Brookings: The Battle for a Union at Amazon in Bessemer, Alabama

By dianeravitch
March 21, 2021 //
24

The struggle now occurring in Bessemer, Alabama, to form a union at an Amazon warehouse could have a dramatic effect on the future of organized labor.

The pandemic made Amazon’s owner, Jeff Bezos, the richest man in the world with a fortune approaching $200 billion.

But his workers are fighting for higher wages and decent working conditions.

A group of scholars at the Brookings Institution, led by Andre Perry, have summarized the historic struggle:

Amazon’s disproportionately Black workforce has risked their lives during the pandemic, but the company has shared little of its astonishing profits with them. Last year, Amazon earned an additional $9.7 billion in profit—a staggering 84% increase compared to 2019. The company’s stock price has risen 82%, while founder Jeff Bezos has added $67.9 billion to his wealth—38 times the total hazard pay Amazon has paid its 1 million workers since March.

Equally informative and interesting is this account of the union organizing drive that appeared in a recent issue of The New Yorker by Charles Bethea.

The union started collecting authorization cards—they amassed more than three thousand—and the National Labor Relations Board decided that the union had enough support to hold a vote. Amazon insisted that the election should be held in person, but the board, which has been allowing mail-in balloting since the pandemic began, ruled against the company. A seven-week balloting period began last month and will end on March 29th. The effort has garnered international headlines, and a handful of the employees who have been among the most involved, like Richardson, have spoken to reporters from across the country. One of the employees I talked to, Jennifer Bates, is slated to speak at a congressional hearing on Wednesday. Late last month, Joe Biden unexpectedly offered a statement of clear, albeit nonspecific, support for the union push. “Unions lift up workers, both union and non-union, and especially Black and brown workers,” Biden said. Though he did not mention Amazon by name, he referred to “workers in Alabama and all across America.”

Categories Accountability, Alabama, Billionaires, Unions

Richard P. Phelps Looks Back on D.C. Reform, Part 2

By dianeravitch
March 21, 2021 //
10

Richard P. Phelps was hired by D.C. Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee to oversee testing, which was a crucial element in her plans to “reform” the district and raise test scores. During his time there, outsiders raised questions about whether there was widespread cheating on tests.

Phelps addresses those questions in this post.

He begins:

Ten years ago, I worked as the director of assessments for DCPS. For temporal context, I arrived after the first of the infamous test cheating scandals and left just before the incident that spawned a second. Indeed, I filled a new position created to both manage test security and design an expanded testing program. I departed shortly after Vincent Gray, who opposed an expanded testing program, defeated Adrian Fenty in the September 2010 DC mayoral primary. My tenure coincided with Michelle Rhee’s last nine months as chancellor.

The recurring test cheating scandals of the Rhee-Henderson years may seem extraordinary but, in fairness, DCPS was more likely than the average U.S. school district to be caught because it received a much higher degree of scrutiny. Given how tests are typically administered in this country, the incidence of cheating is likely far greater than news accounts suggest, for several reasons:

–in most cases, those who administer tests—schoolteachers and administrators—have an interest in their results;

–test security protocols are numerous and complicated yet, nonetheless, the responsibility of non-expert ordinary school personnel, guaranteeing their inconsistent application across schools and over time;

–after-the-fact statistical analyses are not legal proof—the odds of a certain amount of wrong-to-right erasures in a single classroom on a paper-and-pencil test being coincidental may be a thousand to one, but one-in-a-thousand is still legally plausible; and

–after-the-fact investigations based on interviews are time-consuming, scattershot, and uneven.

Still, there were measures that the Rhee-Henderson administrations could have adopted to substantially reduce the incidence of cheating, but they chose none that might have been effective. Rather, they dug in their heels, insisted that only a few schools had issues, which they thoroughly resolved, and repeatedly denied any systematic problem.

Phelps’ articles were originally published at the Nonpartisan Education Review. They were reposted on Valerie Jablow’s blog.

Categories Accountability, Cheating, District of Columbia, Education Reform, Rhee, Michelle, Standardized Testing, Teacher Evaluations

Richard P. Phelps: The D.C. Reform Hoax, Part 1

By dianeravitch
March 21, 2021 //
7

Richard P. Phelps recounts his experiences as the director of assessment for Michelle Rhee, chancellor of the District of Columbia Public Schools. Phelps was expected to expand the notorious IMPACT testing program, meant to evaluate teachers. Phelps visited hundreds of administrators and teachers and asked their advice about how to make the program better. They gave him good ideas, and he passed them on to top staff as recommendations. The professionals’ advice was rejected by two top reformers.

Phelps’ article was posted on the blog of D.C. activist Valerie Jablow. She acknowledged its origin in this editor’s note:

[Ed. Note: In part 1 of this series, semi-retired educator Richard P. Phelps provided a first-hand account of what went down in DCPS as ed reformers in the early days of mayoral control pushed standardized tests; teacher evaluations based on those tests; and harsh school penalties. This second part looks at the cheating scandals that arose in the wake of such abusive practices. Such accounts are all the more important now that the DC auditor has just released a bombshell report of poor stewardship of DC’s education data. Both articles appeared in Nonpartisan Education Review in September 2020 and are reprinted here with permission. For this part, the author gratefully acknowledges the fact-checking assistance of retired DCPS teacher Erich Martel and DC school budget expert Mary Levy.]

Phelps came to realize that the “reformers” really didn’t care about improving education or helping children. They were padding their resumes, building their career prospects in the lavishly funded reform world.

Phelps writes:

Alas, much of the activity labelled “reform” was just for show, and for padding resumes. Numerous central office managers would later work for the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Numerous others would work for entities supported by the Gates or aligned foundations, or in jurisdictions such as Louisiana, where ed reformers held political power. Most would be well paid.

Their genuine accomplishments, or lack thereof, while at DCPS seemed to matter little. What mattered was the appearance of accomplishment and, above all, loyalty to the group. That loyalty required going along to get along: complicity in maintaining the façade of success while withholding any public criticism of or disagreement with other in-group members.

Unfortunately, in the United States what is commonly showcased as education reform is neither a civic enterprise nor a popular movement. Neither parents, the public, nor school-level educators have any direct influence. Rather, at the national level, U.S. education reform is an elite, private club—a small group of tightly connected politicos and academics—a mutual admiration society dedicated to the career advancement, political influence, and financial benefit of its members, supported by a gaggle of wealthy foundations (e.g., Gates, Walton, Broad, Wallace, Hewlett, Smith-Richardson).

Despite their failures, the elites who led DCPS moved on to remunerative positions. The game goes on. And it’s not “for the children.”

Categories Accountability, Corporate Reform, District of Columbia, Education Industry, Hoax, Lies, Standardized Testing, Teacher Evaluations

New Hampshire: Republicans Move Forward with Largest Voucher Program in Nation

By dianeravitch
March 20, 2021 //
18

New Hampshire Republicans are determined to use their new majority in both houses to jam through a generous voucher bill that would offer public money for students to attend any school they wanted, including religious schools, private schools, and homeschooling.

Down party lines, the Senate approved an expansive school voucher bill Thursday that would allow parents to use state education aid for a wide range of alternative educational opportunities for their children. The bill was then immediately tabled on another 14-10 party line vote – a move that enables the body to consider bills with a fiscal impact during the budget process.

Opponents have called Senate Bill 130 the most expansive voucher bill in the country with little accountability and say it would increase local property taxes, not reduce them as supporters claim.

They said the bill is the latest attempt to privatize education at the expense of the children remaining in the public school system.“Public education should be treasured, we should treasure the public education that all of us went through,” said Sen. Lou D’Allesandro, D-Manchester. “All this legislation does is carve public education apart and that is not a good thing.”

Supporters said the bill seeks to help those students left behind and those who do not perform well in the public education setting.

They said the program would not only help students it would save state taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars.

Sen. Bob Giuda, R-Warren, said the current situation in public education is like rearranging the deckchairs on the Titanic.“The opposition centers on the preservation of an institution even if it is at the expense of the children who attend,” Giuda said. “This bill attempts to care for the children whom our schools don’t work for.”

He said the top reason parents apply to the current business tax credit school scholarship fund are for bullying and discrimination.

The program allows parents who best know their children to find the best fit for their children’s needs, Giuda maintained.

Under the bill, a parent seeking to establish an account would receive between $4,500 to $8,500 per pupil to spend on tuition to any private, religious, or alternative school and on other related educational costs including home schooling, computers, books etc.

The student’s parents would receive the basic state adequacy grant of about $3,700 as well as additional money if the student qualified for free or reduced lunches, special education services, English as a Second Language instruction, or failed to reach English proficiency.

The average grant is estimated to be $4,600.

The program is open to the parents of a student in public —traditional and charter — private or religious school, home schooling, or other alternative educational programs.

New Hampshire has some excellent private schools, some are day schools, some are boarding schools.

The most elite is Phillips Exeter, a boarding school, where the tuition is $55,402. Not likely to accept a single voucher student.

Then there is Brewster Academy, tuition $64,950.

The Dublin School has day students who pay $38,450 and boarding students who pay $66,800.

But if a parent can raise the difference, they might sent their child to Portsmouth Christian Academy, for $15,945 or Concord Christian Academy for $11,200. However, these schools have very small student bodies and are unlikely to find space for a student who is failing in their public school. (Concord Christian Academy has 216 students, perhaps they can make room for one more.)

The state grants will instead underwrite the tuition of students already enrolled in religious schools or being home-schooled. And perhaps a few who are able to find low-quality religious schools with uncertified staff and meager facilities, typically inferior to the public school that the students left.

The Republican legislators don’t care about the experience of other states, where vouchers attract small numbers of students but lead to budget cuts in public schools across the state. If they care to make up for the loss of revenue to public schools, the Legislature will have to raise property taxes. There is no way that vouchers for students currently paying their own way or leave public schools for private schools will reduce the cost of schooling.

It is a shame that none of the legislators consider the research on vouchers. It is not promising. Independent evaluator Mark Dynarski has reviewed many voucher studies and conducted the official evaluation of the D.C. voucher program. He finds that students who use vouchers fall behind their peers in public schools. Voucher schools typically have high attrition rates because the students or their parents realize that the miracles promised never happened. Reviewers at the Center for American Progress described the harm that vouchers do to students. CAP also warned of the dangers that vouchers pose to the civil rights of students. And they warned of the racist origins of school choice and the segregating impact of vouchers.

The Republican legislators are ignorant of the research. They keep repeating Betsy DeVos’s weary cliches, none of which have proven true.

How sad for the children of New Hampshire! How sad for the future of the state.

Categories Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Education Industry, New Hampshire, Republicans, Vouchers

Jan Resseger: How to Wreck Your State’s Public Schools

By dianeravitch
March 20, 2021 //
12

I said I would not reproduce blogs, with rare exceptions. Jan Resseger is that one rare exception.

In this post, she explains how the costs of vouchers are destroying and defunding Ohio’s public schools.

Categories Education Reform, Funding, Ohio, School Choice, Vouchers

Theresa Thayer Snyder: What Shall We Do With the Children After the Pandemic?

By dianeravitch
March 20, 2021 //
39

I originally posted this commentary in December 2020. It has since been opened by readers more than 600,000 times. It struck a chord with teachers and parents. It still does.

In recent months, we have heard a crescendo of recommendations for what to do with the children. “Test them!” “Quantify the learning loss!” “Let no child go untested!” Those clamoring for testing are well-funded, usually by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. They have big megaphones. Here and there, other voices have spoken with quiet authority about what children need when they are back in school. They need social and emotional support. Some have lost parents, grandparents, siblings, cousins to the virus. Some have experienced intense loneliness and sadness.

Theresa Thayer Snyder offers different advice, based on her long experience as an educator. She was superintendent in the Voorheesville, New York, district. As more and more schools begin to reopen, it is time to read it again.

Teresa Thayer Snyder was superintendent of the Voorheesville district in upstate New York. She wrote this wise and insightful essay on her Facebook page. A friend sent it to me.

Dear Friends and Colleagues:

I am writing today about the children of this pandemic. After a lifetime of working among the young, I feel compelled to address the concerns that are being expressed by so many of my peers about the deficits the children will demonstrate when they finally return to school. My goodness, what a disconcerting thing to be concerned about in the face of a pandemic which is affecting millions of people around the country and the world. It speaks to one of my biggest fears for the children when they return. In our determination to “catch them up,” I fear that we will lose who they are and what they have learned during this unprecedented era. What on earth are we trying to catch them up on? The models no longer apply, the benchmarks are no longer valid, the trend analyses have been interrupted. We must not forget that those arbitrary measures were established by people, not ordained by God. We can make those invalid measures as obsolete as a crank up telephone! They simply do not apply. 

When the children return to school, they will have returned with a new history that we will need to help them identify and make sense of. When the children return to school, we will need to listen to them. Let their stories be told. They have endured a year that has no parallel in modern times. There is no assessment that applies to who they are or what they have learned. Remember, their brains did not go into hibernation during this year. Their brains may not have been focused on traditional school material, but they did not stop either. Their brains may have been focused on where their next meal is coming from, or how to care for a younger sibling, or how to deal with missing grandma, or how it feels to have to surrender a beloved pet, or how to deal with death. Our job is to welcome them back and help them write that history.

I sincerely plead with my colleagues, to surrender the artificial constructs that measure achievement and greet the children where they are, not where we think they “should be.” Greet them with art supplies and writing materials, and music and dance and so many other avenues to help them express what has happened to them in their lives during this horrific year. Greet them with stories and books that will help them make sense of an upside-down world. They missed you. They did not miss the test prep. They did not miss the worksheets. They did not miss the reading groups. They did not miss the homework. They missed you.

Resist the pressure from whatever ‘powers that be’ who are in a hurry to “fix” kids and make up for the “lost” time. The time was not lost, it was invested in surviving an historic period of time in their lives—in our lives. The children do not need to be fixed. They are not broken. They need to be heard. They need be given as many tools as we can provide to nurture resilience and help them adjust to a post pandemic world.

Being a teacher is an essential connection between what is and what can be. Please, let what can be demonstrate that our children have so much to share about the world they live in and in helping them make sense of what, for all of us has been unimaginable. This will help them– and us– achieve a lot more than can be measured by any assessment tool ever devised. Peace to all who work with the children!

As an added bonus, here is a video featuring the author of this wonderful article. Her title: “Children. Cherished and Challenged.”

Categories Childhood, Education Reform, Hope, Standardized Testing, Teachers and Teaching

McConnell Threatens “Scorched Earth” in Senate if Democrats Eliminate the Filibuster

By dianeravitch
March 19, 2021 //
32

I recently starting subscribing to a blog by Robert Hubbell because it has interesting takes on the day’s news. This post from yesterday puts the news into context. If you want to subscribe, here is the link.

McConnell’s Ugly (and Empty) Threat

         On Tuesday, Mitch McConnell issued an ugly threat that was vintage Mitch McConnell. In a sign of desperation and fear, McConnell warned Democrats not to eliminate the filibuster, saying: 

         Nobody serving in this chamber can even begin, even begin to imagine what a completely scorched-earth Senate would look like.


         Okay, Mitch! Challenge accepted! I will try to imagine what a ‘scorched-earth Senate’ would look like. 


         My first idea is that if you ever become Majority Leader again, you will refuse to allow any Democratic bill to be brought to the Senate floor for a vote. Oh, wait! You already used that technique from 2017 through 2020, so we can ‘imagine’ what that version of a ‘scorched earth Senate’ looks like. Darn! 


         Here’s another idea: Republicans should agree that no matter what legislation Democrats propose, every Republican will vote against every Democratic bill—regardless of how popular the bill is with the American public. Oops! That’s what Republicans are doing now, so we can ‘imagine’ what that version of a ‘scorched-earth Senate’ looks like. Fudge!


         My next idea is crazy, but stick with me: What if Republicans refuse to grant a hearing for a Supreme Court nominee of a Democratic president (on the theory that there might be an election in the future), but rush through the Supreme Court nominee of a Republican president in two weeks? Argh! I forgot! We can ‘imagine’ what that looks like because you crammed through the confirmation of Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett in two weeks after Trump was defeated. Shut the front door!


         Okay, Mitch. I am not giving up. No one in their right mind would ever do this: What if Republicans attempted to overturn the vote of the Electoral College by objecting to the counting of those votes because of baseless claims of election fraud that were rejected by the U.S. Attorney General, sixty-two state and federal courts, and Republican state election officials? Oh, shoot! We can ‘imagine’ what that looks like because that is what Republicans did to incite the January 6th Capitol Insurrection.


         So, Mitch. You are wrong. We can ‘imagine’ what a ‘scorched-earth Senate’ looks like. It looks like the current Senate. It looks like unbridled obstructionism. It looks like bad-faith manipulation of Senate rules to pervert the process of elevating justice to the Supreme Court. It looks like an attempt to overthrow the government of the United States. We can imagine what a scorched-earth Senate looks like because we believe your depravity is bottomless. We get it. Whatever you can do, you will do—without hesitation or remorse. So, Mitch, don’t try to sweet-talk us out of eliminating the filibuster. We will—as soon as we can. Hold that thought, Mitch. Democracy will catch up with you. It’s just a matter of time.

Categories Democrats, Education Reform, Politics, Republicans

Florida: Republicans Plan to Eviscerate Public Schools

By dianeravitch
March 19, 2021 //
13

Kathleen Oropeza, parent activist in Florida, explains in The Progressive how Republicans intend to destroy public schools and turn the state into a publicly-funded voucher haven. Governor Ron DeSantis is accomplishing Betsy DeVos’s dream while tossing aside the future of the state’s children. In Florida, public schools are held accountable for students and teachers but in private and religious schools, no accountability or standards are required.

Oropeza writes:

In what state Senator Perry Thurston calls a “death knell,” the 2021 Florida House and Senate are fast-tracking the passage of SB 48. This bill will convert the state’s five vouchers into two Education Savings Account/Debit Cards paid, for the first time, with public school tax dollars and a spending flexibility so wide that parents are not even required to pay for teachers or tuition.

Vouchers provide parents with public money to pay for private, often religious schools, with little accountability or guarantee of quality, in eighteen states. Florida leads the way, ahead of other states like Arizona, in how to “choice” parents out of public education and into private school voucher programs. Today, Florida operates two Exceptional Student Educationvouchers, the McKay and Gardiner, plus the Corporate Tax Credit, Hope and Family Empowerment, for a total of five vouchers. The goal has always been to significantly expand the base of students giving up their right to a free public education in exchange for granting parents the freedom to spend their child’s money as they see fit. 

To accelerate the growth of vouchers, Florida seeks to convert all five programs into Education Savings Account/Debit Cards, funded directly by state general revenues. This money will not be spent on public schools. Instead, “parents can use the funds to pay for a variety of educational services, including private school tuition, tutoring, online education, home education, curriculum, therapy, postsecondary educational institutions in Florida and other defined educational services.

The bill, modeled after legislation created by the American Legislative Exchange Council, or ALEC, represents the unfinished business of former U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos, former Florida Governor Jeb Bush, the late libertarian economist Milton Friedman, and a host of rightwing philanthropists from the Waltons to the Kochs. 

Categories Education Reform, Florida, Privatization, Vouchers

Michael J. Hynes: Beware the College Board Dragon!

By dianeravitch
March 19, 2021 //
30

Dr. Michael J. Hynes is superintendent of the Port Washington school district on Long Island in New York. He previously posted here his proposal for a new vision of education.

He writes here about the College Board, which has become the gatekeeper whose tests decide which students go to which colleges.

He writes:

The College Board Monster and Why It’s Time to $lay the Dragon (at least during a pandemic)

Michael J. Hynes, Ed.D.

Reader beware. I wrote a scathing diatribe about the College Board a few years ago. I have since updated it as we enter testing season this spring.

Before you read my thoughts about the educational sacred cow and standardized testing machine known as the College Board, you should know up front that I am no fan of the College Board CEO/President David Coleman who years ago was the architect of Common Core. I felt this way before the pandemic and feel even more strongly about it now.

Most of us in the educational world know of the Common Core State Standards and the “test focused education reform movement” that accompanied it as a fiasco that plagued American schools.

Mr. Coleman was on the English Language Arts writing team and his good friend and eventual partner at Student Achievement Partners (SAP) Jason Zimba was a leader on the Common Core Mathematics team. Student Achievement Partners is a non-profit organization that researches and develops achievement based assessment standards.

Interesting enough, it was funded in large part by Bill Gates. The final nail in the coffin for me was when I realized Mr. Coleman, his former assistant and Mr. Zimba were founding board members for Michelle Rhee’s StudentsFirst, an organization that lobbies for standards driven educational reform.

Do you see a pattern?

Years later Mr. Coleman still leads the College Board money-making machine and this educational monolith is the church where most public schools worship several times a year.

For the reader who doesn’t know what The College Board is: it is the ultimate gatekeeper and judge-jury-executioner for millions of students each year who dream to enter college and it literally is a hardship for many families due to the test taking expense.

Schools and families have no other choice because there is no other game in town, aside from a student taking the ACT exam.

The College Board claims to be a non-profit organization, but it’s hard to take that claim seriously when its exam fees for the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT), Advanced Placement test (AP), services for late registration, score verification services and a multitude of other related fees are costing families and schools millions of dollars each year.

Eleven years ago this “non-profit” made a profit of $55 million and paid nineteen College Board Executives’ salaries that ranged from three hundred thousand dollars to over one million dollars a year.

That trend continues today.

Cost aside, it is hard to fathom and understand how the College Board has claimed a monopoly-like status over our public school system.

Over the years it has literally convinced school administrators, school board trustees, teachers, parents and students they can’t live without what they sell. They sell classes and tests to schools like Big Pharma sells pills to consumers.

They sell as much as they can and jack up the prices just enough where most people won’t complain. They have convinced my beloved public education system, the university system and pretty much the solar system that if students don’t take the PSAT, the SAT and now multiple Advanced Placement tests during a child’s tenure in high school, then those students won’t be competitive and have the same opportunities to be successful in life as the ones who drink the College Board Kool-Aide.

I fear too many of us have bought this story hook, line and sinker without many of us asking the question…why and how did we let this get so out of control?

We now know there are over 800 colleges (and counting) that are SAT optional or flexible. We also know that AP classes and tests have doubled over the past ten+ years. Over four million tests are administered each year.

If you do the simple math (4 million tests x $94.00 a test = over $376 million a year). And that’s just the AP exam…the money from the AP exams go to the College Board and a students’ score is sent to the student but they never know what questions they got right or wrong, they just receive a score of 1-5. The reality is many schools get great marks for enrolling more AP students and the College Board makes a ton of money off this arrangement.

What a sham.

The problem I have with College Board is the effect and infection it’s created on the climate within school systems and their respective communities. We have reached a crescendo of students and families believing that “more is more” when it comes to prepping for the PSAT/SAT tests.

The SAT (with the optional essay) can be taken several times throughout a student’s high school career. If you do the simple math (1.7 million tests x $64.50 a test = $109 million a year). This does not include the other fees attached to the SAT test or the prep books or courses a student may take. If your child is applying to many colleges, you will pay for each score sent to them. 

Here is an example of how much it costs for SAT prep courses:

There are some SAT prep centers that cost upwards of $1800 per in-person course to online courses that cost up to $1400 per course. One-on-One tutoring can cost up to $200 an hour. This all adds up very fast. More important, how is this not seen as an equity concern? Many families can’t afford this type of assistance and since so much is at stake for successful college acceptance, it’s criminal unless the system truly changes. 

As a school superintendent I see and hear about many families hiring tutors for PSAT tests (sometimes starting in eighth grade) and many young men and women taking AP classes because they are “weighted” which bolsters their academic transcript and grade point average.

Most troublesome to me is when I’m told by families that enroll their children in multiple AP classes each year; taking so many AP classes provides a “badge of honor” for both the family and student. In some school districts you have communities that have bred and unleashed a “Keep up with the Joneses” phenomenon. All at the expense for what?

If this is true, what are the unintended consequences? Mental health has never been more important. When students take multiple AP classes and have four hours of homework and skip lunch every day, who suffers in the end? When a student feels like they have to take multiple AP classes to keep their class ranking high and take as many classes as possible to receive college credit so they potentially save money when they go to college, what are they losing in the present moment when they are still in high school?

I believe we have more stressed out and anxious children in our high schools than ever before.

This is a big reason why.

I offer some sincere observations sprinkled in with some facts…

1. AP classes have a lot of material with not much time to teach and truly understand it. Don’t get me wrong, many of the courses are wonderful and stretch our student’s worldview and cognitive abilities, but the courses end in early May. They don’t have the same amount of time as other students who take courses throughout the year. IN NY they have almost two months of school left!

2.  Students are over burdening themselves with the belief that 8-10 AP courses guarantees them access to a high performing university or academic scholarships. I don’t believe that’s true.

One thing I can guarantee this type of course load will provide is 4 hours or more of homework every night and not enough time for students to take electives they will enjoy.

Also, a friend of mine and I agree that the college acceptance process is so badly and deeply damaged, that kids should know that lots of AP classes will not help them as much as they think.

3.  If schools had the courageous conversation to eliminate class ranking, eliminate the weighting of AP classes and mandate lunch for every student, I believe we will have healthier and happier kids. U.S. News and World Report must stop using AP courses as part of their criteria in ranking the top high schools in America.

If they care about college readiness so much, how about looking at more important factors for success such as a student’s emotional, social and physical growth.

It would paint a much more effective predictor of college readiness and future success.

4. Schools must do a better job of promoting predictors of success that are not affiliated with the College Board. Universities want to see that students are more than AP test taking machines:1. GPA (grade point average) is a much better predictor of college success2. Rich and eclectic electives – take risks and explore new opportunities3. Play a sport – physical growth is just as important as academic growth4. Join clubs – a great way for students to get their social and emotional needs met5. Join outside school organizations in the community – fosters empathy6. Work after school part time – teaches responsibility

A few years ago, Mr. David Coleman once said, “Never give someone only one chance to be great.”

I couldn’t agree more but we know the College Board stands to make millions of dollars off of a child’s second chance by taking the SAT or AP test(s) multiple times a year.

If the College Board is really looking to provide better opportunities for students, why not make the test fee reasonable? I know they offer reduced pricing for some hardships but why not make a flat fee for all students? I thought the purpose of a non-profit was to not make a profit…especially off of children.

Finally, if information needs to be sent from the College Board to anywhere the family needs, make it a free service.

I have a problem when non-educators make decisions in my educational arena.

David Coleman and the College Board are not educators, they are business-people. As a parent, would you bring your child to a businessperson instead of a pediatrician if your child was sick? Would you find it odd that your child’s teacher or principal was a businessperson and not an educator?

So the obvious next question is. why is it widely accepted that we have business-people who run an educational institution that has such a significant influence over our children’s futures, a families’ pocketbook and total domination over the last two-three years of your child’s high school experience?

Mr. Coleman, please help me understand how these tests have not been placed on hold during this pandemic. Students are fighting for their lives. They are living in incredibly difficult times where the importance of mental health is at an all-time high but our children’s mental health is at an all-time low. 

The College Board has fleeced us all and its time we fight back against our over reliance on this monopoly.

Categories Accountability, Standardized Testing

Arkansas: Voucher Forces Trying Again, Backed by Walton Money

By dianeravitch
March 18, 2021 //
8

Max Brantley writes in the Arkansas Times that the voucher lobby is determined to reverse their 44-52 loss in the Arkansas House. Backed by Walton money, they are naming and shaming the legislators who stood up for their community’s public schools.

Although Sam Walton, founder of Walmart, and his children attended public schools, they are determined to destroy public schools that provide the same opportunity for other people’s children. They blithely toss out millions to buy the support of people who have no heart or soul and will gladly lobby to harm the institution that has been an abiding symbol of our democracy for generations. Public schools have failings, like every other institution. They must be far better, and they should have the respect and the funding to provide equal opportunity to all children.

But the Waltons have led the forces of greed that seek to undermine public schools that accept all students and have standards for professionals. Let me tell you what I think of the Waltons: I think they are greedy. I think they don’t care about other people’s children. They hate unions and public schools. They love privately managed charter schools, vouchers,and any other substitute for the public schools they attended. They treat everyone else as peasants. They are arrogant. They are prideful.

The Waltons represent the worst of American society: people who have become fabulously wealthy by killing small towns, driving small stores out of business, underpaying their one million employees, using their vast wealth to impoverish others and to undermine the community institutions that enrich the lives of people they treat with contempt. For them and their ilk, playing with the lives of other people’s children is a hobby, a pastime. They are very, very rich, and they must have their way. They don’t understand why the peasants refuse to bow down to their wishes.

Categories Accountability, Arkansas, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Privatization, Vouchers, Walton Foundation
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