Justin Parmenter: What Happened What a Private Segregationist Academy Turned into a Charter School in North Carolina

By dianeravitch
August 27, 2019 //
5

Justin Parmenter here tells the story of the “white flight academy” that decided to turn itself into a charter, thus relieving the parents of the burden of paying tuition. Now the taxpayers of North Carolina get to fund this school with a long history of fighting desegregation.

Hobgood Academy was founded in 1969 and opened in 1970 as a private academy for white parents who didn’t want their children to attend desegregated (by court order) schools in North Carolina. Tuition was low ($5,000) but onerous for the parents. They realized not long ago that they could become a charter school and the state would pay all their costs.

The Hobgood parent site confirms that the primary reason behind the school’s desire to become a public charter was not to increase diversity and expand opportunity for children of poverty at all. Rather, it was to allow children who already went to the 87% White school to continue to attend it, instead of going to Halifax County Schools, where only 4% of students are White. According to 2010 census data, Halifax County’s residents are 40% White and 53% Black.

North Carolina’s Director of Charter Schools opened Hobgood’s opening ceremony as a charter school and praised it for…its “diversity.”

Do you laugh or cry when confronted with such hypocrisy?

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Hypocrisy, North Carolina, Privatization, Racism, Segregation, Shame

Tennessee: Pro-Voucher Republican Replaced by Anti-Voucher Republican as Speaker of House

By dianeravitch
August 27, 2019 //
19

Great news from Tennessee!

The Speaker of the House, Glenn Canada, who rammed through a voucher bill, was replaced by Cameron Sexton, an anti-voucher Republican.

https://www.chalkbeat.org/posts/tn/2019/08/22/tennessee-is-about-to-replace-its-voucher-friendly-house-speaker-with-a-voucher-opponent/

Marta W. Aldrich of Chalkbeat reports:

The House overwhelmingly elected Rep. Cameron Sexton on Friday as its speaker to replace Glen Casada, who stepped down earlier this month. While both men are party loyalists, Sexton voted against the voucher bill that Casada strong-armed through the chamber before a series of scandals rocked him out of his leadership job….

Sexton has strong ties to public education. He attended schools in Knox County before graduating in 1989 from Oak Ridge High School in neighboring Anderson County, where he had access to foreign languages, advanced placement courses, and early college credits before heading to the University of Tennessee. His mother was a kindergarten teacher for more than 30 years, and his grandfather was a principal. He and his wife, Lacey, have chosen public schools for their own children.

That family history, he said, was likely a factor behind his consistent votes against voucher bills, but he cites philosophical reasons, too.

“We should do everything we can to improve all public schools in the state of Tennessee so they can be successful,” he said. “I would rather go that route than the voucher route.”

Pastors for Tennessee Children have been working alongside parents and teachers to protect public schools and separation of church and state. Hallelujah.

Categories Education Reform, Separation of church and state, Tennessee, Vouchers

Robert Kuttner Has a Dream

By dianeravitch
August 26, 2019 //
39

If only.

Today from the American Prospect
AUGUST 26, 2019

Kuttner on TAP

I Have a Dream. My dream is that some senior member of the Trump administration makes a public declaration that Donald Trump is clinically insane. Everybody knows this, but his appointees keep behaving as if the mad king has clothes.

The Republican primary challenge to Trump by former Tea Party Congressman Joe Walsh softens the ground. Walsh, in a surprisingly candid op-ed piece, said this:

Fiscal matters are only part of it. At the most basic level, Mr. Trump is unfit for office. His lies are so numerous—from his absurd claim that tariffs are “paid for mostly by China, by the way, not by us,” to his prevarication about his crowd sizes, he can’t be trusted.

Beyond his sheer demagoguery, it is Trump’s lunacy that is most hazardous to our country. He lives in a fantasy world. He seems to be getting crazier by the week.

Suppose a competent and principled conservative, say chief trade negotiator Robert Lighthizer, asked to appear before a congressional committee, and testified firsthand to Trump’s mental instability. Suppose he was joined by a senior national security official.

This conspiracy of silence needs to be broken. Whether Trump is removed from office via impeachment or the 25th Amendment is a tactical detail. January 2021 is too long to wait.

As Joe Walsh said yesterday on ABC News, saying that the 25th Amendment needed to be looked at:

We’ve never had a situation like this, you can’t believe a word he says. Again, I don’t care about your politics, that should concern you. He’s nuts, he’s erratic, he’s cruel, he stokes bigotry, incompetent.… The only thing he cares about is Trump.

This revelation is hardly a well-kept secret. Maybe Walsh will inspire other ashamed Republicans, and set off a stampede. ~ ROBERT KUTTNER

Categories Education Reform

Robin Lithgow: A Blog to Celebrate the Arts in School

By dianeravitch
August 26, 2019 //
30

Robin Lithgow was in charge of arts education for the Los Angeles Unified School District. She learned to deal with bureaucracy, frustration, and budget cuts, but she never lost her joy and passion for the arts and their power to change students’ lives.

Now in retirement, she has become a student of the history of the arts.she believes that the justification for the arts cannot be demonstrated with data. She is convinced that explorations into their history will awaken minds and draw them into sympathetic appreciation for the power of the arts.

Read this entry on “Good Behavior and Audacity” to understand where she is heading.

I am retired from the position of Director of the Arts Education Branch in the Los Angeles Unified School District, where for fourteen years I and dozens of amazing colleagues labored to bring the arts to the core of the academic day for every student at every grade level. Research supported our efforts; teachers and most administrators embraced the program enthusiastically; and the evidence poured in that students thrive in arts-rich schools….And yet, we were constantly amazed that we had to advocate, advocate, advocate, to fight each year for our modest funding and for our seat at the table with the decision makers at the head of the district.

Could it be that this was, at least in part, because of our lack of history? Education leaders keep asking us for our “data,” and the obsession for data certainly drives the political power battles in education across the country. We HAVE data, and tons of it, but it is “soft” data and cannot always be directly linked to the results being sought. Perhaps history could be more powerful than data.

So I launched my own research, and once I retired I was literally able to bask in it. Over the past six years I have written a book focusing on one brief period in history, that of the humanist education designed primarily by Desiderius Erasmus and enjoyed by the young William Shakespeare and tens of thousands of his peers in Elizabethan England.

The title of my book is Good Behavior and Audacity: Humanist Education, Playacting, and a Generation of Genius.

Categories Art, Arts Education, Creativity

Carl J. Petersen: Watch Nick Melvoin Give Away Public Facilities to the Charter Industry

By dianeravitch
August 26, 2019 //
13

Carl J.Petersen describes the machinations of Nick Melvoin, a school board member who was put into office by the money of the charter school lobby.

As blogger Michael Kohlhaas has demonstrated by publishing leaked emails between Melvoin and leaders of the California Charter School Association, Melvoin is looking out for the interests of his sponsors.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Los Angeles, Privatization

Larry Lee: What Charter Pushers Don’t Understand About Rural Communities Like Fruitdale

By dianeravitch
August 26, 2019 //
22

Larry Lee writes about a small town in Alabama called Fruitdale. He describes the central role of the public schools in that community. It is the anchor of the community.

The charter lobby doesn’t care about Fruitdale, its history, its people, its future. They have dollar signs in their eyes.

He begins:

Sweet Jesus. It was hot, like really, really hot. But what do you expect on an August afternoon in the middle of a football field just 90 miles from the Gulf of Mexico?
I was there to watch the 2019 version of the Fruitdale Pirates practice. Fruitdale is one of five high schools in Washington County. It’s a 1A school, the smallest classification in Alabama high school sports. There are dozens and dozens of such schools across the state, places where Dollar General coming to town is a big deal. (Fruitdale recently opened one.)

Places where community and school are joined at the hip. Take away the school and you’ve jerked the heart from the community.

This August afternoon coach Johnny Carpenter was getting his 32 players ready for their first game against A. L. Johnson of Marengo County. Carpenter grew up just down the road in Citronelle, played football at Mississippi State and met a cheerleader in college who later became both his wife and an M.D. This is his first year as a head coach.

When you coach at this level, you do it all. From teaching class, to cooking ribs for a fund-raiser, to lining the field, to selling signs to merchants to help pay the bills and to actually coaching. His staff is another teacher/coach, John Hobbs. Former player Michael Dubose is a volunteer coach.
There was a pep rally before the first game. Elementary, middle and high school students sweated and yelled. Cheerleaders cheered. Players were introduced. Later that afternoon, fifth grade boys went home and ran around their yard with a football dreaming of the day they could be a Pirate scoring touchdowns and making tackles. Fourth grade girls jumped and pumped their arms and yelled for their team.

I know about dreams and memories. Fifty-nine years ago this fall number 83 of the Theodore Bobcats scored the only touchdown of his high school football career. Quarterback Charles Bryant threw a short pass to his left end, a 160 pound farm boy, standing in the end zone. That touchdown catch will always be mine. No one can take it away from me.

More than anything, that is what Fruitdale is all about. A small school in a small place where dreams are realized and memories are made.

Categories Accountability, Alabama, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Privatization, Rural Schools

Louisiana: The Failure of Vouchers

By dianeravitch
August 26, 2019 //
6

When I first started writing this blog in 2012, Louisiana’s then Governor Bobby Jindal was crowing about his new voucher plan. He and his state commissioner John White insisted that vouchers were a wonderful innovation. They would save poor children from failing public schools. They would give poor children the same choices that rich children have. All the DeVos baloney was served up.

We now know that none of this was true. Most of the voucher money went to backwoods evangelical church schools that did not have certified teachers or a real curriculum. Some of the voucher schools relied on the state money to keep their doors open. The “opportunity” was not for the students, but for the schools, which were glad to have the money from the state.

Now an organization called The Center for Investigative Reporting reveals what we anticipated: most students who use vouchers attend schools that are rated D or F by the State Education Department that funds them. The state is subsidizing no-quality education.

Read the article here.

The vouchers are an expensive hoax. They are not saving poor children from failing schools. Most of them ARE failing schools.

This story was produced by FOX8 WVUE, NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune and WWNO New Orleans Public Radio as part of Reveal’s Local Labs initiative, which supports lasting investigative reporting collaborations in communities across the United States.

Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal beamed with pride in April 2012, as he signed into law one of the most sweeping school choice expansions in the nation.

The law was lauded by the American Federation for Children, then chaired by future Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, and other school choice advocates. Like Jindal, they said it would free countless lower-income children from the worst public schools by allowing them to use state tax dollars in the form of vouchers to pay tuition at private schools, where they would ostensibly receive a better education.

“Our children do not have time to wait,” Jindal had said as he spent some of his waning political capital on what he felt would become a major part of his political legacy in Louisiana. “They only grow up once, and they have one shot to receive a quality education.”

Seven years later, however, the $40 million-a-year Louisiana Scholarship Program has failed to live up to its billing. The nearly 6,900 students who’ve left public schools have instead been placed into a system with numerous failing private schools that receive little oversight, a monthslong examination by a coalition of local and national media organizations has found.

Two-thirds of all students in the voucher system attended schools where they performed at a D or F level last school year, according to a data analysis by NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune, WVUE Fox 8 News, WWNO and Reveal from The Center for Investigative Reporting.

Categories Failure, Hoax, Louisiana, Vouchers

My Gift to You, an Hour of Sheer Pleasure

By dianeravitch
August 25, 2019 //
19

I recently watched the PBS special about the Jewish legacy on Broadway, and I enjoyed every minute.

It is online, and I share it now with you. 

I hope it is still online.

I have always loved Broadway musicals, and many are reprised in this special.

But in addition to the entertainment and the rich cultural history, we see a very contemporary story of immigrants coming to America and becoming quintessentially American. We see Irving Berlin arriving as a five-year-old from Russia, having survived a pogrom, then becoming the composer of “God Bless America,” “Easter Parade,” and “White Christmas,” among the thousands of songs he wrote. We see stories in which composers used their music to teach lessons about racism, intolerance, and bigotry, like “South Pacific,” and the song “You Got to Be Taught to Hate.” Often they told the stories through the experiences of other groups, like “Porgy and Bess” and “West Side Story.”

I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.

I am sending a gift to PBS for remaining a beacon of light in these dark times.

Categories Art, Bias, Bigotry, Creativity, Joy, Love

Bill Phillis: Those Who Know Public Schools Best Love Them

By dianeravitch
August 25, 2019 //
16

 

Bill Phillis points out the annual paradox, reported in every poll about public schools: the public has a low opinion of American education but a very high opinion of their neighborhood public school, the one they know best. This is the result of more than thirty years of public school bashing, launched in 1983 by the Reagan-era “Nation at Risk” report. To the great frustration of the Disruption machine (“Reformers”), Americans love their public schools. That is where nearly 90% of the children are enrolled.

School Bus
2019 Phi Delta Kappa (PDK) 51st Annual Poll: implications for education policy in Ohio—first in a series
Grades given to public schools by the public
Most adult Americans have attended public schools. No doubt their experience in the public system and the experience of their children greatly influence the grade they give public schools.
Subsequent to the release of the flawed Nation at Risk report in 1983, many government officials have portrayed public education as a failing institution. Those politicians have spurred the creation of tax-supported, privately-operated education alternatives.
It would seem the public perception of public education would have soured given the way public schools have been attacked and the tax-supported options that have been made available. However, the grades the public have given public schools the past half century have changed very little.
In 1981, 20% graded the nation’s schools A or B. In 2019, 19% gave public schools an A or B. In 1974, 48% graded their community’s schools (not charters) A or B. In 2019, 44% gave their community’s schools A or B. In 1986, 71% of parents gave their child’s schools an A or B. In 2019, 76% gave their child’s school an A or B.
The type of district grades given to schools varied by type of district (urban, suburban, rural), race, income, etc.
Those closest to the public schools gave them the highest grade. People generally give their own schools much higher marks than the nation’s schools in general.
The remarkable take away is that in spite of 30 years of public school bashing, the perception of the American people has changed very little.
William L. Phillis | Ohio Coalition for Equity & Adequacy of School Funding | 614.228.6540| ohioeanda@sbcglobal.net| www.ohiocoalition.org
School Bus
Ohio E & A | 50 S. Young Street, Suite M102, Columbus, OH 43215
Categories Education Reform, Opinion Polling, Propaganda, Supporting public schools

Larry Cuban: Why Standardizing Teaching Causes More Variation, Not Less

By dianeravitch
August 25, 2019 //
22

Larry Cuban writes that efforts to standardize teaching invariably fail because teachers adapt whatever they are given to the students they teach.

The past half-century has seen record-breaking attempts by policymakers to influence how teachers teach. Record-breaking in the sense that again and again (add one more “again” if you wish) federal and state policymakers and aggressive philanthropists have pushed higher curriculum standards in math, science, social studies, and reading decade after decade. With federal legislation of No Child Left Behind (2002-2015) and Every Student Succeeds Act (2015-) teaching has been influenced, even homogenized (following scripts, test prep, etc.) in those schools threatened by closure or restructuring. Now with Common Core standards, the push to standardize math and language arts instruction in K-12 (e.g., close reading for first graders) repeats earlier efforts to reshape classroom lessons. If past efforts are any indicator, then these efforts to homogenize teaching lead paradoxically, to more, not less, variability in lessons. But this increased variation in teaching seldom alerts policymakers and donors in their offices and suites to reassess the policies they adopt.

The take-aways from this post are first, policies aimed at standardizing classroom practice increase variation in lessons, and, second, teachers are policymakers.

Policies aimed at standardizing classroom practice increase variation in lessons

Categories Accountability, Common Core, NCLB (No Child Left Behind), Teachers and Teaching
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