Robin Lithgow on Boy Actors in the Court of Henry VIII

By dianeravitch
December 27, 2019 //
1

Robin Lithgow, former director in charge of arts education in Los Angeles public schools, has written an engaging series about the history of “boy actors.”

This is Part 2. 

She begins:

The day of the old morality plays ended in 1514, when the young King Henry VIII stood up in the middle of one, yawned, and walked out of the room. Two years earlier, during a celebration of Twelfth Night (the holiday, not the play), Henry’s Sergeant of the Revels had introduced a brand new style from Italy: the Meskaler: “called a masque, a thing not seen afore in England.” The sets, the dress, the colors, the music, the wit, and especially the dance that the noble observers always joined at the end, all imported from the seat of the Renaissance, quickly displaced the old religious dramas that had dominated English theatre for centuries. This new style, mixing music and dance with interludes of dialogue, had a huge impact on theatrical productions during Henry’s reign.

It was the in the “interludes of dialogue” that the Children of the Chapel had their big opportunity. The masques were lavish and they involved unbelievably elaborate pageant wagons that would put our Rose Parade floats to shame. Here’s a description of just one: “adorned with purple and gold, having branches wrought of roses, lilies, marigolds, gillyflowers, primroses, cowslips, and other kindly flowers, with an orchard of rare fruits, all embowered by a silver vine bearing 350 clusters of grapes of gold. It contained thirty persons, and its great weight broke the floor as it moved up the hall. On the sides were eight minstrels with strange instruments, and on the top, the Children of the Chapel singing.” At least one of wagons was said to be pulled by lions and antelopes! (Really?! I know that is hard to imagine, but that’s in the description. They may have been huge disguises manipulated by several bodies?) Since they where heavy enough to crack the tile flooring at court, the light bodies of the boys were an asset, and their trained voices made them natural candidates for the interludes. Indeed, before they were called actors, these young Thespians were called “interluders.”

Eventually there were two major boys’ companies who entertained the aristocracy, providing most of the theatricals at court for the first eighty years of the 16th century. They were the Children of the Chapel Royal and the Children of St. Paul’s. There were other companies in the provinces that came and went, playing for the great houses of the dukes, earls,  viscounts, and lords, but because of the meticulously kept royal records we have the most information about the Chapel and St. Paul’s boys. Researching them I relied heavily on two books written early in the last century: The Evolution of the English Drama up to Shakespeare by Charles William Wallace and The Child Actors by Harold Newcomb Hillebrand. Very little attention has been paid to them since, which, if Wallace and Hillebrand are correct, is kind of astonishing. Both of them make a convincing argument that the Golden Age of Elizabethan theatre would never have happened without them!

Categories Art, Arts Education

Garrison Keillor Remembers the Devastating Tsunami of 2004

By dianeravitch
December 26, 2019 //
5

At his website, “A Writer’s Almanac,” Garrison Keillor writes:

On this date in 2004, a tsunami devastated coastlines along the Indian Ocean. It was triggered by an earthquake in the middle of the ocean, 160 miles west of Sumatra. With a magnitude of between 9.1 and 9.3, the quake was the third strongest ever recorded on a seismograph, and it lasted for up to 10 minutes. It occurred when pressure built up along a 600-mile fault line between two tectonic plates to such a degree that one plate slipped underneath the other. The quake occurred in relatively shallow water, which meant that the energy was not dispersed as much as it would have been in deeper seas. The U.S. Geological Survey estimates that the quake released energy equivalent to 23,000 Hiroshima-type atomic bombs. The quake was so powerful that it vibrated the whole planet and actually changed the Earth’s rotation very slightly.

The shifting of the plates raised the sea floor by about 10 yards, and this displaced massive amounts of water. The tsunami chain that this generated reached the Sumatra coast within 15 minutes. The waves — which started small but grew as high as 50 feet — wiped out whole villages in seconds. The tsunami even claimed lives in South Africa, up to 3,000 miles away from the epicenter of the quake. An estimated 230,000 people from 14 different countries died; half a million more were injured. Five million people required humanitarian aid. A ship weighing almost 3,000 tons was thrown almost a mile inland, where it remains a tourist attraction in Indonesia. But there were very few animal casualties; many people reported seeing animals fleeing for higher ground just minutes before the tsunami struck.

Two years after the quake and tsunami, the Indian Ocean Tsunami Warning System went into operation, and it was successfully put to the test in 2012, when more quakes hit the Indian Ocean.

Categories Environment

William Webster: The Danger to the Rule of Law

By dianeravitch
December 26, 2019 //
14

William Webster served as director of both the FBI and the CIA.

From the New York Times:

 

The privilege of being the only American in our history to serve as the director of both the F.B.I. and the C.I.A. gives me a unique perspective and a responsibility to speak out about a dire threat to the rule of law in the country I love. Order protects liberty, and liberty protects order. Today, the integrity of the institutions that protect our civil order is, tragically, under assault from too many people whose job it should be to protect them.

The rule of law is the bedrock of American democracy, the principle that protects every American from the abuse of monarchs, despots and tyrants. Every American should demand that our leaders put the rule of law above politics.

I am deeply disturbed by the assertion of President Trump that our “current director” — as he refers to the man he selected for the job of running the F.B.I. — cannot fix what the president calls a broken agency. The 10-year term given to all directors following J. Edgar Hoover’s 48-year tenure was created to provide independence for the director and for the bureau. The president’s thinly veiled suggestion that the director, Christopher Wray, like his banished predecessor, James Comey, could be on the chopping block, disturbs me greatly. The independence of both the F.B.I. and its director is critical and should be fiercely protected by each branch of government.

Over my nine-plus years as F.B.I. director, I reported to four honorable attorneys general. Each clearly understood the importance of the rule of law in our democracy and the critical role the F.B.I. plays in the enforcement of our laws. They fought to protect both, knowing how important it was that our F.B.I. remain independent of political influence of any kind.

As F.B.I. director, I served two presidents, one a Democrat, Jimmy Carter, who selected me in part because I was a Republican, and one a Republican, Ronald Reagan, whom I revered. Both of these presidents so respected the bureau’s independence that they went out of their way not to interfere with or sway our activities. I never once felt political pressure.

I know firsthand the professionalism of the men and women of the F.B.I. The aspersions cast upon them by the president and my longtime friend, Attorney General William P. Barr, are troubling in the extreme. Calling F.B.I. professionals “scum,” as the president did, is a slur against people who risk their lives to keep us safe. Mr. Barr’s charges of bias within the F.B.I., made without providing any evidence and in direct dispute of the findings of the nonpartisan inspector general, risk inflicting enduring damage on this critically important institution.

The country can ill afford to have a chief law enforcement officer dispute the Justice Department’s own independent inspector general’s report and claim that an F.B.I. investigation was based on “a completely bogus narrative.” In fact, the report conclusively found that the evidence to initiate the Russia investigation was unassailable. There were more than 100 contacts between members of the Trump campaign and Russian agents during the 2016 campaign, and Russian efforts to undermine our democracy continue to this day. I’m glad the F.B.I. took the threat seriously. It is important, Mr. Wray said last week, that the inspector general found that “the investigation was opened with appropriate predication and authorization.”

As a lawyer and a former federal judge, I made it clear when I headed both the F.B.I. and the C.I.A. that the rule of law would be paramount in all we did. While both agencies are staffed by imperfect human beings, the American people should understand that both agencies are composed of some of the most law-abiding, patriotic and dedicated people I have ever met. While their faces and actions are not seen by most Americans, rest assured that they are serving our country well.

I have complete confidence in Mr. Wray, and I know that the F.B.I. is not a broken institution. It is a professional agency worthy of respect and support. The derision and aspersions are dangerous and unwarranted.

I’m profoundly disappointed in another longtime, respected friend, Rudy Giuliani, who had spent his life defending our people from those who would do us harm. His activities of late concerning Ukraine have, at a minimum, failed the smell test of propriety. I hope he, like all of us, will redirect to our North Star, the rule of law, something so precious it is greater than any man or administration.

This difficult moment demands the restoration of the proper place of the Department of Justice and the F.B.I. as bulwarks of law and order in America. This is not about politics. This is about the rule of law. Republicans and Democrats alike should defend it above all else.

In my nearly 96 years, I have seen our country rise above extraordinary challenges — the Great Depression, World War II, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, segregation, assassinations, the resignation of a president and 9/11, to name just a few.

I continue to believe in and pray for the ability of all Americans to overcome our differences and pursue the common good. Order protects liberty, and liberty protects order.

Categories Democracy, Justice

Jere Hochman: The St. Louis Story

By dianeravitch
December 26, 2019 //
19

Jere Hochman was most recently the superintendent of the  Bedford Central School district in New York State (his third superintendency). He then became the education advisor to Governor Cuomo, where he seemed to have a calming effect on the governor. He went home to St. Louis and took a position within the school system. He writes here about what he sees as the success of what was once a very troubled school district, threatened from all sides because of low test scores. St. Louis, he writes, is back, even though its population is declining and under-enrolled schools must be closed. State takeovers seldom improve schools. In St. Louis, the story is different, perhaps because of the steadiness of local leadership, which did not try to destroy the school district. Public confidence is on the rebound. He explains why.

 

The Surprising Success of the St. Louis Public Schools

Jere Hochman

December 2019

“Startling mismanagement,” “emergency managers,” “charters galore,” “Academic Distress Commissions,” privatization maneuvering, dismal student performance and graduation rates and other descriptors cited in Dr. Ravitch’s blogs have characterized state takeovers including those in Detroit, Houston, Providence, Youngstown and most recently, Rochester.  

In St. Louis, words like “trust,” “direction and focus,” “fiscally responsible and economical stable,” “confidence,” and “accredited” describe the outcomes following a state takeover.  

Last summer, Dr. Ravitch asked me “Why did St. Louis work?”

In 2007, the State of Missouri declared the St. Louis Public Schools “unaccredited.”  A news article summarizing the circumstances cited: “The district was graduating just 56 percent of the students it was supposed to. District leaders were staring down a budget hole more than $24 million deep that had been dug out of a $52 million surplus just five years before. The district would force out or say goodbye to six superintendents in five years. The district was meeting only five of 14 state accreditation standards.” (St. Louis Post Dispatch, January 11, 2017).

 At that time, the school district governance was transferred from an elected board of education to a three-person Special Appointed Board (SAB).  The Mayor, the President of the Board of Alderman, and the Governor each appointed a Board member. Subsequently, and, perhaps their most noteworthy accomplishment, was the SAB’s hiring an outstandingsuperintendent who is still leading the district garnering confidence and results.  

Under the appointed board’s governance and the superintendent’s leadership, the district restored fiscal responsibility, balanced budgets, operational efficiency, and long-term financial stability.  The district achieved state accreditation in 2017.   Among the accomplishments during this period, the district:

• Upgraded aging facilities, new science labs, playscapes, and more.
• Passed a 75% community majority vote on a $155 Bond Issue and a ballot proposition to support early childhood, safety and security, equipment, character education, and curriculum advancements.
• Minimized obstacles of student mobility and homelessness, partnered with dozens of community agency supports; reduced suspensions, and improved student attendance.
• Implemented with teacher union support, a plan for first year teachers to be coached and evaluated by fellow full-time “consultant teachers.”
• In 2018, the 4-year graduation rate was 78%.  Two and Four-year college entrance rates were on par with the State average.

And, while academic performance improvement afforded re-accreditation, all concur with optimism and determination, there is much work to be done.

 Throughout this intervention process, local control remained intact and stability in governance and district leadership provided growth, capacity, and sound foundation for the future.  Having attained accreditation, on July 1, 2019, governance transitioned from the SAB to an elected seven-person Saint Louis Public Schools Board of Education. 

It Worked.  Why?

When asked, “Why did St. Louis work?” my response was immediate: 1) A temporary appointed board governance model,2) the individuals serving on the three-person board, and 3) the superintendent – all under a microscope.  

It worked because the governance model inherently required the board’s unflinching and self-disciplined attention to policy, protocols, and oversight.   The board scrutinized and directed the district’s operations for efficiency, productivity, and accountability. It worked because these board members left their egos at the door, adhered to the model’s roles and expectations, and did their homework.  

 They stayed the course through initial opposition and they stayed, literally.  They served the interests of the children and the district.  They did not jump on the sweeping educational reform bandwagon or allow infiltration of political interests.  Moreover, they cleared the way for their newly hired superintendent, Dr. Kelvin Adams, to lead, to genuinely lead, the school district.

From day one, Dr. Adams provided direction, focus, and disciplined operations.  He exemplified a relentless mission for every students’ success, equity, and accountability and he held all staff to the same standards and expectations.

 There were no promises of a splashy quick fix turnaround or “take no prisoners” authoritarian posturing. (witnessed by short-lived tenure of superintendents and boards in other districts).  Any concerns about a privatization movement, charter takeover, or special interest board seat takeover were alleviated.  Charter schools popped up, however approximately one-third eventually shuttered their doors.  And, today, Dr. Adams continues to serve with stick-to-itiveness, integrity, and sights set on high expectations for students and employees.

In every meeting, the appointed board stuck to protocols and their responsibilities.  Through the challenges, highly scrutinized decisions, and response to concerns, they supported and protected the superintendent to perform his responsibilities.  Were there problems, unsuccessful efforts, and criticism?  Of course.  They were matched, however, with research-based endeavors, “data driven” goals and accountability, confidence-building audits, and determination.

The governance model kept board members focused on what boards are supposed to do which in turn allowed the superintendent to do what superintendents are supposed to do. Which in turn provided clear direction and allowed district leaders and staff, principals, and teachers to do what they are supposed to do.  They did so well.

In addition to continuous academic improvement in the schools, the district worked with local corporate, and agency partners; religious institutions and faith-leaders; on-a-mission employees and the union; necessary watchdogs and critics and wary but caring parents; and innovative local philanthropists, an academically focused Foundation, and numerous support agencies. 

 Now, as the elected Board of Education resumes governance, the St. Louis Public Schools currently enrolls approximately 22,000 students, a decline from approximately 26,000 in 2009 (overall city population has decreased).  There are 17 charter school entities in the city, enrolling approximately 10,000 students..  

This past year, the “new” elected Board of Education immersed themselves in orientation, development, and preparation to resume governance.  Their preparation and determined effort could serve as a model for board orientation in any school district.  Now, they govern a district where there is confidence in the superintendent; academic, operational, and financial stability; a comprehensive Transformation Plan (3.0); and a solid foundation upon which continued academic growth is occurring.  

In a reform world, particularly in an urban district, stability and success are unusual.  Board stability with “constancy of purpose” is uncommon.  A long-term superintendent methodically leading academics and operations particularly is rare.  A superintendent leading deliberately, instilling confidence, and inspiring all around her or him is as rare. 

In all categories, St. Louis is an outlier upon which to build continued success. Whether it was the appointed board governance model and respective roles of the board and superintendent or it was the individuals who filled the positions, or a combination of both (no doubt the latter), it worked. 

(Disclosure:  I am an employee of the district with a unique lens.  After serving as a superintendent in three school districts for 19 years, I serve as a network superintendent in SLPS).

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Categories Accountability, Administrators, superintendents, Education Reform, St. Louis

NEPC Review on Academic Progress of Children of Color

By dianeravitch
December 26, 2019 //
9

The National Education Policy Center publishes reviews of research and reports from think tanks and advocacy groups.

In this post, Professor Jaekyung Lee of SUNY, Buffalo, reviews a report from the Thomas B. Fordham Institute on the academic progress of children of color. To the surprise and delight of many, including me, TBF concluded that poverty reduction played a role in the academic gains in the past two decades.

Reviewed
by:
Jaekyung Lee
University at Buffalo, SUNY
November 2019
Executive Summary
A recent Fordham report highlights the historic academic progress of Black and Hispanic
groups over the past two decades at the elementary school level on the NAEP exam. From
this, the report offers the major claim, based on its author’s eyeball test, that the academic
progress of students of color is attributable “mostly” to poverty reduction. The report, how-
ever, also acknowledges that correlation is not causation and calls for systematic statistical
analysis to test the author’s proposition. This review responds to that call by examining the
validity of the report’s arguments around progress and causes, looking to expanded data
sources, including both family income and school expenditures. The review notes uneven
patterns of achievement among grade levels and refutes the report’s claim that flat achieve-
ment trends among 12th graders are a result of dropout reductions. My own analysis with
data suggests that poverty reduction has indeed been important, as has increased school
funding. Further, I raise critical questions about national progress towards both excellence
and equity. First, academic progress at the elementary school level is undercut by an off-
setting slump at the high school level. Second, in spite of the greater academic progress of
Black and Hispanic groups during the 1990s and 2000s, Black-White and Hispanic-White
achievement gaps remain substantial across all grades in core subjects. Third, despite prog-
ress in poverty reduction, racial inequalities in social and educational opportunities as well
as racial differences in economic returns to educational investment persist. Overall, the re-
port helpfully brings attention to the significant academic progress of Black and Hispanic
students over the past two decades, although it is incorrect to downplay the persisting racial
gaps or the phenomenon of the high school slump.

 

Categories Education Reform

The Saudi Trial for Khashoggi Murder Was a Cover-Up

By dianeravitch
December 26, 2019 //
10

Robin Wright describes the phony trial in Saudi Arabia intended to punish the assassins who killed journalist Jamaal Khashoggi.

its real purpose was to shield MBS, the tyrant who ordered a team of 15 hit men to murder an dismember Khashoggi in the Saudi consulate in Turkey. Everything that happened was videotaped by Turkish Intelligence.

 

She begins:

On Monday, the authoritarian kingdom of Saudi Arabia sentenced five operatives to death for the grisly murder and dismemberment of the Washington Postjournalist Jamal Khashoggi, at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, in October, 2018. Another three men were dispatched to jail; three more were acquitted. The outcome was, in the words of human-rights experts with whom I spoke after the verdict was announced, “typical Saudi justice.” The trial was held in secret. The government’s evidence was never publicly released. The convicted were never named, even in the verdict. And the few diplomats allowed to attend the trial had to swear that they would not disclose any details or identities. Most strikingly, the three men widely believed to be ultimately responsible for Khashoggi’s murder—including the powerful crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, his close adviser, Saud al-Qahtani, and the former deputy head of intelligence, Ahmed al-Assiri—got off scot-free. “This is not a surprise. It is true to form,” Sarah Leah Whitson, the executive director of the Middle East and North Africa division of Human Rights Watch, told me. “The Saudis are compounding their stream of laughable lies with a laughable verdict.”

Both the C.I.A. and the U.N. implicated M.B.S., as the crown prince is commonly known, in Khashoggi’s murder. During the past two years, the ambitious young royal has consolidated Saudi Arabia’s five major branches of power under his gold-embroidered robe. He has also been the key Saudi liaison to the Trump Administration and a close ally of Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser, Jared Kushner. Khashoggi, a former unofficial spokesman for the oil-rich monarchy, fled the kingdom in 2017 and took residence in the United States, where he became the prince’s most vocal and visible critic. Weeks before his death, Khashoggi told me that M.B.S., still only the heir apparent to the Saudi throne, had already become more autocratic than any of the previous six kings. He compared the prince’s absolute powers to those of Iran’s Supreme Leader: “He has no tolerance or willingness to accommodate critics.” In one of Khashoggi’s early columns for the Post, he says that he has to write as his conscience dictates. “To do otherwise would betray those who languish in prison,” he writes. “I can speak when so many cannot. I want you to know that Saudi Arabia has not always been as it is now. We Saudis deserve better.”

M.B.S.’s culpability—and premeditation—was the issue implicitly on trial. The kingdom originally lied, saying that Khashoggi had walked out of the consulate shortly after he’d arrived. It took three weeks for the government to admit that he’d been murdered; it claimed that the execution was a rogue operation, despite the extraordinary planning required for a sophisticated covert operation on foreign soil. Turkey then released videotapes of two Saudi hit squads—comprising fifteen people in total—arriving in Istanbul the day before the murder. It had video of Khashoggi going into the consulate. Turkish intelligence recorded all that followed, including Khashoggi’s struggle to fight off Saudi security, his gasping suffocation, and the bone-sawing that followed, as his body was cut up into pieces. The Turks also had video footage of a body double—one of the men who had flown in for the operation—leaving the diplomatic mission dressed in Khashoggi’s clothing.

The U.N.’s report, released in June, concluded that “every expert consulted finds it inconceivable that an operation of this scale could be implemented without the Crown Prince being aware, at a minimum, that some sort of mission of a criminal nature, directed at Mr. Khashoggi, was being launched.” But, in announcing the verdict, the Saudi deputy public prosecutor, Shalaan al-Shalaan, declared that the investigation showed that “the killing was not premeditated. The decision was taken at the spur of the moment.” Last year, the Republican-led Senate passed a resolution—notably, with unanimity—blaming the crown prince for the Khashoggi murder, despite pushback from the White House.

The outcome triggered disbelief among Saudi experts. “Are we to believe these individuals conceived, planned, and executed the operations without direction and authority from Saudi leadership? Not likely,” James Smith, a former U.S. Ambassador to the kingdom, told me. “The Saudis do not want to solve the case. They want it to go away.”

Qahtani, the prince’s adviser, was also not on trial, despite widespread indications that he played a central role in the Khashoggi murder. He had masterminded the arrest of hundreds of dissidents. He has been identified by prisoners as an interrogator and torturer. Citing intelligence sources, Reuters reportedthat Qahtani ran the Khashoggi execution—in real time—via Skype. And he had long worked at the side of the crown prince. A few months before the murder, he tweeted, “Do you think I make decisions without guidance? I am an employee and a faithful executor of the orders of my lord the king and my lord the faithful crown prince.” Qahtani was moved aside after the murder; he has not been seen in public since then. Various reports from the secretive kingdom have suggested that he has been under house arrest, or has had his movements restricted, or has been occasionally allowed to travel within the Gulf. But nothing official has been released….

Whitson said, “Given that the chief architects of this murder were not even investigated or indicted—and I mean Qahtani and M.B.S.—there is no doubt that this trial was merely a mechanism to offer a theatre of process devoid of substance.” Agnès Callamard, a special rapporteur for the U.N.’s human-rights office who led the U.N. investigation, voiced similar outrage. “The hit-men are guilty, sentenced to death. The masterminds not only walk free. They have barely been touched by the investigation and the trial,” Callamard tweeted on Monday. “Under international human-rights law, the killing of Mr. #Khashoggi was an extrajudicial execution for which the State of #SaudiArabia is responsible. But at no point did the trial considered the responsibilities of the State….”

The verdict came just days after President Trump signed the National Defense Authorization Act, which includes a provision that the director of National Intelligence submit to Congress—within thirty days—a list of the Saudis believed to be responsible for the Khashoggi murder, the subsequent coverup, or for impeding a fair and impartial investigation. The original bill, submitted by Representative Tom Malinowski, a Democrat of New Jersey, called for everyone on the list to be sanctioned and denied a visa. The final bill, stripped down by Republicans in conference, removed the punishment of sanctions. But it still called for publication of their names—which Saudi Arabia has yet to do partially or in full. “M.B.S. should already be on the list of shame for Khashoggi’s murder,” Malinowski told me. “If he thinks these verdicts are going to help him, then he’s badly miscalculated. Executing his henchmen for following his orders will be one more reason to include him on the list.”

Our friends, the Saudis. MBS, Jared’s best friend.

Categories Education Reform

Robin Lithgow: Boys Theater Companies During the Tudor Age, Part 1

By dianeravitch
December 26, 2019 //
3

Robin Lithgow, former director in charge of arts education in Los Angeles public schools, has written an engaging series about the history of “boys’ theater companies.”

This is Part 1. 

She begins:

“Harken, I do hear sweet music: I never heard the like” and “we shall hear [in the choir of Saint Paul’s] the fairest voices of all the cathedrals in England … and to tell the truth, I never heard better singing.”

— Claude Desainliens, a French visitor to London in 1573

“Mom, I was just in Westminster Abbey, and there was music falling from the ceiling—the most beautiful singing I’ve ever heard. I thought it was angels, but then the choir door opened and out walked a whole lot of little boys!”

—My 18-year-old daughter, calling from a phone booth on her first day in London, 1995, having just heard the Westminster Boys Choir in rehearsal

* * *

A Bit of Little-Known History From My Book:

“In England, the training of boys’ voices for royal entertainment goes far back in history, deep into the Middle Ages. Sometime in the 12thcentury, probably earlier, an ecclesiastical body of musicians and singers was organized to meet the spiritual needs of the England’s reigning sovereign. It still exists. Called the Chapel Royal, it is today considered the oldest continuous musical organization in the world. Traditionally it has been comprised of from twenty-four to thirty-eight men and from eight to twelve boys. Besides the Chapel Royal and the Westminster Boys’ Choir there are dozens of boys’ choirs throughout Britain, the Chapel Royal only being the oldest.

“No one knows when boy singers were added to the Chapel Royal or other church choirs, but they were probably present from the very beginning, their treble voices being thought to be the closest to the voices of angels. There was a religious pursuit of this purity of tone. Churches, abbeys and cathedrals were designed acoustically to capture it: massive sound boxes that amplified these “fairest voices.” Choir schools, attached to churches and training children for church choirs, played a role in the pre-reformation history of British education. They offered free education to able students. Their purpose was to assure a sufficient number of well-trained voices to supply the needs of the church. As we shall see, Erasmus himself attended a song school in Utrecht, perhaps because it was an opportunity for a free education. The earliest choirmasters were usually almoners, the men who distributed alms to the needy.

Categories Art, Arts Education, History

Garrison Keillor: Harper Lee’s Best Christmas Present Ever

By dianeravitch
December 25, 2019 //
3

I recently subscribed to Garrison Keillor’s free website called”A Writer’s Almanac.”

He told this wonderful Christmas story today:

It was on this day in 1956 that novelist Harper Lee (books by this author) spent Christmas in New York City with friends, and received a gift that changed her life. In 1949, Lee had dropped out of a law program at the University of Alabama and moved to New York City, the home of her childhood friend Truman Capote. Capote had just published his first novel, Other Voices, Other Rooms (1948) — which featured a character based on Lee, and he was a literary star. In New York, Lee found a job as a ticket agent at an airline. For seven years, she wrote on the weekends, but she never published anything.

She rarely got time off from work, so she wasn’t able to get home to Alabama for Christmas. That Christmas of 1956, she was homesick. Lee wrote: “What I really missed was a memory, an old memory of people long since gone, of my grandparents’ house bursting with cousins, smilax, and holly. I missed the sound of hunting boots, the sudden open-door gusts of chilly air that cut through the aroma of pine needles and oyster dressing. I missed my brother’s night-before-Christmas mask of rectitude and my father’s bumblebee bass humming ‘Joy to the World.’”

Lee spent that Christmas, like many others, with her closest friends in the city: a couple named Michael and Joy Brown, whom she had met through Capote, and their two sons. Michael Brown was paid by companies to write promotional “industrial musicals,” like “Wonderful World of Chemistry” for DuPont, which was performed 17,000 times. In the fall of 1956, he had written a successful industrial show for Esquire magazine, and he was feeling rich.

Lee and the Browns had a tradition of trying to exchange the best Christmas gifts for the least amount of money, and that year Lee’s present for Michael Brown was a portrait of an 18th-century Anglican writer and cleric. It cost her 35 cents. Lee couldn’t hide her disappointment when everyone had opened their gifts and there were none for her. The Browns told her to look in the tree, where she found an envelope addressed to her. Inside, it said: “You have one year off from your job to write whatever you please. Merry Christmas.”

Lee thought it was a joke, and when she finally realized that it wasn’t, she protested, but the Browns insisted — they were feeling financially comfortable, and they thought she was talented and deserved a chance to write full-time. When she said that it was too big of a risk for them, Michael replied: “No, honey. It’s not a risk. It’s a sure thing.” She wrote: “I went to the window, stunned by the day’s miracle. Christmas trees blurred softly across the street, and firelight made the children’s shadows dance on the wall beside me. A full, fair chance for a new life. Not given me by an act of generosity, but by an act of love. Our faith in you was really all I had heard them say. I would do my best not to fail them.”

She went to work immediately, and just three weeks later she brought 49 pages of a new novel called Go Set a Watchman to an agent. By the end of February, she had finished the draft. Her agents suggested some edits, and by October of 1957 the manuscript was sent off to a publishing company without a title. The publishers liked it but thought it needed major revisions — most significantly, they thought that Lee should focus on the childhood, not the adulthood, of the novel’s narrator, Scout Finch. Lee spent two years reworking the novel, and came up with a new title: To Kill A Mockingbird. To Kill a Mockingbird (1960) went on to sell more than 30 million copies and become one of the most beloved books in American literature.

Lee didn’t release another book until 2015, when she published what had been the first draft of To Kill A Mockingbird, now marketed as a sequel to it: Go Set a Watchman. She died in 2016.

Categories Literature

Merry Christmas!

By dianeravitch
December 25, 2019 //
18

Merry Christmas, Happy Chanakuh, Happy Kwanzaa.

Whatever you celebrate, have a great day!

Make it a great day by doing something kind for someone else.

 

Diane

Categories Education Reform

How to Talk to Your Family About Charter Schools During the Holidays

By dianeravitch
December 24, 2019 //
19

Jeremy Mohler of the nonpartisan “In the Public Interest” wrote a clear summary of the reasons to be concerned about charter schools:

The holidays are a time of joy and relaxation but also uncomfortable conversations with family. Will Uncle Tommy go on another rant about windmills causing cancer? Does grandma still think Russia is the only reason Trump won?

So, what should you say when someone starts dissing traditional, neighborhood public schools and hyping up charter schools?

Charter schools generally perform academically about the same as neighborhood public schools.

Study after study show that, just like there are high and low performing neighborhood public schools, there are high and low performing charter schools.

In fact, because some charter schools effectively exclude special education students or expel students with perceived disciplinary issues, charter school academic success often can be overstated.

Charter schools can drain school district budgets, taking resources from neighborhood public school students.

Research is revealing that, in many states, school districts and the students they serve are undermined by policies that prioritize opening new charter schools.

For example, California’s unchecked charter school growth cost San Diego’s school district $65.9 millionduring the 2016–17 school year. That’s $620 less in funding a year for things like nurses, counselors, and computers for each neighborhood public school student.

Charter schools have been co-opted into a market-based model of providing education with winners and losers.

While some charter schools are founded and run by grassroots groups of parents and educators, many are run by large, corporate-like chains, such as Rocketship and KIPP.

Wealthy donors and organizations like the family who owns Walmart are bent on privatizing public education through the creation of a parallel education system in competition with neighborhood public schools.For example, since 1997, the Walton Family Foundation has invested more than $407 millionin charter schools.

The seeds of today’s “school choice” movement were sewn in the years after desegregation.

Charter schools are more racially isolated than neighborhood public schools in virtually every state and large metropolitan area in the nation.

The vast majority of the school districts that have experienced state takeovers in the last 30 years are majority black and Latinx. Many subsequently were forced to allow for the creation of charter schools. Some middle and upper class, predominantly white communities are even using charter schools to opt out of neighborhood public schools.

This harkens back to the years following Brown v. Board of Education when southern legislatures enacted as many as 450 laws and resolutions attempting to discredit, block, postpone, limit, or evade school integration. Many of these acts allowed the re-direction of taxpayer dollars to benefit private schools, such as private school vouchers, as white Americans fled in record numbers from neighborhood public schools.

Even though most charter schools are nonprofit doesn’t mean the people who run them aren’t pocketing tons of taxpayer money.

Running a nonprofit charter school can be a highly lucrative undertaking. Some charter schools hire for-profit charter management organizations. Others rent buildings from real estate investors who specialize in charter school investment.

One charter school in California’s Bay Area rented school space at three and one-half times market rate from a company with business ties to its CEO. Through this and other schemes, the CEO diverted $2.7 million in taxpayer dollars without any supporting documents over a span of five years.

Public school systems should provide a great education to each and every student.

Students (and society alike) don’t need a public school system that creates winners and losers. They need smaller classes, better paid teachers, more support services, and cleaner and safer facilities.

Whatever you do during the holidays this year, don’t buy into the myth that the U.S. public education system is broken. There are countless neighborhood public schools around the country finding powerful and groundbreaking ways to educate students. There are hardworking, courageous teachers in every city and town across this land.

What’s broken is how we fund public education. Public schools simply need more resources, and, for that to happen, we don’t need anything all that complicated. Corporations must pay their fair share in taxes, and more resources must to go to the schools and communities that need them most.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Education Reform, Privatization
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