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The Dallas Institute: An Intellectually Exciting Experience for Teachers

By dianeravitch
March 31, 2014 //
9

This wonderful article in the American Educator describes the work of the Dallas Institute of Humanities and Culture, which has been conducting summer seminars for teachers for 30 years.

It opens the story through the eyes of a teacher named Keith Black:

“Instead of being subjected to what he disparagingly calls “PowerPoint drudgery,” Black spent eight hours each day dis- cussing classic works of literature, 17 in all, that he had read the previous three months on his own: Prometheus Bound, Agamem- non, The Libation Bearers, The Eumenides, Antigone, Oedipus the King, Oedipus at Colonus, Peace, Lysistrata, King Lear, Othello, Hamlet, The Tempest, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Blood Wedding, Crime and Punishment, and Beloved.”

The Dallas Institute does not mention the Common Core or testing or rubrics:

“For 30 years, the Dallas Institute has treated teachers as intellectuals. To that end, the nonprofit educational organization, founded by former faculty members at the University of Dallas, offers teachers from all grade levels and all disciplines—not just English—an experience that either reacquaints them with or introduces them to the literature of Western civilization. The classic works studied are taught at the level of a graduate-school course and do not at all resemble typical professional development. Educators who attend this program rise to the challenge of engaging in insightful discussions about these complicated texts. In fact, they hunger to do so.

“Teachers work with human material, and the best way traditionally to gain access to human things is through the humani- ties, which are the foundation of a liberal arts education,” says Claudia Allums, who directs the Summer Institute. But a liberal arts education encompasses more than literature or philosophy or history courses, she says. It’s a particular spirit with which one approaches any discipline. “If a teacher has a broad, strong liberal arts education, then he or she is going to have a broad, strong foundation in human sensibilities. That’s the foundation we believe is important for any teacher’s wisdom.”

“Today, that belief is not widely shared. With the overwhelming focus on testing and measuring, it’s rare to hear words such as “wisdom,” “humanities,” and “human sensibilities” in relation to public education. Occasionally, reports like The Heart of the Matter: The Humanities and Social Sciences for a Vibrant, Competitive, and Secure Nation,2 published last year by the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, will decry the narrowing of the curriculum and call for a renewed emphasis on the liberal arts and their importance. But in the end, often little will be done to act on these ideas, however noble.”

I visited the the Dallas Institute a few years ago and was exhilarated by the spirit that permeates it: love of learning. Learning for the sake of learning, not for a bonus or a prize. This is a very small island of joy in a land where joy has been banned by federal and state authorities. Here there is intellectual freedom, which is endangered in our society by the powerful plutocrats who prize standardization and the ability to check the right box.

How ironic that the Institute flourishes in Texas, where the educational industrial complex was first launched. It is a small but important form of resistance to the status quo, a place where learning lives and thrives.

Categories Curriculum, Resistance, Texas

Texas: Parents Opt Their Child Out of Testing and Test Prep

By dianeravitch
March 24, 2014 //
23

Kyle and Jennifer Massey in Waco, Texas, wrote a respectful letter to their child’s principal explaining why they would not permit him to take the state STAAR tests or to engage in test prep for STAAR testing. As his parents, they care more about their child than the Legislature or Governor Perry or Pearson. They clearly, in this instance, know more than the legislators who are influenced by lobbyists to keep piling on more testing without regard to the best interests of children or our society. They want for their child what “the best and wisest parent ” wants for his own children: a full, rich, creative, liberating education, one that prepares him for life in a democracy, not endless drill and practice for tests that are prepared thousands of miles away, whose sole purpose is to rate their child, his teachers, his principal, and his school.

The Masseys write:

“This letter is to respectfully inform you that our fourth grade child XXXXXX will need to be excused
from all mandated standardized testing (e.g. STAAR test) during the remainder of the school year. This is also
to include classroom activities that are intended as STAAR test preparation, such as practice tests and test-
taking training exercises. As we are morally and ethically opposed to these school activities, we are making this
decision with recognition of our parental rights and obligations under the due process clause of the Fourteenth
Amendment of the United States Constitution and the Texas Education Code (Title 2, Subtitle E, “Students and
Parents, Section 26, “Parental Rights and Responsibilities”).

“We maintain that it is our parental right to choose to opt our children out of school activities that are harmful to
children as stated in the Texas Education Code CHAPTER 26. PARENTAL RIGHTS AND RESPONSIBILITIES
Sec. A26.010.EXEMPTION FROM INSTRUCTION. A parent is entitled to remove the parent’s child
temporarily from a class or other school activity that conflicts with the parent’s religious or moral beliefs if the
parent presents or delivers to the teacher of the parent’s child a written statement authorizing the removal of
the child from the class or other school activity. Please consider this letter to be our written statement of
authorization.

“We want our children to become critical and creative thinkers, not subservient test-takers.
We do not want XXX or his teachers shackled to a faulty testing product such as the STAAR test, or any standardized test for that matter. High-stakes standardized testing is not the education experience we want for our children, and thus we are choosing to opt XXXX out of all STAAR testing activities.

“Public education in this country has been the victim of thirty years’ worth of neoliberal hegemonic attacks in the form of political and
economic policies. These corporate attacks have negatively altered the structures, pedagogical practices, and
intended democratic goals of public education. As we reflect on the intended goals of public schools in a liberal
democracy – to prepare citizens for active civic participation, and indeed for global citizenship, for example –
we believe it is morally wrong to put children through the ordeal of standardized testing which has no benefit to
their personal education or development as citizens.

“The following summarizes some of our reasons for our belief that the practice of high stakes standardized
testing is morally wrong:

“AFFECTS SOCIO-EMOTIONAL WELL-BEING: This system of constant testing seems designed to
produce anxiety and depression. Evidence has accumulated over the last few decades of the
detrimental effect of frequent testing on students’ enjoyment of school, their
willingness to learn, other than for the purpose of passing tests or examinations, and their understanding of the process of
learning. A well-documented direct impact of testing regimes is that they induce test anxiety in young
learners and that perceived low scores negatively affect students’ self-esteem and perceptions of
themselves as learners. Any negative impact on motivation for learning is clearly highly undesirable,
particularly at a time in a young person’s life when the importance of learning to learn and lifelong
learning is widely embraced.

“KILLS CURIOSITY AND LOVE OF LEARNING: High-stakes standardized testing actually limits and
reduces the amount of QUALITY learning experiences. Rather than focusing on a child’s natural curiosity, testing emphasizes (and drills in) isolated facts limiting teacher’s ability to create
environments that stimulate a child’s imagination.

“REDUCES A CHILD’S CAPACITY FOR ATTAINING NEW KNOWLEDGE: If children cannot actively
make connections between different topics of study, they don’t remember what they learn from day to
day. Most standardized tests are still based on the recall of isolated facts and narrow skills.

“REPLACES HIGHER ORDER THINKING WITH SKILL, DRILL AND KILL: Most tests include many
topics that are not important, while many important areas are not included on standardized tests
because they cannot be measured by such tests. Teaching to the test does not produce real and
sustained gains on independent learning measures.

“NARROWS THE CURRICULUM: The loss of a rich curriculum has been documented in research and
in teacher testimony. The use of high-stakes tests is universally found to be associated with teachers
focusing on the content of the tests, administering repeated practice tests, training students in the
answers to specific questions or types of question, and adopting transmission styles of teaching. In
such circumstances teachers make little use of assessment formatively to help the learning process.
High-stakes tests are inevitably designed to be as ‘objective’ as possible, since there is a premium on
reliable marking in the interests of fairness. This has the effect of reducing what is assessed to what
can be readily and reliably marked. Generally this excludes many worthwhile outcomes of education
such as problem-solving and critical thinking.

“REDUCES SOCIALIZATION AS A CENTRAL CORE OF LEARING: The reduction of opportunities to
learn to socialize through and collaborative classroom activities reduces children’s opportunities to
develop healthy social skills. Being seated alone at a desk taking a test all day, or for a significant
portion of the day, isolates children from learning how to develop community-based problem solving
skills they will need as adults.

“WASTES VALUABLE EDUCATIONAL TIME SPENT TAKING TESTS: Texas Public Schools will
spend one of every five days or nearly 20% of the school year conducting tests. According to the
Texas Education Agency, Texas public schools will spend 34 out of the 185 day long year conducting
tests mandated by the state government. This does not include the regular testing in schools such as
six-weeks tests, quizzes, and final exams.

“VIOLATES ALL CHILDRENS’ RIGHTS TO A FREE AND APPROPRIATE EDUCATION: High-stakes
testing leads to under-serving or mis-serving all students, especially the most needy and vulnerable,
thereby violating the principle of ‘do no harm’. For example, students living in poverty, who already lack
critical access to books and free reading, are condemned to test prep instead of having opportunities
to read. Monies desperately needed for vital school resources such as clean drinking water, supplies
and roofs that don’t leak are being spent on testing materials. Texas spends $44 billion per year on
public education, of that $1 billion is spent just on testing days!

“LIMITS THE EDUCATION DECISION-MAKING POWER OF COMMUNITIES: Largely though
standardized testing, neoliberal reforms have transferred the control of schools away from the local
school boards, where control has resided since the founding of public schools, to the state and federal
levels, which create policies about which communities have little input but are mandated to implement.
States and the federal government have managed to gain control in part by adopting a discourse of
civil rights and equity, and by not imposing specific curricula on schools but, instead, leaving it to the
local school districts to implement curricular policies to achieve the test score goals, what can be
described as steering from a distance. In this way, the state and federal governments are able to take
credit for whatever perceived improvements result from their policies, and, conversely, whenever their
policies produce negative results, they can blame someone else, usually teachers. Teachers have
suffered the brunt of the blame since the publication of a Nation at Risk (1983) thirty years ago.
Consequently, the negative portrayal of public school teachers in the USA has demoralized many
educators.”

There is more. Go to the link and read the letter.

Categories Parents, Testing, Texas

Jason Stanford: A Hard Choice in Texas: $100 for a Graphic Calculator or $15 for an App?

By dianeravitch
March 23, 2014 //
5

Jason Stanford is a political journalist in Texas who keeps
a close watch on the nexus between money, politics, and education.
He is especially interested in how lobbyists shape decisions about
where the education money should be spent. In this post,
he sees the usual lobbyists pressing to make more money for their
clients: Forcing schools to buy a graphing calculator for
every single 8th grader in Texas would make Texas Instrument
probably in excess of $1 million at a time the state is failing to
increasing funding to keep up with population growth. And you can
only use a TI graphing calculator to do one thing; schools can use
tablet computers for innumerable purposes. In a state that prides
itself on being miserly with the public purse, you’d think this
would be a no-brainer. Enter Sandy
Kress, a lobbyist for
Pearson (the testing company), for Amplify (Robert
Murdoch’s pre-K tablet company), and, as it turns out,
for Texas
Instruments as well. And initially, Texas Education
Agency commissioner Michael Williams sided with Texas Instruments,
saying that using a tablet could help students cheat on tests.
Using the calculators would prevent that, he claimed. This might be
true if the kids have never heard of YouTube where one can find
numerous tutorials on how to use TI graphing calculators to cheat
on tests…   Read more to see what happened.
Win some, lose some.

Categories Texas

Houston’s Apollo Program Faces Tough Questions

By dianeravitch
February 28, 2014 //
2

With any experimental program, the question is always “is it replicable and affordable?”

If the program works only on a small scale, it may not be replicable or scalable.

In this discussion of Houston’s Apollo program , we learn that the program started with mass firings and intensive tutoring in math. The designer of the program said it might close the achievement gap in three years, but that seems optimistic. Math scores went up, though not as much in following years, but reading scores did not.

Categories Texas

Texas Parents Give Grades to Legislators: “It’s Ugly”

By dianeravitch
February 16, 2014 //
6

“Reformers” love to grade students, educators, and schools.

Parent-led Texas Kids Can’t Wait has turned the tables. It here gives grades to the state’s legislators. Parent groups should do the same everywhere else.

Newsletter

I didn’t want you to miss seeing this great blog by Kim Burkett:

IT’S REPORT CARD DAY FOR TEXAS LEGISLATORS … AND IT’S UGLY
February 13, 2014
By Kim Burkett, PTA Mom

Like many states, Texas loves grading its education system. The state has spent years slapping labels on public schools for standardized test results. We’ve labeled schools everything from “unacceptable” to “exemplary,” and next year we’ll even have a new A-F rating system used to brand our schools. Today, Texas Kids Can’t Wait turned the tables and labeled Texas’ state legislators by grading their support of public education in their first bi-annual legislative report card.

Texas Kids Can’t Wait is a statewide public education advocacy group founded by Democrats and Republicans to encourage equity, excellence, and adequacy for Texas’ students. The grassroots group works to educate citizens about challenges facing their schools and encourages legislative action to strengthen public education in Texas. After generations of school funding lawsuits, more than a decade of over-testing, and subversive attempts to undermine public schools through privatization efforts, Texas Kids Can’t Wait recognizes that Texas’ children don’t have the time to wait for legislators to find the political courage and will to finally do right by their schools. You can find more information about Texas Kids Can’t Wait here http://www.texaskidscantwait.org.

Using the same labels once used to grade public schools, (exemplary, recognized, acceptable, and unacceptable) the report card examines votes on 22 key bills from the last legislative session to identify each legislator’s support of public education issues. A team of researchers at the University of Mary Hardin-Baylor evaluated voting records related to funding, privatization, various school voucher schemes, accountability and assessment, charter school expansion, and other education issues.

And the results? Let’s just say some of your elected representatives need to spend some time in summer school. According to Dr. Bonnie Lesley, co-founder of Texas Kids Can’t Wait, “What we saw in all these bills was a strong attack by about one-third of the legislators in the House and about one-fourth of the Senate on the vast majority of Texas’s five million public school students, on local control, on local school boards and educators, and on the whole concept of the common good.”

Here are some breakdowns of the ratings:
Unacceptable ratings were earned by 34% of House Representatives and 23% of Senators.
Positive ratings of Exemplary and Recognized were earned by 28% of House Representatives and 32% of Senators.
Senator Dan Patrick, Chair of the Senate Education Committee and current candidate for Lieutenant Governor, received the lowest ranking of any legislator in either chamber.
The strongest ranking in either chamber was earned by Senator Jose Rodriguez.
Representative Jimmie Don Aycock and Speaker Joe Straus received accolades for strong leadership in support of public education in the 83rd session.
How did your elected representative do? See the chart at the end of this blog.
So, what can you do with this data?
If you’re unhappy with your representative’s grade, ask them to explain why they didn’t make public education a priority last session. Encourage them to support public education issues in the future. You can find your state representative here.
If your representative’s grade doesn’t indicate a strong record for public education, re-consider your support or vote.
Seek and support pro-public education legislators. Thank them for their commitment to our schools.
Let legislators know that public education issues drive your voting decisions. (Education is one of the top issues facing the state according to polling data of Texans.)
Learn and share the names of the legislators who earned Unacceptable ratings. These are the politicians that seek to undermine public schools as demonstrated by their abysmal voting records. Let them know you will fight their attacks on the public education system that serves five million Texas children and employs 400,000 Texas teachers.
Be vocal in support of public education issues and legislation.
Above all – VOTE! Don’t miss a primary or general election. Texas’ students are counting on you.
There was a time, not so long ago, when it was expected that elected officials would support education. It was viewed as an important commitment to our future; vital to economic development. But times have changed, and today many for-profit and special interests have sought to undermine public education through a variety of legislative attacks. The outcome of those efforts is evident in this report card.

That’s why it has never been more critical to carefully evaluate legislators to ensure those who earn your vote will represent the interests of our children, our schools, and our teachers. Legislators without the foresight to see the disastrous impact a struggling public education system will have on Texas’ long-term economic future are not serving Texas’ interests. Legislators who ignore chronic over-testing and under-funding are not worthy of your support. It’s high time they’re sent home with a clear message that Texans demand better.
It’s time to support an education system worthy of a state like Texas. And it’s time to elect legislators committed to delivering it.

Texas Kids Can’t Wait Bi-Annual Legislative Report Card

House of Representatives – 83rd Legislative Session

Representatives are listed alphabetically.

For a listing based on ratings within each category as well as an understanding of the methodology used, please visit here.

http://www.texaskidscantwait.org/media-center

Exemplary

(7 of 150 representatives)

Collier, Nicole (District 95)
Farias, Joe (District 118)
Herrero, Abel (District 34)
Martinez Fischer, Trey (District 116)
Munoz, Jr., Sergio (District 36)
Pitts, Jim (District 10)
Reynolds, Ron (District 27)

Recognized

(35 of 150 representatives)

Allen, Alma (District 131)
Alonzo, Roberto (District 104)
Ashby, Trent (District 57)
Aycock, Jimmie Don (District 54)
Burnam, Lon (District 90)
Callegari, Bill (District 132)
Canales, Terry (District 40)
Cortez, Philip (District 117)
Dukes, Dawnna (District 46)
Farrar, Jessica (District 148)
Giddings, Helen (District 109)
Gonzalez, Mary (District 75)
Gutierrez, Roland (District 119)
Howard, Donna (District 48)
Huberty, Dan (District 127)
Longoria, Oscar (District 35)
Martinez, Armando (District 39)
McClendon, Ruth Jones (District 120)
Miles, Borris (District 146)
Moody, Joe (District 78)
Nevarez, Poncho (District 74)
Oliveira, Rene (District 37)
Patrick, Diane (District 94)
Perez, Mary Ann (District 144)
Phillips, Larry (District 62)
Price, Four (District 87)
Rodriguez, Eddie (District 51)
Rodriguez, Justin (District 125)
Rose, Toni (District 110)
Sheffield, J. D. (District 59)
Straus, Joe (District 121, Speaker)
Thompson, Senfronia (District 141)
Turner, Sylvester (District 129)
Vo, Hubert (District 149)
Walle, Armando (District 140)

Acceptable

(57 of 150 representatives)

Alvarado, Carol (District 145)
Anderson, Charles (District 56)
Bonnen, Dennis (District 25)
Coleman, Garnet (District 147)
Cook, Byron (District 8)
Crownover, Myra (District 64)
Darby, Drew (District 72)
Davis, Sarah (District 124)
Davis, Yvonne (District 111)
Deshotel, Joe (District 22)
Dutton, Jr., Harold (District 142)
Eiland, Craig (District 23)
Farney, Marsha (District 20)
Frullo, John (District 84)
Geren, Charlie (District 99)
Gonzales, Larry (District 52)
Gonzalez, Naomi (District 76)
Guerra, Bobby (District 41)
Guillen, Ryan (District 31)
Harless, Patricia (District 126)
Hernandez, Ana (District 143)
Hunter, Todd (District 32)
Johnson, Eric (District 100)
Kacal, Kyle (District 12)
Keffer, James (District 60)
King, Ken (District 88)
King, Susan (District 71)
King, Tracy (District 80)
Kleinschmidt, Tim (District 17)
Kuempel, John (District 44)
Larson, Lyle (District 122)
Lewis, Tryon (District 81)
Lozano, J. M. (District 43)
Marquez, Marisa (District 77)
Menendez, Jose (District 124)
Miller, Doug (District 73)
Murphy, Jim (District 133)
Naishtat, Elliott (District 49)
Orr, Rob (District 58)
Otto, John (District 18)
Paddie, Chris (District 9)
Perry, Charles (District 83)
Pickett, Joe (District 79)
Raney, John (District 14)
Ratliff, Bennett (District 115)
Raymond, Richard (District 42)
Sheffield, Ralph (District 55)
Smith, Wayne (District 128)
Stephenson, Phil (District 85)
Strama, Mark (District 50)
Turner, Chris (District 101)
Villalba, Jason (District 114)
Villarreal, Mike (District 123)
White, James (District 19)
Workman, Paul (District 47)
Wu, Gene (District 137)
Zerwas, John (District 28)

Unacceptable

(51 of 150 representatives)

Anchia, Rafael (District 103)
Bell, Cecil(District 3)
Bohac, Dwayne (District 138)
Bonnen, Greg (District 24)
Branch, Dan (District 108)
Burkett, Cindy (District 113)
Button, Angie Chen (District 112)
Capriglione, Giovanni (District 98)
Carter, Stefani (District 102)
Clardy, Travis (District 11)
Craddick, Tom (District 82)
Creighton, Brandon (District 16)
Dale, Tony (District 136)
Davis, John E. (District 129)
Elkins, Gary (District 135)
Fallon, Pat (District 106)
Fletcher, Allen (District 130)
Flynn, Dan (District 2)
Frank, James (District 69)
Goldman, Craig (District 97)
Gooden, Lance (District 4)
Harper-Brown, Linda (District 105)
Hilderbran, Harvey (District 53)
Hughes, Bryan (District 5)
Issac, Jason (District 45)
King, Phil (District 61)
Klick, Stephanie (District 91)
Kolkhorst, Lois (District 13)
Krause, Matt (District 93)
Laubenberg, Jodie (District 89)
Lavender, George (District 1)
Leach, Jeff (District 67)
Lucio III, Eddie (District 38)
Miller, Rick (District 26)
Morrison, Geanie W. (District 30)
Parker, Tan (District 63)
Riddle, Debbie (District 150)
Ritter, Allan (District 21)
Sanford, Scott (District 70)
Schaefer, Matt (District 6)
Sheets, Kenneth (District 107)
Simmons, Ron (District 65)
Simpson, David (District 7)
Smithee, John (District 86)
Springer, Drew (District 68)
Stickland, Jonathan (District 92)
Taylor, Van (District 66)
Thompson, Ed (District 29)
Toth, Steve (District 15)
Turner, Scott (District 33)
Zedler, Bill (District 96)

Senate – 83rd Legislative Session

Senators are listed alphabetically.

Exemplary

Garcia, Sylvia (District 6)
Rodriguez, Jose (District 29)

Recognized

(9 of 31 senators)

Deuell, Bob (District 2)
Davis, Wendy (District 10)
Ellis, Rodney (District 13)
Nichols, Robert (District 3)
Seliger, Kel (District 31)
Uresti, Carlos (District 19)
Watson, Kirk (District 14)
Williams, Tommy (District 4)
Zaffirini, Judith (District 21)

Acceptable

(13 of 31 senators) Carona, John (District 16)
Duncan, Robert (District 28)
Eltife, Kevin (District 1)
Estes, Craig (District 30)
Fraser, Tony (District 24)
Hancock, Kelly (District 9)
Hinojosa, Juan “Chuy” (District 20)
Huffman, Joan (District 17)
Lucio, Eddie (District 27)
Nelson, Jane (District 12)
Schwertner, Charles (District 5)
Van de Putte, Leticia (District 26)
Whitmire, John (District 15)

Unacceptable

(7of 31 senators) Birdwell, Brian (District 22)
Campbell, Donna (District 25)
Hegar, Glenn (District 18)
Paxton, Ken (District 8)
Patrick, Dan (District 7)
Taylor, Larry (District 11)
West, Royce (District 23)
Dewhurst, David (Lt. Governor)

Equity, Adequacy, Excellence

Learn more about Texas Kids Can’t Wait and how to become involved at http://www.texaskidscantwait.org.

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Categories Texas

TAMSA: The Hero Moms of Texas

By dianeravitch
February 12, 2014 //
31

The heroes of the movement to reduce standardized testing in Texas is a group called TAMSA. The unwieldy title is Texans Advocating for Meaningful Student Assessment. They are better known as Moms Ahainst Drunk Testing.

They realized that Pearson had a lock on the Texas legislature as that body passed more and more testing requirements. The legislature cut $5 Billion from the schools’ budget yet managed to find nearly $500 million for a contract with Pearson. Give credit where it is due: Pearson hired Sandy Kress, architect of NCLB, as its lobbyist. Kress sends his own children to a wonderful school that does NOT give standardized tests.

So, I hereby honor the Moms of Texas, who beat Pearson.

Here is a letter about their activities:

“TAMSA deserves the credit for HB5 that reduced end of course testing by Pearson from 15 tests to 5.

Students in grades 3-8 take 17 of Pearson’s tests.

The TAMSA slideshow provides important facts about how the Pearson lobbyists were unmasked by the moms.

http://www.tamsatx.org

http://res.dallasnews.com/interactives/2013_December/texan-of-the-year/tamsa/”

Categories Resistance, Testing, Texas

KIPP Pulls Out of Two Campuses in Galveston

By dianeravitch
February 5, 2014 //
19

Schools in Texas have been forced to absorb huge budget cuts in recent years.

One casualty was the two KIPP schools in Galveston, Texas, which could not afford to continue. They will close.

“Galveston ISD paid KIPP $5.5 million this year – about $1.5 million more than it would have spent on those students in district-run schools….

KIPP, which operates 141 campuses that serve 50,000 students nationally, has closed or returned schools to local districts eight times nationally, but this is the first time it is to happen in Texas, where KIPP started 20 years ago….

“The Costal Village elementary and middle schools opened in the months following Hurricane Ike in 2008 to help draw families back to the island. After the contract was negotiated, the 6,800-student Galveston ISD lost $7.4 million in state funding for the biennium in 2011. About $1.7 million was restored by the Legislature last year, Nichols said.

“The original agreement was no longer workable after GISD had to live with quite a bit less money,” the superintendent said.

“KIPP leaders said they couldn’t maintain their model, which includes a longer school day and year, for less money. The charter chain spends about $6,200 per student in Galveston, compared to Galveson ISD’s $4,623. And KIPP’s costs were higher earlier in the contract, officials said.”

Categories Budget Cuts, KIPP Charter Schools, Texas

A Fellow Texan Reviews “Reign of Error”

By dianeravitch
January 24, 2014 //
10

John Savage, a freelance journalist and former teacher, reviewed “Reign of Error” in the “Texas Observer.”

I liked the review for many reasons.

First, because Savage liked the book. That pleases every author.

Second, because the first article I ever published appeared in the “Texas Observer,” a gritty liberal journal that covers Texas politics. The article was called “My Ghetto and Yours,” and it was about growing up Jewish in Houston. It appeared, I think, in 1961. I think I was lamenting how little I knew of the big world outside Houston. I haven’t read it since 1961, so I can’t be certain what I wrote but I feel pretty sure I launched my writing career by stepping on toes. I think that it would be called “juvenalia” if it ever appeared in a collection.

Categories Corporate Reformers, KIPP Charter Schools, NCLB (No Child Left Behind), Reign of Error, Testing, Texas

Texas Charter Chain Teaches Creationism

By dianeravitch
January 17, 2014 //
29

Zack Koppelin is a college student in Texas who grew up in Louisiana. He is determined to expose the publicly-funded schools that teach creationism. As a high school student, he drew attention to voucher schools teaching religious dogma as science. Now in Texas, he finds creationism taught in the state’s biggest charter chain:

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

January 16, 2014
Contact: Zack Kopplin
(225)-715-5946
Zsk1@Rice.edu

Texas’ Largest Charter District is Teaching Creationism

Houston, Texas — Is the Fossil Record “sketchy?” Is evolution “dogma?” Do leading scientists doubt the age of the Earth?

At Responsive Education Solutions’ charter schools, a public Texas Charter “Super-Network” with 17,000 students and over 65 schools, students are learning creationism and false history.

Responsive Ed is the largest charter network in the State of Texas and it receives $82 million in public money, annually.

Science activist Zack Kopplin, who investigated the program, said, “This creationist charter program represents an attack on science, an attack on the First Amendment, and is an insidious threat to the charter movement itself.”

Kopplin also said, “Responsive Ed’s creationist curriculum presents a moment of truth for the Charter movement; will charter proponents demand the closure of schools that teach this creationist rot? Responsive Ed has crossed a line and charter authorizers should immediately revoke Responsive Ed’s charters for academic malpractice.”

Read more about Responsive Ed’s creationist curriculum at Slate.com:

http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/2014/01/creationism_in_texas_public_schools_undermining_the_charter_movement.html

###

Categories Charter Schools, Religion, Texas

Private Firms=No Accountability

By dianeravitch
January 12, 2014 //
22

Morgan Smith of the Texas Tribune (published in thr New York Times) wrote about the secrecy that surrounds the finances of private corporations that manage schools and claim to be “public.”

They are “public” when it is time to get the money but their finances are private when asked to account for taxpayer money.

Basis, an Arizona charter chain, submitted an application to open a charter in San Antonio and this is what happened:

“On a recently approved Texas charter school application, blacked-out paragraphs appear on almost 100 of its 393 pages.

“Redactions on the publicly available online version of the application often extend for pages at a time. They include sections on the school’s plan to support students’ academic success, its extracurricular activities and the “extent to which any private entity, including any management company” will be involved in the school’s operation. The “shaded material,” according to footnotes, is confidential proprietary or financial information.”

Smith writes:

“In Texas, commercial entities cannot run public schools. But when a school’s management — including accounting, marketing and hiring decisions — is contracted out to a private company, the distinction can become artificial. Such an arrangement raises questions about how to ensure financial accountability when the boundary between public and private is blurred, and the rules of public disclosure governing expenditures of taxpayer money do not apply.”

Some of the most secretive companies run virtual schools, paid for with public money:

“When The Texas Tribune made an open-records request for employee salary records and marketing expenses at the state’s full-time virtual schools, it received responses from all but one of those connected with for-profit entities indicating either that the records were not available or were not subject to public information laws.

“The Huntsville Independent School District, which went into partnership with K12 Inc. to open a virtual academy this year, said the district did not have documents responding to the request at the virtual campus as “it contracts with a private company to handle all employment of personnel and staffing-related data.”

“In other instances, The Tribune was directed to make a request to the private company. A lawyer for Responsive Ed Solutions, a charter school that also contracts with K12 Inc., wrote that most employees of its virtual school were hired by the company and provided the email address of a K12 lawyer. A K12 Inc. spokesman then told The Tribune that “confidential information about K12’s employees” could not be disclosed.”

Categories Charter Schools, Education Industry, For-Profit, K12 Inc., Privatization, Texas
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