Archives for category: U.S. Department of Education
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Trump’s Draconian Budget Cuts: A Win for the Military, a Loss for Civil Society

By dianeravitch
March 16, 2017 //
85

Thanks for Jim Harvey of the National Superintendents Roundtable for this breakout of Trump’s budget cuts:

On Thursday, March 16, the Trump administration released a preliminary budget plan for Fiscal 2018 that proposed huge increases in defense-related spending and corresponding cuts in domestic programs, including education. According to stories in The Washington Post, the budgetary impact across government agencies and the U.S. Department of Education includes the following:
Agency

Change from Fiscal 2017

THE LOSERS:

Corporation for Public Broadcasting
– 100%

National Endowment for the Arts
– 100%

National Endowment for the Humanities
– 100%

Environmental Protection Agency
– 31%

State Dept. and USAID
– 29%

National Institutes of Health
– 20%

Department of Education
– 13%

Transportation
– 13%

National Science Foundation
– 10%

THE WINNERS:

Department of Defense
+ 10%

Homeland Security
+ 7%

Veterans’ Affairs
+ 6%

With regard to the U.S. Department of Education, proposed cuts amount to $9.2 billion, according to the Post. Significant programs are on the chopping block, while funds are added to promote the administration’s school choice agenda:

Program Change from 2017

Grants to states for teacher training
– $2.4 billion

Grants to colleges for teacher preparation
– $43 million

Impact Aid
– $66 million

Special Education
No Change

College Work-Study
Reduce “significantly”

Upward Bound & Related TRIO Programs
– $200 million

SEOG program for low-income college students
– $732 million

Pell Grants
No Change

Pell Reserves
– $3.9 billion

School Choice, made up of:

+ $1.4 billion

Title I Portability
+ $1 billion

Charter Schools
+ $168 million

Private school choice
+ $250 million

Categories Betsy DeVos, Budget Cuts, School Choice, Trump, U.S. Department of Education, Vouchers

Leonie Haimson: Dropping the ESSA regulations is No Big Deal

By dianeravitch
March 13, 2017 //
10

Leonie Haimson explains here the significance–or lack thereof–of the Senate’s decision to kill former Secretary of Education John King’s highly prescriptive regulations to implement the 2015 federal law called Every Student Succeeds Act.

There were some who reacted with joy to see the King regs killed. King was known for his love of high-stakes testing.

Others worried whether the death of the regs meant that the states would be free to ignore the neediest kids because of the withdrawal of federal oversight.

I worked in the U.S. Department of Education for two years. What I learned is there are very few educators who work for ED.

The Feds have two important roles:

1. Supplying extra money for equity purposes

2. Protecting the civil rights of children

The federal government has zero capacity to direct or measure academic quality.

The people who work in the Department of Education are clerks, not educators.

THE ED has no capacity whatever to assure or ascertain quality of education. Very few people who work there have a view about what education is or should be. That is not their job. Most have worked for ED for many years, regardless of which party is in power. They do not express their views. They do their job. They write checks, collect data, review contracts. They can tell you how many students are served in which programs. They can determine how much money is allocated and spent. The Department consists of clerks and bureaucrats. I was there. Nothing has changed. Educators are in schools, not at the U.S. Department of Education.

Categories Accountability, Civil Rights, Education Reform, Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), Funding, Testing, U.S. Department of Education

Laura Chapman: HR 610 and Manufactured Chaos

By dianeravitch
March 12, 2017 //
33

The House Republicans have cooked up a bill to empower states with unencumbered control over federal funds. It is called HR 610. In DC, they refer to the principle of the bill as”block grants.” Otherwise known as send the money without strings so the states can do what they want. An earlier post by Denis Smith explained that federal funds without oversight leads to waste, fraud, and abuse.

Laura Chapman explains more here:

“HR 610 has the Arne Duncan trick of requiring a change in state law if vouchers are not on the books. So the new national system must be voucher-compliant or no federal funds will be available. Federal funds to states are in the range of 8% to 12%, average about 10%. Given that many states have already cut their state budgets for education, and most are in Republican hands, this law is likely to pass. Notice that the same bill invites a lot of junk food contractors to get in the game of providing food to all children.

“Some key passages in the bill.

“From these amounts, each LEA shall: (1) distribute a portion of funds to parents who elect to enroll their child in a private school or to home-school their child, and (2) do so in a manner that ensures that such payments will be used for appropriate educational expenses.

“To be eligible to receive a block grant, a state must: (1) comply with education voucher program requirements, and (2) make it lawful for parents of an eligible child to elect to enroll their child in any public or private elementary or secondary school in the state or to home-school their child.”

“This is part of the same bill.

“No Hungry Kids Act

“The bill repeals a specified rule that established certain nutrition standards for the national school lunch and breakfast programs. (In general, the rule requires schools to increase the availability of fruits, vegetables, whole grains, and low-fat or fat free milk in school meals; reduce the levels of sodium, saturated fat, and trans fat in school meals; and meet children’s nutritional needs within their caloric requirements.)”

“Notice that money goes to states, then to local districts where the administrative burden for distributing money is located with no state oversight or consideration of how districts can make sure that payments to parents “will be used for appropriate educational expenses.” Follow them to Walmart? to Target? to Staples? This is a ridiculous bill. It is legislation from Republicans who want to create chaos.”

Categories Funding, U.S. Department of Education

The Republicans in Senate Did Something Right!

By dianeravitch
March 9, 2017 //
31

Give credit where credit is due: Even though the Republican majority in the Senate seems eager to privatize public schools, for fun and credit and to satisfy their inner Ayn Rand, they did something right: they eliminated former Secretary of Education John King’s regulations to measure the effectiveness of teacher education. King wanted to judge teacher education institutions by student test scores. It was likely if not inevitable that teachers who went to affluent districts would get better results than those who taught in the neediest schools.

Teacher educators lambasted King’s effort to micromanage teacher education and warned that his demands would drive teachers away from high-needs schools.

This is one example where deregulation was necessary and didn’t make matters worse.

The Senate also voted to roll back an Obama administration rule to “hold schools accountable,” which passed by only 50-49, over vociferous Democratic opposition. Frankly, I don’t know which rule this is. If it was the Obama-Duncan-King test-based accountability, then I think its repeal or elimination is a step forward. As we saw again and again over the past eight years, the Obama Department of Education had an obsessive devotion to test-based accountability that harmed students, teachers, and schools. If this is what the Senate knocked down, count me in. Even the znational Academy of Sciences issued a report critical of test-based accountability, but Duncan was as smitten with standardized testing as DeVos is smitten with vouchers.

Categories Accountability, John King, Teacher Education, Teacher Evaluations, Testing, U.S. Department of Education

NPE Action Reports on Fight Against School Privatization

By dianeravitch
March 9, 2017 //
20

NPE Action exists to fight school privatization and to demand better resourced, more equitable schools.

Here is the latest news on the privatization front.


Good News! House Bill HR 610, the School Choice Act, Appears to Have Stalled

HR 610 was written to eliminate the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965, which was passed as a part of Lyndon B. Johnson’s “War on Poverty,” and to create block grants to “distribute a portion of funds to parents who elect to enroll their child in a private school or to home-school their child.” It would also lower nutritional standards for free or reduced priced lunches.

Thanks to your efforts, the Network for Public Education generated over 32,000 emails to members of the U.S. House of Representatives in opposition to this bill. That is a job well done, members!

Be our Eyes and Ears in Your State

Voucher bills and bills that expand charter schools are popping up in nearly every state. When we learn of such bills, we create an action alert that produces a barrage of emails to lawmakers. We need your help in keeping us up to date.

Become a member of our state alert system. If you know of a bill in your state that would promote vouchers, so-called education savings accounts, or tax credit funded “scholarships” to private schools, let us know using the form below. If there is a bill that would expand charter schools or reduce their governing regulations, tell us.

You can find the sign-up form here. Please be sure to save it in your favorites for easy access.

We will then investigate the bill and help mobilize activists in your state.

NPE Action Welcomes Tina Andres to its Board of Directors

Tina Andres has been a public school teacher for 30 years in Santa Ana, California. She has taught elementary special education classes and middle school mathematics for 25 years. She has served as a math curriculum specialist, and mentored over 50 student teachers from public universities throughout her career. Tina is married with two children who attend Santa Ana schools. She is an active member of NEA and CTA and serves on the State Council. Tina is also a member of the BATs Board of Directors. She is a proud advocate for public schools. We welcome Tina to our NPE Action Board.

Are you a School Board Member? It’s Time to Organize!

NPE Action is creating a nationwide Grassroots School Board Members Network. If you are a member of a board of education, please sign up to join​.

https://npeaction.org/2017/03/03/7286/

This new grassroots group will provide a means by which you can share resolutions, actions, and communicate with like-minded board members who are intent on supporting and preserving public education.

We believe that School Boards are vital for democratically goverend public schools, and we want to fight with you to make sure that the public understands their importance. We will also provide resources and information.

There is no cost to you–our only motivation is to help you find like-minded board members with whom you can communicate in this important struggle to save our public schools from privatization.

If you would like to join, please fill out our short form that you can find here. If you are not a school board member, please share the form with a school board member.

https://npeaction.org/2017/03/03/7286/

Categories Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Networkfor Public Education Action Fund, Privatization, U.S. Department of Education, U.S. education, Vouchers

Gene V. Glass: The Department of Education’s “Gold Standard” Produces “Fool’s Gold”

By dianeravitch
February 21, 2017 //
13

Gene V. Glass is one of our nation’s most distinguished education researchers.

This post is an important analysis of the failure of the U.S. Department of Education’s Institute of Education Sciences, which was reorganized during the George W. Bush administration.

As a new administration moves into the US Department of Education, the opportunity arises to review and assess the Department’s past practices. A recent publication goes to the heart of how US DOE has been attempting to influence public education. Unfortunately, in an effort to justify millions of dollars spent on research and development, bureaucrats pushed a favorite instructional program that teachers flatly rejected.

The Gold Standard

There is a widespread belief that the best way to improve education is to get practitioners to adopt practices that “scientific” methods have proven to be effective. These increasingly sophisticated methods are required by top research journals and for federal government improvement initiatives such as Investing in Innovation (i3) Initiative to fund further research or dissemination efforts. The US DOE established the What Works Clearinghouse (WWC) to identify the scientific gold-standards and apply them to certify for practitioners which programs “work.” The Fed’s “gold standard” is the Randomized Comparative Trial (RCT). In addition, there have been periodic implementations of US DOE policies that require practitioners to use government funds only for practices that the US DOE has certified to be effective.

However, an important new article published by Education Policy Analysis Archives, concludes that these gold-standard methods misrepresent the actual effectiveness of interventions and thereby mislead practitioners by advocating or requiring their use. The article is entitled “The Failure of the U.S. Education Research Establishment to Identify Effective Practices: Beware Effective Practices Policies.”

The Fool’s Gold

Earlier published work by the author, Professor Stanley Pogrow of San Francisco State University, found that the most research validated program, Success for All, was not actually effective. Quite the contrary! Pogrow goes further and analyzes why these gold-standard methods can not be relied on to guide educators to more effective practice.

Researchers have told us that we need “randomized comparative trials” to reach “research-based conclusions.”

In fact, says Glass and the article he cites, this is not what happens. And the results of these trials turn out to be easily manipulated and falsified.

He writes:

Key problems with the Randomized Comparative Trial include (1) the RCT almost never tells you how the experimental students actually performed, (2) that the difference between groups that researchers use to consider a program to be effective is typically so small that it is “difficult to detect” in the real world, and (3) statistically manipulating the data to the point that the numbers that are being compared are mathematical abstractions that have no real world meaning—and then trying to make them intelligible with hypothetical extrapolations such the difference favoring the experimental students is the equivalent of increasing results from the 50th to the 58th percentile, or an additional month of learning. The problem is that we do not know if the experimental students actually scored at the 58th or 28th percentile. So in the end, we end up not knowing how students in the intervention actually performed, and any benefits that are found are highly exaggerated.

The sad part of the story is that we now have a new administration that is both ignorant of research and indifferent to it. DeVos has seen the failure of school choice in her own state, which has plummeted in the national rankings since 2003, and it has had no impact on her ideology. Ideology is not subject to testing or research. It is a deep-seated belief system that cannot be dislodged by evidence.

Categories Betsy DeVos, Data, Research, U.S. Department of Education

The Nation: How Activists in Alaska Turned Senator Murkowski Around

By dianeravitch
February 2, 2017 //
12

This is a heartening story in The Nation about the effective activism of Alaskans, who persuaded Senator Lisa Murkowski to oppose DeVos.

They bombarded her with calls, emails, etc.

The question for Senator Murkowski and Senator Collins–who say they will vote against DeVos on the Senate floor–is why they didn’t vote against her in committee. If her nomination had been voted down in committee, it would never have reached the Senate as a whole. She was endorsed by the HELP committee by vote of 12-11. If only one of them had voted no, DeVos would now be history.

But they cannily approved her in committee, then announced they would vote no when their vote no longer was pivotal.

If every Republican votes for DeVos except for these two, the Senate will have a tie, 50-50. Mike Pence will then cast the tiebreaker and DeVos will be confirmed.

DeVos will become the first candidate for a Cabinet position in history to be endorsed by a tie-breaking vote by the Vice President.

I am not ready to offer any awards to Murkowski or Collins. Either one of them could have put an end to her candidacy in committee, and they didn’t. These are not profiles in courage.

Categories Alaska, Betsy DeVos, Republicans, U.S. Department of Education

Network for Public Education Vows to Carry Fight Against DeVos to Senate Floor!

By dianeravitch
January 31, 2017 //
23

The Network for Public Educations vows to carry the fight for a qualified Secretary of Education to the Senate floor.

We now have more than 300,000 members, located in every state.

We will fight for a Secretary of Education who will uphold the laws, support the right to an education for all children, and strengthen our public schools.

http://networkforpubliceducation.org/2017/01/devos-nomination-moves-senate-npes-300000-will-continue-fight/

NPE just released this statement:

Although disappointed by the decision of the HELP committee to send the vote on Betsy DeVos to the Senate floor, The Network for Public Education (NPE) was pleased by the strong opposition to DeVos. All Democrats voted against DeVos. Senators Collins of Maine and Murkowski of Alaska while voting to move her nomination forward, would not commit to voting for her when the vote comes to the full Senate.

“Betsy DeVos put a spotlight on the threat to public education that charters-both online and brick and mortar, and private voucher schools pose to our democratically governed, community public schools. Public school advocates across the nation spoke out. Our campaign against DeVos generated over 600,000 emails and thousands of phone calls and letters to the Senate. Most Americans do not want an unregulated, privatized school system paid for by American taxpayers. That is what DeVos represents,” said NPE Executive Director, Carol Burris.

NPE President, Diane Ravitch, believes the massive political donations by DeVos was the driving factor behind her appointment. “We are disappointed but not surprised that Betsy DeVos was approved by the Senate HELP committee, despite the fact that she is completely unqualified for the job by experience or knowledge or any other criteria. As she has acknowledged, she and her family have given millions of dollars to the Republican party, including to members of the committee that just approved her. We weep for the children of America, knowing that this woman will launch an assault on their community public schools, as she did in Michigan. Since her choice theology was implemented in Michigan, that state’s rankings on national tests have plummeted, and Detroit–now flooded with charters–remains the lowest performing urban district on national tests. We will continue to fight this nomination as it moves forward.“

NPE Executive Board member, Phyllis Bush, lives in Indiana, a state the embraces the DeVos philosophy. “While the members of the HELP committee can talk about the importance of using a business model to reform public schools, the ultimate cost to Indiana is landing on the backs of students. Privatization reform has resulted in larger class sizes, tests that provide little useful information, school letter grades that reward zip codes, the elimination of essential services in public schools, and a critical teacher shortage.”

The Network for Public Education intends to mobilize its over 300,000 supporting members to continue the fight against DeVos’ appointment.

“When it comes to our fight for adequately funded, democratically-governed public schools, we make ‘no excuses’.” Our neighborhood schools made our country great. We will not allow them to be destroyed,” Burris said.

Categories Betsy DeVos, Education Reform, Network for Public Education, Networkfor Public Education Action Fund, Supporting public schools, U.S. Department of Education

Teacher at a Rally in DC Asks a Good Question

By dianeravitch
January 30, 2017 //
21

I found this picture on the Twitter feed of the Alt_DeptofED:

https://mobile.twitter.com/Alt_DeptofED/status/825746591344631808/photo/1

“If I have to be highly qualified to serve my students, why doesn’t DeVos?”

Categories Betsy DeVos, U.S. Department of Education

Laura Chapman on the Mysterious Non-Evaluation of ED Department Charter Funding

By dianeravitch
January 22, 2017 //
12

Laura Chapman, retired educator and crack researcher, comments on the strange case of the millions (billions?) of dollars awarded to charter schools that have never been evaluated as to their use, misuse, or effectiveness:

 

 

I doubt if you will ever find an evaluation report for our charter school investments, from USDE or IES.
USDE shoved money out the door for anything charter–startup, replication (franchising), and facilities and facilities financing.

 
Negative reviews of the grant applications were ignored. I read some of these reviews. Even the questions for the reviewers were rigged to minimize “accountability.”

 
We paid federal dollars for absurdities, including advertising for charter students; cross-country junkets to recruit teachers and leaders; uniforms for the students including backpacks with logos, various goodies for “awards.”

 
I have yet to find any reports from states back to USDE on what happened to the money channeled to states. No federal reports on schools opened, closed, etc. No credible peer-reviewed independent studies on student outcomes.

 
USDE let the charter authorizers and franchisers call the shots. Some of the grant applications had redacted information–unreadable chunks of text blacked out because this information was “proprietary” and might “leak,” offering a competitive advantage to other charters. USDE rolled over on that request from the grant applicants. What was redacted? Test scores and enrollments were redacted.

 
I just checked the 2016 active contracts of USDE bearing on charters. Only two are there, and both have been granted extensions from the original contracts.

 
WESTAT, INC. The purpose of this procurement is to obtain technical services for the U.S. Department of Education Charter Schools Program to support the Credit Enhancement Program with grantee monitoring. Monitoring grant projects means examining policies, systems, and procedures to ensure compliance with Federal statutes, regulations, Guidance, grant applications, and performance agreements.

Dates: 9/25/15 to 9/24/17 extended to 9/24/19
Amount: $514,554. This is a very small contract for WESTAT: It is a major subcontractor for many federal agencies.

 
SAFAL PARTNERS, INC. The purpose of this contract is to obtain technical assistance for the U.S. Department of Education Charter Schools Program for a range of activities, including online assistance, meetings, reports, studies, and assistance in a variety of focus areas, that COULD include human capital resources, facilities, authorizing, accountability, students with disabilities, English learners, military-connected children, and others.
Dates: from 9/27/13 to 9/26/17 extended to 9/26/18-
Amount: $12,872,533.
SAFAL Partners leads the National Charter School Resource Center, which hosts other USDE subcontractors. SAFAL Partners appears to be the go-to outfit for charter-friendly research. Clients include the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Laura and John Arnold Foundation, Education Pioneers, George W. Bush Institute, Teach for America Houston among others.

 
A 2016 report from SAFAL Partners titled “Student Achievement in Charter Schools: What the Research Shows” is a very limited and dubious “comparison” of five studies, with caveats dismissed (e.g., fewer ELL and special education students in charter schools, only math and reading scores, test scores not from the same tests, and more). This report is more PR more than credible research.

Categories Charter Schools, Funding, Research, U.S. Department of Education
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