Archives for category: U.S. Department of Education
« Older Entries
Newer Entries »

Peter Greene: The Arne Duncan Drinking Game

By dianeravitch
June 29, 2014 //
32

Peter Greene proves himself a man of infinite patience. In this post, he analyzes and deconstructs a speech that Arne Duncan gave to the annual meeting of the PTA.

He writes:

“Arne opens up his speech as pretty much anybody would (Glad to be here! Your organization is great! Let’s here it for your leaders!) and then moves on to tales of his children’s schooling. Their experience was not the typical 25-30 desks in a row. His son got to work ahead in math because, technology. His daughter got to attend a constitutional convention and Civil War day.

[Duncan says]: “But it’s those kinds of opportunities that I think are so special. And why are those experiences so important? Because I think all of us – all of us as parents – want our children to be inspired, to be challenged, to be active participants in their own learning.

“This is not the last time that Arne will say something that is true, but also completely disconnected from the kind of schooling promoted by his department’s policies. I’m pretty sure we can make it a drinking game; every time Arne says something that would make a great basis for educational policy, but US DOE actually does the opposite–drink! Do I need to point out that Arne’s kids attend a school that remains untouched by the policies that are being inflicted on the rest of us?”

See if you can actually wade through this speech.

Categories Common Core, Duncan, Arne, Education Industry, U.S. Department of Education

Peter Greene: Is This the “Stupidest Thing Ever to Come Out of the U.S. DOE?”

By dianeravitch
June 25, 2014 //
113

Peter Greene writes that Arne Duncan has figured out why children with disabilities get lower test scores: Low expectations.

Greene writes:

“In announcing a new emphasis and “major shift,” the US Department of Education will now demand that states show educational progress for students with disabilities.

“Arne Duncan announced that, shockingly, students with disabilities do poorly in school. They perform below level in both English and math. No, there aren’t any qualifiers attached to that. Arne is bothered that students with very low IQs, students with low function, students who have processing problems, students who have any number of impairments– these students are performing below grade level.

“We know that when students with disabilities are held to high expectations and have access to a robust curriculum, they excel,” Duncan said. (per NPR coverage)”

Tennessee Commissioner of Education Kevin Huffman agreed with Duncan.

Greene writes:

“And that’s not even the stupidest thing. We’re not there yet.

“Kevin Huffman, education boss of Tennessee, also chimed in on the conference call, to explain why disabled students do poorly, and how to fix it.

“He said most lag behind because they’re not expected to succeed if they’re given more demanding schoolwork and because they’re seldom tested.

“That’s it. We should just demand that disabled students should do harder work and take more tests.

“When Florida was harassing Andrea Rediske to have her dying, mentally disabled child to take tests, they were actually doing him a favor, and not participating in state-sponsered abuse.”

So that’s the Department of Education’s solution for children with special needs: Give them harder work and test them more frequently. But why should that be surprising. That is the DOE’s idea for pre-K, for K, and for all children. Harder work and more tests.

Categories Duncan, Arne, Special Education, Testing, U.S. Department of Education

Arne Duncan Proposes New Accountability for Special Education

By dianeravitch
June 25, 2014 //
132

Arne Duncan proposed new accountability standards for students with disabilities.

Claudio Sancez of NPR wrote:

“The Obama administration said Tuesday that the vast majority of the 6.5 million students with disabilities in U.S. schools today are not receiving a quality education, and that it will hold states accountable for demonstrating that those students are making progress.

“Education Secretary Arne Duncan announced what he calls “a major shift” in how the government evaluates the effectiveness of federally funded special education programs.”

He added:

“Under the new guidelines, Duncan says he’ll require proof that these kids aren’t just being served but are actually making academic progress.

“We know that when students with disabilities are held to high expectations and have access to a robust curriculum, they excel,” Duncan said.

States that don’t comply with the new guidelines might lose federal funding.

And now for a commentary on the new guidelines, written by BeverleyH. Johns, a national authority on special education. She is Illinois Special Education Coalition Chair for 32 years and was President of the Learning Disabilities Assn., President of the Council for Exceptional Children, and author of many books about students with disabilities.

In a widely circulated email Beverly Johns writes:

We know that when students with disabilities
are held to high expectations and have access
to the general curriculum in the regular classroom,
they excel.” Arne Duncan, June 24, 2014

Really? Where is the evidence that the general
curriculum in the regular classroom results
in such excellence for all students with disabilities?

It is just the kind broad general statement
that Arne Duncan is so fond of making.

The U.S. Department of Education today announced
new standards for judging States on special education.

The new system greatly reduces compliance enforcement
for IDEA, on the theory that States are in procedural
compliance with IDEA, in return for using NAEP test
results to judge educational outcomes for students in
special ed.

NAEP was NEVER designed or tested for any such purpose
(see below). NAEP is a test taken by a sample of
school districts from each State, every 2 years.

Below is my summary of the conference call hosted
by U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan today.

Conference call on new Special Ed requirements
for States, June 24, 2014.

USDOE plus two Commissioners of Education,
called Superintendents in some States –
Massachusetts (MA), Mitchell Chester, and
Tennessee (TN), Kevin Huffman.

TN: “States build up their little special education
units.” 40 percent of students with SLD can
achieve same test results as others – “not
students with significant cognitive disabilities.”
(last comment made several times by others)

MA: identifies 17 percent of students for SE.
Tom Hehir assisting them: double the number of
students in poverty identified for SE. More students
of color need to be in general ed classrooms.

USDOE: New system has fewer data reporting requirements,
no need for reporting on results of actions taken
on previous non-compliance, no need to have improvement
on previous indicators, etc.

Arne Duncan to the 2 Commissioners: “Other stuff we
should be looking at to eliminate?”

Reporter question: NAEP ever been used this way?
NAEP designed for high stakes testing?
NAEP designed for students with disabilities?

Duncan: “Only accurate measurement we have. Imperfect…”
“I would not call it high stakes.”
“NAEP given every 2 years.”

Reporter question: reinventing the wheel? If States
cannot meet requirements, then change the requirements
in 5 years?

USDOE: “We have to own these kids.”

MA: SE needs to be integrated into the mainstream.

Reporter question: What are the consequences?

Duncan: No real answer, withholding funds not his
first priority.

Reporter question: What outcomes? The same proficiency
for all students?

USDOE: Vast majority of students in SE must achieve to the
same high standard required by NAEP of all students.
“do not have cognitive disabilities”
Most students in SE now do not have access to content
standards or to the same assessment.

The tone of the call was set by having 2 non-experts in special ed, the 2 Commissioners.

Bev Johns

Categories Duncan, Arne, Special Education, U.S. Department of Education

Stephanie Simon: How Parents Organized and Beat Big Data

By dianeravitch
June 11, 2014 //
8

Stephanie Simon writes in politico.com about how parents organized, lobbied, agitated, and brought down inBloom.

Simon writes:

“You’ve heard of Big Oil and Big Tobacco. Now get ready for Big Parent.

“Moms and dads from across the political spectrum have mobilized into an unexpected political force in recent months to fight the data mining of their children. In a frenzy of activity, they’ve catapulted student privacy — an issue that was barely on anyone’s radar last spring — to prominence in statehouses from New York to Florida to Wyoming.”

Most shocking of all is that the Obama administration is prepared to spend $1 billion (half from the federal government, half from the states) to track the movements of every child:

“Now, parents are rallying against another perceived threat: huge state databases being built to track children for more than two decades, from as early as infancy through the start of their careers.

Promoted by the Obama administration, the databases are being built in nearly every state at a total cost of well over $1 billion. They are intended to store intimate details on tens of millions of children and young adults — identified by name, birth date, address and even, in some cases, Social Security number — to help officials pinpoint the education system’s strengths and weaknesses and craft public policy accordingly.

“The Education Department lists hundreds of questions that it urges states to answer about each child in the public school system: Did she make friends easily as a toddler? Was he disciplined for fighting as a teen? Did he take geometry? Does she suffer from mental illness? Did he go to college? Did he graduate? How much does he earn?

“Every parent I’ve talked to has been horrified,” said Leonie Haimson, a New York mother who is organizing a national Parent Coalition for Student Privacy. “We just don’t want our kids tracked from cradle to grave.”

Why does the Education Department want so much information about every child? What is the rationale for assembling Big Data about our children? Does Congress know about this? Is there any other government in the world that is data mining its children?

Will parents mobilize to stop the federal government from mining their children’s personal data?

Categories Data and Data Mining, Parent Groups, Parents, U.S. Department of Education

Oregon Educator: When Did the Federal Role Change from Equity and Integration to Control?

By dianeravitch
May 29, 2014 //
12

Oregon Educator, a high school principal in that state, poses some hard questions about the federal role in education.

The federal government puts up about 12% of the cost of public education but has grown increasingly assertive about exercising maximal control over state and local decision-making.

She writes:

“In 1965, President Johnson’s landmark education bill was designed to equalize schooling as part of his War on
Poverty. It went a long way to accomplishing that. Unfortunately, now fifty years later, the federal dollars constitute less help and more control, resulting in testing regimens and a hyper-concentration on the tested skills that undermine programs in the arts and sciences as well as experiential learning that has been shown effective. We are now down the rabbit hole of tightly managed programs with single metrics (tests) that lead to ever more restrictive programs. Schools in poor neighborhoods are scapegoated while other poverty factors are ignored. And because we can now blame public schools for their alleged poor performance, more and more of public education dollars are skimmed off by charter schools, many of them run by highly profitable corporations.”

Is the transfer of power to Washington, D.C., irreversible. No, it is not. As the public becomes aware that all of the Bush-Obama initiatives have failed and that state and local control has been replaced by corporate control, there will be a demand to reverse the power-hungry federal control of public education. Federal control was not the intent of Congress in 1965 when the Elementary and Secondary Education Act was passed. Nor was it the intent of Congress when the Department of Education was created in 1979. No child Left Behind was and is a failed aw. Obama’s Race to the Top is NCLB on steroids. The two in tandem are imposing failed ideas and doing serious harm to public education. The only question is whether our schools can survive nearly three more years of Arne Duncan’s destructive “leadership.”

Categories Duncan, Arne, NCLB (No Child Left Behind), Race to the Top, Special Education, U.S. Department of Education

New Post: Duncan Says Racial Segregation Has Worsened, But No one Is Accountable

By dianeravitch
May 23, 2014 //
157

I posted this on my trip home from the hospital earlier today. I made a mistake and hit “publish” before I wrote the post. Here is the post that was supposed to accompany the title!

In a speech to the Education Writers Association, Arne Duncan said that racial isolation has gotten worse in the past two decades, including (one assumes) during his own tenure in office.

An article in Education Daily by Frank Wolfe (sorry, don’t have the link) says:

“While the Education Department has promoted a number of programs and measures to improve the achievement of disadvantaged students, the singularly thorny problem of racially isolated schools has remained and has worsened, Education Secretary Arne Duncan acknowledged on Tuesday.
“While [Brown v. Board of Education, 347 U.S. 483, 107 LRP 36247 (1954)] struck down de jure segregation as unconstitutional, de facto school seg- regation has worsened in many respects in the last two decades,” Duncan told the Education Writers Association national seminar in Nashville. “Since 1991, all regions of the nation have experienced an increase in the percentage of black students who attend highly segregated schools, where 90 percent or more of students are students of color. Here in the South, more than a third of black students attend such racially isolated schools. In the Northeast, more than 50 percent do.”

What? Who should be held accountable for this backsliding on our nation’s commitment to equality of educational opportunity (not separate but equal)?

The US Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights has powerful enforcement powers. What are they doing about this retrograde trend? Are they demanding that charter schools reach out and seek integrated enrollments? What have they done in Chicago and Néw York City, both highly segregated urban school districts. What have they done about the proliferation of all-black vouchers? Why has Duncan been so forceful in advocating on behalf of racially segregated charter schools? When will he be held accountable for his failure to do anything to promote racial integration? How has he used the considerable powers of his office to make a difference?

The Department of Education responded to questions by Education Daily, defending its record.

“Six decades after Brown, the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights is vigorously working to steer America away from racial isolation,” ED said in a statement in response to questions from Education Daily®. “When we find examples of race segregation and discrimination, we put a stop to it. We negotiate settlements with districts to bring them into compliance with our civil rights laws. We carry a huge hammer. Any district that refuses to work with us faces the prospect of our withholding federal funds. Once those agreements have been signed, we closely monitor their implementation — sometimes for years. We issue guidance to schools on their responsibilities to ensure racial equality. We provide grass roots technical assistance at our regional OCR offices around the country. The goal that drives our work is simple — to promote excellence in education that’s colorblind and equal for all.”

Here is an example of empty bureaucratic blather. The US Department of Education has not played a forceful or effective role. If it had, segregation would not be worsening. Why don’t they just apologize and say, “We have really fallen down on the job. Our boss wants more charter schools, even though they are more segregated than the surrounding district. He likes to go to all-black schools and celebrate their success. Actually we have been sitting on our hands where racial integration is concerned, just like the last Bush administration. Frankly, racial integration is not on our radar screen these days. We can’t afford to offend the charter lobby. Sorry, our hands are tied.”

Categories Duncan, Arne, Segregation , Racial Isolation and Integration, U.S. Department of Education

Duncan: Racial Isolation Has Worsened

By dianeravitch
May 23, 2014 //
20
Categories Charter Schools, Chicago, Duncan, Arne, New York City, Segregation , Racial Isolation and Integration, U.S. Department of Education

John Kuhn Explains How Budget Cuts Devastate Rural Schools

By dianeravitch
May 21, 2014 //
7

John Kuhn is the superintendent of the small Perrin-Whitt Independent School District in rural Texas. He is an eloquent speaker and supporter of public education. He has spoken at national events and recently published two new books. He knows that the schoolssuffernot only fro budget cuts but from Washington’s wildly unrealistic expectations. He knows it would be nice if every student were bound for college but he knows it is unrealistic and turns success into failure.

This is a wonderful interview with the Texas Tribune. You will enjoy reading it.

This is the last Q&A:

“Trib+Edu: How has your life been different since 2011?

Kuhn: Not a whole lot different in terms of my day-to-day life. I still basically do what I’ve always done for a living and that is work in a rural public school and try to serve my community to the very best of my ability. I’ve been invited to give some speeches here and there and I’ve written a couple of books … I think speaking out like I did put me in a situation to where I’ve been educated in the political reality that affects local schools.

Previously, I just kind of accepted whatever rolled down from Washington, D.C., and whatever rolled down from Austin. I kind of thought the role of a teacher and educator was just to live with dumb policies. And I don’t think that anymore. I think now that I have a moral obligation to speak up and say, “Hey, this policy is dumb. It doesn’t work and this is what we’re seeing on the frontlines.”

I’m a fan of public education. I grew up in a little, rural Texas town where the public school was the center of what we did in town. There was no mayor’s office. It’s an unincorporated town and the school was the heart of the community. And I think, politically, we’ve kind of forgotten how important public schooling is in Texas.”

Categories Budget Cuts, Supporting public schools, Teacher Evaluations, Texas, U.S. Department of Education, US Education

Ted Mitchell, Leader in Privatization Movement, Confirmed as Undersecretary of Education

By dianeravitch
May 15, 2014 //
44

One of the nation’s leaders of the privatization movement, Ted Mitchell, has been confirmed by the. u.S. Senate as Undersecretary of Education, the second most powerful job in the U.S. Department of Education.

Mitchell most recently was CEO of the NewSchools Venture Fund, which collects millions from philanthropies and venture funds and invests the money in creating charter chains and for-profit ventures.

Among his many other accomplishments, Mitchell served as chairman of the State Board of Education for Governor Arnold Schwarzenegegger, a time of unprecedented expansion of charter schools and deep budget cuts for both K-12 piblic schools and public higher education.

Lee Fang

Categories Education Industry, For-Profit, Privatization, U.S. Department of Education

Jersey Jazzman: Did NPR Sell Out to the Walton Family Foundation?

By dianeravitch
April 29, 2014 //
10

Jersey Jazzman heard NPR describe the reason that Washington State refused to bow to Arne Duncan’s demand that the sate use test scores to evaluate teacher quality.

It wasn’t because the methodology has no evidence behind it.

It wasn’t because the method has been questioned by theNational Academy of Education, the American Educational Research Association, the American Statistical Association, and leading scholars.

No, Washington State said no to our omnipotent, omniscient Secretary of Education because of those terrible unions who are afraid of being evaluated.

Or could this explain NPR’s rationale:

“So, as I was sitting at the kitchen table this evening, my ears perked up at the 5:30 break for WNYC, the NPR outlet here in the greater New York area. The announcer let us know that All Things Considered was proudly sponsored by the Walton Family Foundation, which was supporting (I’m paraphrasing here) educational “choice” for families.”

– See more at: http://jerseyjazzman.blogspot.com/2014/04/corporate-education-reform-buys-public.html#sthash.DkIcHS3q.dpuf

Categories Teacher Evaluations, U.S. Department of Education, Unions, Walton Foundation, Washington State
« Older Entries
Newer Entries »