem, and Anna Rorem, of the University of Virginia, who used two large, nationally representative data sets to compare public school kindergarten classrooms between 1998 and 2010. More formal, directed instruction in reading, writing, and math, once the province of first grade, has trickled down into kindergarten. Close reading is becoming part of the expected skill set of 5-year-olds, and the pressure has extended, in some cases, to prekindergarten, where children are being asked to master reading by the end of the year. The repercussions are severe:

“It’s essential for every kindergarten child to feel welcomed and included, to be part of the class. Instead, we’re separating the cream from the milk. From the beginning, we’re telling kids who are poor, ‘You’re deficient,’ instead of helping them become competent and feel successful and part of their class. Then it’s ‘remedial this, remedial that.’ It’s discrimination.

“The report concludes with a series of recommendations—from the real experts in the room. The first calls for the withdrawal of current early childhood standards and mandates. Another urges the use of authentic assessment, based on observations of children, their development, and learning. Number ten addresses child poverty, our national stain:

“Work at all levels of society to reduce, and ultimately end, child poverty. To do this, we must first acknowledge that a narrow focus on improving schools will not solve the complex problems associated with child poverty.

“Breaking the silence was never so sweet. Now it’s time, as John Lewis says, to get in good trouble.”

Categories Accountability, Childhood, Pre-K, K, Common Core, Early Childhood Education, Education Industry, Testing

BATS Meet with Education Staff of Senators Sanders and Hassan

By dianeravitch
January 30, 2017 //
8

Leaders of the Badass Teachers Association met in DC with the education staff of Senator Sanders (VT) and Senator Hassan NH).

They spoke for all of us who care about children and fighting back against privatization and standardization.

Please read the summary of their meeting.

Thank you, BATS!

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