TFA (Teach For Awhile) and the Permanent Stream of Temps for the Poor

What better way for Caitlin and Seth to build their resumes while deciding on Penn or Columbia for grad school? Sweet!

A big chunk from the the NYTimes Magazine:

. . . .In some circles, there is a perception that Teach for America’s corps of teachers do not come back, that many of them view their teaching stint as a résumé-burnishing pit stop before moving on to bigger things — that T.F.A. stands for “Teach for Awhile.” The numbers are telling. More than a third leave after their two years, and another 10 percent drop out well before. T.F.A. says that more than 60 percent of its alumni stay in education, though its definition of education is a broad one. In the organization’s view, it takes allies in every field to close the achievement gap. T.F.A.’s sights are set on the boardroom and Capitol Hill. This is what it calls “the second half of the movement,” beyond the classroom.

One new program, for example, coaches alumni in how to run for political office. Their goal is to get 100 leaders into elected office by 2010. “We have to have advocates in every sector to work on educational inequity,” Elissa Clapp, T.F.A.’s senior vice president for recruitment, told me in June. “It’s naïve to think that we can solve this problem only through teaching. We are completely agnostic about what people do after their two years.” T.F.A.’s agnosticism is central to its cachet. Most college seniors are blissfully without a clue as to the future, much less ready to sign on for a life in the classroom. T.F.A. soothes their qualms by emphasizing the two-year commitment. Recruiters have an impressive arsenal of statistics at their fingertips to prove that they can get you just about anywhere. “Our alumni,” Clapp said, “are living proof that these two years could actually be a career accelerator.”

Kilian Betlach is not your average T.F.A. teacher. After graduating from Boston College in 2002, he applied to the program. He was dealt a shock during the summer training: “I wasn’t happy. I wasn’t having success. I left feeling like this had been a mistake.” That fall, he was assigned to a public school in San Jose, Calif., where, for the length of the first year, he felt in over his head. “I was just squeaking by,” he told me. Despite the difficulties, he has stayed on far longer than most; he has just finished his sixth year as a teacher and doesn’t see himself leaving anytime soon.

“Every day that first year,” Betlach said, “I was like: ‘Oh, my god, I’m a teacher. I’m not ready for this.’ But I got better with time. We all do.” Still, he is troubled by what he refers to as “T.F.A.’s message about teaching.” In six years with T.F.A., he said, “I never was encouraged to stay on as a teacher. It’s almost as if the program perpetuates the idea that if you went to Harvard, a teaching career is below you. As soon as you join T.F.A., the focus is on being an amazing teacher. Then, all of a sudden, it stops. And you start getting e-mails from Goldman Sachs.”

AT TIMES, T.F.A.'S recruitment model, with all its emphasis on high achievement rather than a strong commitment to teaching, does suggest that great teachers are born, not made. But what it takes to excel in college may not be what it takes to command the attention of a class full of children, and making up the difference may require more than five to seven weeks of training over the summer. Traditional master’s-degree programs in teaching tend to take at least one year, along with substantial time as a student teacher. T.F.A., however, usually responds to state certification requirements by having its teachers work toward certification during their first year of teaching. Still, the summer training program is an intensive indoctrination. Trainees are shuttled about in yellow school buses, fed box lunches and given frequent pep talks. Schedules run from early morning to late in the night. When I sat in on parts of the summer institute in Houston, I noticed that some trainees were nearly asleep. Others scribbled into their notebooks furiously. All of them wore nametags; it was like freshman year all over again. T.F.A. insists that its content is just as good as that of traditional programs. “It’s a trial by fire,” one current trainee told me. “If you can’t handle the sprint, get out.” Some do drop out.

The question of what it takes to be a good teacher has inspired a series of spirited data wars between T.F.A. and its critics. Most often cited (by the critics) is a 2005 study examining the links between student achievement and their teachers’ certification status. In a study of more than 132,000 students and 4,400 teachers in the Houston public-school district, Linda Darling-Hammond, a professor at Stanford University’s School of Education, and three colleagues found that students taught by certified teachers outperformed those taught by noncertified teachers in reading and mathematics. Uncertified T.F.A. teachers had negative impacts on student achievement on five of six tests. Tellingly, their effectiveness improved when they gained certification.

T.F.A. has called the Stanford study flawed, arguing that its sample sizes were small and questioning whether it was subject to adequate independent review. (The organization’s P.R. team is formidable.) Teach for America points to a 2004 study carried out by Mathematica Policy Research that shows T.F.A. teachers’ student scores matching those of a comparison group of novice and veteran colleagues in reading and slightly better in math. Over two months of talking to T.F.A. staff members, I was referred to this study no less than 13 times. Another study points to the fact that principals clamor for T.F.A. teachers; 74 percent considered T.F.A. teachers more effective than other beginning teachers.

Darling-Hammond’s explanation for the numbers is not exactly flattering to T.F.A. “The principals who are saying ‘I love T.F.A.’ are responding to the fact that teaching standards in schools that hire uncertified teachers are typically low,” she told me this summer. “This is a country that spends so little on the neediest, and here we are perpetuating a cycle of underprepared teachers. If one takes the lowest possible standard and accepts that as a goal, then Teach for America is great.” . . .

What IS Left Behind?

What IS Left Behind?

We have reached a critical crossroads in our educational and national history. As NCLB’s reauthorization or expiration takes center stage in Washington, American citizens who care about the future of our public schools and our democracy must be heard. Our shared future is not an abstract political possibility but, rather, one that breathes in every son or daughter, every niece or nephew, every grandson or granddaughter, every neighbor’s child, and every one of our own students who enters the schoolhouse door.

While Secretary Spellings and legislators from both parties stubbornly proclaim that NCLB is working—despite of all the empirical evidence indicating otherwise—and as politicians boast that no child is being left behind, let us pause to consider what has been jettisoned. Let us take a moment to think about what has been left behind, what has been dumped, what has been pushed out the door because there is no longer space or time for it in the school day.

Now if your school still has some of these things, I say congratulations. At the same time, however, I say beware. Beware, because the unattainable goal of 100% proficiency that is the bedrock of NCLB makes it most likely that over the next seven years, your school will join the 30% of schools today where these crucial elements of school have already been left behind.

As American citizens deeply concerned about the health of our democratic republic, we are, of course, concerned and horrified that the social studies have been left behind. In Florida and other states, social studies teachers, afraid of losing their jobs, are lobbying for social studies to be tested, so that their work will survive.

The emphasis on math and reading tests has meant less geography, civics, and government, which leaves children ignorant of how public decisions are made or where their community fits into state, national, and global contexts—or even that there is a context beyond their street and TV screens. Children are left, in effect, stranded on lonely islands of ignorance, without the impetus or skills to have their voices heard in ways that make the world listen.

History, too, has been left behind, making it assured that this next generation will grow up more likely to be swayed by the mistakes and misdeeds of the past to which they remain clueless. What is a democratic republic and where did it come from? Sorry, that’s not on the test, either.

And economics? While children in wealthy communities, the ones without AYP worries yet, play stock market games and learn about hedge funds, the economic education of children in schools under the testing gun consists of collecting “Scholar Dollars” that they trade in for bags of Skittles, a pittance of pay for a meaningless labor whose significance remains a mystery to them.

Health and physical education have been left behind, too, leaving children out of shape and subject to diseases associated with obesity and inactivity. At the same time, children are left in the dark about the importance of healthy foods, fresh fruits and vegetables, the kinds of foods that are scarce in the small stores of poor neighborhoods. And left behind, too, is information about the hazards of a never-ending diet of Taco Bell and McDonalds—because that's not on the test, either.

Art and music have been left behind, leaving in their crossing wakes an imagination gap, a creativity gap, and expression gap, an aesthetic gap, a souls gap. We can add these gaps to the achievement gap that parallels a widening economic gap – despite years and years of increased testing and accountability in those schools where the economic gaps are at their deepest points.

Diversity of thought has been left behind. What remains in failing schools and the ones teetering on the testing bubble are collections of remote and desiccated facts that represent not even a single culture, but rather, an anti-culture that has essentially eradicated cultural values as a discussable issue.

Science has been left behind, too, and thus the primary tool for understanding how the modern world is organized. Where science survives, it is where it is tested, and the kind of science that remains is the kind that can be fit into a multiple-choice format, not the kind that exercises children’s ability to think, solve problems, conduct experiments, and make good decisions.

Literature has been left behind, and with it the love of reading and books and the curiosity that is spawned and kept alive by the life of the imagination. Stories are now substituted by the measured mouthing of nonsense syllables and the framing of comprehension responses that the children who utter them do not understand.

Recess has been left behind in a third of all American elementary schools, and as the percentage of failing schools increases, we may expect that number to rise. Play, itself, then becomes left behind, and along with it one of the most useful skills of all—to think as if, what if, as in what if life were somehow different than, or what if there were a choice beyond a, b, c, or d?

Nap time has been left behind in kindergarten and even in pre-K, as teachers focus on replacing dream time with skill practice time for a future of testing.

Field trips, holidays, and assemblies have been left behind unless they can be used for test preparation, or unless they come after the test, those short precious weeks when smiles may be seen to return to teachers’ lips and to students’ eyes.

The love of the teacher for her craft has been left behind in so many schools, replaced by the burdensome regimen of the pacing guide and the production schedule and the script. And time for teacher-led discussion, exploration, reflection? There is only time for teachers to learn their lines, trying to become good actors in a very bad play where the audience is compelled to participate. And time to weigh the results of the practice tests in order to get ready for the real tests.

Left behind, too, are teacher autonomy and professional discretion. Now whole hallways of fourth grade classes are on the same page of the same scripted lesson at the same moment that any supervisor should walk by, supervisors who are identically trained to look for the same manifestations of sameness, from bulletin boards to hand signals to the distance that children are trained to maintain from one another as they march to lunch, with their arms holding together their imaginary straightjackets.

Most troubling, however, of all that has been left behind is the teacher’s nurturing care, the teacher whose advocacy for and sensitivity to every child’s fragile humanity has been a trademark of what it means to be the teacher of children.

With the current laser focus on avoiding test failure, even as expectations become higher with each passing year, the child who cannot do more than a child can do now becomes viewed as the stumbling block to a success that is increasingly elusive.

Instead, then, of being viewed as the reasons we have schools to begin with, the needful child who is, indeed, behind, becomes the obstacle to a proficiency that becomes further and further out of reach. When this occurs, as it surely does every time teachers and principals fall prey to the pressure, children become the burden that must be reluctantly borne, obstacles to a success that their own disability, poverty, or language issues complicate— and that even the best teacher can never compensate for.

Students, then, come to be seen as complicit in creating the failure that, in fact, no one, teacher or student, can remedy, because there is a monstrous system that has made child failure and, thus, school failure inevitable, a monstrous system that has traded and treated this generation of children as a means to attain a political end—a political end that, in fact, threatens our future as a free people who are able to think, to solve problems, to care, to imagine, to understand, to have empathy, to participate, to grow, to live.

So as you listen to the growing debate this fall in Washington, please do not leave your political responsibility behind and your good sense with it. Go online tonight and order the Linda Perlstein book, Tested. . .. Read it and, as you do so, keep in mind that the horror that she so ably describes occurred in a school that is considered a success, a “lighthouse school.” Think, then, of what it must be like in the thirty percent of American schools that are now labeled failures.

Recently, a quote by Cal State professor, Art Costa showed up on one of internet discussion groups, a quote that is horribly relevant today: "What was once educationally significant, but difficult to measure, has been replaced by what is insignificant and easy to measure. So now we test how well we have taught what we do not value."

Call and write and visit your school boards and your Congressional delegation. Remind them what you value and what you believe to be significant for now and for our future, and what you know that now and finally must to be left behind.

Jim Horn

A similar version of this commentary was delivered September 27 at Monmouth University. It will be posted on YouTube a few days hence.

50 Years After Little Rock

The witnesses to that old brutality returned to Little Rock High this week, fifty years after President Eisenhower ordered out the 101st Airborne Division to assure the safety of schoolchildren trying to get an education.

Today we find the segregationists no less determined than they were then, but now they use head-spinning interpretations of the Constitution that their advocates on the Supreme Court confirm--and federal education policy that assures separation and white privilege.

From the Washington Post:

LITTLE ROCK, Sept. 25 -- This time around, the Little Rock Nine pulled up at the high school in three white stretch limousines.

Five decades ago, they had to walk through a gantlet of jeering whites shouting venomous threats. Tuesday, fans swarmed them for autographs and pictures. News crews lobbed softball questions. In front of a crowd of 5,000 people, dignitaries including former president Bill Clinton and Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, governors, congressmen and the mayor were on hand to laud their bravery in desegregating the school.

The nine former students had returned to the campus of Little Rock Central High School half a century after President Dwight D. Eisenhower had ordered soldiers to escort them into the school.

"We thought this was a place that would accept us," one of the nine, Ernest Green, told the crowd. "And you know what? Fifty years later, I think we were right!"

It was a day of unmitigated adulation of the nine, and recognition of how much their determination to attend school had galvanized the civil rights movement,

Their decision to enroll despite the dangers, backed by the federal show of force, made it clear throughout the nation that the 1954 Supreme Court ruling of Brown v. Board of Education would be enforced.

But off the podium here, in private conversations, there was also concern that their achievements had been in part undone by other social changes. Many school districts around the country, for instance, are becoming more segregated along racial lines.

"The forces that resisted the desegregation of Little Rock have never stopped fighting," Jesse L. Jackson said. "Those who rejected the dream are still rejecting the dream."

With the growth of private religious academies, vouchers and charter schools, Jackson said, black and white students are less likely to attend school together. He noted the difficulties of integrating schools when whites leave urban areas, leaving behind what he called "the hole in the doughnut."

"Anything other than have people send their kids where whites and blacks are together," he said.

His observations are borne out in Little Rock and elsewhere in the United States by statistics from the Civil Rights Project at UCLA.

The high point of desegregation in the Little Rock School District came in 1980, when the average black student attended a school that was 50 percent white. Today, the average black student attends a school that is 20 percent white.

"There's been a huge decline -- it takes us back to the kinds of numbers we had in the late '60s," said Gary Orfield, a professor of education at UCLA.

The student body at Little Rock Central High School is 53 percent black and 40 percent white.

Orfield attributed the change in Little Rock's school district to decades of court rulings and other changes that, as of June, restrict school districts in considering race for school attendance plans.

"Little Rock is in the same situation that a lot of the South is," he said. "There's no court order to integrate anymore and the school board doesn't have any right to take any action to integrate based on race. It probably means it will become more segregated." . . .

Decider Speaks: "Childrens Do Learn"

From Reuters:

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Offering a grammar lesson guaranteed to make any English teacher cringe, President George W. Bush told a group of New York school kids on Wednesday: "Childrens do learn."

Bush made his latest grammatical slip-up at a made-for-TV event where he urged Congress to reauthorize the No Child Left Behind Act, the centerpiece of his education policy, as he touted a new national report card on improved test scores.

The event drew New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Education Secretary Margaret Spellings plus teachers and about 20 fourth and fifth graders from P.S. 76.

During his first presidential campaign, Bush -- who promised to be the "education president" -- once asked: "Is our children learning?"

On Wednesday, Bush seemed to answer his own question with the same kind of grammatical twist.

"As yesterday's positive report card shows, childrens do learn when standards are high and results are measured," he said.

The White House opted to clean up Bush's diction in the official transcript.

Bush is no stranger to verbal gaffes. He often acknowledges he was no more than an average student in school and jokes about his habit of mangling the English language.

Just a day earlier, the White House inadvertently showed how it tries to prevent Bush from making even more slips of the tongue than he already does.

As Bush addressed the U.N. General Assembly on Tuesday, a marked-up draft of his speech briefly popped up on the U.N. Web site, complete with a phonetic pronunciation guide to get him past troublesome names of countries and world leaders.

Spellings Manipulates NAEP Scores to Spread Lie About NCLB

Chart from NY Times (click to enlarge).

The corporate media is already in action, printing the press releases handed them by the dissemblers in charge of handing them out from Education Department. "Test scores at all time high" the headlines scream. Yes, true, but this has happened many times over the past thirty five years, as NAEP test scores have generally trended upward since NAEP began.

What none of the Spellings spinners will talk about is the fact that growth in scores has slowed since NCLB as compared to growth before NCLB. The best media report I've seen so far is from the NY Times, and it is has its weaknesses.

Here's the straight dope from FairTest:

NAEP DATA CONTRADICT BUSH ADMINISTRATION EDUCATION CLAIMS;

“NO CHILD LEFT BEHIND” HAS NOT LED TO FASTER SCHOOL IMPROVEMENT

Bush Administration claims about the controversial “No Child Left Behind” (NCLB) law are undermined by data from its own Department of Education, according to an analysis of newly released National Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP) scores by the National Center for Fair & Open Testing (FairTest). “NAEP shows educational improvement across the nation slowed significantly since NCLB went into effect,” said FairTest co-Executive Director Monty Neill. “This happened despite the fact that curriculum narrowed in many schools to little more than test preparation in reading and math”

“Gains from 2000 to 2003, before NCLB went into effect, were significantly greater than they were from 2003 to 2007, when NCLB was the law,” Neill continued. “That deflates the administration’s claims that federal law is driving school improvement. For example, black students’ 4^th grade math scores jumped from 203 to 216 in the three years before NCLB took effect, then edged up to 222 from 2003 to 2007.”

FairTest also cited today's National Assessment Governing Board news release on National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) score trends, which acknowledges:

- “[Mathematics] gains made since 2003 are . . . not as large as those realized during some earlier period.”

- “The average 8th-grade reading score . . . remains below the level of achievement shown in 2002.”

“The administration continues to cherry-pick test scores to defend its deeply flawed education policy,” said Neill. “There are much better ways to improve educational quality and equity. Congress should listen to the more than 140 national education, civil rights and religious organizations that have come together to call for an overall of this damaging federal law."

- - 3 0 - -

The multi-organizational statement calling for an overhaul of “No Child Left Behind” and other assessment reform materials are available at http://www.fairtest.org

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Additional observations on NAEP grade 8 reading results - from Monty Neill

Black, white and Hispanics scores all are identical to 2002.

The black-white gap in reading is same as in 2002 (27 points) and is one point wider than in '98 - AND scores did not rise at a statistically signifcant level since '98 - 1 point for blacks, 2 points for whites.

Scores for whites and Hispanics are unchanged since 2002; but the gap then was reported as 26 points, while this year it is reported as 25 points. Scores for both groups have inched up a few points since '94, but the gap then was 24 points. The gap was 26 points in '92. Gains since '92 have been 5 points for whites and 6 points for Hispanics. At this rate, equity will never be attained and 'proficiency' will be reached in which century?

Join Us at Monmouth Sept. 27

Come one, come all to Monmouth University's Pollak Theatre this Thursday evening, 7-9 PM, for a presentation and panel discussion of the new PDK/Gallup Poll on Public Attitudes toward the Public Schools. There is no admission fee, and no reservations are required. Safe campus, lots of parking.

I will present the major findings of the poll, which will be followed by a panel discussion and questions from the audience. Of course, NCLB will be a prominent topic, but other important education issues for the American electorate will be discussed. Please bring a friend and join us.

Bob Herbert Gets Close, But Swoops On Past

This is a great piece by Bob Herbert from the Times today on the maturation (what is that smell?) of the GOP, but he, like the NAACP and the Children's Defense Fund, miss the elephantine black-bashing strategy that is the heart and soul of the GOP's darling ideological tool, NCLB: the trained subjugation of a permanent caste that is taught and trained in an anti-cultural and anti-thinking curriculum from kindergarten up.

There are many books out there, Mr. Herbert, that document this phenomenon. I would suggest Perlstein's Tested . . . as a primer, which, by the way, examines what happens as a result of NCLB in one of the most successful (makes AYP) urban schools. Read it and then imagine what happens in the ones that don't make AYP!:

I applaud the thousands of people, many of them poor, who traveled from around the country to protest in Jena, La., last week. But what I’d really like to see is a million angry protesters marching on the headquarters of the National Republican Party in Washington.

Enough is enough. Last week the Republicans showed once again just how anti-black their party really is.

The G.O.P. has spent the last 40 years insulting, disenfranchising and otherwise stomping on the interests of black Americans. Last week, the residents of Washington, D.C., with its majority black population, came remarkably close to realizing a goal they have sought for decades — a voting member of Congress to represent them.

A majority in Congress favored the move, and the House had already approved it. But the Republican minority in the Senate — with the enthusiastic support of President Bush — rose up on Tuesday and said: “No way, baby.”

At least 57 senators favored the bill, a solid majority. But the Republicans prevented a key motion on the measure from receiving the 60 votes necessary to move it forward in the Senate. The bill died.

At the same time that the Republicans were killing Congressional representation for D.C. residents, the major G.O.P. candidates for president were offering a collective slap in the face to black voters nationally by refusing to participate in a long-scheduled, nationally televised debate focusing on issues important to minorities.

The radio and television personality Tavis Smiley worked for a year to have a pair of these debates televised on PBS, one for the Democratic candidates and the other for the Republicans. The Democratic debate was held in June, and all the major candidates participated.

The Republican debate is scheduled for Thursday. But Rudy Giuliani, John McCain, Mitt Romney and Fred Thompson have all told Mr. Smiley: “No way, baby.”

They won’t be there. They can’t be bothered debating issues that might be of interest to black Americans. After all, they’re Republicans.

This is the party of the Southern strategy — the party that ran, like panting dogs, after the votes of segregationist whites who were repelled by the very idea of giving equal treatment to blacks. Ronald Reagan, George H.W. (Willie Horton) Bush, George W. (Compassionate Conservative) Bush — they all ran with that lousy pack.

Dr. Carolyn Goodman, a woman I was privileged to call a friend, died last month at the age of 91. She was the mother of Andrew Goodman, one of the three young civil rights activists shot to death by rabid racists near Philadelphia, Miss., in 1964.

Dr. Goodman, one of the most decent people I have ever known, carried the ache of that loss with her every day of her life.

In one of the vilest moves in modern presidential politics, Ronald Reagan, the ultimate hero of this latter-day Republican Party, went out of his way to kick off his general election campaign in 1980 in that very same Philadelphia, Miss. He was not there to send the message that he stood solidly for the values of Andrew Goodman. He was there to assure the bigots that he was with them.

“I believe in states’ rights,” said Mr. Reagan. The crowd roared.

In 1981, during the first year of Mr. Reagan’s presidency, the late Lee Atwater gave an interview to a political science professor at Case Western Reserve University, explaining the evolution of the Southern strategy:

“You start out in 1954 by saying, ‘Nigger, nigger, nigger,’ ” said Atwater. “By 1968, you can’t say ‘nigger’ — that hurts you. Backfires. So you say stuff like forced busing, states’ rights, and all that stuff. You’re getting so abstract now [that] you’re talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you’re talking about are totally economic things, and a byproduct of them is [that] blacks get hurt worse than whites.”

In 1991, the first President Bush poked a finger in the eye of black America by selecting the egregious Clarence Thomas for the seat on the Supreme Court that had been held by the revered Thurgood Marshall. The fact that there is a rigid quota on the court, permitting one black and one black only to serve at a time, is itself racist.

Mr. Bush seemed to be saying, “All right, you want your black on the court? Boy, have I got one for you.”

Republicans improperly threw black voters off the rolls in Florida in the contested presidential election of 2000, and sent Florida state troopers into the homes of black voters to intimidate them in 2004.

Blacks have been remarkably quiet about this sustained mistreatment by the Republican Party, which says a great deal about the quality of black leadership in the U.S. It’s time for that passive, masochistic posture to end.

Gates Spews--Bracey Responds

From HuffPost:

After Bill Gates spoke to the National Governors Association in February, 2005, I wrote "You Bill Gates! If You're So Rich How Come You Ain't Smart?" To me, Gates' speech was just another illustration that when experts in one field speak out in another, they can say some really stupid things. No one would publish my screed. Maybe it just wasn't well written.

But Gates is at it again. Saying really dumb things. This time in the September 23 edition of Parade. I don't generally read Parade because I think it is generally garbage and it has a long history of saying nasty and erroneous things about public schools. But my wife peruses it and I had to listen to her read out loud the very short piece that is not headed with a by-line. I suppose the author was embarrassed.

Gates is quotes as saying "Testing is the only objective measurement of our students. It's incredible that we have not national standard." Testing is not "objective" when different students have different opportunities to learn what's on the tests. Why is it incredible that we have no national standard? Remember "Only in America?" It used to be a statement of pride that we did things different from the rest of the world. National standards in and of themselves mean nothing. A study of the results of the Third International Mathematics and Science Study in 1995 found that in math, 8 of the 10 highest scoring nations had centralized curricula and national standards. But so did 8 of the 10 lowest scoring nations. In science 8 of the 10 highest scoring nations had national standards, but so did 9 of the 10 lowest scoring countries.

He says that the 20% of U. S. students who take honors classes and go to college get an education as good as any in the world. "It's the other 80% where the U. S. is weak." Where on earth does he get these figures? There are no data looking at college education across nations. And if only 20% of our kids were getting good college education, why would millions of students flock to American universities. Why would everyone consider them the best in the world? A ranking from Shanghai Jiao Tong University placed 19 U. S. colleges in the top 25 (along with only 3 from the U. K., 2 in Japan and one in Canada).

"When we gave up phonics, we destroyed the reading ability of kids." Not even the National Reading Panel, which went too far towards phonics, went that far. Those of us who learned to read before we started school...well, I guess we couldn't have done that, huh, Bill? (There are many documented cases of people learning to read without instruction).

He says we should end the disparities between urban and suburban high schools. Well I'm all for that and he's at least put his money where his mouth is there, but he doesn't really say what he means. Test scores, I guess.

But you have to wonder about Gates. He must giggle every time he enters his 11,500 square foot house. He's smart enough to know he's pulled off one of the great scams ever. If GM, Ford or Chrysler had marketed a product as lousy as Windows, they'd have long since been bankrupt. The "Bill Gates Wealth Clock" is no longer functioning because something is wrong with the real-time data suppliers, but when I wrote my last book in 2006, the clock registered $65 billion (the URL is here when it functions).

The Parade article observes that it's been two years since Gates made his grim predictions about the economic decline of the U. S. if our schools didn't shape up. And indeed, since then, we have fallen from first to 6th in the annual Global Competitiveness Ranking from the World Economic Forum. But it's a funny thing. If you read their explanation of why we've slumped you end up with only two words: Bush policies (new rankings will be out in a month or two).

What does Gates mean by ending that disparity of urban and suburban schools? It means making them all "non-profit" charter schools so that corporations can use them for tax credits, turn teaching into temporary internships, use tests to determine moves from grade to grade, create a national database that tracks ALL children, and eliminate the need for that transitional phase of school to work by turning school INTO work.

When Russian Othodox Freedom Looks Like American Christian Hegemony

From the NYTimes:

KOLOMNA, Russia — One of the most discordant debates in Russian society is playing out in public schools like those in this city not far from Moscow, where the other day a teacher named Irina Donshina set aside her textbooks, strode before her second graders and, as if speaking from a pulpit, posed a simple question:

“Whom should we learn to do good from?”

“From God!” the children said.

“Right!” Ms. Donshina said. “Because people he created crucified him. But did he accuse them or curse them or hate them? Of course not! He continued loving and feeling pity for them, though he could have eliminated all of us and the whole world in a fraction of a second.”

Nearly two decades after the collapse of the Soviet Union and the return of religion to public life, localities in Russia are increasingly decreeing that to receive a proper public school education, children should be steeped in the ways of the Russian Orthodox Church, including its traditions, liturgy and historic figures.

The lessons are typically introduced at the urging of church leaders, who say the enforced atheism of Communism left Russians out of touch with a faith that was once at the core of their identity.

The new curriculum reflects the nation’s continuing struggle to define what it means to be Russian in the post-Communist era and what role religion should play after being brutally suppressed under Soviet rule. Yet the drive by a revitalized church to weave its tenets into the education system has prompted a backlash, and not only from the remains of the Communist Party.

Opponents assert that the Russian Orthodox leadership is weakening the constitutional separation of church and state by proselytizing in public schools. They say Russia is a multiethnic, pluralistic nation and risks alienating its large Muslim minority if Russian Orthodoxy takes on the trappings of a state religion.

The church calls those accusations unfounded, maintaining that the courses are cultural, not religious.

In Ms. Donshina’s class at least, the children seem to have their own understanding of a primary theme of the course. “One has to love God,” said Kristina Posobilova. “We should believe in God only.”

The dispute came to a head recently when 10 prominent Russian scientists, including two Nobel laureates, sent a letter to President Vladimir V. Putin, protesting what they termed the “growing clericalization” of Russian society. In addition to criticizing religious teachings in public schools, the scientists attacked church efforts to obtain recognition of degrees in theology, and the presence of Russian Orthodox chaplains in the military.

Local officials carry out education policy under Moscow’s oversight, with some latitude. Some regions require the courses in Russian Orthodoxy, while others allow parents to remove their children from them, though they rarely, if ever, do. Other areas have not adopted them.

Mr. Putin, though usually not reluctant to overrule local authorities, has skirted the issue. He said in September that he preferred that children learn about religion in general, especially four faiths with longstanding ties to Russia — Russian Orthodoxy, Islam, Judaism and Buddhism. But the president, who has been photographed wearing a cross and sometimes attends church services and other church events, did not say current practices should be scaled back. . . .

Recalling the Lead-lined Chinese Lunch Tote

Adding lead to paint helps the paint dry faster. The Market made them do it--it wasn't Chairman Mao. That's what I call trading one totalitarian system for another without missing a sale. Wonder if the State of California will apologize to the Chinese like Mattel did. From the LATimes:

The hundreds of thousands of lunchboxes given away by state health officials were designed to promote healthful habits, bearing slogans such as "Eat Fruits & Vegetables and Be Active." Just one problem: At least some of them were made with unhealthful levels of lead.

The California Department of Public Health said Thursday that it was recalling 300,000 green and blue canvas lunch coolers made in China and distributed throughout the state at health fairs and other events since 2004.

"It's unfortunate that an item we're using hopefully to promote healthy behavior is discovered itself to be a potential health hazard," said Dr. Mark Horton, director of the state's public health department and a pediatrician. "Kids have a habit of putting their hands in their mouth a lot, and the food inside the lunchbox possibly could be contaminated."

The recall underscores the difficulty of ensuring the safety of millions of products produced around the world and sold -- or given away -- in the United States. A wave of high-profile toy recalls this year, including millions of Mattel Inc. products containing lead paint, spurred manufacturers and retailers to implement new controls. The problem with lead in consumer products, however, goes beyond one industry, activists say.

No injuries have been reported as a result of the lead-tainted lunchboxes, California health officials said. But no exposure to lead is considered safe.

Lead is particularly dangerous to the developing brains and nervous systems of children. Exposure, usually as a result of deteriorating old paint in a home, can affect a child's learning ability, hearing, height, nervous system and gastrointestinal tract and, in larger doses, can cause seizures, coma and death.

Children deficient in iron and other key nutrients are particularly susceptible to lead poisoning. Many of the now-recalled lunchboxes went to low-income Californians, including recipients of food stamps.

The recall includes 56,000 dark-green canvas lunchboxes with Spanish and English versions of the "Eat Fruits & Vegetables" logo. State health officials were alerted to the problem after technicians from the Sacramento County Health Department, doing a spot check in late July, found elevated lead levels.

Subsequent tests by the state's Department of Toxic Substances Control found that multiple parts of the boxes, such as the vinyl lining, contained lead.

The highest lead levels were found in the bag's decorative logo, a shining yellow sun and brightly colored fruits and vegetables along with the www.ca5aday.com Web address.

Horton said the tests showed lead levels "significantly above" 600 parts per million, the legal limit. One box tested at 1,700 parts per million, according to the Department of Public Health.

Although lead paint has been banned in the United States since 1978, factories in some countries have used lead as an inexpensive way to, among other things, make paint dry faster and last longer. . . .

Protecting Families of the Jena 6, Or Just Another Blanco Stare

Blanco wants to investigate, while the crackers are ready to drag bodies. Who will the Administration send this time to neglect Louisiana citizens?

NEW ORLEANS (AP) - The FBI is reviewing a white supremacist Web site that purports to list the addresses of five of the six black teenagers accused of beating a white student in Jena and "essentially called for their lynching," an agency spokeswoman said Saturday.

Sheila Thorne, an agent in the FBI's New Orleans office, said authorities were reviewing whether the site breaks any federal laws. She said the FBI had "gathered intelligence on the matter," but declined to further explain how the agency got involved.

CNN first reported Friday about the Web site, which features a swastika, frequent use of racial slurs, a mailing address in Roanoke, Va., and phone numbers purportedly for some of the teens' families "in case anyone wants to deliver justice." . . . .

Laura Bush on NCLB: "The test isn't really punitive"

Hoping to convince America to re-up for the continuing war against public education, the White House has brought out, by far, its most likable recruiter to put that buttery school marm spin on the horrid fact that parents are expected to sacrifice their children to another six years of educational genocide:

"The test isn't really punitive, it's not to punish people," the first lady said this week. "It's just to find out what the problems are. It's like, you wouldn't go to your doctor and say, 'Tell me what's wrong with me but you can't run any tests.' The outcry against the tests, to me, just seems really silly."

Laura, Laura, Laura. First off, your metaphor is lost on the poor people you are hoping to sway, since most of them don't have doctors. They have emergency rooms. If they did have doctors, I doubt that it would the kind of doctor who decides to remove a vital organ when the test shows the patient is sick, who calls up every day to threaten more organ removal if recovery isn't quick, and who repeats the same test-organ removal process regardess of how much the patient has tried to get well.

As part of their campaign, Bush and Spellings discussed the education bill in a rare, invitation-only briefing this week with female White House reporters. And Spellings is on a bus tour of the Midwest, highlighting back-to-school issues and the No Child Left Behind debate.

At the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland, she sang a chorus of Stevie Wonder's Signed, Sealed, Delivered — an anthem, perhaps, for the White House's hopes on the bill.

Or perhaps an indictment? Or impeachment articles?

John Edwards Offers Detailed, Sane Education Plan

Issued today, this Edwards plan is the most impressive of all the presidential wannabes. And it actually has references, which is totally unheard of.

Here is one clip of the plan:

Making Every School an Outstanding School

Every child in America should have the chance to attend an outstanding public school that has high expectations for every child. Children need to master both basic skills in reading, writing and math and advanced thinking skills like creativity, analytic thinking and using technology. We cannot tolerate the benign neglect of our schools. No Child Left Behind has lost its way by imposing cheap standardized tests, narrowing the curriculum at the expense of science, history, and the arts and mandating unproven cookie-cutter reforms on schools. As a result, it has lost the support of teachers, principals, and parents, whose support is needed for any reform to succeed.

John Edwards believes that we need to overhaul No Child Left Behind to center our schools around children, not tests, and help struggling schools, not punish them. He will:

Overhaul No Child Left Behind: The law must be radically changed to live up to its goal of helping all children learn at high levels, accurately identifying struggling schools, and improving them. Its sole reliance on standardized, primarily multiple choice reading and math tests has led schools to narrow the curriculum. Its methodology for identifying failing school can be arbitrary and unfair. And it imposes mandatory, cookie-cutter reforms on these schools without any evidence they work. Edwards supports:

Better tests: Rather than requiring students to take cheap standardized tests, Edwards believes that we must invest in the development of higher-quality assessments that measure higher-order thinking skills, including open-ended essays, oral examinations, and projects and experiments.

Broader measures of school success: Edwards believes that the law should consider additional measures of academic performance. The law should also allow states to track the growth of students over time, rather than only counting the number of students who clear an arbitrary bar, and give more flexibility to small rural schools.

More flexibility: Edwards will give states more flexibility by distinguishing between schools where many children are failing and those where a particular group is falling behind. He will also let states implement their own reforms in underperforming schools when there is good reason to believe that they will be at least equally effective.

Launch a “Great Schools” Initiative to Build and Expand 1,000 Successful Schools: Across America, there are public schools that are helping children from all backgrounds succeed, including traditional public schools, public charter schools, small schools, and other models. Edwards will help 250 schools a year expand or start new branches. Federal funds will support new buildings, excellent teachers, and other needs. Among the schools he will support are:

Small schools: Small high schools create stronger communities, reducing adolescent anonymity and alienation and encouraging teachers to work together. At 47 new small high schools recently opened in New York City, graduation rates are substantially higher than the citywide average. Communities can establish multiple schools within an existing facility, build new schools, and reopen old facilities. [Aspen Institute, 2001; N.Y. Times, 6/30/2007]

Early college high schools: High schools on college campuses let students earn both a high school diploma and an associate’s degree (or two years of transfer credit) in only five years. In North Carolina, Governor Mike Easley’s Learn and Earn initiative raises rigor and aspirations, reduces tuition costs, and relieves overcrowded college campuses. [American Institutes for Research and SRI International, 2007; Easley, 2007]

Economically integrated schools: While income diversity is not a substitute for racial diversity, low-income students perform best when in middle-class schools where they are more likely to have experienced teachers and classmates with high aspirations. States can build magnet schools in low-income communities and create incentives for middle-class schools to enroll more low-income children. [Kahlenberg, 2007; Harris, 2006; NY Times, 7/15/05]

Create a School Success Fund to Turn Around Struggling Schools: Improving our worst schools is going to take more than federal mandates of unproven remedies; it will require a serious commitment of resources. A new School Success Fund will:

Let experts design and implement reforms: Based on North Carolina’s successful reform, Edwards will ask teams of experienced educators to spend a year at struggling schools helping start reforms. These educators will tailor comprehensive solutions to each school, rather than adopting silver bullets or one-size-fits-all solutions.

Provide resources to implement them: Some schools need more resources to help their children succeed. The School Success Fund will target resources to the neediest schools. Resources will be available to recruit new school leadership and a core of excellent teachers, reduce class sizes, duplicate proven models, strengthen the curriculum, and other reforms.

Emphasize extra learning time: Due to our 180-day school year, American children spend much less time in class than their foreign competitors. Many other countries have 25 percent more instructional time, which adds up to more than two years by the end of high school. When combined with making better use of learning time and designed with educators, longer school days and years create new opportunities for children to master the basics and a broader curriculum. [ED in 08, 2007; Zimmerman, 1998; CAP, 2006]

Establish stronger academic and career curricula: The rigor of high school classes is the number-one predictor of college success. Even students who do not go to college need strong math and reading skills in the workplace. Edwards believes that all schools – even those in small, isolated, and high-poverty areas – should have access to challenging Advanced Placement courses. And he will support partnerships between high schools and community colleges to help high school students get the training they need for the good jobs where skilled workers are in short supply today. [US Department of Education, 1997; ACT, 2006; ED in 08, 2007]

More Resources for Poor and Rural Schools: Four out of five urban school districts studied nationally spend more on low-poverty schools than on high-poverty schools. Rural schools enroll 40 percent of American children – including most children in Iowa, New Hampshire, and North Carolina – but receive only 22 percent of federal education funding. Edwards will increase federal Title I funding and dedicate the increases to low-income schools and districts and rewarding states that distribute funding where it is needed most to increase learning. He will also invest in distance education and cutting-edge software to bring the promise of new learning technologies to remote areas. [NASBE, 2003; Rural School and Community Trust, 2007; Digital Promise, 2003]

Meet the Promise of Special Education: More than thirty years ago, Congress committed to fund 40 percent of the excess cost of educating children with disabilities, but it provides less than half that amount. George Bush has proposed a $300 million cut. Edwards opposes the Bush cuts and supports getting on a path toward meeting the federal promise. [Committee for Education Funding, 2007]

Raise Graduation Rates: Almost a third of all students drop out of school before earning a high school diploma, and rates among children of color or from low-income families are higher. At nearly 2,000 high schools nationwide – called “dropout factories” – more than 40 percent of students won't graduate. Edwards will create multiple paths to graduation such as Second Chance schools for former dropouts and smaller alternative schools for at-risk students. He will focus on identifying at-risk students and support the Striving Readers literacy program and one-on-one tutoring to keep them in school. Edwards will also fund additional guidance counselors in high-poverty schools. [Baron, 2005; Alliance for Excellent Education, 2007; Balfranz and Legters, 2004; NCES, 2004]

Support High School Service Programs: The energy and enthusiasm of high school students who want to make their community and their country a better place to live. One type of service program, service-learning, has been shown to have positive impacts on students’ civic engagement, college enrollment, career development, and personal relationships. Nearly half of school-age children lack the activities and role models that are opportunities to make a difference through helping others. Edwards will create a Community Corps service programs for high school students. It will provide resources to high schools that choose to make community service a graduation requirement, helping them make service opportunities higher in quality and integrate them into the curriculum. [NYLC, 2006; America’s Promise Alliance, undated] . . . .

Mychal Bell Still Jailed and More Nooses Appear

Apparently, there is some work remaining to be done in Jena and in other racist strongholds across Louisiana:

Mychal Bell, one of the so-called 'Jena 6,' apparently will not be released from juvenile detention today. Bell attended a hearing in juvenile court in Jena, La., this afternoon, one day after a massive civil rights protest in the town involving the arrest of six black teens for the alleged beating of a white teen.

From the AP: Lawyers would not comment because juvenile court proceedings are secret. But the father of one of Bell's codefendants said Bell's bail request was denied. Bell's mother left the courthouse in tears and refused to comment.

Meanwhile, rednecks near Alexandria were arrested after driving around with extension cord nooses hanging from the tailgate of their pickup truck:

ALEXANDRIA, Louisiana (CNN) -- Authorities in Alexandria, Louisiana, arrested two people after nooses were seen hanging from the back of a red pickup Thursday night, the city's mayor told CNN.

A photograph taken by I-Reporter Casanova Love shows a noose hanging from a red pickup.

Alexandria is less than an hour away from Jena, Louisiana, and was a staging area Thursday for protesters who went to the smaller town to demonstrate against the treatment of six black teens known as the "Jena 6" in racially charged incidents.

Police say the 18-year-old driver of the truck was charged with driving while intoxicated and inciting to riot and also may be charged with contributing to the delinquency of a minor -- the 16-year-old passenger.

As police were questioning the driver, he said he had an unloaded rifle in the back, which police found. They also found a set of brass knuckles in the cup holder on the dashboard, according to the police report.

The passenger told police he and his family are in the Ku Klux Klan, the police report said. He also said he had tied the nooses and that the brass knuckles belonged to him, the report said. Watch what police found on the truck »

At least one of the nooses was made out of an extension cord, according to the police report.

Alexandria Mayor Jacques Roy said those arrested were "from around Jena" and not in the same parish as his city.

Just Saying No to Abstinence Only Funding Is Only A Start

From the NY Times:

New York is rejecting millions of dollars in federal grants for abstinence-only sex education, the state health commissioner, Dr. Richard F. Daines, announced yesterday. The decision puts New York in line with at least 10 other states that have decided to forgo the federal money in recent years.

New York has received roughly $3.5 million a year from the federal government for abstinence-only education since 1998. The abstinence program was approved as part of welfare overhauls under the Clinton administration and was expanded and restructured under President Bush.

In a statement posted on the Health Department’s Web site, Dr. Daines said, “The Bush administration’s abstinence-only program is an example of a failed national health care policy directive.” He added that the policy was “based on ideology rather than on sound scientific-based evidence that must be the cornerstone of good public health care policy.”

The state had also spent $2.6 million annually to fund the same programs over the last decade. That money will now be spent on other existing programs for sex education, Dr. Daines said in an interview. . . .

Now if New York and other states would just say to the behavioral literacy training that the lead quacks, Reid Lyon and Doug Carnine, have packaged as reading instruction for the poor, we could begin, perhaps, to repair the damage done to millions of American children who are taught how NOT to think for several hours of every day.

By the way, the other day when I was sharing with my students some of the pornographic clips from the Association for Direct Instruction website, one student commented on the ominous music behind the clinical narration. He noted that only the harmonica is missing to truly make it jailhouse-worthy. Effective Behavior Management, now that's a good one. Taking it off here, Boss!

Maybe we should send some of these videos to the ghouls in charge of Friday nite programming at the Prison Channel, MSNBC--call it Prison Prep or Carnine's Cages!! How about Reid's Redemption?

As the Party of Lincoln Becomes the Party of David Duke . . .

. . . it validates and emboldens the racists out in the heartland to come out from under their rocks and start making their ugly business. Comments here by Dr. Cornel West on the latest snub by the leading Republican presidential contenders:

The GOP debate in Baltimore at Morgan State University, led and moderated by Tavis Smiley, and currently being snubbed by the leading candidates, is a pivotal moment in this election. It is a litmus test for a Republican Party that, in the past, has run away from black voters and only selectively interacted with Hispanic citizens.

At this moment in American history, it is clear that either the Republican Party wisely embraces people of color, or it chooses to be a losing political party in the future. The courage and vision of Tavis Smiley, and his often overlooked but historic Covenant movement, has put the limelight on this dilemma of the Republican Party.

We shall see which choice the Republican Party makes in regard to people of color in particular, but most importantly to their future as a party in the American democratic experiment.

Of course, we may see Jena, Tuscaloosa, and Greene County, Georgia as blatant examples of racism rekindled in schools. Now if the tens of thousands who showed up in Jena today could take some of that energy to the U. S. Department of Education and to the U. S. Supreme Court to protest the imposition of anti-cultural and anti-thinking curriculums in the SCOTUS-sanctioned segregated public schools that have become testing chain gangs, then we might really see a new movement born for human rights, civil rights.

NCLB's Forced Failure Model Demands Civil Disobedience from Parents, Teachers, and Students

Page above (click it to enlarge) from the Forum for Educational Accountability. Below are the references to source the information for the 11 states listed above.

In the meantime, liberals are scurrying around Capitol Hill playing Let's Make a Deal with the privatizers as the future of the public education system sits on the chopping block. The latest evidence? A Feingold-Leahy proposal that keeps in place the IMPOSSIBLE PIPEDREAM of 100% proficiency if Title One is fully funded:

Addressing the 2014 Deadline – Reforms the 2014 deadline by putting in place a funding trigger that waives the 2014 deadline for any year that Congress does not fully fund Title I, Part A.

What I know and they know, as well, is that the entire Defense Budget added to Title One will not make the 2014 proficiency target any less impossible. This stipulation is simply an open invitation to charterize and voucherize K-12 education as schools continue to swoon under the unreachable goals and as the Gates-Broad movement swings into full action mode, i.e. dumping truckloads of cash into Congressional re-election offices.

Parents, teachers, and students just saying no is the only thing that will derail this bullet train.

SOURCES

California:
CA Accountability page: http://www.cde.ca.gov/ta/ac/ay/index.asp

Connecticut:
“Projecting AYP in Connecticut Schools” (2004)
http://www.cea.org/nclb/upload/AYPCurtisFinal.pdf
http://www.cea.org/nclb/upload/Final_AYP_Report_Feb_06.doc

Great Lakes Region: Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Minnesota, Ohio, Wisconsin
The Impact of the Adequate Yearly Progress Requirement of the Federal “No Child Left Behind” Act on Schools in the Great Lakes Region, September 2005
http://epsl.asu.edu/epru/documents/EPSL-0509-109-EPRU.pdf

Additional information for Illinois:
http://www.ed.gov/admins/lead/account/stateplans03/ilcsa.pdf. Fig. 4 on page 14

Additional information for Minnesota:
Office of the Legislative Auditor, State of Minnesota. (February 26, 2004).
http://www.auditor.leg.state.mn.us/ped/2004/0404/v3_document.htm
http://www.auditor.leg.state.mn.us/Ped/2004/pe0404.htm

Louisiana:
NCLB: A Steep Climb Ahead: A Case Study of Louisiana’s School Accountability System, Public Affairs Research Council of Louisiana, Inc., July 2004
http://www.la-par.org/Publications/PDF/NCLBASteepClimbAhead.pdf

Massachusetts:
Facing Reality: What happens when good schools are labeled “failures”? Projecting Adequate Yearly Progress
in Massachusetts schools. http://www.mespa.org/pdf/o5JuneAYP.pdf

Pennsylvania:
Projecting AYP Results in Pennsylvania. http://www.qualityednow.org/pdf/PA-Report2005.pdf

Forum on Educational Accountability materials are available at www.edaccountability.org.

Thousands to March in Jena September 20

From Amy Goodman, reprinted at Common Dreams:

by Amy Goodman

The tree at Jena High School has been cut down, but the furor around it has only grown.

“What did the tree do wrong?” asked Katrina Wallace, a stepsister of one of the Jena Six, when I interviewed her at the Burger Barn in Jena, La. “I planted it 14 years ago as a tree of knowledge.”

It all began at the start of the school year in 2006, at a school assembly, when Justin Purvis asked if he could sit under the schoolyard tree, a privilege unofficially reserved for white students. The next morning, three nooses were hanging from its broad, leafy branches.

African-American students protested, gathering under the tree. Soon after, the district attorney, Reed Walters, came to the school with the police, threatening, “I could end your lives with the stroke of a pen.” Racial tensions mounted in this 85 percent white town of 4,000. In December, a schoolyard fight erupted, and the district attorney charged six African-American high school students, the soon to be dubbed Jena Six, with second-degree attempted murder.

I recently visited Billy “Bulldog” Fowler in his office. He’s a white member of the LaSalle Parish School Board. He says Jena is being unfairly painted as racist. He feels the hanging nooses were blown out of proportion, that in the high school setting it was more of a prank: “This is the Deep South, and [older] black people know the meaning of a noose. Let me tell you something-young people don’t.”

That night, I went to see the Baileys in their mobile home in Ward 10, one of the black neighborhoods in Jena. Two of the Jena Six, Robert Bailey and Theo Shaw, were ironing their clothes. I asked them what they thought when they saw the nooses. Robert immediately said: “The first thing came to mind was the KKK. I don’t know why, but that was the first thing that came to my head. I used to always think the KKK chase black people on horses, and they catch you with rope.”

Theo said he thought the students who hung the nooses “should have got expelled, cuz it wasn’t no prank. It was a threat.” School principal Scott Whitcomb thought the same. He recommended expulsion of those who hung the nooses, but the superintendent overruled him, imposing three days of suspension. Whitcomb resigned.

The African-American teens were dealt with differently. They were expelled, but appealed to the school board. The school district had conducted an investigation, but the school board was not allowed to review it. The school board’s lawyer was none other than the prosecuting district attorney, Reed Walters.

Board member Fowler recalls the January meeting: “Our legal authority that night was Mr. Walters.”

I asked, “And he told you, you couldn’t have access to the school proceedings, or the investigation?”

Fowler replied: “That’s right. [Walters said] it was a violation of something.” The board voted, without information. Fowler recalls: “It was unanimous. No, no it wasn’t. There was one board member who voted no, and that was Mr. Worthington.” Melvin Worthington, the only African-American on the school board, voted against upholding the expulsion of the black students.

Asked if he felt that Walters had a conflict of interest that night, Fowler replied, “Well, I’m assuming that Mr. Walters knows the law.”

Louisiana’s 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals doesn’t agree. The court just overturned Walters’ first conviction in the Jena Six case (by an all-white jury), that of Mychal Bell, ruling that he should have been tried as a juvenile. Walters pledges to challenge that ruling in the Louisiana Supreme Court, while continuing to pursue the other five prosecutions.

Bell remains in jail, where he has been since last December. Although yet to be tried, the others were jailed as well. Theo Shaw just got out earlier this summer. Imprisoned with adults who were maced repeatedly, Theo’s asthma was triggered, and he was hospitalized.

National organizations like the NAACP have called for a major march in Jena on Sept. 20, the day Bell was to be sentenced. Although his conviction has been overturned, the march will happen, with thousands expected.

Amy Goodman is the host of “Democracy Now!,” a daily international TV/radio news hour airing on 500 stations in North America.

Global Warming for Children--and Adults Who Should Know Better

From Laurie David at Huffington Post:

A global warming denier group is attacking The Down To Earth Guide to Global Warming, the new children's book I co-authored with Cami Gordon.

Our crime? It turns out one of the illustrations in the book was accidentally mislabeled. This has got the gang at the at the Science and Public Policy Instituted up in arms - or at least pretending to be -- no doubt hoping to ride our coattails, create some controversy, and promote their own new book.

Why am I not surprised? These "skeptics" have grown so predictable.

Even so, I'd like to thank the SPPI for pointing out this minor error to us. However, we have checked with climate experts who confirmed that the text accompanying the mislabeled illustration, and our description of the close relationship between CO2 and temperature, is accurate and fairly represents the current state of scientific knowledge.

Apparently the climate change "skeptics" have grown so desperate in their attempts to hide the truth from the American people that they've taken to spending hours scrutinizing a children's book, trying to marginalize the urgent information it contains about global warming. And through all their efforts, all they uncovered in a hundred pages was a single mislabeled illustration -- an illustration accompanied by accurate text. Now they've launched a full 'report' attempting to discredit the entire book, even though they can't find anything wrong with it besides the flipping of two colors on a solitary illustration.

So thanks guys! We will correct the illustration in the next edition. We're happy to learn that that was the only question SPPI had about the entire fact-filled book! The Down To Earth Guide translates complex scientific facts about global warming into language that is easily understood by kids.

I hope children of all ages read this book because, ultimately -- and unfortunately -- global warming is the grim legacy we are passing on to them.

stopglobalwarming.org

Dan Brown Knows

Highly recommended (with Perlstein's Tested. . .), especially for teacher education students where faculty know nothing of or steer clear of the realities of NCLB implementation. Review by Jude Rabin:

I just finished reading The great expectations school: A rookie year in the new blackboard jungle by Dan Brown, a 26-year-old TFA dropout who spent 1 year in the Bronx and is now enrolled at Teachers College. Anyway, here's an excerpt from his conclusion and a ray of hope that the younger folks might perhaps get it right some day:

"A clear step in the right direction would be to scrap the No Child Left Behind legislation and to pass new, progressive education laws. NCLB was conceived to hold each school accountable for its students' academic proficiency, a noble aim. However, by using standardized testing as the sole tool to calibrate success, the government has created in the school system a Frankenstein monster of compliance, with its energies devoted in all the wrong directions."

What Brown astutely recognizes, and what most Americans still fail to recognize can be found in this paragraph:

"No single line graph or shortcut can close the social-class achievement gap in America. The idea that high stakes testing will motivate positive change has rationalized massive under funding and the ignoring of the complex needs of students (art, music, and physical education are just a few). Educating the youth of America is not an endeavor that can be performed simply, or on the cheap. As things stand, the primacy of the standardized test saps the most important human elements of education, a wholly human institution."

Brown places the responsibility for improving the lives of American youth at the feet of the voters, "who must use their power to force lawmakers to recognize this issue as a priority."

There's not much new in his book that hasn't been already documented, recorded or said before about poverty and education, but his call to action and outrage over NCLB should be a call to arms for the next generation --because this one doesn't seem to get it. Delaying the date for 100%proficiency, instituting a cheap mass produced version of growth models and more databases, national standards, blah, blah, blah, really isn't the issue - now is it?

The entire discussion must move in a whole new direction and be broadened to include the bigger issues, or we will continue to see the further balkanization and segregation of our society through apartheid education. The stakes are too high to settle for a few worthless crumbs to appease the teachers unions and just postpone the day of reckoning.

KUDOS TO DAN BROWN! He can be reached at danbrownteacher@gmail.com

Pickets for Spellings, Miller, and Kennedy

As Susan Ohanian's caption reads: A Picture is Worth 666,483,972,618,001 Pages of Congressional Testimony.

It is time to break some No. 2 pencils and go to Washington. None of the Business Roundtable's agents on Captitol Hill want to hear anything that anyone has to say that does not agree with the bankrupt business model ideology that is driving the reauthorization of NCLB.

The inept and cowardly NEA in the meantime, with a membership of over 3 million souls, continues to work their back room deals in hopes of preserving collective bargaining rights, while children, starting with the most vulnerable, are ground up in a crucible that extrudes data, leaving behind mindless clumps who are clocking in every morning all over America to earn their Scholar Dollars and a bonus for their foremen, who once were caring and humane teachers, but who now hate their children for the failure that they are unable to correct.

Yesterday Hugo Chavez got headlines by declaring that he would insist on regulation of private schools to make make sure their curriculums encourage critical thinking, critical of capitalism, no doubt. The gringo press shouted, SOCIALIST INDOCTRINATION. At least Hugo so far is allowing the distinction between public and private to remain, rather than working to erase the boundaries with corporate-inspired "public" charter schools that become tax havens for those same corporations who are marketing their wares through those same schools.

And at least Hugo (so far) is encouraging some kind of thinking, directed as it may be, rather than the imposition of mind-blotting math and reading curriculums whose main attraction by those who push them is the total passivity that it breeds among the poor and the disenfranchised who become their victims. Reid Lyon and Doug Carnine are much more interested in neuronal switches that control behavior in young children than they are in imagination, understanding, and knowledge.

And none of these issues is of any concern for the dollar-bloated pols in Washington or the corporate media who present the education agendas of the conservative think tanks, whose remaining good intentions have been washed away by the flood of money that is required to remain in power. Instead, they talk about bonus pay for teachers in neighborhoods ravaged by poverty and public neglect, where you can't find health care, a good job, or even a decent grocery store. Merit pay for our meritocracy, hear, hear!!

Civil disobedience by parents, teachers, and students is the only tactic that will stop this dollar-stuffed juggernaut. It is time to JUST SAY NO THE CONTINUING CHILD ABUSE, PARENT ABUSE, AND TEACHER ABUSE.

The children, the teachers, and parents are not the failures. Their only failure is allowing the continuation of a failed system. It's time for change.

Public Attitudes Toward the Public Schools

Michael Martin's summary of the PDK/Gallup Poll:

* 67% of parents graded their local school an "A" or "B" in 2007 compared to 64% in 2006.
* 60% agreed "most public school students leave high school adequately prepared for college."
* The "biggest problem" facing schools is lack of funding.
* 40% had a negative view of NCLB, while only 31% had a favorable view
* Those claiming no opinion on NCLB declined from 69% in 2003 to 29% in 2007 with 27 of that 40 point change becoming negative.
* 48% are concerned that NCLB is reducing the teaching of "science, health, social studies, and the arts."
* only 27% supported "finding an alternative to the existing public school system."
* only 39% supported vouchers for private schools.
* two-thirds of the public and 70% of public school parents opposed having "private profit-making corporations" run local schools.
* 59% of the public and 57% of public school parents opposed having local mayors take over schools.
* 52% of parents felt "there is too much emphasis on achievement testing" in 2007 compared with only 32% in 2002, and 16 of that 20 point change previously felt it was "about right."
* 62% said that the current emphasis on standardized tests was a "bad thing" because it encouraged teachers to teach to the tests. Only 39% of parents were concerned about this in 2003.
* 82% prefer a measure of student improvement, rather than whether students pass a test, as the best way to measure school performance.
* 73% said they were "not willing" to have their child attend a virtual high school over the internet.
* 85% said it was important for children to learn a foreign language (but not necessarily in school).
* 79% think that English Language Learners should not have their scores counted in measuring school performance until after they pass an English proficiency test.
* 78% of public school parents said that Special Education students should not be required to meet the same academic standards as other students.

Michael T. Martin
Research Analyst
Arizona School Boards Association

Resegregationists on the Move in the New Old South

Following the Roberts Court's repudiation of Brown v Board of Education, a closeted generation of racists has begun crawling out from under their rocks to pick up where they left off in 1954.

The NYTimes has found a prime example of emboldened segregationists in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, where "color-blindness" has not been such a black and white issue since the heyday of Gov. George Wallace.

But this is not segregation, the No Excuses segregationists rebel-yell back, but, rather, efficient use of limited economic resources. And if these Negro children don't like going to a segregated school, then they can apply for a transfer under that 21st Century Civil Rights Act, NCLB, whose mandated reporting of test scores has already driven real estate prices even lower in poor neighborhoods--thus making them undesirable for blacks and whites, alike.

What a savior that NCLB is, allowing as it does the transfer of the most able and informed students from these poor and getting poorer schools, and leaving behind deepening encampments of the disenfranchised and demoralized. And what gated lake community needs that type of pollution added to the healthy school climates that these white parents have worked so hard to create. Really, the nerve of you, madam!!

TUSCALOOSA, Ala. — After white parents in this racially mixed city complained about school overcrowding, school authorities set out to draw up a sweeping rezoning plan. The results: all but a handful of the hundreds of students required to move this fall were black — and many were sent to virtually all-black, low-performing schools.

Black parents have been battling the rezoning for weeks, calling it resegregation. And in a new twist for an integration fight, they are wielding an unusual weapon: the federal No Child Left Behind law, which gives students in schools deemed failing the right to move to better ones.

“We’re talking about moving children from good schools into low-performing ones, and that’s illegal,” said Kendra Williams, a hospital receptionist, whose two children were rezoned. “And it’s all about race. It’s as clear as daylight.”

Tuscaloosa, where George Wallace once stood defiantly in the schoolhouse door to keep blacks out of the University of Alabama, also has had a volatile history in its public schools. Three decades of federal desegregation marked by busing and white flight ended in 2000. Though the city is 54 percent white, its school system is 75 percent black.

The schools superintendent and board president, both white, said in an interview that the rezoning, which redrew boundaries of school attendance zones, was a color-blind effort to reorganize the 10,000-student district around community schools and relieve overcrowding. By optimizing use of the city’s 19 school buildings, the district saved taxpayers millions, officials said. They also acknowledged another goal: to draw more whites back into Tuscaloosa’s schools by making them attractive to parents of 1,500 children attending private academies founded after court-ordered desegregation began.

“I’m sorry not everybody is on board with this,” said Joyce Levey, the superintendent. “But the issue in drawing up our plan was not race. It was how to use our buildings in the best possible way.” Dr. Levey said that all students forced by the rezoning to move from a high- to a lower-performing school were told of their right under the No Child law to request a transfer. . . .

Spellings vs. the Facts (Bilingual Edition)

With her Bachelors Degree in Poli Sci and her on-the-job training as Lead Deconstructor of Public Education, Spellings continues to demonstrate that there is no niche of educational policy that is safe from that painfully familiar Bush brand of swaggering ignorance and grinny denial of the facts.

If she had ever bothered to consult the scientifically-based research that her own Department insists upon when it is in their ideological interests to do so, Spellings would have found ample empirical evidence to support a conclusion contrary to the right-wing ruling of her gut, prominent though it surely is.

The subject this time: English language learners. Ed Week's Mary Ann Zehr has this:

I raised this issue when blogging that U.S. Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings has objected to a provision in the House Education and Labor Committee's "discussion draft" for reauthorizing the No Child Left Behind Act involving English-language learners. The provision would permit school districts to give ELLs state tests in their native languages for up to five years, with the option of extending that time for two more years on a case-to-case basis. "That's simply too long," Ms. Spellings wrote in a letter to leaders of the committee, and added that the provision would provide an incentive to "slow down" the learning of English rather than speed it up. Now, states can give students tests in their native languages for three years, with an option of extending that time for two additional years.

Some people in the field think extending the amount of time for students to take native-language tests will encourage more school districts to offer bilingual education. The secretary's comment prompts me to speculate that by saying that permitting the use of native-language tests for many years is a disincentive to speed up the learning of English, she is also meaning to imply that providing bilingual education for a long time may "slow down" the learning of English.

I might be wrong to make such an assumption but, regardless, I put the following question to two experts in the field: Is the learning of English by students slowed down by some kinds of bilingual education?

Both researchers agree that English-language learners in grades 1-3 taking bilingual education may not test as well on an English test as ELLs in English-only programs, but by the end of elementary school, the scores on English tests even out.

Here's an excerpt from an answer by Deborah Palmer, an assistant professor of bilingual/bicultural education at the University of Texas, Austin: "Kids in bilingual programs often don't test in English in the early elementary grades as [well as] kids in English-only programs, but those test scores even out by 4th or 5th grade, and bilingual education kids will stay higher over the long term, into middle and high school, and be more successful academically in English and other areas. English-only/English-as-a-second-language instructed kids, meanwhile, tend to lose ground after 3rd grade, and show a flat or even downward trend in test scores in middle and high school. I'm referring here to two large-scale studies: Ramirez et. al. (1992) and Thomas and Collier (2003)."

Donna Christian, the president of the Center for Applied Linguistics, got some input from researchers at her center and responded with the following comments:

"I assume that 'learning of English' includes oral language and literacy (and probably learning of academic content through English). ... It's not accurate to say that the learning of English is slowed down because students are learning two languages at the same time. The students who are becoming bilingual may be on a slightly different trajectory in their English-language development than their English-only peers or their English-language-learner peers who are receiving instruction all in English. ... Our research in two-way immersion programs shows that ELLs who begin the program by 1st grade are quite proficient in oral English by 3rd grade. Literacy skills in English show a lot of variation, some of which relates to the grade level at which literacy instruction begins in the program."

"...In the early years of elementary school (grades K-3), ELL students who learn through two languages may score lower on English-medium tests than students who are instructed only through English; however, by the end of elementary school, ELL students in two-way and developmental programs tend to score at least as high as, and often higher than, ELL students who learn through English only. By the time students are in middle school, ELL students in dual-language programs tend to achieve at higher levels than students who only study through English. So not only do ELL students in dual-language programs achieve as well in English as their ELL peers who study only in English, but unlike most of their peers, they can read, write, and speak in their native language as well."

(Ms. Christian clarifies in her e-mail that she's referring to the kind of bilingual programs that provide instruction in two languages through elementary school. Those programs differ from transitional bilingual education programs, which typically move children into full-time English instruction after a few years of bilingual education.) . . . .

Grandpa Fred on NCLB

I know it's difficult to master the Spellings education doublespeak that offers local control and centralized sanctions, or is that local sanctions and centralized control. But Grampa Fred has a long way to go:

. . . . Earlier, Thompson told a crowd in Jacksonville that Bush's signature education program isn't working and that he would provide federal education money with fewer strings attached.

"We've been spending increasing amounts of federal money for decades, with increasing rules, increasing mandates, increasing regulations," Thompson said. "It's not working."

He added that there are problems with Bush's No Child Left Behind program, which requires annual testing and punishes schools that don't make progress.

"No Child Left Behind — good concept, I'm all for testing — but it seems like now some of these states are teaching to the test and kind of making it so that everybody does well on the test — you can't really tell that everybody's doing that well. And it's not objective," Thompson said.

Instead, he said the federal government should be providing block grants as long as states set up objective testing programs.

He said his message to states would be, "We expect you to get objective testing done and publicize those tests for the local parents and for the local citizens and suffer the political ramifications locally if things don't work out right."

The former star of NBC's "Law & Order" was responding to a question as he began a three-day bus tour of Florida, his first visit to the state since announcing his candidacy last week. A woman asked what he would do for education. He told her decisions on how schools are run should be made by local and state officials, not dictated out of Washington.

Thompson voted for the No Child Left Behind law in 2001, as did most of his fellow senators.

"It's your responsibility," he said. "If you don't like what's going on, don't get in your car and drive by your school board and maybe drive by the capitol and get on an airplane and fly to Washington and say, 'I don't like the way the school down the street is being run.'"

Got that? That's okay--he has trouble remembering Terry Schiavo, too.

Mychal Bell of Jena Six Gets Redo

The corruption and blatant racism in the conviction of Mychal Bell and the Jena Six have been exposed. The reaction in Louisiana? Try him again, this time in Juvenile Court. Would you call this double jeopardy lite?

From NYTimes:

NEW ORLEANS, Sept. 14 — A Louisiana appeals court on Friday overturned the conviction of an African-American high school student who was accused of the beating of a white classmate in case that has become a flashpoint for accusations of racial bias in the state’s judicial system.

The student, Mychal Bell, 17, was one of six black teenagers accused in the beating of a schoolmate in the northern Louisiana town of Jena last December. Mr. Bell was the first accused student to face trial, and his conviction on charges of conspiracy and aggravated battery drew accusations that prosecutors were biased.

His lawyers argued that Mr. Bell was not old enough to be tried as an adult and that the maximum penalty that he faced — 22 years in prison — was excessive. Facing increasing pressure from national civil rights groups, prosecutors in recent weeks have reduced the charges against some of the other defendants, who are yet to face trial.

On Sept. 4, Mr. Bell’s conviction on conspiracy charges was overturned by another judge.

A lawyer for Mr. Bell, Louis Scott, said in a telephone interview Friday night that his client felt a sense of relief at the decision but is still concerned by the prospect of another trial in Juvenile Court.

“I explained it to Mychal in football terms,” Mr. Scott said. “We started the game down by a touchdown and a field goal. On Sept. 4, we got the field goal. Today, we got the touchdown. Now, we get to start the game all over again.”

The teenagers, who have come to be known as the Jena Six, were originally charged with attempted murder in the beating of a classmate, Justin Barker, who was injured in a brawl that was sparked by racial taunts, including the dangling of hangman’s nooses from a tree.

California Teachers to Washington: ENOUGH!

If you are a member of the teaching profession who received a copy of the NEA Code of Ethics when you became a member, you must be wondering if Reg Weaver and Joel Packer have ever read that document, or if they just ripped it up as a condition of joining Sandy Kress and Margaret Spellings for their private fast-track school corporatization klatch with Miller and Kennedy.

It appears assured now that the NEA Suits have decided to get in bed with the coniberal globalizers, while their members and the children they teach are turned into passive consuming robots incapable of making the independent, critical decisions that free people require.

It is past time that teaching, the noblest labor, take back the professional organizations that have abandoned them. If you are looking for model, here's one:

BURLINGAME – Moving to stop more federal attacks on our students, educators and public schools, the 340,000-member California Teachers Association today kicked off a statewide campaign calling on Congress to vote no on the proposal by California Rep. George Miller and Speaker Nancy Pelosi to reauthorize the failed “No Child Left Behind Act.”

Flanked by the CTA Board of Directors at a news conference, CTA President David A. Sanchez warned that House Speaker Pelosi of San Francisco and Rep. Miller, D-Martinez, who co-authored NCLB with Senator Edward Kennedy, have failed to make any substantive improvements.

California’s teachers “have had enough of the so-called No Child Left Behind Act,” Sanchez said. “It is hurting our students, our schools and our teachers. Unfortunately, the Miller/Pelosi reauthorization plan would only make the law worse. It does nothing to improve student learning and would place even more undue emphasis on test scores, create new sanctions for struggling schools, make it harder to attract and retain teachers, undermine local control, and erode employee rights.”

Sanchez said the proposal that mandates merit pay for teachers based on the test scores of students is insulting. “Test scores alone don’t measure student achievement and shouldn’t be the only method for paying or evaluating teachers.”

Instead of backing changes that punish students, teachers and schools, Pelosi and Miller should be supporting the proven reforms that teachers and parents know will help. CTA is advocating for a law that restores the federal class size reduction program, provides resources for quality teacher training, mentors for new teachers, and provides programs that promote parental and family involvement in our schools.

Sanchez also called on Congress not to repeat the mistakes of the past. “Congress should not rush through this process, as the future of our public schools depends on this law.”

Miller and Pelosi have placed the reauthorization on a fast track. Draft language was released just before midnight last Thursday, with the first congressional hearing called today. California’s teachers are in Washington D.C. for the hearing. A vote on the proposed legislation could come as early as next month.

No Child Left Behind is the misleading name given to the 2002 reauthorization of the federal Elementary and Secondary Education Act, which was approved by Congress in 1965 to help the nation’s most struggling schools with federal funding and is renewed every five years. In addition to its unfair sanctions, NCLB has been massively underfunded by President Bush and Congress – by $56 billion nationwide, and more than $7 billion in California.

A 2006 study by the Harvard Civil Rights Project found that the law has not helped narrow the student achievement gap and has shortchanged schools that serve mostly disadvantaged, minority students with its overemphasis on sanctions rather than assistance, said Mignon Jackson, a teacher at Paul Revere Middle School in the Los Angeles Unified School District.

“Students at risk deserve better,” Jackson said. “If we’re going to close the achievement gap, we need to give our schools support, not sanctions.”

With its one-size-fits-all approach to learning, NCLB attempts to standardize students by relying too much on teaching to standardized tests at the expense of important subjects like art, music, foreign language and physical education, warned Eric Heins, a Bay Area teacher in the Pittsburg Unified School District.

“The overemphasis that this law puts on testing our students and the time required preparing them for tests takes valuable time away from what teachers really need and want to do to help students learn and think,” Heins said.

“Teachers at my school and in districts around the state work together and support one another,” said Bonnie Shatun, a teacher in the Burbank Unified School District. “All of this benefits students. This proposal would destroy that.”

In coming weeks, CTA members will be contacting every member of the California congressional delegation and urging a no vote on the current proposals. The statewide effort will also include grassroots mobilizing and a public awareness campaign. For more information visit the CTA website at www.cta.org.

###

The 340,000-member CTA is affiliated with the 3.2 million-member National Education Association.

Shock Treatment: The One Punishment That Fits All

For children who can't be duped or doped into compliant behavior, there is one place parents can still go to get the the kind of ultimate behavior modification treatment for their children that state prison guards are not even allowed to use on adults. That's not a book in that child's backpack--that's a battery for administering shock treatments.

Could the Rotenberg Center be the next alternative schooling model for America?

From Mother Jones:

. . . .

One Punishment Fits All

The story of the Rotenberg Center is in many ways a tale of two schools. Slightly more than half the residents are what the school calls "high functioning": kids like Rob and Antwone, who have diagnoses like attention-deficit disorder, bipolar disorder, post-traumatic stress disorder, and other emotional problems. The other group is even more troubled. Referred to as "low functioning," it includes kids with severe autism and mental retardation; most cannot speak or have very limited verbal abilities. Some have behaviors so extreme they can be life threatening: chomping on their hands and arms, running into walls, nearly blinding themselves by banging their heads on the floor again and again.

The Rotenberg Center has long been known as the school of last resort—a place that will take any kid, no matter how extreme his or her problems are. It doesn't matter if a child has been booted out of 2, 5, 10, or 20 other programs—he or she is still welcome here. For desperate parents, the Rotenberg Center can seem like a godsend. Just ask Louisa Goldberg, the mother of 25-year-old Andrew, who has severe mental retardation. Andrew's last residential school kicked him out after he kept assaulting staff members; the Rotenberg Center was the only place willing to accept him. According to Louisa, Andrew's quality of life has improved dramatically since 2000, when he was hooked up to the shock device, known as the Graduated Electronic Decelerator, or ged.

The Rotenberg Center has a policy of not giving psychiatric drugs to students—no Depakote, Paxil, Risperdal, Ritalin, or Seroquel. It's a policy that appeals to Louisa and many other parents. At Andrew's last school, she says, "he had so many medicines in him he'd take a two-hour nap in the morning, he'd take a two-hour nap in the afternoon. They'd have him in bed at eight o'clock at night. He was sleeping his life away." These days, Louisa says she is no longer afraid when her son comes home to visit. "[For him] to have an electrode on and to receive a ged is to me a much more favorable way of dealing with this," she says. "He's not sending people to the hospital."

Marguerite Famolare brought her son Michael to the Rotenberg Center six years ago, after he attacked her so aggressively she had to call 911 and, in a separate incident, flipped over a kitchen table onto a tutor. Michael, now 19, suffers from mental retardation and severe autism. These days, when he comes home for a visit, Marguerite carries his shock activator in her purse. All she has to do, she says, is show it to him. "He'll automatically comply to whatever my signal command may be, whether it is 'Put on your seatbelt,' or 'Hand me that apple,' or 'Sit appropriately and eat your food,'" she says. "It's made him a human being, a civilized human being."

Massachusetts officials have twice tried to shut the Rotenberg Center down—once in the 1980s and again in the 1990s. Both times parents rallied to its defense, and both times it prevailed in court. (See "Why Can't Massachusetts Shut Matthew Israel Down?" page 44.) The name of the center ensures nobody forgets these victories; it was Judge Ernest Rotenberg, now deceased, who in the mid-'80s ruled that the facility could continue using aversives—painful punishments designed to change behavior—so long as it obtained authorization from the Bristol County Probate and Family Court in each student's case. But even though the facility wasn't using electric shock when this ruling was handed down, the court rarely, if ever, bars the Rotenberg Center from adding shock to a student's treatment plan, according to lawyers and disability advocates who have tried to prevent it from doing so.

Since Evelyn Nicholson filed her lawsuit in 2006, the Rotenberg Center has faced a new wave of criticism and controversy. (See "Nagging? Zap. Swearing? Zap," page 41.) And again, the facility has relied heavily on the testimonials of parents like Louisa Goldberg and Marguerite Famolare to defend itself. Not surprisingly, the most vocal parent-supporters tend to be those with the sickest children, since they are the ones with the fewest options. But at the Rotenberg Center, the same methods of "behavior modification" are applied to all kids, no matter what is causing their behavior problems. And so, while Rob would seem to have little in common with mentally retarded students like Michael and Andrew, they all shared a similar fate once their parents placed them under the care of the same psychologist, a radical behaviorist known as Dr. Israel.

Dr. Israel's Radical Behavior

In 1950, Matt Israel was a Harvard freshman looking to fill his science requirement. He knew little about B.F. Skinner when he signed up for his course, Human Behavior. Soon, though, Israel became fascinated with Skinner's scientific approach to the study of behavior, and he picked up Walden Two, Skinner's controversial novel about an experimental community based on the principles of behaviorism. The book changed Israel's life. "I decided my mission was to start a utopian community," he says. Israel got a Ph.D. in psychology in 1960 from Harvard, and started two communal houses outside Boston.

One of the people Israel lived with was a three-year-old named Andrea, the daughter of a roommate. The two did not get along. "She was wild and screaming," Israel recalls. "I would retreat to my own room, and she'd be trying to pull away and get into my room, and I'd have to hold the door on one side to keep her from disturbing me." When company would come over, he says, "She would walk around with a toy broom and whack people over the head."

Through experiments with rats and pigeons, Skinner had demonstrated how animals learn from the consequences of their actions. With permission from Andrea's mother, Israel decided to try out Skinner's ideas on the three-year-old. When Andrea was well behaved, Israel took her out for walks. But when she misbehaved, he punished her by snapping his finger against her cheek. His mentor Skinner preached that positive reinforcement was vastly preferable to punishment, but Israel says his methods transformed the girl. "Instead of being an annoyance, she became a charming addition to the house."

Israel's success with Andrea convinced him to start a school. In 1971, he founded the Behavior Research Institute in Rhode Island, a facility that would later move to Massachusetts and become known as the Judge Rotenberg Center. Israel took in children nobody else wanted—severely autistic and mentally retarded kids who did dangerous things to themselves and others. To change their behavior, he developed a large repertoire of punishments: spraying kids in the face with water, shoving ammonia under their noses, pinching the soles of their feet, smacking them with a spatula, forcing them to wear a "white-noise helmet" that assaulted them with static.

In 1977, Israel opened a branch of his program in California's San Fernando Valley, along with Judy Weber, whose son Tobin is severely autistic. Two years later, the Los Angeles Times reported Israel had pinched the feet of Christopher Hirsch, an autistic 12-year-old, at least 24 times in 30 minutes, while the boy screamed and cried. This was a punishment for soiling his pants. ("It might have been true," Israel says. "It's true that pinches were being used as an aversive. The pinch, the spank, the muscle squeeze, water sprays, bad taste—all those procedures were being used.") Israel was in the news again in 1981, when another student, 14-year-old Danny Aswad, died while strapped facedown to his bed. In 1982, the California Department of Social Services compiled a 64-page complaint that read like a catalog of horrors, describing students with bruises, welts, and cuts. It also accused Israel of telling a staff member "to grow his fingernails longer so he could give an effective pinch."

In 1982, the facility settled with state officials and agreed to stop using physical punishments. Now called Tobinworld, and still run by Judy Weber, it is a $10-million-a-year organization operating day schools near Los Angeles and San Francisco. The Rotenberg Center considers itself a "sister school" to Tobinworld, and Israel makes frequent trips to California to visit Weber. The two were married last year.

Despite his setback in California, Israel continued to expand on the East Coast—and to generate controversy. In 1985, Vincent Milletich, an autistic 22-year-old, suffered a seizure and died after he was put in restraints and forced to wear a white-noise helmet. Five years later, 19-year-old Linda Cornelison, who had the mental capacity of a toddler, refused to eat. On the bus to school, she clutched her stomach; someone had to carry her inside, and she spent the day on a couch in a classroom. Linda could not speak, and the staff treated her actions as misbehaviors. Between 3:52 p.m. and 8 p.m., staffers punished her with 13 spatula spankings, 29 finger pinches, 14 muscle squeezes, and 5 forced inhalings of ammonia. It turned out that Linda had a perforated stomach. She died on the operating table at 1:45 a.m.

The local district attorney's office examined the circumstances of Vincent's death but declined to file any charges. In Linda's case, the Massachusetts Department of Mental Retardation investigated and found that while Linda's treatment had "violated the most basic codes and standards of decency and humane treatment," there was insufficient evidence to prove that the use of aversives had caused her death.

By the time Linda died, Israel was moving away from spatulas and toward electric shock, which, from his perspective, offered many advantages. "To give a spank or a muscle squeeze or a pinch, you had to control the student physically, and that could lead to a struggle," he says. "A lot of injuries were occurring." Since shocking only required pressing a button, Israel could eliminate the need for employees to wrestle a kid to the ground. Another benefit, he says, was increased consistency. It was hard to know if one staff member's spatula spanking was harder than another's, but it was easy to measure how many times a staff member had shocked a child.

Israel purchased a shock device then on the market known as sibis—Self-Injurious Behavior Inhibiting System—that had been invented by the parents of an autistic girl and delivered a mild shock that lasted .2 second. Between 1988 and 1990, Israel used sibis on 29 students, including one of his most challenging, Brandon, then 12, who would bite off chunks of his tongue, regurgitate entire meals, and pound himself on the head. At times Brandon was required to keep his hands on a paddle; if he removed them, he would get automatic shocks, one per second. One infamous day, Brandon received more than 5,000 shocks. "You have to realize," Israel says. "I thought his life was in the balance. I couldn't find any medical solution. He was vomiting, losing weight. He was down to 52 pounds. I knew it was risky to use the shock in large numbers, but if I persevered that day, I thought maybe it would eventually work. There was nothing else I could think of to do...but by the time it went into the 3,000 or 4,000 range, it became clear it wasn't working."

This day was a turning point in the history of Israel's operation—that's when he decided to ratchet up the pain. The problem, he decided, was that the shock sibis emitted was not strong enough. He says he asked sibis's manufacturer, Human Technologies, to create a more powerful device, but it refused. "So we had to redesign the device ourselves," he says. He envisioned a device that would start with a low current but that could increase the voltage if needed—hence its name, Graduated Electronic Decelerator or ged—but he abandoned this idea early on. "As it turns out, that's really not a wise approach," he says. "It's sort of like operating a car and wearing out the brakes because you never really apply them strongly enough. Instead, we set it at a certain level that was more or less going to be effective for most of our students."

Thirty years earlier, O. Ivar Lovaas, a psychology professor at ucla, had pioneered the use of slaps and screams and electric jolts to try to normalize the behavior of autistic kids. Life magazine featured his work in a nine-page photo essay in 1965 with the headline, "A surprising, shocking treatment helps far-gone mental cripples." Lovaas eventually abandoned these methods, telling cbs in 1993 that shock was "only a temporary suppression" because patients become inured to the pain. "These people are so used to pain that they can adapt to almost any kind of aversive you give them," he said.

Israel encountered this same sort of adaptation in his students, but his solution was markedly different: He decided to increase the pain once again. Today, there are two shock devices in use at the Rotenberg Center: the ged and the ged-4. The devices look similar and both administer a two-second shock, but the ged-4 is nearly three times more powerful—and the pain it inflicts is that much more severe.

The Mickey Mouse Club

Ten years ago, Israel hung up a Mickey Mouse poster in the main hall, and he noticed that it made people smile—so he bought every Mickey Mouse poster he could find. He hung them in the corridors and even papered the walls of what became known as the Mickey Mouse Conference Room. Entering the Rotenberg Center is a bit like stepping into a carnival fun house, I discovered during a two-day visit last autumn. Two brushed-aluminum dogs, each nearly 5 feet tall and sporting a purple neon collar, stand guard outside. Giant silver stars dangle from the lobby ceiling; the walls and chairs in the front offices are turquoise, lime green, and lavender.

Israel, 74, still holds the title of executive director, for which he pays himself nearly $400,000 in salary and benefits. He appears utterly unimposing: short and slender with soft hands, rounded shoulders, curly white hair, paisley tie. Then he sits down beside me and, unprompted, starts talking about shocking children. "The treatment is so powerful it's hard not to use if you have seen how effective it is," he says quietly. "It's brief. It's painful. But there are no side effects. It's two seconds of discomfort." His tone is neither defensive nor apologetic; rather, it's perfectly calm, almost soothing. It's the sort of demeanor a mother might find comforting if she were about to hand over her child.

. . . .

Rogue Science

In 1994, matthew israel had just 64 students. Today he has 234. This astonishing rate of growth is largely the result of a dramatic change in the types of students he takes in. Until recently, nearly all were "low functioning," autistic and mentally retarded people. But today slightly more than 50 percent are "high functioning," with diagnoses like add, adhd, and bipolar disorder. New York state supplies the majority of these students, many of whom grew up in the poorest parts of New York City. Yet despite this change in his population, Israel's methods have remained essentially the same.

Israel has long faced criticism that he has not published research about his use of electric shocks in peer-reviewed journals, where experts could scrutinize it. To defend his methods, he points to a bibliography of 110 research articles that he's posted on the Rotenberg Center website. This catalog seems impressive at first. Studied more closely, however, it is not nearly so convincing. Three-quarters of the articles were published more than 20 years ago. Eight were written or cowritten by Lovaas, the ucla-affiliated behaviorist. One of America's leading autism experts, Lovaas long ago stopped endorsing painful aversives. And Lovaas' old studies focus primarily on children with autism who engage in extreme self-injury—not on troubled teens who have been diagnosed with adhd or add.

But then, it would be hard for Israel to find contemporary research supporting his program, because the practice of treating self-abusive kids with pain has been largely abandoned. According to Dr. Saul Axelrod, a professor at Temple University and an expert on behavior modification, "the field has moved away from painful stimuli because of public outcry and because we've devised better techniques," including determining the cause of an individual's self-abuse.

Another expert Israel cites several times is Dr. Brian A. Iwata, a consultant on the development of sibis, the device Israel modified to create his ged. Now a professor of psychology and psychiatry at the University of Florida, he's a nationally recognized authority on treating severe self-abuse among children with developmental disabilities. Iwata has visited the Rotenberg Center and describes its approach as dangerously simplistic: "There appears to be a mission of that program to use shock for problem behaviors. It doesn't matter what that behavior is." Iwata has consulted for 25 states and says there is little relationship between what goes on at Israel's program and what goes on at other facilities. "He may have gotten his Ph.D. at Harvard, but he didn't learn what he's doing at Harvard. Whatever he's doing, he decided to do on his own."

Paul Touchette, who also studied with B.F. Skinner, has known Israel since the 1960s when they were both in Cambridge. Like Israel, Touchette went on to treat children with autism who exhibit extreme self-abuse, but he isn't a fan of Israel's approach either. "Punishment doesn't get at the cause," says Touchette, who is on the faculty of the University of California-Irvine School of Medicine. "It just scares the hell out of patients."

Over the decades, Touchette has followed Israel's career and bumped into him at professional conferences. "He's a very smart man, but he's an embarrassment to his profession," Touchette says. "I've never been able to figure out if Matt is a little off-kilter and actually believes all this stuff, or whether he's just a clever businessman."

Big Reward Store

At the rotenberg center, an elaborate system of rewards and punishments governs all interactions. Well-behaved kids can watch TV, go for pizza, play basketball. Students who've earned points for good behavior visit a store stocked with dvd players, cds, cologne, PlayStation 2, Essence magazine, knockoff Prada purses—anything the staff thinks students might want. But even more prized is a visit to the "Big Reward Store," an arcade full of pinball machines, video games, a pool table, and the most popular feature, a row of 42-inch flat-screen TVs hooked up to Xbox 360s.

Students like the "brs" for another reason—it's the only place many can socialize freely. At the Rotenberg Center, students have to earn the right to talk to each other. "We had to wait until we were in brs to communicate with others," says Isabel Cedeño, a 16-year-old who ran away from Rotenberg in 2006 after her boyfriend, a former student, came and got her. "That was the only time you really laughed, had fun, hung around with your friends. Because usually, you can't talk to them. It was basically like we had to have enemies. They didn't want us to be friendly with nobody."

Students live grouped together in homes and apartments scattered in nearby towns and are bused to the facility's headquarters every morning. They spend their days in classrooms, staring at a computer screen, their backs to the teacher. They are supposed to teach themselves, using self-instruction programs that include lessons in math, reading, and typing. Even with breaks for gym and lunch, the days can be incredibly dull. "On paper, it does look like they're being educated, because we have lesson plans," says former teacher Jessica Croteau, who oversaw a classroom of high-functioning teens for six months before leaving in 2006. But "to self-teach is not exciting. Why would the kids want to sit there and read a chapter on their own without any discussion?"

Croteau says teachers have to spend so much time monitoring misbehaviors there's often little time left for teaching. Whenever a student disobeys a rule, a staff member must point it out, using the student's name and just one or two rote phrases like, "Mark, there's no stopping work. Work on your task, please." Each time a student curses or yells, a staffer marks it on the student's recording sheet. Teachers and aides then use the sheet to calculate what level of punishment is required—when to just say "No!" and when to shock.

Employees carry students' shock activators inside plastic cases, which they hook onto their belt loops. These cases are known as "sleds," and each sled has a photo on it to ensure employees don't zap the wrong kid.

Behaviorism would seem to dictate that staff shock students immediately after they break the rules. But if employees learn about a misbehavior after it has occurred—by, say, reviewing surveillance footage—they may still administer punishment. Rob Santana recalls that Mondays were always the most stressful day of the week. He would sit at his desk all day, trying to remember if he had broken any rules over the weekend, waiting to see if he'd be shocked.

Employees are encouraged to use the element of surprise. "Attempt to be as discreet as possible and hold the transmitter out of view of the student," states the employee manual. This way, students cannot do anything to minimize the pain, like flipping over their electrodes or tensing their muscles. "We hear the sound of [a staffer] picking up a sled," says Isabel, the former student. "Then we turn around and see the person jump out of their seat."

Employees shock students for a wide range of behaviors, from violent actions to less serious offenses, like getting out of their seats without permission. In 2006, the New York State Education Department sent a team of investigators, including three psychologists, to the Rotenberg Center, then issued a scathing report. Among its many criticisms was that the staff shocked kids for "nagging, swearing, and failing to maintain a neat appearance." Israel only disputes the latter. As for nagging and swearing? "Sometimes a behavior looks innocuous," he says, "but if it's an antecedent for aggression, it may have to be treated with an aversive."

New York officials disagreed, and in January 2007 issued regulations that would prohibit shocking New York students for minor infractions. But a group of New York parents filed a federal lawsuit to stop the state from enforcing these regulations. They prevailed, winning a temporary restraining order against the state, one that permits the Rotenberg Center staffers to continue using shock. The parents' case is expected to go to trial in 2008.

When they talk about why they use the shock device, Israel and his employees like to use the word "treatment," but it might be more accurate to use words like "convenience" or "control." "The ged—it's two seconds and it's done," says Patricia Rivera, a psychologist who serves as assistant director of clinical services. "Then it's right back to work." By contrast, it can take 8 or 10 employees half an hour or longer to restrain a strong male student: to pin him to the floor, wait for him to stop struggling, then move his body onto a restraint board and tie down each limb. Restraining five or eight kids in a single day—or the same student again and again—can be incredibly time-consuming and sometimes dangerous.

Even with the ged, the stories both students and employees tell make the place sound at times like a war zone: A teenage boy sliced the gym teacher across the face with a cd. A girl stabbed a staffer in the stomach with a pencil. While staff have been contending with injuries ever since Israel opened his facility, the recent influx of high-functioning students, some with criminal backgrounds, has brought a new fear: that students will join forces and riot. Perhaps tellingly, among high-functioning kids most of the violence is directed at the staff, not each other.

"Our Students Have a Tendency to Lie"

Rotenberg staff place the more troubled (or troublesome) residents on 1:1 status, meaning that an aide monitors them everywhere they go. For extremely violent students, the ratio is 2:1. Soon after I arrived, right before I set off on my tour, a small crowd gathered—it seemed that almost the entire hierarchy of the Rotenberg Center was going to follow me around. That's when I realized I'd been put on 5:1. As I began to roam around the school with my escorts, my every move monitored by surveillance cameras, I realized it would be impossible to have a private conversation with any student. The best I could hope for would be a few unscripted moments.

Ten years ago, a reporter visiting Israel's center would have been unable to talk to most students; back then few of them could speak. These days, there are more than 100 high-functioning kids fully capable of voicing their views, and Israel has enlisted a few in his campaign to promote the ged. "If we had only [severely] autistic students, they couldn't talk to you and say, 'Gee, this is really helping me,'" Israel says. "Now for the first time we have students like Katie who can tell you it helped them."

In the world of the Rotenberg Center, Katie Spartichino is a star. She left the facility in the spring of 2006 and now attends community college in Boston. Around noon, a staff member brings her back to the facility to talk to me. We sit at an outdoor picnic table away from the surveillance cameras but there's no privacy: Israel and Karen LaChance, the assistant to the executive director for admissions, sit with us.

Katie, 19, tells me she overdosed on pills at 9, spent her early adolescence in and out of psych wards, was hooked up to the ged at 16, and stayed on the device for two years. "This is a great place," she says. "It took me off all my medicine. I was close to 200 pounds and I'm 160 now." She admits her outlook was less rosy when she first had to wear the electrodes. "I cried," she says. "I kind of felt like I was walking on eggshells; I had to watch everything I said. Sometimes a curse word would just come out of my mouth automatically. So being on the geds and knowing that swearing was a targeted behavior where I would receive a [GED] application, it really got me to think twice before I said something disrespectful or something just plain-out rude."

As Katie speaks, LaChance runs her fingers through Katie's hair again and again. The gesture is so deliberate it draws my attention. I wonder if it's just an expression of affection—or something more, like a reward.

"Do you swear anymore?" I ask.

"Oh, God, all the time," Katie says. She pauses. "Well, I have learned to control it, but I'm not going to lie. When I'm on the phone, curse words come out."

The hair stroking stops. LaChance turns to Katie. "I hope you're not going to tell me you're aggressive."

"Oh, no, that's gone," Katie says. "No, no, no. The worst thing I do sometimes is me and my mom get into little arguments."

For Israel, of course, one drawback of having so many high-functioning students is that he cannot control everything they say. One afternoon, when I walk into a classroom of teenagers, a 15-year-old girl catches my eye, smiles, and holds up a sheet of paper with a message written in pink marker: HELP US. She puts it back down and shuffles it into her stack of papers before anyone else sees. When I move closer, she tells me her name is Raquel, she is from the Bronx, and she wants to go home.

My escorts allow me to interview Raquel while two of them sit nearby. Raquel is not hooked up to the ged, but she has many complaints, including that she has just witnessed one of her housemates get shocked. "She was screaming," Raquel says. "They told her to step up to be searched; she didn't want to step up to be searched, so they gave her one." After 20 minutes, my escorts cut us off. "Raquel, you did a great job—thank you for taking the time," says Patricia Rivera, the psychologist.

Once Raquel is out of earshot, Rivera adds, "Some of the things she said are not true, some of them are. Our students obviously have a tendency to lie about things." She explains that a staff member searches Raquel's housemate every hour because she's the one who recently stabbed an employee with a pencil.

The Rotenberg Center does not have a rule about how old a child must be before he or she can be hooked up to the ged. One of the program's youngest students is a nine-year-old named Rodrigo. When I see him, he is seated outside at a picnic table with his aide. Rodrigo's backpack looks enormous on his tiny frame; canvas straps dangle from both legs.

"He was horrible when he first came in," Rivera says. "It would take five staff to restrain him because he's so wiry." What was he like? "A lot of aggression. A lot of disruptive behavior. Whenever he was asked to do a task that he didn't feel like doing, he would scream, yell, swear. The stuff that would come out of his mouth you wouldn't believe—very sexually inappropriate."

"Rodrigo, come here," one of my escorts says.

Rodrigo walks over, his straps slapping the ground. He wears a white dress shirt and tie—the standard uniform for male students—but because he is so small, maybe 4 feet tall, his tie nearly reaches his thighs. "What's that?" he asks.

"That's a tape recorder," I say. "Do you want to say something?"

"Yeah."

Unfazed by the presence of Israel, Rivera, and my other escorts, Rodrigo lifts a small hand and pulls the recorder down toward his lips. "I want to move to another school," he says.

The Employee-Modification System

To understand how the Rotenberg Center works, it helps to know that it runs not just one behavior-modification program, but two—one for the residents, and one for the staff. Employees have no autonomy. If a staffer believes it's okay to shock a kid who is smashing his head against a wall, but it's not okay to shock someone for getting out of his chair without permission, that could spell trouble. "There's pressure on you to do it," a former teacher told me. "They punish you if you don't."

I met this former teacher at a restaurant, and our meeting stretched on for six hours. At times it felt less like an interview than a confession. "The first time you give someone a ged is the worst one," the teacher said. "You don't want to hurt somebody; you want to help. You're thinking, 'This has got to be okay. This has got to be legal, or they wouldn't be doing this.'" At the Rotenberg Center, it's virtually impossible to discuss such concerns with coworkers because there are cameras everywhere, even in the staff break room. Staff members who want to talk to each other without being overheard may meet up in the parking lot or scribble notes to each other. But it's hard to know whom to trust, since Israel encourages employees to file anonymous reports about their coworkers' lapses.

In addition, staff members are prohibited from having casual conversations with each other. They cannot, for example, say to a coworker, "Hey, did you see the Red Sox game last night?" "We don't want them discussing their social life or the ball games in front of the students or while they're on duty," Israel says. "So we'll sometimes actually have one staffer deliberately start a social conversation with another and we'll see whether the other—as he or she should—will say, 'I don't want to discuss that now.'" Monitors watch these setups on the surveillance cameras and punish staffers who take the bait.

Former employees describe a workplace permeated with fear—fear of being attacked by students and fear of losing their job. There are so many rules—and so many cameras—it's not easy to stay out of trouble. Employees quit or are fired so often that two-thirds of the direct-care employees remain on the job for less than a year.

New employees must sign a confidentiality agreement promising not to talk about the Rotenberg Center—even after they no longer work there. Of the eight ex-employees I interviewed, most did not want to be identified by name for fear of Israel suing them; all were critical of how the ged is used. Maybe, says one, the use of shocks was justified in a few extreme self-injurious cases, but that's all. "Say you had a hospital that was the only hospital in the nation that had chemotherapy, and they were treating people who had the common cold with it," she says. "I think the extreme to which they abuse their power has outweighed what good they do." . . . .

Kucinich on Education Policy

From Huffington Post (interviewed by Charlie Rose):

Rose: This is a user question from William C. Spruiell about education. He says, "If we want to compare school performance, we need a common set of national standards for measuring the performance, but we have a tradition of local control of schools, which means curricula and standards can vary enormously from place to place. How would you go about dealing with these conflicting desires?"

Kucinich: My election will mean the end of No Child Left Behind as a way of achieving the education of our children, because the fact of the matter is, No Child Left Behind has made testing the end-all and be-all of education. Of course, you have to have tests, but you to realize that some school districts, the students have already started out behind. I want a universal pre-kindergarten program so that every child age 3, 4, and 5 will have access to full-quality day care so that they'll learn reading skills and social skills and learn the arts and languages to help them grow so they're ready for the primary schools. And I'm also planning on a universal college education plan where every young American would be able to go to college or a public college or university tuition-free. We have to make education a priority, but all this debate about education and testing is almost beside the point. Our young people are falling farther and farther behind based on where we stand with other nations. We have to start focusing on education. We only spend a fraction of the money on education that we spend on arms buildups. Under a Kucinich administration, education becomes one of the top domestic priorities. We put money into it. We cause the government to be vitally involved in it. And we make sure our children have the love of knowledge. All this stuff about test-taking, we make children good little test-takers under No Child Left Behind. It's the wrong approach to education.

Rose: What's the federal government's responsibility?

Kucinich: Great. It's a great responsibility the federal government has. I'll tell you how I'm going to get the money to fund a No Child Left Behind--excuse me--I'll tell you where I'm going to get the money to fund a universal pre-kindergarten program. A 15 percent cut in the bloated Pentagon budget will yield $75 billion a year that will pay universal pre-kindergarten, as well as more money to fund elementary and secondary education. The government has a major responsibility. After all, an educated populous is core, central to democracy. Charlie, as you walk up the stairs of the Capitol on your way into the House of Representatives, way over the top of that entrance to the House is a statue of a woman whose arm is outstretched, and she is protecting a child who is sitting blissfully next to a pile of books. The title of that sculpture, which is right at the center of our national experience as we walk into the House: Peace Protecting Genius. The goddess of peace protects the child genius. Under a Kucinich administration, peace, strength through peace, focusing on education is going to give our children a chance to unfold in the joy that every child deserves.

Cato Institute: Dump NCLB

It is a rare occasion that I find reason to post a study from the Cato Institute. Cato has their own extremist agenda, of course, for ending ANY federal participation in state or local school funding, but that fool notion does not detract from the points made here regarding the research that has been and continues to be ignored by Spellings, Miller, and Kennedy all.

From the Courier-Journal:

The looming expiration of the federal No Child Left Behind Act has prompted a flood of commission reports, studies and punditry.

Virtually all of those analyses have assumed that the law should and will be reauthorized, disagreeing only over how it should be revised. They have accepted the law's premises without argument: that government-imposed standards and bureaucratic "accountability" are effective mechanisms for improving American education and that Congress should be involved in their implementation.

Thorough review

In this paper, we put those preconceptions under a microscope and subject NCLB to a thorough review. We explore its effectiveness to date and ask whether its core principles are sound. We find that No Child Left Behind has been ineffective in achieving its intended goals, has had negative unintended consequences, is incompatible with policies that do work, is at the mercy of a political process that can only worsen its prospects, and is based on premises that are fundamentally flawed.

We further conclude that NCLB oversteps the federal government's constitutional limits -- treading on a responsibility that, by law and tradition, is reserved to the states and the people. We therefore recommend that NCLB not be reauthorized and that the federal government return to its constitutional bounds by ending its involvement in elementary and secondary education.

Virtually every study that has weighed in on the future of the No Child Left Behind Act has taken the law's underlying principles as given.

The voluminous "Beyond NCLB: Fulfilling the Promise to Our Nation's Children" report from the Aspen Institute's Commission on No Child Left Behind is typical, declaring that "Commission members . . . were united from the outset in [their] firm commitment to . . . harness the power of standards, accountability and increased student options."

Commission members' commitment to government standards and testing was not a product of their study but a foregone conclusion. Similarly, the "ESEA Reauthorization Policy Statement," published by the Council of Chief State School Officers, promises that "if we follow through," standards-based reform "has the potential to dramatically improve student achievement and meet our education goals."

No defense of, or evidence supporting, this claim is included in the statement. Despite the widespread assumption that government standards and accontability will prove effective, it is unwise to make policy decisions affecting tens of millions of children -- and costing tens of billions of dollars -- on the basis of preconceived, unscrutinized notions.

Assessing no child left behind

NCLB's supporters began declaring the law a success within a few years of its January 2002 passage. In July 2005, for instance, when the National Assessment of Educational Progress released its most recent Trends in Academic Progress report, then-chairman of the House Committee on Education and the Workforce John Boehner, R-Ohio, asserted that "[t]hrough No Child Left Behind, we made it a national priority to improve student achievement and close achievement gaps that have persisted between disadvantaged students and their peers. The culture of accountability is taking root in our nation's schools, and student achievement is on the rise."

In January 2006, Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings was similarly effusive:

"I am pleased to report that No Child Left Behind is working. The long-term Nation's Report Card results released this past summer showed elementary school student math and reading achievement at an all-time high and the achievement gap closing."

This sort of triumphalism has continued ever since, with Secretary Spellings in May 2007 even giving NCLB credit for improving scores on NAEP U.S. history and civics exams, despite the fact that NCLB does not address those subjects:

"For the past five years, No Child Left Behind (NCLB) has focused attention and support on helping students become stronger readers. The release today by The Nation's Report Card on U.S. History and Civics proves NCLB is working and preparing our children to succeed."

Policymakers like Boehner and Spellings, who helped to craft and pass NCLB, are not the only ones who have touted the law's supposed success. In its final report, released in February 2007, the Aspen Institute's NCLB commission rang a similarly positive note, claiming that "[t]here is growing evidence that NCLB is producing . . . improved student achievement. According to NAEP, scores in mathematics increased nationwide for fourth and eighth graders from 2003 to 2005. . . . In reading, the national average of fourth graders' scores improved from 2003 to 2005."

Consider, however, that NCLB was passed in January 2002, and fourth-grade reading scores did not in fact change at all between 2002 and 2005. The one-point uptick between 2003 and 2005 only offset a one-point downtick between 2002 and 2003. Furthermore, the Aspen commission neglects to mention that eighth-grade reading scores fell by two points after 2002. At least according to NAEP scores since NCLB's passage, it seems that the law has achieved nothing of consequence.

But post-passage scores don't tell us the whole story. To judge whether the law is working, we also have to look at preexisting trends in achievement. It is quite possible, for example, that math scores were already rising, and reading scores stagnating or falling, before the law was passed and that NCLB affected neither. To have any hope of isolating NCLB's actual effect on student achievement and test score gaps, we have to compare score trends before and after the law's passage.

According to the NAEP Long-Term Trends report, fourth- and eighth-grade math scores did improve between 1999 and 2004, as did fourth grade reading scores (eighth grade reading was flat). Attributing those results to NCLB is highly problematic, however, given that the law was only enacted in January 2002 and not fully implemented until the 2005-06 school year.

But suppose NCLB really did start transforming American education after just a year or two in existence. A rough idea of its effects could then be gleaned by looking at the standard NAEP mathematics and reading results (a data set that is separate from the Long-Term Trends report mentioned earlier). The news wouldn't be good: The trends in those results are virtually unchanged.

While both 4th- and 8th-grade math scores rose between 2003 and 2005 (the only period during which score changes can be reasonably attributed to NCLB), the rate of improvement actually slowed from that achieved between 2000 and 2003, a period before the law's effects would have been felt. In reading, the results were worse, with the period covered by NCLB seeing a score decline for 8th graders and stagnation for 4th graders, following an appreciable improvement between 2000 and 2002 (before the law's passage).

The analysis above is admittedly cursory, providing only tentative evidence of NCLB's effects. In June 2006 Harvard University's Civil Rights Project released a more rigorous review of NAEP score trends before and after passage of NCLB. After comparing the trends from 1990 all the way through 2005, the study's author, Jaekyung Lee, concluded that:

NCLB does not appear to have had a significant impact on improving reading or math achievement. Average achievement remains flat in reading and grows at the same pace in math as it did before NCLB was passed. In grade four math, there was a temporary improvement right after NCLB, but it was followed by a return to the pre-reform growth rate.

NCLB does not seem to have helped the nation and states significantly narrow the achievement gap. The racial and socioeconomic achievement gap in NAEP reading and math persists after NCLB. Despite some improvement in reducing the gap in math right after NCLB, the progress was not sustained.

NCLB's attempt to scale up the alleged success of states that already had test-driven accountability programs does not appear to have worked. It neither enhanced the earlier academic improvements seen in some of those states nor transferred them to other states.

Harvard study ignored

NCLB supporters have responded to the Harvard study by ignoring it. At the time of this writing, the only reference to Lee's study on the Department of Education's Web site was its routine entry in the department's database of education research papers (the ERIC database). And although the Aspen commission lists the Harvard study in its bibliography, the commission's report does not address -- indeed, does not even mention -- Jaekyung Lee's findings.

Interestingly, the Aspen commission released a background paper of its own, investigating post-NCLB test score gaps in seven states.

The paper did not compare score trends before and after the law's passage and was not nationally representative, so it is less useful than the Harvard study, but it is notable in that it offers little support for the commission's own positive views on the effects of NCLB. The paper finds that post-NCLB changes in ethnic and other achievement gaps have been "mixed." Some gaps have shrunk, some have grown larger, others haven't changed much at all.

Another recent report that bears on NCLB's academic effects was conducted by the Northwest Evaluation Association, a nonprofit test provider that works with 2,400 school districts. Using its database of test scores from more than 300,000 students, NWEA researchers compared how much students learned over the course of the 2003–04 school year with how much they learned in 2001–02. What the researchers found was that students learned less in a year after NCLB's passage than they did before it, a result that held true for every ethnic group analyzed and for both mathematics and reading.

The NWEA's results, it should be noted, were not necessarily nationally representative -- data from only 23 states were used -- and they do not conclusively prove that NCLB was responsible for the observed decline in student learning. However, they are a further piece of evidence that NCLB has not improved American education. Those results have also largely been ignored by the people who wish to reauthorize the law.

There is one last, important componen to NCLB that might offer evidence that the law is working: NCLB requires all states to create math and reading standards and to test student mastery of them. Perhaps the results of those assessments are promising. Indeed, many states have been reporting gains on state test scores. Most recently, a June 2007 report from the Center on Education Policy found that many states have seen overall state test score improvements and shrinking achievement gaps under NCLB, a finding that Secretary Spellings declared "confirms that No Child Left Behind has struck a chord of success with our nation's schools and students. . . We know that the law is working."

Despite the seemingly rosy findings when it comes to state test results, there is more bad news than good. For one thing, the CEP study identified huge holes and inconsistencies in state data, the result of most states' having altered their standards, tests, definitions of "proficiency," and other achievement measures since NCLB was passed. Indeed, there were so many holes in the data that CEP had usable pre- and post-NCLB data for only 13 states, and only enough information to conduct full analyses for seven.

And data holes are not the only problem. Several studies have found that students' score on state tests often greatly outstrip their performance on NAEP exams, suggesting that states make success on their own tests relatively easy to achieve, compared with the more rigorous NAEP. A June 2006 University of California, Berkeley, analysis comparing scores on state tests with those on NAEP for 12 states, for instance, concluded that "state results consistently exaggerate the percentage of fourth graders deemed proficient or above in reading and math -- for any given year and for reported rates of annual progress, compared with NAEP results."

More recently, the Institute of Education Sciences equated scores on state tests in schools that administered NAEP with those schools' NAEP results. (NAEP is based on representative sampling of schools and students rather than testing every student in every school.) This revealed that most states' "proficient" levels are equivalent to NAEP's "basic"designation. That is, except in fourth grade reading, where most state proficiency levels are actually below NAEP's basic level.

Taking all these findings together, NCLB appears to have done little good, despite rhetoric from NCLB supporters to the contrary.

Indeed, if anything, there is appreciable evidence that NCLB may have slowed or even partly reversed gains achieved before its passage.

Ohio Attorney General Goes After Failed Charter Schools

If I were David Brennan, I would be trying to move my operation to another venue. Marc Dann is on the move in Ohio:

Ohio Attorney General Marc Dann has filed lawsuits against two Dayton charter schools, saying they should be stripped of public funding because their poor academic performance breaks a public trust.

Dann filed the cases in Montgomery County Common Pleas Court against Colin Powell Leadership Academy and New Choices Community School, both of which enroll more than 200 students.

In the complaint against the Powell academy, Dann argues that in spite of $10 million in public funding, the school has not achieved its academic purpose, meeting only one of 61 state indicators for school performance and averaging a 51.58 out of possible 120 on the state performance index in recent years, giving the school an "F." The academy received a 59.4 on the performance index in the 2006-07 school year.

Superintendent Shane Floyd said the school is aware of the improvements that need to be made and has been working to be in a better position academically next year. The Powell academy replaced 70 percent of its teachers for the 2007-08 school year and officials sat down in the summer to work out an academic plan.

"We are confident that we are on the right track, and making the necessary strides to ensure the academic success of our students," Floyd said.

The complaint against New Choices also lays out the school's academic performance - an "F" - as reason for taking its public funding. The school has met only one of 29 applicable state indicators for school performance and has averaged a 49.26 out of a possible 120 on the state performance index in recent years. New Choices received a 63.8 out of 120 for the 2006-07 school year.

New Choices Superintendent Gary Hardman said the school he started six years ago for students who have fallen through the cracks of Dayton City Schools has shown progress over time - it recently moved from "academic emergency" to "academic watch" status - and can't be judged like other districts.

"What I expected was for the cameras to come here and say, 'Congrats, you made "academic emergency" into "academic watch" with this tough population," Hardman said, noting that 23 percent of New Choices' population of seventh- to 12th-graders are involved in court proceedings and all came in at least two grade levels below standard. "We have made progress and that's not what people are seeing... It takes a while to build from nothing."

Both schools, Dann says, have performed worse than Dayton City Schoolscq, from where they draw the bulk of their students and funding. That 15,825-student district scored a 71.5 on the state performance index, meeting two of 30 district requirements in the 2006-07 year. . . .

Oh, Artificial Boy!

Look at those cute little frubber cheeks and those big sad plastic eyes. What's wrong, Zeno--did your friend fail his high-stakes test today? Give him a few encouraging words, something to help him score higher next year when he gets another chance to move on to the next grade.

Robot boy companions for robotic children--what could be more perfect! From the South Florida Sun-Sentinel:

David Hanson has two little Zenos to care for these days. There's his 18-month-old son Zeno, who prattles and smiles as he bounds through his father's cramped office. Then there's the robotic Zeno. It can't speak or walk yet, but has blinking eyes that can track people and a face that captivates with a range of expressions.

At 17 inches tall and 6 pounds, the artificial Zeno is the culmination of five years of work by Hanson and a small group of engineers, designers and programmers at his company, Hanson Robotics. They believe there's an emerging business in the design and sale of lifelike robotic companions, or social robots. And they'll be showing off the robot boy to students in grades 3-12 at the Wired NextFest technology conference Thursday in Los Angeles.

Unlike clearly artificial robotic toys, Hanson says he envisions Zeno as an interactive learning companion, a synthetic pal who can engage in conversation and convey human emotion through a face made of a skin-like, patented material Hanson calls frubber.

"It's a representation of robotics as a character animation medium, one that is intelligent," Hanson beams. "It sees you and recognizes your face. It learns your name and can build a relationship with you."

It's no coincidence if the whole concept sounds like a science-fiction movie.

Hanson said he was inspired by, and is aiming for, the same sort of realism found in the book "Supertoys Last All Summer Long," by Brian Aldiss. Aldiss' story of troubled robot boy David and his quest for the love of his flesh-and-blood parents was the source material for Steven Spielberg's film "Artificial Intelligence: AI."

He plans to make little Zenos available to consumers within the next three years for $200 to $300. . . .

The Conservative Stance Against NCLB

From NRO (ht to Monty Neill):

No Question Left Behind
Monsters in the law.

By Chester E. Finn Jr.

With every passing week, the 110th Congress looks less likely to reauthorize the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB), the fate of which will therefore hinge on the 2008 election. This contentious law cannot be revamped absent a fairly broad and bipartisan consensus. George Miller and Nancy Pelosi could conceivably bring a bill before the House and possibly ram it through on a near-straight party-line vote (though such a move would provoke more Democratic defections than GOP supporters), but it would come unstuck in the Senate, where it’s essential nowadays to have 60 firm votes for anything controversial. Which this would surely be.

The truth is, despite all the fuss and feathers about NCLB, there’s little agreement on exactly what ails or what might cure it — which is not to say there’s a shortage of advice. A five-foot shelf of books, studies, reports, commission recommendations, etc. is rapidly accumulating. (I plead guilty to having helped contribute a few inches.) Its very amplitude attests not only to the length and complexity of the law, but also to the disputed nature of what, exactly, is awry in NCLB 1.0 and what should be the essential attributes of version 2.0. Even more important, underlying all the technical specifics are five immense dilemmas that go to the heart of the matter.

Is NCLB’s grand goal itself naïve and unrealistic? Politicians pledge that no child will be left behind, yet I don’t know a single educator who seriously thinks 100 percent of American children can become “proficient” (according to any reasonable definition of that term) by 2014 in reading and math. Exemptions have already been made for seriously disabled youngsters. In truth, raising American kids from their current proficiency level of some 30 percent to 70 or 80 percent would be a remarkable, nation-changing achievement, yet I can’t imagine a lawmaker conceding this. The first thing hurled back at him would be “which 20 percent of the kids don’t matter to you?”

Is the program upside down? My Fordham colleagues and I think NCLB inverted a fundamental design principle: Congress opted to be tight with regard to means and loose with regard to ends. It trusts every state to set its own standards, but micromanages measurement systems and sets rigid sequences for school and district interventions. It would be far better to promulgate a single national standard and assessment system, and then to trust states, districts, and educators to devise their own means of getting there on their own timetables. But half of Congress will recoil in horror from the freedom and flexibility implied therein while the other half will be put off by uniform standards.

Is the governmental architecture usable for this purpose? In LBJ’s day, it made sense for Uncle Sam to distribute his new education dollars via the traditional structures of state education departments and local school systems. Four decades later, however, the main focus of federal policy is altering the behavior and performance of those very institutions in ways they don’t want to be altered. It’s beyond imagining that the old, multi-tiered architecture can satisfactorily handle the new challenge of making it change its ways. Yet nobody is thinking creatively about alternative structures by which NCLB’s goals might more effectively be pursued.

Can Washington successfully pull off anything as complex and ambitious as NCLB in so vast and loosely coupled a system as American K–12 education, one in which millions of “street-level bureaucrats” can ignore, veto, or undermine the plans of distant lawmakers and regulators? I’m no great fan of local control of schools but I’m even less a fan of bureaucratic over-reaching.

Do the likely benefits exceed the ever clearer costs? Boosting skill levels and closing learning gaps are praiseworthy societal goals. But even if we were surer that NCLB would attain them, plenty of people — parents, teachers, lawmakers, and interest groups — are alarmed by the price. I don’t refer primarily to dollars. (They’re in dispute, too, with most Democrats wrongly insisting that they’re insufficient.) I refer to things like a narrowing curriculum that sacrifices history, art, and literature on the altar of reading and math skills; to schools that spend ever more of the year prepping kids to pass tests; to gifted pupils being neglected so as to pull low achievers over the bar; and to the homogenizing of schools — including charter schools — that crave the freedom to be different and offer parents distinctive choices.

So long as these monster questions lack agreed-upon answers, I don’t see much hope for an NCLB consensus, and I don’t see much hope for NCLB 2.0 anytime soon.

John Locke High Gets Charterized

With the help of some serious arm-twisting, pocket padding, politician buying, and $7,800,000 from Bill Gates, the "non-profit" corporation, Green Dot Schools, now has John Locke High School in Watts/L.A. under private management.

Green Dot is a serious contender for America's urban school market, particularly the Hispanic market. In fact, they are patiently awaiting Bloomberg's signal in NYC to get the charterization going there. Their Board of Directors presents a picture of an outfit driven by Catholic pedagogy, Telemundo, Oscar De La Hoya and Golden Boy Promotions, Eli Broad's CEO, Comcast, ultra-slick marketing expertise, and the L.A.janitors' union, which has a never-ending supply of bodies to fill the green tee-shirts, just like the ones that were bussed in and marched out yesterday to cheer on the capitulation of public responsibility for poor children's education. As one parent noted, the board "… just said: Give the children away."

Capping off the Board of Directors is Joanne Weiss, CEO of the NewSchools Venture Fund, a bottomless repository where corporations can side-step their tax burdens by making tax-credited contributions toward the further privatization of America's schools via "non-profit" corporations like Green Dot.

Here is how the L. A. Times covered it yesterday.

One of the activists supporting the takeover said this:

“Locke High fails to provide the necessary safety net for our children. It’s burning our teachers out,” Andrews said. “They have to be social workers, parole officers, they have to be everything other than teachers. Kids are coming to school burned-out because they have to get through gang-infested neighborhoods. When they get to school they are tired.”

The question not on yesterday's agenda: How will the privatization of Locke H. S. have any effect on any of those problems that children bring to school every day as a result of poverty?

Bush Loses the Sale at Bush Elementary

Here's some earlier rants on Bush Family's educational equivalent of Billy Beer. It's called the COW, Curriculum on Wheels.

And here is the latest from Raw Story on the bilking and milking by Bro. Neil:

An independent watchdog agency has asked the Department of Education to investigate why President Bush's younger brother, Neil, has received money earmarked for the president's signature education initiative to sell a curriculum program that has not been subjected to the rigorous evaluation it deserves.

Neil Bush, 52, who has no background in education, founded Ignite! Learning in 1999 with donations from his parents and a slate of international business interests. The company produces "Curriculum on Wheels" devices -- computer/projectors that are pre-loaded with software aimed at preparing students for standardized tests that are the central tenet of the president's No Child Left Behind law.

The "COWs" are sold to school districts at a cost of $3,800 to $4,200, although they have not been subjected to peer-reviewed scientific studies, according to Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington. CREW says nearly $1 million has been spent on the systems in 16 school districts, mostly in Texas, where George W. Bush served as governor before his election in 2000, and Florida, where brother Jeb Bush is governor.

The watchdog group is requesting an investigation from the Education Department's inspector general, alleging that the Ignite! systems do not meet the standards laid out by Congress dictating how NCLB funds can be spent.

"It is astonishing that taxpayer dollars are being spent on unproven educational products to the financial benefit of the president’s brother," Melanie Sloan, CREW's executive director, said in a news release. "The IG should investigate whether children’s educations are being sacrificed so that Neil Bush can rake in federal funds."

Neil Bush first attracted public scrutiny for his role in the Savings and Loan scandals of the late 1980s when a Colorado S&L on whose board he served failed. The scandal cost taxpayers $1.6 billion.

Some school districts identified by CREW spent hundreds of thousands of dollars in federal money on the mobile projectors, which include curriculum for math, science or social studies. In addition to their baseline cost -- $3,800 for a single-subject COW or $4,200 for one covering all three subjects -- the units impose on schools a $1,000 annual licensing and upkeep fee, CREW says. Schools also have the option of purchasing lifetime contracts for $6,800, according to the New York Times.

Although there's no direct evidence of presidential nepotism on behalf of his baby brother, Neil Bush did benefit from his mother's largesse in the wake of Hurricane Katrina last year. Barbara Bush donated an undisclosed amount of money to a hurricane relief fund overseen by former Presidents George H. W. Bush and Bill Clinton, and earmarked part of those funds for purchases of Ignite! software.

In an interview earlier this year with the New York Times, Neil Bush denied using his brother's position to push his product. He claimed he was inspired to start the company after struggling with dyslexia while he was in school.

Ignite's Web site includes anecdotal testimonials from teachers who have used the program. But some teachers are less than impressed with the system, saying it supplants rote memorization for critical thinking skills.

"As a review, it uses catchy phrases and tunes," Jeremy Siefker, a middle school science teacher who's used the program, told the Times, "but as far as scientific investigation and inquiry, I don't think it's very good."

Ironically, among the schools that have shunned the program is a Texas elementary school named for Neil Bush's father.

"After reviewing the program, Bush is not interested," Jill Arthur, principal of George H. W. Bush Elementary in Midland, TX, wrote in an e-mail to Ignite! obtained by CREW. "We feel our money is best spent elsewhere."

Darling-Hammond to Miller on NCLB

Here is part of Linda-Darling Hammond's remarks on Tuesday before the House education committee. Not only did Congressman Miller's office hide this meeting behind the Petraeus floodlights, but he packed 44 people's remarks into one day. That's 6 minutes each if zero questions were asked and if Miller had not offered a 10 minute self back rub to get things started.

From Forum for Education and Democracy:

My comments are based on studies of U.S. education and of the education systems of other countries that are outperforming the U.S. by larger and larger margins every year. For example, in the most recent PISA assessments, the U.S. ranked 19^th out of 40 countries in reading, 20^th in science, and 28^th in math (on a par with Latvia), outscored by nations like Finland, Sweden, Canada, Hong Kong, South Korea, the Netherlands, Japan, and Singapore (which did not participate in PISA but scored at the top of the TIMSS rankings) that are investing intensively in the kinds of curriculum and assessments and the kinds of teaching force improvements that we desperately need and that this re-authorization bill is seeking to introduce.

2003 PISA RESULTS

Reading

Finland

South Korea

Canada

Australia

Liechtenstein

New Zealand

Ireland

Sweden

Netherlands

U.S. ranks # 19 / 40

Scientific Literacy

Finland

Japan

Hong Kong

South Korea

Liechtenstein

Australia

Macao

Netherlands

Czech Republic

U.S. ranks #20 / 40

Math

Hong Kong

Finland

South Korea

Netherlands

Liechtenstein

Japan

Canada

Belgium

Macao (China)

U.S. ranks #28 / 40 It is worth noting that PISA assessments focus explicitly on 21^st century skills, going beyond the question posed by most U.S. standardized tests, “Did students learn what we taught them?” to ask, “What can students do with what they have learned?” PISA defines literacy in mathematics, science, and reading as students’ abilities to apply what they know to new problems and situations. This is the kind of higher-order learning that is increasingly emphasized in other nations’ assessment systems, but often discouraged by the multiple-choice tests most states have adopted under the first authorization of No Child Left Behind. Underneath the United States’ poor standing is an outcome of both enormous inequality in school inputs and outcomes and a lack of sufficient focus for all students on higher-order thinking and problem-solving, the areas where all groups in the U.S. do least well on international tests.

In addition to declines in performance on international assessments, the U.S. has slipped in relation to other countries in terms of graduation rates and college-going. Most European and Asian countries that once educated fewer of their citizens now routinely graduate virtually all of their students. Meanwhile, the U.S. has not improved graduation rates for a quarter century, and graduation rates are now going down as requirements for an educated workforce are going steeply up. According to an ETS study, only about 69% of high school students graduated with a standard diploma in 2000, down from 77% in 1969. Of the 60% of graduates who go onto college, only about half graduate from college with a degree. In the end, less than 30% of an age cohort in the U.S. gains a college degree. For students of color, the pipeline leaks more profusely at every juncture. Only about 17% of African American young people between the ages of 25 and 29 – and only 11% of Hispanic youth -- had earned a college degree in 2005, as compared to 34 % of white youth in the same age bracket.

And whereas the U.S. was an unchallenged 1^st in the world in higher education participation for many decades, it has slipped to 13^th and college participation for our young people is declining. Just over one-third of U.S. young adults are participating in higher education, most in community colleges. Meanwhile, the countries belonging to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), which are mostly European, now average nearly 50% participation in higher education, and most of these students are in programs leading to a bachelors degree. Similarly in Southeast Asia, enormous investments in both K-12 and higher education have steeply raised graduation rates from high school as well as college-going rates.

The implications of these trends are important for national economies. A recent OECD report found that for every year that the average schooling level of the population is raised, there is a corresponding increase of 3.7% in long-term economic growth, a statistic worth particular note while the U.S. is going backwards in educating its citizens, and most of the rest of the world is moving forward.

What are High-Achieving Nations Doing?

Funding. Most high-achieving countries not only provide high-quality universal preschool and health care for children, they also fund their schools centrally and equally, with additional funds to the neediest schools. By contrast, in the U.S., the wealthiest school districts spend nearly ten times more than the poorest, and spending ratios of 3 to 1 are common within states. These disparities reinforce the wide inequalities in income among families, with the most resources being spent on children from the wealthiest communities and the fewest on the children of the poor, especially in high-minority communities.

Teaching. Furthermore, high-achieving nations intensively support a better-prepared teaching force – funding competitive salaries and high-quality teacher education, mentoring, and ongoing professional development for all teachers, at government expense. Countries which rarely experience teacher shortages (such as Finland, Sweden, Norway, Netherlands, Germany, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, Taiwan, Singapore) have made substantial investments in teacher training and equitable teacher distribution in the last two decades. These include:

1 High-quality pre-service teacher education, completely free of charge to all candidates, including a year of practice teaching in a clinical school connected to the university,

2 Mentoring for all beginners in their first year of teaching from expert teachers, coupled with other supports like a reduced teaching load and shared planning,

3 Salaries which are competitive with other professions, such as engineering and are equitable across schools (often with additional stipends for hard-to-staff locations),

4 Ongoing professional learning embedded in 10 or more hours a week of planning and professional development time.

Leaders in Finland attribute the country’s dramatic climb from the bottom of the international rankings to the very top to intensive investments in teacher education. Over ten years the country overhauled preparation to focus more on teaching for higher-order skills and teaching diverse learners – including a strong emphasis on those with special needs – and created a funding stream to provide a 3-year graduate level preparation program to all teacher candidates free of charge and with a living stipend, a full year of training in a professional development school site – rather like the residency promoted in this draft bill, intensive mentoring once in the classroom, and more than ten hours a week of professional learning time in school, where teachers collaborate on lesson planning and on the development and scoring of local performance assessments that are the backbone of the country’s assessment system.

In high-achieving Singapore, which I recently visited as part of a review team for the Institute of Education, students from the top 1/3 of the high school class are recruited into a 4-year teacher education program (or, if they enter later, a one-year graduate program) and immediately put on the Ministry’s payroll as employees. They are paid a stipend while they are in training (which is free for them) and are paid at a rate that is higher than beginning doctors when they enter the profession. There they receive systematic mentoring from expert teachers once they begin teaching. Like all other teachers in Singapore, the government pays for 100 hours of professional development annually in addition to the 20 hours a week they have to work with other teachers and visit each others’ classrooms to study teaching. As they progress through the career, there are 3 separate career ladders they can pursue, with support from the government for further training: developing the skills and taking on the responsibilities of curriculum specialists, teaching / mentoring specialists, or prospective principals.

Curriculum and Assessment. Finally, these high-achieving nations focus their curriculum on critical thinking and problem solving, using examinations that require students to conduct research and scientific investigations, solve complex real-world problems in mathematics, and defend their ideas orally and in writing. In most cases, their assessment systems combine centralized (state or national) assessments that use mostly open-ended and essay questions and local assessments given by teachers, which are factored into the final examination scores. These local assessments – which include research papers, applied science experiments, presentations of various kinds, and projects and products that students construct -- are mapped to the syllabus and the standards for the subject and are selected because they represent critical skills, topics, and concepts. They are often suggested and outlined in the curriculum, but they are generally designed, administered, and scored locally.

An example of such assessments can be found in Appendix A, which shows science assessments from high-achieving Victoria, Australia and Hong Kong – which use very similar assessment systems -- in comparison to traditional multiple choice or short answer items from the United States. Whereas students in most parts of the U.S. are typically asked simply to memorize facts which they need to recognize in a list answers, or give short answers which are also just one-sentence accounts of memorized facts, students in Australia and Hong Kong (as well as other high-achieving nations) are asked to apply their knowledge in the ways that scientists do.

The item from the Victoria, Australia biology test, for example, describes a particular virus to students, asks them to design a drug to kill the virus and explain how the drug operates (complete with diagrams), and then to design an experiment to test the drug. This state test in Victoria comprises no more than 50% of the total examination score. The remaining components of the examination score come from required assignments and assessments students undertake throughout the year – lab experiments and investigations as well as research papers and presentations – which are designed in response to the syllabus. These ensure that they are getting the kind of learning opportunities which prepare them for the assessments they will later take, that they are getting feedback they need to improve, and that they will be prepared to succeed not only on these very challenging tests but in college and in life, where they will have to apply knowledge in these ways.

Locallymanaged performance assessments that get students to apply their knowledge to real-world problems are critically to important to the teaching and learning process. They allow the testing of more complex skills that cannot be measured in a two-hour test on a single day. They shape the curriculum in ways that ensure stronger learning opportunities. They give teachers timely, formative information they need to help students improve -- something that standardized examinations with long lapses between administration and results cannot do. And they help teachers become more knowledgeable about the standards and how to teach to them, as well as about their own students and how they learn. The process of using these assessments improves their teaching and their students’ learning. The processes of collective scoring and moderation that many nations or states use to ensure reliability in scoring also prove educative for teachers, who learn to calibrate their sense of the standards to common benchmarks.

The power of such assessments for teaching and learning is suggested by the fact that ambitious nations are consciously increasing the use of school-based performance assessments in their systems. Hong Kong, Singapore, and several Australian states have intensive efforts underway to expand these assessments. England, Canada, Sweden, and the Netherlands have already done so. Locally managed performance assessments comprise the entire assessment system in top-ranked Finland and in Queensland and ACT, Australia – the highest-achieving states in that high-achieving nation.

These assessments are not used to rank or punish schools, or to deny promotion or diplomas to students. (In fact, several countries have explicit proscriptions against such practices). They are used to evaluate curriculum and guide investments in professional learning -- in short, to help schools improve. By asking students to show what they know through real-world applications of knowledge, these other nations’ assessment systems encourage serious intellectual activities that are currently being discouraged in U.S. schools by the tests many states have adopted under NCLB.

How NCLB can Help the United States Become Educationally Competitive

Multiple Measures and Performance Assessments. The proposals in the re-authorization draft to permit states to use a broader set of assessments and to encourage the development and use of performance assessments are critical to creating a globally competitive curriculum in U.S. schools. We need to encourage our states to evaluate the higher-order thinking and performance skills that leading nations emphasize in their systems, and we need to create incentives that value keeping students in school through graduation as much as producing apparently high average scores at the school level.

Many states developed systems that include state and locally-administered performance assessments as part of their efforts to develop standards under Goals 2000 in the 1990s. (These states included Connecticut, Kentucky, Maine, Maryland, Nebraska, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Oregon, Vermont, Rhode Island, Washington, Wisconsin, and Wyoming, among others.) Not coincidentally, these include most of the highest-achieving states in the U.S. on the National Assessment of Educational Progress. Indeed, the National Science Foundation provided millions of dollars for states to develop such hands-on science and math assessments as part of its Systemic Science Initiative in the 1990s, and prototypes exist all over the country. One such measure -- a science investigation requiring students to design, conduct, analyze, and write up results for an experiment -- currently used as a state science assessment in Connecticut (a top-ranked state in both science and writing) is included with the assessment examples in Appendix A.

Researchers learned that such assessments can be managed productively and reliably scored with appropriate training and professional development for teachers, along with moderation and auditing systems, and that teaching and student achievement improve when such assessments are used.

However, the initial years of NCLB have discouraged the use and further development of these assessments, and have narrowed the curriculum both in terms of the subjects and kinds of skills taught. NCLB’s rapidly implemented requirement for every-child every-year testing created large costs and administrative challenges that have caused some states to abandon their performance assessments for machine-scored, multiple choice tests that are less expensive to score and more easily satisfy the law. In addition, the Department of Education has discouraged states from using such assessments. When Connecticut sued the federal government for the funds needed to maintain its sophisticated performance assessments on an every-child every-year basis, the Department suggested the state drop these tasks – which resemble those used in high-scoring nations around the world -- for multiple choice tests. Thus the administration of the law is driving the U.S. curriculum in the opposite direction from what a 21^st century economy requires.

More on The Darkness Under Brennan's White Hat

David Brennan has shown repeatedly what money can buy in the Ohio Courts and Legislature to create an empire based on educational exploitation of the poor. He provides a case study in charter school corruption that is not likely to be equalled any time soon.

So when the charterites put together this latest smelly pastiche, the NCLB sequel that George Miller is airing in DC, they made sure to stipulate that accountability in charter schools will be determined by state charter laws, rather than Federal statute:

‘‘(N) ACCOUNTABILITY FOR CHARTER SCHOOLS.—The accountability provisions under this Act shall be overseen for charter schools in accordance with State charter school law (p. 52).

If this privatization plans survives, it will open the door for the likes of David Brennan to shape the state charter laws in order to avoid oversight and accountability, while guaranteeing a never-ending public revenue stream.

Here is the latest David Brennan chapter from the Cleveland Free Times:

By Charu Gupta

AKRON-BASED WHITE HAT MANAGEMENT and former Clevelander Robert Townsend once enjoyed a mutually beneficial relationship. White Hat operates charter schools, reporting to each school’s board of directors. Townsend joined one of those boards as president in 1999, then went on to preside over an additional 18 others. Townsend was paid for his service, White Hat saved time by dealing with fewer board presidents, and everyone seemed happy.

The relationship began to sour in 2005. Suddenly, after years of relative silence, Townsend and some fellow board members started, well, acting like a board. They complained that White Hat wasn’t doing enough. They questioned why test sores were so low, who White Hat was hiring, and how state money was being spent. They demanded more information and better results. Meetings got heated.

Whether they were concerned more about the students they’d been appointed to watch over or their own reputations (White Hat’s image was being tarnished by media reports at the time) remains a matter of some debate. But whatever the case, the simmering tension prompted White Hat to seek relieffrom its many friends in the state legislature, who obligingly changed the law in ways that helped the company to marginalize the meddling Townsend and his colleagues.

“It gets really tiresome sometimes, to fight that fight,”Townsend said recently. “It takes a toll on your family and yourself when you’re trying to do something to educate people, and then they introduce a bill, a law, and change the whole charter school movement and no one says anything?”

Today the whole affair is in court, with Townsend and eight fellow board members on one side, and White Hat and the state legislature and department ofeducation on the other. And frankly, it’s hard to know who to root for.

IN OHIO, the person most closely associated with charter schools is David Brennan. The Akron-based industrialist had great influence in determining how charter schools are established and run.

A school-choice advocate, Brennan cultivated political clout. George Voinovich received more than $120,000 from the Brennan family during his time as Ohio’s governor, 1991-98, which helped earn Brennan the chairmanship ofVoinovich’s Commission on Educational Choice. The commission would soon recommend taxpayer-funded vouchers for parents and students. Brennan then raised millions to help Republicans win control of the General Assembly in 1994.

The next year, a $5 million voucher pilot program for Cleveland went into effect, providing up to $2,225 per student. Nonprofit, private schools collected the state money and passed on an administrative fee to Brennan’s people. However, the model never expanded beyond Cleveland’s city limits, and profits proved marginal. One study found voucher students in Brennan’s private schools were even lagging behind academically.

By the late ’90s, Brennan abandoned voucher schools for a more lucrative education business model: charter schools.

Under the system established by the legislature in 1997, “any person or group” could start a charter school, upon approval by a public sponsor, like the state board of education or local school boards. Once this agreement was in place, the founders had to select a “governing authority,”or board. This board reported to the sponsor, but oversaw hiring, curriculum and management ofthe school. Board members subsequently entered into contracts with management companies, which handled dayto-day operations.

As the ink dried on the 1997 law, Brennan was ready. In early 1998, he incorporated (out of state) White Hat Ventures, LLC. Under this umbrella company, which housed a realty arm as well, was White Hat Management. White Hat immediately sought approval from the state board ofeducation for charter schools in Cleveland and Akron.

Brennan met Robert Townsend sometime in 1998, as he combed urban centers for potential board members for Hope Academy Broadway Campus, which opened in Cleveland in 1999. IfBrennan was looking for pliable candidates, Townsend was a good choice. He was a fixture on numerous Cuyahoga County boards during their times of peak inefficiency.

In June 1998, Townsend was a senior member of the Cuyahoga Metropolitan Housing Authority board when it came out that executive director Claire Freeman was turning in financial reports that listed her monthly mortgage payment as an “executive benefit.”When asked by the Plain Dealerif the board should have queried further, Townsend replied yes. “We made a mistake. I take that responsibility for myself.”

He also served on the board ofWard 1’s Amistad Community Development Corporation, which lost hundreds ofthousands of dollars through bad investments, questionable hires and poor oversight (“Who’s Got the Money?,” Free Times, May 2, 2007). He has since moved to Oakwood Village, where he serves on the city council and is running for mayor.

Townsend told the Free Timesin March that he signed on with White Hat “to give a choice.”

“No one can argue that Cleveland public schools have problems,” he said. “Charter schools are a way of helping to resolve their problems, because they deal with the word choice.”

When Townsend joined his first charter school board, White Hat was opening schools at a steady pace, with sponsors such as the University ofToledo and St. Aloysius Orphanage. Townsend soon was board president for 19 schools, one ofwhich was more than three hours from where Townsend and other board members lived.

Attorney Robert DiCello, who represents Townsend and his co-plaintiffs, admits that they were chosen because White Hat wanted hands-offmanagement. These folks weren’t educators, DiCello notes, and were “asked to run an entity that [they had] no prior experience running.”

He did not explain why they agreed to serve on the boards. But he defends White Hat’s asking Townsend to agree 18 more times.

“It’s much more economical for the kids,” DiCello says. Otherwise, imagine the chaos with 19 different school boards telling White Hat to go in 19 different directions. It’s not clear whether he understands or cares that the promise of charter schools was to offer parents more educational choices.

And he does not mention the other role that economics might have played. In 2006, the Plain Dealer reported, Townsend received almost $55,000 from White Hat for his charter school board service that year. Part of that money came from board members scheduling one meeting to discuss six or more schools at a time, and then collecting six or more fees.

A 1999 CONTRACT BETWEEN Townsend’s board and White Hat preclud- ed the board from approving how money was allocated. In 2002, Townsend and his board agreed to let White Hat directly collect 97 percent ofthe available state funds, and thus put state money behind the wall ofa private corporation.

“My clients didn’t have the resources to really vet the contract, to make sure the contract allowed the board to fulfill the mission of helping low-income kids,” DiCello says. Townsend and other board members trusted White Hat’s “package presentation”ofthe contract.

In December 2003, a report by the Legislative Office for Education Oversight (a government agency established in 1990 to provide independent evaluations for state-funded programs and abolished in 2005), reported 2001-02 test results for several charter schools, including Townsend’s first, Hope Academy Broadway Campus. An average of11 out of 52 fourth-graders passed reading, math, science and citizenship exams. Of29 sixthgraders tested, an average of two passed the same exams. Writing was the only field in which Hope Academy Broadway’s students tested well.

Still, it was another two years, even by DiCello’s reckoning, before board members began to get tough with White Hat.

“The thing is,”he says, “you can be told as a board member, well, we’ll get to it in the next meeting. You can have six meetings in a year, and be told six times we’ll get to it, and a year is gone. From a point of view of sheer time, it looks pretty long in development. But I think it was a series of meetings, a series of rejections that ultimately leads to the 2005 point, when [the board] wanted more accountability.”

When board members finally stirred the pot in 2005, White Hat refused to answer their questions. In March 2006, board members reduced White Hat’s direct collection of state money to 96 percent. Then the board took away one bookkeeping contract.

“It was as if my clients were just polished figureheads,” DiCello says, “and they started to get frustrated with that, and they expressed their frustration.”

But even in trying to stake out their independence, the board members seemed to prove their own incompetence. They cut White Hat as their accountant and hired an outside firm, but the company they chose was reprimanded by the state auditor for lack of supporting documentation, purchases allocated to the wrong schools and incomplete accounting practices.

Townsend was also singled out for collecting almost $2,000 in improper, nonschool-related expenses. Cleveland Zoo tickets were purchased for $110. Registration fees, totaling nearly $1,600, were paid for Townsend and a guest to attend conferences hosted by the National League of Cities and National Black Mayor’s Conference.

The audit also took issue with several board members’ practice of collecting multiple fees for one meeting, a practice the audit labeled “abusive.”DiCello blames it on bad advice. “I don’t know if this issue snuck up on them, like we’ll get to it, we’ll discuss it later, no one is telling us it’s wrong, so therefore maybe it’s not.”

An official board response contained in the audit report offers a different excuse, only slightly more plausible: That downsizing at White Hat required board members to put in between 15 to 50 hours a week attending to school operations previously handled by the company. So the compensation for multiple meetings was in effect payment for excess hours over monthly time periods. (DiCello wonders about the timing of this audit report and hints at a conspiracy to make his clients look bad. “Is it a coincidence that the auditor is getting this information now?” he asks. “I certainly don’t think so.”)

APPARENTLY TIRED OF BATTLING with boards, White Hat ran to its powerful friends in Columbus, seeking changes to the system it had helped put in place. In December 2006, Republican legislators quietly slipped new charter school provisions into a bill that dealt largely with teacher background checks. The provisions barred anyone from serving on more than two charter school boards and allowed a management company to appeal to the charter school’s founding institution if the board tried to end its contract. Ifthe decision was overturned, the board would be disbanded and the management company would choose a new one.

Led by Townsend, nine board members have sued on grounds that the law, which went into effect in March, is unconstitutional and deprives charter school boards statewide of the right to oversee management companies. DiCello says a decision in the case should be ready in a few weeks.

A spokesman for White Hat, Bob Tennenbaum, refused to answer any questions related to board members.

DiCello, meanwhile, seems to want to keep his clients’ options open.

“I really want to emphasize,”he says, “I really want this to be known: my clients do not have a desire to terminate White Hat at this time. And more importantly, we recognize that White Hat has considerable resources and skills for the kids, and remember, it’s about the kids.”

Diane Ravitch Loses Her Religion?

I have always been a believer in the capacity for a person to change, and I also believe that anyone who does not believe that should not be an educator. So it is with real interest that I read the latest comments in the "Bridging Differences" column by Diane Ravitch , Koret Task Force member, former Reagan Asst. Secretary of ED, and long time booster of the Business Roundtable agenda for American education. Have a look:

Deborah Meier and Diane Ravitch have found themselves at odds on policy over the years, but they share a passion for improving schools. Bridging Differences will offer their insights on what matters most in education.

Dear Deb,

I hope we are not disappointing our readers by agreeing more than we disagree. I think I am letting down my part of the bargain by agreeing with you so often, but our areas of convergence became clear from the first time that we sat together almost a year ago to talk about our views about No Child Left Behind. The fact is that you are writing and saying the same things you have believed for a long time, and I am in the process of reconsidering and revising my views on many counts.

I have been doing quite a lot of soul-searching these past couple of years. I don’t think it is because of age, although one can never be too sure about that. I think I am reconsidering first principles because of the very topics that you hit so hard in your latest letter. Living in NYC, I see what happens when businessmen and lawyers take over a school system, attempt to demolish everything that existed before they got there, and mount a dazzling PR blitz to prove that they are successful.

Lest anyone think that what you described is purely a NYC story, consider this: I hear from various people who participated in the judging for the Broad Prize that NYC will win it this year. This is not much of a surprise. When Joel Klein was first named chancellor, Eli Broad held his annual prize event in NYC and handed Klein a huge dummy check and predicted that one day soon this would be his. The $1 million hardly matters to NYC, which has an annual budget that approaches $20 billion, but the prestige is what the city is after. It desperately wants the confirmation from Broad that its new regime has succeeded.

About 18 months ago, I was invited to meet Eli Broad in his gorgeous penthouse in NYC, overlooking Central Park. I hear that he made his billions in the insurance and real estate businesses. I am not sure when he became an education expert. We talked about school reform for an hour or more, and he told me that what was needed to fix the schools was not all that complicated: A tough manager surrounded by smart graduates of business schools and law schools. Accountability. Tight controls. Results. In fact, NYC is the perfect model of school reform from his point of view. Indeed, this version of school reform deserves the Broad Prize, a prize conferred by one billionaire on another.

Thanks for your recommendation about the James Scott book, "Seeing Like a State." I happen to own it, as it had been highly recommended to me by Morton Keller, a historian at Brandeis University. It is a wonderful critique of reforms that seek to overturn the world, of the arrogance of reformers who do not understand the practical wisdom of those who must make decisions every day that respond to unique situations.

As I read "Seeing Like a State," especially its concluding chapters, I kept thinking about the wholesale gutting of the NYC school system by Messrs. Bloomberg and Klein, who are now hailed in the media as our nation’s leading education reformers. Professor Scott, an anthropologist at Yale, would find in NYC a perfect exemplar of men who think they can “see like a state.”

Worse, Deb, they seem to have sought out even the cracks in the sidewalk and tried to pave them over. They seem to have succeeded.

Diane

After all the damage that Dr. Ravitch has done over the years with her right-wing ideological extravagances, it will take more than this little commentary for me to believe that any real change is taking place. But as I said, everyone has the potential to change, even Diane Ravitch.

40 School Days Divided by 180 School Days = 22% of School Days Devoted to Testing

Let the anti-thought begin. From the Austin American-Statesman:

Tuesday, September 11, 2007

The third week of school is under way. In other words, it's time to start testing.

In the Austin school district, some teachers must start giving benchmark tests, which measures students' strengths and weaknesses heading into the new year.

Education Austin, which represents 4,000 district employees, marked the occasion Monday by launching a campaign to push district officials to reduce the time spent on such tests.

"Testing is eating up everything else," Education Austin President Louis Malfaro said.

Education Austin and its statewide parent group, the Texas chapter of the American Federation of Teachers, are calling on teachers to document the amount of time they spend practicing for and giving tests. Teacher groups in other cities launched similar campaigns.

Malfaro said the group wants teachers to make sure schools are complying with a new state law that says schools cannot spend more than 10 percent of their instructional days giving district-required tests.

The statewide Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills is the favorite punching bag of teachers and parents who say schools are too focused on tests. But Malfaro said that much of the testing burden in Austin comes not from the state but from district officials who require teachers to give district-produced tests throughout the year.

Ann Smisko, the Austin school district's associate superintendent for curriculum, said the district, like most, "regularly assesses students for one main reason: to ensure that children receive better, more focused classroom instruction."

Smisko said the district uses benchmark tests at the start of school to see where students are, in the middle of the year to measure progress and at the end to see whether students need extra help before moving to the next grade.

District officials said the number of days per year that a class spends on testing varies by grade and campus.

Ken Zarifis, who teaches eighth-grade language arts at Burnet Middle School in North Austin, said he and colleagues spend more than 40 of the 180 instructional days in a school year giving tests that they do not write themselves.

Those tests include state-written exams such as the TAKS and district-produced tests, such as six-week exams and the three-times-a-year benchmark tests.

Richardson Says Dump NCLB In the Potomac and Start Over

Another Dem that gets it! From USA Today:

Get rid of the law; improve teacher pay, preschool programs.

By Bill Richardson

I have a one-point plan for No Child Left Behind: Scrap it.

NCLB has failed. It has failed our schools, it has failed our teachers and it has failed our children.

The Bush administration claims victories, but upon closer scrutiny it becomes clear that the White House is simply dressing up ugly data with fancy political spin. Far from leaving no child behind, President Bush seems to have left reality behind.

Just look at the facts. The National Assessment of Educational Progress shows a slight narrowing of the racial achievement gap over the past three years. This narrowing, however, is due to a decline in overall reading scores, not to improvements in minority student performance.

This is not progress.

Review the figures, and you will see that our schools are not failing NCLB; the program is failing our schools. In some grades, reading and math scores have actually declined for Hispanics, African-Americans and others. The current pass-fail rating system is worse than meaningless — it's counter-productive. If a school needs help, we should help that school. We shouldn't punish it, as NCLB mandates.

We need to move beyond the empty rhetoric of No Child Left Behind. We must provide our public schools with what the National Education Association refers to as the three R's — Responsibility, Respect and Resources.

The key to this improvement is respecting teachers. I signed a law in New Mexico that pays teachers a professional salary. As president, I will fight for national average starting pay for teachers of at least $40,000 a year.

Teacher salaries are just the beginning. Quality pre-K programs allow children to show up in first grade ready to learn. These programs must be available to all children.

Finally, we need strong academic standards aligned with the needs of today's workforce. America's schools were designed for the 20th century economy — this is no longer sufficient. Our children need to graduate ready to engage with the New Economy, not the old one.

True education reform requires more than a set of unfunded mandates and a list of failing schools. It requires a vision for success, the state and federal funding to match, and the experience to bring real reform to America's failing schools.

Bill Richardson is the governor of New Mexico. He is seeking the Democratic Party's nomination for president.

California Teachers Association Says No to NCLB Sequel

We must thank the CTA for taking the position that the Suits for the NEA will not.

Vote NO on the Miller/Pelosi NCLB Reauthorization Proposal

California educators have supported the Elementary and Secondary Act since its inception in 1965 when President Lyndon B. Johnson signed it as part of the War on Poverty. CTA supports improving student achievement, closing achievement gaps and accountability, but when the law was reauthorized in 2002 and was named the No Child Left Behind Act by President Bush, it became a system of sanctions rather than assistance to public schools, students and teachers.

NCLB is again now up for reauthorization. And the proposal by California Congressman George Miller and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi does nothing to improve the law. California teachers are calling on Congress to vote NO on the Miller/Pelosi NCLB reauthorization plan.

The No Child Left Behind Act is Not Working. It is Hurting our Students, Teachers and Schools -- read more.

The NCLB reauthorization proposal by Representative George Miller and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi does nothing to improve the current law and actually makes it worse -- read more.

The Miller/Pelosi NCLB reauthorization bill will make it harder to attract and retain quality teachers in California classrooms -- read more.

The Miller/Pelosi NCLB reauthorization bill imposes new federal mandates that undermine local control and employee rights -- read more.

Rather than punishing students and teachers, NCLB should provide proven reforms that improve student learning -- read more.

We can’t let the past repeat itself. This law is too important for the future of our public schools.

Take Action NOW!

Tell Your Member of Congress to VOTE NO on Miller/Pelosi NCLB Proposal


Read:

• Fact Sheet on Miller/Pelosi NCLB Reauthorization Proposal
• What’s wrong with NCLB?
• Recent CTA News Release
• San Francisco Chronicle articles on NCLB
  • No Child Left Behind Faces Overhaul, Poliltical Donnybrook
  • Napa High School, a State Standout, is Considered a Federal Failure

• • 
    

Don't Starve Yourself, Kozol--Take Us to Washington!!

Here is Jonathan Kozol's piece from Huffington Post, following my appeal to him to lead at this crucial time, rather than starve himself:

This morning, I am entering the 67th day of a partial fast that I began early in the summer as my personal act of protest at the vicious damage being done to inner-city children by the federal education law No Child Left Behind, a racially punitive piece of legislation that Congress will either renew, abolish, or, as thousands of teachers pray, radically revise in the weeks immediately ahead.

The poisonous essence of this law lies in the mania of obsessive testing it has forced upon our nation's schools and, in the case of underfunded, overcrowded inner-city schools, the miserable drill-and-kill curriculum of robotic "teaching to the test" it has imposed on teachers, the best of whom are fleeing from these schools because they know that this debased curriculum would never have been tolerated in the good suburban schools that they, themselves, attended.

The justification for this law was the presumptuous and ignorant determination by the White House that our urban schools are, for the most part, staffed by mediocre drones who will suddenly become terrific teachers if we place a sword of terror just above their heads and threaten them with penalties if they do not pump their students' scores by using proto-military methods of instruction -- scripted texts and hand-held timers -- that will rescue them from doing any thinking of their own. There are some mediocre teachers in our schools (there are mediocre lawyers, mediocre senators, and mediocre presidents as well), but hopelessly dull and unimaginative teachers do not suddenly turn into classroom wizards under a regimen that transforms their classrooms into test-prep factories.

The real effect of No Child Left Behind is to drive away the tens of thousands of exciting and high-spirited, superbly educated teachers whom our urban districts struggle to attract into these schools. There are more remarkable young teachers like this coming into inner-city education than at any time I've seen in more than 40 years. The challenge isn't to recruit them; it's to keep them. But 50 percent of the glowing young idealists I have been recruiting from the nation's most respected colleges and universities are throwing up their hands and giving up their jobs within three years.

When I ask them why they've grown demoralized, they routinely tell me it's the feeling of continual anxiety, the sense of being in a kind of "state of siege," as well as the pressure to conform to teaching methods that drain every bit of joy out of the hours that their children spend with them in school.

"I didn't study all these years," a highly principled and effective first-grade teacher told me -- she had studied literature and anthropology in college while also having been immersed in education courses -- "in order to turn black babies into mindless little robots, denied the normal breadth of learning, all the arts and sciences, all the joy in reading literary classics, all the spontaneity and power to ask interesting questions, that kids are getting in the middle-class white systems."

At a moment when black and Hispanic students are more segregated than at any time since 1968 (in the typical inner-city school I visit, out of an enrollment that may range from 800 to 4,000 students, there are seldom more than five or six white children), NCLB adds yet another factor of division between children of minorities and those in the mainstream of society. In good suburban classrooms, children master the essential skills not from terror but from exhilaration, inspired in them by their teachers, in the act of learning in itself. They're also given critical capacities that they will need if they're to succeed in college and to function as discerning citizens who have the power to interrogate reality. They learn to ask the questions that will shape the nation's future, while inner-city kids are being trained to give prescripted answers and to acquiesce in their subordinate position in society.

In the wake of the calamitous Supreme Court ruling in the end of June that prohibited not only state-enforced but even voluntary programs of school integration, No Child Left Behind -- unless it is dramatically transformed -- will drive an even deeper wedge between two utterly divided sectors of American society. This, then, is the reason I've been fasting, taking only small amounts of mostly liquid foods each day, and, when I have stomach pains, other forms of nourishment at times, a stipulation that my doctor has insisted on in order to avert the risk of doing longterm damage to my heart. Twenty-nine pounds lighter than I was when I began, I've been dreaming about big delicious dinners.

Still, I feel an obligation to those many teachers who have told me, not as an accusation but respectfully, that it was one of my books that diverted them from easier, more lucrative careers and brought them into teaching in the first place. Some call me in the evenings, on the verge of tears, to tell me of the maddening frustration that they feel at being forced to teach in ways that make them hate themselves.

I don't want them to quit their jobs. I give them whatever good survival strategies I can. I tell them that the best defense is to be extremely good at what they do: Deliver the skills! Don't let your classroom grow chaotic! A teacher who can keep a reasonable sense of calm within her room, particularly in a school in which disorder has been common, renders herself almost inexpendable.

At the same time, I always recommend a healthy dose of sly irreverence and a sense of playful and ironical detachment from the criticisms of those clipboard bureaucrats who come around to check on them. (Teachers call them "the curriculum cops" or "NCLB overseers.") I urge them to develop mischievous and inventive ways to convince these gloomy-looking people that whatever they are teaching at that moment, no matter how delectably subversive it may be, is, in fact, directly geared to one of those little chunks of amputated knowledge, known as "state proficiencies," they are supposed to be "delivering" at that specific minute of the day.

But I've also felt the obligation to bring this battle to its source in Washington. I've tried very hard to convince a number of the more enlightened Democrats who serve on the Senate education panel to introduce amendments that will drastically reduce our government's reliance upon standardized exams in judgment of a child, school, or teacher, and attribute greater weight to factors that are not so simple-mindedly reducible to numbers.

Sophisticated as opposed to low-grade methods of assessment would not only tell us whether little Oscar or Shaniqua started out their essays with "a topic sentence" but would also tell us whether they wrote something with the slightest hint of authenticity and charm or simply stamped out insincere placebos. (A child gets no credit for originality or authenticity under No Child Left Behind. Sincerity gets no rewards. Endearing stylistic eccentricity, needless to say, is not rewarded either. That which can't be measured is not valued by the technocrats of uniformity who have designed this miserable piece of legislation.)

On a separate battlefront, I've also tried to win support for an amendment to the law that will take advantage of one of the loop-holes in the recent segregation ruling, an opening that Justice Kennedy has offered us by his insistence that criteria that are not race-specific may be used in order to advance diversity in public schools.

There is a provision in No Child Left Behind that permits a child in a chronically low-performing school to transfer to a more successful school. Up to now, it hasn't worked because there aren't enough successful schools in inner-city districts to which kids can transfer. The Democrats, I've argued, have the opportunity to make this option workable if they are sufficiently audacious to require states to authorize a child's right to transfer across district lines, and provide financial means to make this possible, so that children trapped in truly hopeless schools could, if their parents so desired, go to school in one of the high-spending suburbs that are often a mere 20-minute ride from their front door.

I was surprised that none of the senators with whom I spoke rejected this proposal as too controversial or politically unthinkable. More than one made clear that they enjoyed the notion of helping to "improve" a flawed provision that the White House had included in the law for reasons that most certainly were not intended to enable inner-city kids to go to beautiful suburban schools with 16 or 18 children in a room, instead of 29, or 35, or 40, as in many urban systems.

It was, however, on the testing issue that I received the most explicitly unqualified and positive response. Several of the senators made a lot of time available to think aloud about the ways in which to get rid of that sense of siege so many teachers had described and to be certain that we do not keep on driving out these talented young people from our schools.

The only member of the Democratic leadership I have been unable to get through to is the influential chairman of the education panel, Senator Ted Kennedy, who, one of his colleagues told me flatly, will ultimately "call the shots" on this decision. I've asked the senator three times if he'll talk with me. Each time, I have run into a cold stone wall. This has disappointed me, and startled me, because the senator has been a friend to me in years gone by and has asked for my ideas on education on a number of occasions in the decades since I was a youthful teacher and he was a youthful politician.

Senator Kennedy is, of course, a very busy man and has many other issues of importance he must deal with. But it's also possible, aides to other senators suggest, that he does not wish to contemplate dramatic changes in the law because he co-sponsored the initial bill in a deal with the Republicans. He is also renowned as a gifted builder of consensus in the legislative process. Lending his support to either of the two proposals I have made would almost surely guarantee a knockdown battle with conservative Republicans and, perhaps, with some of the Democratic neoliberals as well.

Still, Senator Kennedy has displayed a genuine nobility of vision in defense of elemental fair play for low-income children many times before. Is it possible that he may rise to the occasion once again? If he does, I may finally listen to the worries of my friends and decide it's time to bring this episode of fasting to an end. If not, I'll keep slogging on. It's a tiny price to pay compared to what so many of our children and their teachers have to go through every single day.

_____________________

Jonathan,
Thank you for your eloquent commitment to what's right for so many years.

Please don't starve yourself while waiting for Godot. It is time to have a big beef steak, regain your strength, and get together the teachers and parents who will meet you in Washington to speak, march, yell, scream, and go to jail if needed to stop the madness. We are at a tipping point, and public acts of civil disobedience will make the difference here.

When/if the Congressional hearings start this month, we all should be there. Lead the revolution that the NEA is too cowardly and vested in the status quo to lead. Teachers are with you, and many of us academics, too.

A trusted lieutenant, should you need one.
Jim Horn

The NCLB Overhaul That Ended With A Quart of Stop-Leak

The San Francisco Chronicle has a good rundown on the various constituencies who are not getting what Nancy Pelosi promised when said a major overhaul was in the works. Here is a clip:

. . . .Polls show that the public is also growing weary of the reliance on testing. A Phi Delta Kappa/Gallup poll in June found that 52 percent of public school parents felt there was too much testing, up from 32 percent in 2002. And 75 percent of public school parents said the focus on testing was leading teachers to teach to the test, not the subject matter.

Miller hopes to address the complaint by allowing states to use other factors to judge a school's improvement: graduation rates, rates of students taking Advanced Placement classes and going to college, as well as results from statewide exams on history, science, writing and other topics. But math and reading scores would still dominate, accounting for 85 percent of a school's index of yearly progress for elementary and middle schools and 75 percent for high schools.

Critics have attacked Miller's approach from both sides. Teachers unions and advocates for states and school boards say the proposal still relies too heavily on the two tests. But Spellings and business groups warn that it could create a confusing new accountability system for parents, which might allow some states or individual schools to rig the results.

"We're concerned that it may provide too many opportunities for schools to game the system and obscure the fact that students are not progressing toward reading and doing math at grade level," said Arthur Rothkopf, a senior vice president at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

Some parents and educators say the law is shortchanging gifted students: Schools are rated based only on whether they get kids to "proficiency" in math and reading, but they get no credit for getting kids beyond proficient.

"It's not that teachers don't want to challenge those gifted kids, but there is so much pressure on them to pay attention to the other kids," said Susan Goodkin, president of the California Learning Strategies Center, a Ventura-based group that works with parents.

Many schools object to being labeled as underperforming because they missed the targets for one subgroup - say, if a small number of African American students failed to reach proficiency in math - which triggers tough sanctions.

"If School A hits 80 percent of its targets and School B hits 20 percent of its targets, under the current law they are both treated the same way," said Reginald Felton of the National School Boards Association. "That's not fair."

Miller wants to ease the penalties on schools that narrowly miss the targets, giving them more freedom to spend federal dollars to help those that missed the goal. But the administration says it would let too many schools off the hook and keep all students from getting free tutoring promised under the original law.

The draft House bill also offers more flexibility in testing special needs students - giving states up to two additional years before English language learners must take reading and math tests in English, and allowing more students with disabilities to take modified tests. Spellings warned that it could hinder the progress made by those groups.

There's one key area where the White House and Congress agree: expanding the use of "growth models," a new type of test that gauges how the same group of students performs over time, rather than measuring this year's third-graders against last year's third-grade class. A dozen states are using the new measurements under a pilot program with the Department of Education, and now more states would get the chance.

The original act was the product of a rare left-right consensus in Washington - a shared view that strong accountability was needed in the public schools - and passed by huge bipartisan majorities: 381-41 in the House; 87-10 in the Senate.

But the consensus may be cracking. A Republican bill in the House by Rep. Pete Hoekstra, R-Mich., that would allow states to opt out of No Child Left Behind has more than 60 co-sponsors. A similar bill is being pushed in the Senate by Sen. Jim DeMint, R-S.C.

On the right, "there's a split between the accountability hawks and those who see the law as a substantial achievement of this administration and those who either have buyer's remorse - who backed it in 2001 to support the president but now regret it - or those who weren't in Congress and now see it as inconsistent with conservative traditions," said Frederick Hess, an education expert at the American Enterprise Institute.

The split is even more evident in the Democratic Party. All the major presidential contenders have turned sharply against the act. New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson said at a recent debate that he would scrap it. Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., told a group of union teachers in July, "Don't come up with this law called No Child Left Behind and then leave the money behind."

The law is so closely identified with the Republican president and the teachers unions are such a key voting bloc in early primary states that it has become an easy target - even to senators such as Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York, who voted for it.

"While the children are getting good at filling in all those little bubbles, what exactly are they really learning?" she asked delegates at a National Education Association meeting in New Hampshire earlier this year.

The rising anti-No Child sentiments in both parties may make it tough for Kennedy to corral the 60 votes needed to reauthorize the law in a divided Senate. So far he's divulged few details about his plans - leaving the fight for now to the House. . . .

Say No to continued testing insanity and school privatization Bill. Write and call:

Write and call Congress Today
Stop the Madness!

NCLB: They Hate It in Missoula, Too

The bureaucratic and pedagogical horrors created by NCLB are well-documented in urban school districts, but less has been written about sparsely-populated states like Montana. Here is a nice piece of reporting from the Missoulian on the unique nightmares imposed by NCLB in rural states (ht to Ken Bernstein):

By ROB CHANEY of the Missoulian

Editor's note: This is the second in a two-part series on No Child Left Behind test scores, which were released this week. On Friday, we looked at how Missoula schools fared, and the ramifactions of those test results. Today, we look at other schools in western Montana.

Montana's struggle to make adequate yearly progress on federal education standards is beginning to look like the kid staying after school writing 100 times, “I will finish all my homework on time.”

By one measure,

90 percent of Montana schools met AYP requirements last year on their No Child Left Behind reading and math tests. And 85 percent of the state's school districts cleared the bar.

But six of the state's seven big-city schools did not make AYP. Although just 62 of the state's 425 districts are on the “needs improvement” list, they represent 77,229 of Montana's 144,418 school children.

The difference points up one of the biggest controversies surrounding No Child Left Behind rules. Multi-building school districts like Missoula or Great Falls can have the large majority of their schools meet the federal guidelines while the district as a whole fails.

“In Missoula, if 27 more kids had made AYP in reading at Big Sky High School, we would not be talking about making AYP in reading,” said state Superintendent of Public Instruction Linda McCulloch. “It seems awfully unfair to label a school as failing AYP when a small number of kids didn't do well on one test taken once a year. And they're your kids with disabilities.”

Big Sky did not make AYP this year, along with Lowell Elementary School. That puts them on a federal “watch list.” C.S. Porter and Meadow Hill middle schools have missed AYP two years in a row, and are listed as “identified for improvement.”

But Missoula County Public Schools and all its 8,753 children are labeled as “identified for corrective action” - the third level of federal sanction.

One of the first sanctions any school district missing AYP must incur is public notification of its status. This year, that's the case for the communities where 53.4 percent of the state's public school students live. District administrators must acknowledge the test score deficits and offer families the opportunity to transfer to another school.

In Missoula, letters have already gone home to Hellgate and Porter families. While the letters were being sent, Hellgate officials successfully appealed their test results because of record-keeping errors. As a result, Hellgate made AYP for 2006. That level of administrative busy work is another frustration for McCulloch.

“We're acutely aware of the foofaraw the schools have to go through,” McCulloch said. “There are things I would like to have done in the last five years, but our very small group of staff folks have to be working on the federal requirements. It's taken a long time to make folks 3,000 miles away understand a very large state with very few students and what we do here, whereas we could have been doing more in the schools.”

Among Montana's big-city districts, none missed making adequate yearly progress among their main student body. Like the fabled elephant chased by the mouse, the failure stems from often-tiny subgroups of students with special needs, low-income families, or other minority characteristics. If an insufficient number of those subgroup children don't pass the reading or math tests, or if less than 80 percent of the seniors graduate from high school, the whole school is sanctioned.

So although 88 percent of Libby High School's sophomores passed the reading test and 63 percent passed the math, the school got on the watch list because only 75 percent of the previous year's seniors graduated.

Lolo Elementary School District had 86 percent of its students pass reading and 81 percent pass math. It stumbled because its students with disabilities did not clear the bar.

That same population also didn't pass at Hellgate Elementary School District, but the district as a whole did make AYP. Superintendent Doug Reisig said his special-needs students showed enough progress from the previous year, the district qualified for a “safe harbor” exception from the federal sanction.

“To hold us accountable that all of our children will learn is a good thing,” Reisig said. “But to say they all will go from Point A to Point B at the same speed is unrealistic. Our kids with disabilities worked so hard to meet the threshold. For us to show that kind of growth is a credit to the parents as well as the teachers. But for bigger districts, it's virtually certain that every one of them will find their students with disabilities can't make it.”

Bozeman was the only Class AA school district to make AYP this year. Office of Public Instruction spokesman Joe Lamson noted that 92 percent of its students passed the reading test. But according to the current version of No Child Left Behind, that figure must be 100 percent by 2014. Seven years in the future, Bozeman would also be considered a failing school given last year's performance.

And the draft version of the federal law currently before Congress doesn't look any better. The tiny subgroups, 2014 deadline and testing sanctions all remain in place at the moment.

In addition, the draft bill takes away many of the tools upon which small states like Montana relied to measure small schools. Lamson said another proposal would require students whose first language isn't English to take tests in their home language. In Montana, that would mean creating reading and math tests in languages like Crow or Blackfeet.

“Neither one of those are written languages,” Lamson said. “And even though most of those students' predominant language is English, but they'd be required to take the test in Crow or Blackfeet.”

Nevertheless, not one state has turned its back on No Child Left Behind. In Montana, NCLB controls the purse strings to $148 million in federal aid for struggling learners annually. But rejection of the federal rules could trigger a domino effect endangering another $350 million in special education dollars, program grants and impact aid payments for federal lands, military bases and Native American reservations. Given that the state only spends about $700 million a year in Montana tax dollars on public education, that federal help can't be ignored.

But McCulloch's office lacks much power to enforce those sanctions. In more centrally controlled states, the superintendent of schools can fire teachers, take over management of buildings or close whole districts. In Montana, that power is vested in local school boards, not in Helena.

“I've had conversations with Washington where they've said to me: ‘You just need to change the Constitution,' ” McCulloch said. “I told them it would be easier to take red meat off the menu in Montana than to take local control out of the Constitution.”

More Money for Testing, But Big Cuts to Children's Insurance

From the New York Times on the most recent U. S. Census Report:

The number of uninsured children under 18 dropped steadily and significantly from 1999 to 2004, thanks largely to an expansion in coverage of low-income children under two programs operated jointly by the states and the federal government, Medicaid and the State Children’s Health Insurance Program. Then last year the number of uninsured children jumped more than 600,000 to reach 8.6 million. The main reason, advocacy groups say, is that access and funding for the low-income programs became tighter while employer coverage for dependents eroded.

Now that erosion is sure to start cutting deeper, with recent decisions to restrict Medicaid coverage to children and to restrict expansion of the SCHIP health insurance program.

Fenty's Charter Schools to Bail Out Catholic Church?

With the Church paying out more than a $858,000,000 since July in California alone to settle claims against its unholy dis-order of pedophile priests, the cost of a Catholic education just went up. The Church is scrambling to come up with the pedophile payouts without disturbing its golden investments and properties around the World, so convents and schools (closed because of parental nervousness) are being auctioned off to pay what’s not covered by the skyrocketing pedophile insurance premiums. I just hope they didn’t have State Farm.

Enter Mayor Fenty as potential underwriter. The Mayor and the DC charterites are now pushing a plan to allow the Catholic Church to close some of its unprofitable DC school properties that are bulging with black children whose parents cannot afford to pay the tuition, to reopen these schools as “nonsectarian” charter schools, and to have the taxpayer pay the rent so that the Church can hang on to its properties while stashing cash for the inevitable next crop of lawsuits for lives ruined by pervert priests.

From WaPo:

Archbishop Donald W. Wuerl is proposing to convert eight of the District's 28 Catholic schools into secular charter schools, saying the archdiocese can no longer afford to keep them open.

Wuerl said his recommendation to strip the schools of their core religious identity and turn them over to a nonsectarian entity to be run as charter schools is the only way to avoid closing them and would continue the education of thousands of low-income city children without interruption.

The converted charter schools -- elementary schools in some of the city's poorest neighborhoods -- would receive operating and facilities funds from the District. They would remain in their buildings and pay rent to the parishes.

National education experts say the proposal could be a solution for other urban Catholic school systems around the country that have struggled with declining enrollment and rising operating costs.

The archdiocese sent letters home with students yesterday explaining the proposal, which would take effect as soon as fall 2008 and affect 1,400 current students. Starting next week, individual schools will hold information sessions to solicit parent and community feedback. Wuerl is expected to make a final decision next month.

"It's a heartache to know that we wouldn't have these schools any longer," Wuerl said in an interview this week. "But the sadness is sweetened by the fact that these students would continue to have an education."

But some parents and parishioners reacted angrily, saying Wuerl's proposal would gut high-quality education for black children. The majority of the students in the schools that would be affected are black and not Catholic. The archdiocese subsidizes a large portion of their tuition.

"The fact that they are even considering doing this is not only unacceptable, it's outrageous," said Kathryn S. Allen, who sits on the parish council of St. Augustine Catholic Church in Northwest Washington. St. Augustine is on the list of schools to be converted, but the Rev. Patrick Smith has told the archdiocese that he intends to try to continue operating it as a parish-supported school.

A learning environment suffused with religion is a key part of Catholic schools, which are known for strict discipline and a rigorous curriculum that also promotes morality. Although most students in such schools are not Catholic, they learn about the seven sacraments and the lives of saints, attend prayer together and are taught compassion for others.

Under a charter model, archdiocese officials said, the schools would still have strong values, but the schools' names would change and specific religious references would be stripped from the curriculum.

The plan, which has been vetted by two church bodies and floated to Mayor Adrian M. Fenty (D) and city charter leaders, would require the District to increase its budget for charter schools. The city's 57 charter schools, representing about 22,000 students, are scheduled to receive $320 million from the city this year. The mayor and Chancellor Michelle A. Rhee are looking for additional funds for public school improvements.

Victor Reinoso, deputy mayor for education, said that now the diocesan proposal is a possibility, "we will take it into consideration as we plan future budgets."

The move by Wuerl to consider the charter route stems from a decade of financial losses at 12 inner-city schools known as the Center City Consortium. The consortium was set up after a 1995 archdiocese study recommended closing or consolidating several city schools.

Then-Cardinal James A. Hickey insisted they remain open, so the archdiocese formed the consortium as a way for the schools to save on administrative costs and pool fundraising resources. Although they have improved academically, they have continued to lose money despite $60 million in diocesan and private donations.

Of these 12 consortium schools, eight would be converted to charters managed by a single secular entity selected by the archdiocese. The four others would remain Catholic.

The recommendation came after a year of study by a committee of 40 parents, teachers and other archdiocese officials that considered a school's enrollment, the number of students who were Catholic, projected deficits and other factors.

Wuerl, who has been in Washington for 14 months, previously served as bishop of Pittsburgh, where he gained a reputation as a tough-minded administrator -- closing nearly a third of the diocese's 320 parishes and eliminating a $2 million deficit -- and an education innovator. He sought funding from the business community to set up an endowment for needy schools, raised tuition and opened regional grade schools to replace smaller elementary schools.

Soon after he arrived in the District in June 2006, Wuerl said he heard from Catholic education officials that the inner-city schools were no longer financially viable. Part of the reason was that many poor families were choosing charter schools, which are free.

"One by one, families left to go to charters . . . and it was a kind of steady drifting away," said Monsignor Charles Pope, pastor of Holy Comforter-St. Cyprian Roman Catholic Church in Southeast Washington, whose parish school, which dates to the 1920s, would be converted to a charter.

But Pope said it is a better alternative than shutting down. "At least we'll be able to serve children in some capacity in our neighborhoods."

Thomas A. Nida, chairman of the D.C. Public Charter School Board, said he has spoken to Wuerl about the proposal and described the seven-member appointed board as "open to the possibility" of the conversion schools.

Turning religious schools into secular charter schools can be difficult. In Chicago, public schools chief Arne Duncan asked an independent Catholic school to open a charter school several years ago. The Catholic school San Miguel has opened two secular charters.

"There are church-state issues," Duncan said. "But if you're really trying to innovate and think outside the box, they are absolutely surmountable."

The Archdiocese of Washington's struggle with shrinking enrollment is not unique. More than three-quarters of Catholic dioceses in the country have had flat or falling enrollment in elementary schools for the past seven years, according to a study last year by the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate at Georgetown University.

The decline has accelerated in recent years because of several factors: smaller Catholic families, urban Catholics' moving to the suburbs, weakening attachment of Catholic families to a Catholic education -- and, more recently, the Catholic clergy sex-abuse scandal. As a result of the drop, the study found, hundreds of Catholic schools in such cities as Boston, New York, Philadelphia and Chicago have closed. . . .

I Test, Therefore, It Exists

If you thought that the orgy of tabulation that has infected our society had reached a climax already, hang on. It seems now that the only way the Congressional braintrust can come up with a plan to offer a crumb of credibility to the idea of teaching, say, art or music, would be to create a test for it so that the results can be used in AYP determinations. If it ain't tested, it ain't real. From Ed Week:

Advocates for broadening the curriculum hope a draft House proposal for reauthorization of the No Child Left Behind Act will give a boost to history, art, music, and other subjects that they believe have been marginalized in many districts under the 5½-year-old federal law.

The draft of changes to Part A of the Title I program, released by Rep. George Miller, D-Calif., Rep. Howard P. “Buck” McKeon, RCalif., and key colleagues late last month, features potential incentives for states to test students in core subjects other than those now required—mathematics, reading, and, beginning this school year, science.

“It’s a good start … and encouraging that Congressmen Miller and McKeon are showing sensitivity to the criticism that there has been a narrowing of the curriculum” under No Child Left Behind, said Jack Jennings, the president of the Center on Education Policy, and a former aide to House Democrats. “If school districts can include testing in other subjects [in gauging how well their schools are doing], it allows them to pay more attention to those other areas.” . . .

Now that's Unreal!

Blaming Schools While Ignoring Poverty

From the BBC:

Children from disadvantaged backgrounds need to do more than just attend a good school to boost their educational achievement, a report has claimed.

The report for charity Joseph Rowntree Foundation highlighted how a quarter of poor children in England gain five good GCSEs compared with half of all pupils.

School quality accounted for a fraction of variations in achievement, it said.

Family disadvantage is passed on from one generation to the next in a cycle of underachievement, it added.

The report said that factors such as how children felt about themselves and their learning also needed to be tackled.

'Chavs and posh'

The report, which summarises the findings of eight earlier projects for the charity's education and poverty programme, seeks to understand the well-known correlation between poverty and low educational performance.

Parents who were making a choice between low income and long hours found it hard to give children good life chances, the report added.

It claimed that just 14% of the difference between individual's performance was down to the quality of the school.

Report author Donald Hirsch said: "What this means is that if you simply looked at factors which varied from one school to another - there would not be that much difference in educational performance.

"Looking at children's social background had much more of an impact."

This research did not imply that poorer parents don't care about their children's education Joseph Rowntree Foundation report

Children were highly aware of their social position and the limitations it placed upon them.

Many had clear stereotypes of "chavs" and "posh" children, the report found.

And children from different backgrounds had different attitudes to their learning and schools, which were developed at an early age.

For example, those in disadvantaged schools complained that they were shouted at by teachers, whereas those in more advantaged schools did not mention this.

The children concluded that those who had been able to develop reading and writing outside school were more confident and had higher self-esteem, the report said.

Mr Hirsch added that if children did not feel confident about their learning they were reluctant to invest effort into it.

Low incomes

What did help was more activities outside school which could help children develop their confidence.

Out-of-school activities should not be just an add-on, the report said, instead they were absolutely central to raising achievement.

The report also found children in advantaged homes not only had more help with their homework but more physical space to do it.

"This research did not imply that poorer parents don't care about their children's education.

"Many parents on low incomes lack the resources that allow them to help out, to provide conducive environments or to access relevant services," it added.

The arrival of extended schools, which will provide homework clubs and help for children and families, offered the opportunity for children from disadvantaged backgrounds to experience some out of school learning that better off children had access to, the report said.

Wider opportunities

But Mr Hirsch said there was a risk they would reinforce the negative perceptions that some disengaged children already had of school and learning.

Schools minister Lord Adonis said helping children from disadvantaged backgrounds was one of the government's key objectives.

The report's findings chimed with many of the things the government was already doing, he said.

"We will continue to focus on making sure every child can fulfil all aspects of their potential, regardless of their background."

NCLB and How Not to Close the Achievement Gap

By Jerry Bracey at Ed Week:

The Bush administration has claimed lately that rising test scores and a narrowing black-white test-score gap reflect the success of the federal No Child Left Behind Act. Even if this is true—and it is not at all clear that it is—the achievement gap, broadly conceived, is growing. Let me explain.

I recently visited an elementary school in Fairfax County, Va. Although Fairfax County is generally affluent, the homes in this neighborhood are modest by any standard. The parents are workers—in food services, in dry cleaning, in construction, in lawn care. The school contains students from 40 nations, and its ethnic makeup is 39 percent Hispanic, 32 percent Asian, 6 percent black, 18 percent white, and 5 percent “other.” More than half don’t speak English well, half qualify for free or reduced-price meals, and the school’s mobility rate is double that of the district as a whole.

Yet, because it manages decent scores on the Virginia Standards of Learning tests, the school is fully accredited by the state and has met the No Child Left Behind law’s requirements for adequate yearly progress.

But all the above doesn’t really give you a feel for how the school operates or its successes.

In some schools today, principals patrol the halls listening to make sure that the teachers are all following the exact sequence laid out by the scripted reading programs.

The school burbles. It’s a sound that emanates from kids who are content to be where they are. Student artwork covers the hallway walls. Classroom walls are richly decorated. Some students are painting a huge cafeteria mural showing the Taj Mahal, the Pyramids at Giza, and other wonders of the world. In one hall, I meet a group returning from “butterfly-release day.” They had watched as caterpillars transformed themselves into butterflies, and they had just gone outside to set them free. Science from the real world, not from a book. Students sometimes worked in small groups, sometimes worked alone, and sometimes listened to the teacher talk to the whole class. Questions were plentiful.

It’s as if the school lives under a shield. As if being part of an affluent district, though not affluent itself, offers cover, a kind of Strategic Defense Initiative, protecting it from state and federal dictates.

Unfortunately, in many impoverished districts, no such armor protects the children or the teachers. In such districts, children endure an endless diet of math and reading test-prep worksheets. “Bubble-kids”—those perceived to be on the threshold of passing the test—get extra time in reading and math, sometimes in gym class. “Sure things” and “hopeless cases” get identified and ignored. Science, if it happens at all, happens in the two dimensions of a book. Thinking about those butterflies, I was reminded of a California superintendent’s retort on being asked why her district wouldn’t be making any more whale-watching field trips: “Kids are not tested on whale watching, so they’re not going whale watching.” Music? Art? Social studies? Plays? Chess club?

In some such schools today, principals patrol the halls listening to make sure that the teachers are all following the exact sequence laid out by the scripted reading programs. One teacher who gave a creative answer to a question while using the highly programmed Open Court reading series was severely reprimanded by her principal. “But it was a teachable moment,” she said.To which he replied, “There are no teachable moments in Open Court!” Some principals have contracts specifying that test scores must rise by a certain amount each year. They administer copious “formative evaluations,” which are merely mini-tests to see if the kids are making progress toward the big tests at the end of the year.

The outcome of this gun-barrel focus is the gap I mentioned at the outset. It was described well recently by the president of the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation, Chester E. Finn Jr., a longtime public school critic, and initially a supporter of the No Child Left Behind law. “It’s increasingly clear,” he said recently in an online newsletter, “that making schools and teachers focus narrowly on test results, especially in basic skills, squeezes a lot of the juice out of the curriculum and out of the educational experience itself. ... America’s true competitive edge doesn’t come from producing more engineers than India. It arises from the creativity, rebelliousness, and drive that result from a broad liberal education and the values and convictions that accompany such teaching and learning.”

Kids facing an infinite series of phonics exercises are not enjoying that broad liberal education. They’re not growing butterflies or watching whales. If the reading and math scores in the drilled schools rise, some people will claim success. Others will say, “At least they’re getting more of an education than they used to.” Somehow, I don’t think so.

Gerald W. Bracey is an independent researcher, policy analyst, and writer in Alexandria, Va., and a fellow of the Education Policy Studies Laboratory at Arizona State University, in Tempe, Ariz. His most recent book is Reading Educational Research: How to Avoid Getting Statistically Snookered (Heinemann, 2006).

If Big Business Should Run Schools, Schools Should Run Big Business

From Huffington Post, a post entitled "No CEO Left Behind: A Teacher's Fantasy":

For children across the country, its back to school this week, and many of them will be attending schools in systems run by corporate executives. At the forefront of this initiative is Los Angeles-based Broad Foundation via its training program for school management. Broad's web site states, "Wanted: The Nation's most talented executives to run the business of urban education." As a result, major cities, including Pittsburgh (Eddy Jones, formerly of Deloitte) and Chicago (Jacqueline Statum of Hershey's Corporation) now have corporate executives in managerial positions.

In 2005, San Diego in keeping with its longstanding ties to the navy, hired retired Rear Admiral Jose Betancourt--also a Broad Foundation grad - to be the Chief Administrative Officer of its schools. Betancourt was ousted recently after pleading guilty to violating federal conflict-of-interest laws by prematurely lobbying on behalf of his Pentagon contractor employer to try to secure a $300 million military contract.

In New York City, soon after he was elected mayor, Michael Bloomberg chose Joel Klein, former Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Bertelsmann to be school Chancellor. He enlisted former General Electric CEO Jack Welsh to chair the Advisory Board of the Leadership Academy, formed to inculcate business-like thinking and behavior into New York City's school principals. 2006- 2007 standardized reading test scores indicate that roughly half the city's school kids aren't measuring up. Former Assistant Secretary of Education, now N.Y.U. professor of Education, Diane Ravitch has commented "You might say that it's Joel Klein and Michael Bloomberg's report card. They get 50 %. Fifty percent is not a passing grade."

What has led so many mayors including Rudolph Giuliani, (in 2002, he appointed a Citigroup lawyer as Chancellor) to think that America's corporate executives have the credentials, experience and values to turn around our schools? A valid question under any circumstances, but even more pertinent in light of the ethically challenged behavior of top executives at Enron, Tyco, Halliburton, Blackwater and other corporations; and Ford, General Motors, and Chrysler's well-publicized managerial incompetence.

No mayor or other government official would ever dream of recruiting school teachers to help fix America's corporations. But if corporate executives can be called upon to turn around our schools, then why not call upon teachers to turn around our corporations? Let's dream on...

Teachers' recommendations, based on their school experience, for turning around corporate America:

Sharing: No teacher on cafeteria patrol would allow a child to grab a bag full of chocolate chip cookies leaving other children to have to take a few nibbles off the leftovers.
Recommendation: CEO's must learn to better share their corporations' revenue with hardworking employees. It's not fair for a CEO to be making $15 million a year while his hard working employees have to moonlight to make ends meet.

Cleaning Up: Whether it's bussing your tray in the cafeteria, or cleaning up your desk at the end of the school day; kids are taught to clean up after themselves. No one else--teachers or classmates--will do it for them.
Recommendation: CEO's must be held responsible for the messes they make. No more putting up with companies polluting our air, land, and rivers (like Welsh's General Electric dumping PCB's into the Hudson river), and then trying to make taxpayers pay for cleanup.

Bullying: Some schools now have programs to help teachers deal with bullies who boss children around, humiliate them, force them off slides or swings they want to take over, and generally make life miserable for their schoolmates. Teachers with anti-bullying training would be particularly well equipped to deal with corporations that specialize in hostile takeovers
Recommendation: Corporations must stop forcing themselves on other corporations which do not want to merge with them. (What part of "no" do they not understand?); and they must stop humiliating and making life miserable for the numerous employees they invariably fire when they take over.

Favoritism: Every teacher knows that systematically favoring one group of children--white over black? girls over boys? - and giving them better grades for the same work is a big no-no.
Recommendation: The practice of favoring white males over others, and paying them more for the same work must stop. Salaries must be made public within corporations so that favoritism can be eliminated.

Gifts and Teacher's Pets: Because some parents try to get better grades or other favors from teachers by giving them expensive Christmas gifts, some schools have banned all gifts. Schools do not stand either for a teacher giving the child of a friend or a relative who happens to be in her class undeserved better grades. No "teachers' pets" is a basic educational rule.
Recommendation: Our government must ban corporations from giving big gifts to politicians in order to win favors. It's just not right that because HMO's and pharmaceutical corporations shower politicians with such gifts, Americans don't have the universal health insurance and affordable medication that people in other countries like us have. It's also not fair for corporations to be "government pets," and get billion dollar contracts just because they have a friend in the White House.

Conclusion: If CEO's want to help improve our schools, they need to clean up their own act first. For starters, they should stop hogging taxpayer dollars through corporate subsidies and stop setting up off shore corporate headquarters to avoid paying their fair share of taxes. Some of those billions in tax dollars could then be used to pay teachers enough to attract the best and the brightest to the profession.

Truth and Consequences: Act Now to Stop NCLB

"Testing improves education the same way that bombing promotes democracy." --Steve Cohn, Professor of Education, Tufts University

Write and call Congress Today
Stop the Madness!

NCLB and Iraq Are Working--Stay the Course

Contrary to all the empirical evidence that their own government has accumulated, George and Margaret insist that their failed policies and costly adventures are working and that nothing should be done to alter their continued imaginary success. From the AP:

"We must refuse to make any changes that would make us less accountable for educating every child to grade-level standards in reading and math," she said in a speech to business leaders.

Accountability for everyone--except George and Margaret, of course.

Founder of California's Largest Charter School Network Indicted on 113 Felony Counts

Another chapter in the charter school sewer saga from WaPo:

SAN BERNARDINO, Calif. -- The founder of one of California's largest charter school networks was indicted Tuesday on 113 felony counts and accused of siphoning millions in public school funds, prosecutors said.

C. Steven Cox, founder of the now-defunct California Charter Academy, was indicted on 56 counts of misappropriation of public funds and 56 counts of grand theft, said Michael Fermin, a supervising deputy district attorney. Cox was also accused of failing to file a state tax return, he said.

The grand jury also indicted Tad Theron Honeycutt, a Hesperia city councilman, on 15 counts of misappropriation of funds, 15 counts of grand theft, three counts of failure to file a state tax return and one count of filing a false tax return.

They are accused of transferring more than $5 million in charter school funds to the network's private management firm to cover expenses, Fermin said.

Cox, 59, pleaded not guilty and was jailed with bail set at $1 million. If convicted of all counts, he could face 64 years in prison. Honeycutt, 44, also entered a plea of not guilty to all charges and was jailed in lieu of $500,000 bail. He faces a maximum 20 years in prison if convicted.

San Bernardino County prosecutors began their investigation after the release of a state audit in 2004 that detailed problems with the finances and operations management at the schools.

The audit charged that Cox routinely looted millions from public schools to enrich his friends and family, leading to the academy's collapse. Auditors wrote that California Charter Academy and its private management firm, Educational Administrative Services Corp., spent millions on hefty executive salaries, perks and questionable contracts awarded to Cox's friends and family.

At their peak, Cox's four schools enrolled 4,500 children and 7,000 adults at 50 satellite campuses from Gridley, north of Sacramento, to near the Mexican border. The academy shut down in August 2004 as the state began its investigation.

State Superintendent of Public Instruction Jack O'Connell called the indictment "welcome news in a very sad story" and said the state would still try to collect $23 million from the academy in bankruptcy proceedings. . . .

Should Highly-Qualified Teachers Like Kids?

I've done a good deal of ranting over the past two years (scroll down after the click) about NCLB's "highly-qualified" teacher requirement, which like other semantic constructions from this decomposing policy carcass, is right out of the Orwellian dictionary. For the Bushies, "highly-qualified" means that teacher have a Bachelors degree in the subject areas they teach, and, bang, they're highly qualified. No teacher education required or desired, thank you. The Bush Gang don't need none of that stinking democracy talk by the likes of John Dewey, whose Democracy and Education ranks right up there with the Kinsey Report and Chairman Mao on the top 10 most harmful books of the 19th and 20th Century. For real--Dewey is #5.

What we know, in fact, is that large numbers of the most caring and creative teachers have left teaching rather than become guards on the testing chain gangs that have replaced learning centers in the schools of our nation. The teaching scripts that have replaced the plan books in urban schools make good teaching irrelevant and iron-fisted behavior control everything.

Now some real research examines whether or not the Bush-Spellings definition of "highly-qualified" has any value at all. A clip from Ed Week:

“The AIR-RAND report very clearly shows that the federal government has given very poor direction and a variety of mixed signals to states on a whole range of highly qualified teacher provisions,” said Barnett Berry, the president of the Center for Teaching Quality, a research and advocacy group based in Hillsborough, N.C. Rural schools, in particular, needed more resources to attract skilled teachers and boost the subject-matter expertise of existing teachers, he added.

Wrong Criteria?

But Robert C. Pianta, the dean of the education school at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, said the variation the researchers found might also suggest that federal policymakers are measuring teacher quality the wrong way.

“If almost everybody is already meeting those standards, and we’re still not seeing large achievement gains, then that should give us pause as to whether or not we’re using the right metrics,” Mr. Pianta said in an interview.

For a study published in March in the journal Science, Mr. Pianta and his research partners conducted detailed observations of 5th grade teachers in 20 states. They found that teachers who were labeled “highly qualified” were no more likely than colleagues without that designation to use effective teaching practices. ("Study Casts Doubt on Value of ‘Highly Qualified’ Status," April 4, 2007.)

Mr. Pianta favors rating teachers on the extent to which they use education practices proven to be scientifically sound as a measure of their highly qualified status.

In the CEP’s surveys of the administrators in charge of implementing NCLB’s teacher-quality provisions in 50 states and 349 districts, those officials called the highly-qualified-teacher definition’s focus on content knowledge “too narrow” for accurately identifying good teachers.

“Some of them say whether teachers like kids and can improve the skills of diverse students also are important,” explained Jack Jennings, CEP’s president and chief executive officer. “But that’s hard to measure.”. . . .

Like kids? How novel! If we could only design a multiple-choice test to measure caring, perhaps humanitarian teaching would once more have a chance in American schools.

The New and Improved Doping of Children

The drug companies have found a whole new market for their anti-psychotic catalog of goodies: schoolchildren. If Ritalin was not enough to tame the child bored blind by schools that impose psychic straightjackets, get the doc to call it bi-polar disorder and put them on Seroquel.

And, of course, the drug advertisers and manufacturers are leading the charge in this latest manifestation of consumer capitalism gone berserk. From the New York Times:

. . . .Some experts say greater awareness, reflected in the increasing diagnoses, is letting youngsters with the disorder obtain the treatment they need.

Other experts say bipolar disorder is overdiagnosed. The term, the critics say, has become a catchall applied to almost any explosive, aggressive child.

After children are classified, the experts add, they are treated with powerful psychiatric drugs that have few proven benefits in children and potentially serious side effects like rapid weight gain.

In the study, researchers from New York, Maryland and Madrid analyzed a National Center for Health Statistics survey of office visits that focused on doctors in private or group practices. The researchers calculated the number of visits in which doctors recorded diagnoses of bipolar disorder and found that they increased, from 20,000 in 1994 to 800,000 in 2003, about 1 percent of the population under age 20.

The spread of the diagnosis is a boon to drug makers, some psychiatrists point out, because treatments typically include medications that can be three to five times more expensive than those for other disorders like depression or anxiety.

“I think the increase shows that the field is maturing when it comes to recognizing pediatric bipolar disorder, but the tremendous controversy reflects the fact that we haven’t matured enough,” said Dr. John March, chief of child and adolescent psychiatry at the Duke University School of Medicine, who was not involved in the research.

“From a developmental point of view,” Dr. March said, “we simply don’t know how accurately we can diagnose bipolar disorder or whether those diagnosed at age 5 or 6 or 7 will grow up to be adults with the illness. The label may or may not reflect reality.”

Most children who qualify for the diagnosis do not proceed to develop the classic features of adult bipolar disorder like mania, researchers have found. They are far more likely to become depressed.

Dr. Mani Pavuluri, director of the pediatric mood disorders program at the University of Illinois, Chicago, said the label was often better than any of the other diagnoses often given to difficult children.

“These are kids that have rage, anger, bubbling emotions that are just intolerable for them,” Dr. Pavuluri said, “and it is good that this is finally being recognized as part of a single disorder.”

The senior author of the study, Dr. Mark Olfson of the New York State Psychiatric Institute at the Columbia University Medical Center, said, “I have been studying trends in mental health services for some time, and this finding really stands out as one of the most striking increases in this short a time.”

The increase makes bipolar disorder more common among children than clinical depression, the authors said. Psychiatrists made almost 90 percent of the diagnoses, and two-thirds of the young patients were boys, said the study, published in the September issue of The Archives of General Psychiatry.

About half the patients were identified as having other mental difficulties, mostly attention deficit disorder.

The children’s treatments almost always included medication. About half received antipsychotic drugs like Risperdal from Janssen or Seroquel from Astrazeneca, both developed to treat schizophrenia.

A third were prescribed so-called mood stabilizers, most often the epilepsy drug Depakote. Antidepressants and stimulants were also common.

Most children took a combination of two or more drugs, and 4 in 10 received psychotherapy.

The regimens were similar to those of a group of adults with bipolar diagnoses, the study found.

“You get the sense looking at the data that doctors are generalizing from the adult literature and applying the same principles to children,” Dr. Olfson said.

The increased children’s diagnoses reflect several factors, experts say. Symptoms appear earlier in life than previously thought, in teenagers and young children who later develop the full-scale disorder, recent studies suggest.

The label also gives doctors and desperate parents a quick way to try to manage children’s rages and outbursts in an era when long-term psychotherapy and hospital care are less accessible, they say.

In addition, drug makers and company-sponsored psychiatrists have been encouraging doctors to look for the disorder since several drugs were approved to treat it in adults.

Last month, the Food and Drug Administration approved one of the medications, Risperdal, to treat bipolar in children. Experts say they expect that move will increase the use of Risperdal and similar drugs for young people.

“We are just inundated with stuff from drug companies, publications, throwaways, that tell us six ways from Sunday that, Oh my God, we’re missing bipolar,” said Dr. Gabrielle Carlson, a professor of psychiatry and pediatrics at the Stony Brook University School of Medicine on Long Island. “And if you’re a parent with a difficult child, you go online, and there’s a Web site for bipolar, and you think: ‘Thank God, I’ve found a diagnosis. I’ve found a home.’ ” . . . .

White Hat Charters Continue Chronic Underperformance, and So Do the Profits

The Ohio charter school scam just rolls on, with their status protected regardless of their performance:

. . . .In a news release issued by the Coalition for Public Education, the organization claims that a decade after the inception of charter schools, traditional public schools in Ohio continue to provide the best opportunity for children to learn and succeed.

‘‘If your child attends a traditional public school, he or she has an 80 percent chance of receiving an effective or excellent education. Those are pretty good odds,’’ states CPE chair Barbara Shaner.

The numbers used by the CPE come from state report card results released in August by the Ohio Department of Education for the 2006-07 school year. CPE claims that, according to that data, public schools have outperformed charter schools 10 years in a row.

In Trumbull County, there are five charter schools in Warren with a total enrollment of more than 700 students, according to data from the ODE. State report cards show that four of the schools rate in either academic watch or academic emergency — the two lowest of the state rankings. One building, which houses grades K-2, is not rated.

In Mahoning County, ODE shows that there are 12 charter schools in operation in Youngstown, with more than 2,700 students enrolled. Nine of of those schools are in academic watch or academic emergency. Three have been rated to be in continuous improvement.

In comparison to the charter school state report card results, the Warren City Schools and the Youngstown City Schools both were rated as districts in academic watch for the 2006-07 school year.

Bob Tenenbaum, spokesman for White Hat Management, which operates Life Skills Centers that work with dropouts, said, ‘‘This is not new criticism.

‘‘It’s very unfortunate that the OEA, among other groups, have made it very clear that they’re simply anti-charter and they they’re either unable or unwilling to distinguish schools that are designed for a very unique student body,’’ Tenenbaum said.

But, he added, that doesn’t mean that the low scores shouldn’t be addressed.

‘‘Anything can be improved and should be improved,’’ Tenenbaum said.

But expecting the same amount of improvement between different types of schools is impractical.

If some charter schools go as many as three to four years in academic emergency, the state pulls the plug and they’re closed. To date, more than 25 community schools are in jeopardy.

But dropout recovery schools such as Life Skills are exempted by the state from being closed for underperformance due to the nature of that particular student body, Tenenbaum said.

Officials from Summit Academy Schools, which operates buildings in Warren and Youngstown, as well as from the Academy of Arts and Humanities and Art and Science Academy in Warren, did not return calls for comment.

In numbers compiled in an analysis by the Ohio Education Association in conjunction with CPE, data shows that statewide 57 percent of charter schools remain in academic watch or academic emergency, and only 21 percent of charter schools met local report card standards by ODE.

Bill Sims, head of the Ohio Alliance for Public Charter Schools in Columbus, said that such data can be misconstrued.

For example, the ODE reported that no school districts in Ohio are rated in academic emergency for the 2006-07 school year. But more than 100 individual public school buildings statewide have received that rating, Sims said.

But, he said, he isn’t one to back any failing school, traditional or community-based.

‘‘Those schools have got to go,’’ Sims said. . . . .

The New and Improved Doping of Children

The drug companies have found a whole new market for their anti-psychotic catalog of goodies: schoolchildren. If Ritalin was not enough to tame the child bored blind by schools that impose psychic straightjackets, get the doc to call it bi-polar disorder and put them on Seroquel.

And, of course, the drug advertisers and manufacturers are leading the charge in this latest manifestation of consumer capitalism gone berserk. From the New York Times:

. . . .Some experts say greater awareness, reflected in the increasing diagnoses, is letting youngsters with the disorder obtain the treatment they need.

Other experts say bipolar disorder is overdiagnosed. The term, the critics say, has become a catchall applied to almost any explosive, aggressive child.

After children are classified, the experts add, they are treated with powerful psychiatric drugs that have few proven benefits in children and potentially serious side effects like rapid weight gain.

In the study, researchers from New York, Maryland and Madrid analyzed a National Center for Health Statistics survey of office visits that focused on doctors in private or group practices. The researchers calculated the number of visits in which doctors recorded diagnoses of bipolar disorder and found that they increased, from 20,000 in 1994 to 800,000 in 2003, about 1 percent of the population under age 20.

The spread of the diagnosis is a boon to drug makers, some psychiatrists point out, because treatments typically include medications that can be three to five times more expensive than those for other disorders like depression or anxiety.

“I think the increase shows that the field is maturing when it comes to recognizing pediatric bipolar disorder, but the tremendous controversy reflects the fact that we haven’t matured enough,” said Dr. John March, chief of child and adolescent psychiatry at the Duke University School of Medicine, who was not involved in the research.

“From a developmental point of view,” Dr. March said, “we simply don’t know how accurately we can diagnose bipolar disorder or whether those diagnosed at age 5 or 6 or 7 will grow up to be adults with the illness. The label may or may not reflect reality.”

Most children who qualify for the diagnosis do not proceed to develop the classic features of adult bipolar disorder like mania, researchers have found. They are far more likely to become depressed.

Dr. Mani Pavuluri, director of the pediatric mood disorders program at the University of Illinois, Chicago, said the label was often better than any of the other diagnoses often given to difficult children.

“These are kids that have rage, anger, bubbling emotions that are just intolerable for them,” Dr. Pavuluri said, “and it is good that this is finally being recognized as part of a single disorder.”

The senior author of the study, Dr. Mark Olfson of the New York State Psychiatric Institute at the Columbia University Medical Center, said, “I have been studying trends in mental health services for some time, and this finding really stands out as one of the most striking increases in this short a time.”

The increase makes bipolar disorder more common among children than clinical depression, the authors said. Psychiatrists made almost 90 percent of the diagnoses, and two-thirds of the young patients were boys, said the study, published in the September issue of The Archives of General Psychiatry.

About half the patients were identified as having other mental difficulties, mostly attention deficit disorder.

The children’s treatments almost always included medication. About half received antipsychotic drugs like Risperdal from Janssen or Seroquel from Astrazeneca, both developed to treat schizophrenia.

A third were prescribed so-called mood stabilizers, most often the epilepsy drug Depakote. Antidepressants and stimulants were also common.

Most children took a combination of two or more drugs, and 4 in 10 received psychotherapy.

The regimens were similar to those of a group of adults with bipolar diagnoses, the study found.

“You get the sense looking at the data that doctors are generalizing from the adult literature and applying the same principles to children,” Dr. Olfson said.

The increased children’s diagnoses reflect several factors, experts say. Symptoms appear earlier in life than previously thought, in teenagers and young children who later develop the full-scale disorder, recent studies suggest.

The label also gives doctors and desperate parents a quick way to try to manage children’s rages and outbursts in an era when long-term psychotherapy and hospital care are less accessible, they say.

In addition, drug makers and company-sponsored psychiatrists have been encouraging doctors to look for the disorder since several drugs were approved to treat it in adults.

Last month, the Food and Drug Administration approved one of the medications, Risperdal, to treat bipolar in children. Experts say they expect that move will increase the use of Risperdal and similar drugs for young people.

“We are just inundated with stuff from drug companies, publications, throwaways, that tell us six ways from Sunday that, Oh my God, we’re missing bipolar,” said Dr. Gabrielle Carlson, a professor of psychiatry and pediatrics at the Stony Brook University School of Medicine on Long Island. “And if you’re a parent with a difficult child, you go online, and there’s a Web site for bipolar, and you think: ‘Thank God, I’ve found a diagnosis. I’ve found a home.’ ” . . . .

No Merit to Merit Pay

From Dave Riegel at Huffington Post:

I was surprised to hear that Barack Obama was sticking his big toe into the merit pay waters at the NEA convention and again at the most recent Democratic presidential debate. While Obama has not to my knowledge advocated "merit pay" by name or outlined a specific proposal, his apparent openness to the concept has excited advocates of pay for perfomance who are anxious to see a major figure on the left like Obama defy the prevailing Democratic wisdom and counter the NEA's opposition to the concept.

Marc Lampkin of the Strong American Schools campaign, nobly promoting the idea that education should be at the heart of the presidential discussion, took the NEA to task for suggesting that none of the Democratic candidates in Iowa for ABC's debate supported the concept of pay for performance. However, the candidate Lampkin points to -- Obama -- was rather circumspect in his support. In saying that pay shouldn't be tied to "standardized tests that don't take into account whether children are prepared before they get to school or not," Obama is trying to have it both ways, giving the appearance of supporting some vague pay for performance standard, but also insisting it not be tied to test scores. There's the rub: a pay system not tied to test scores isn't really a merit pay system at all.

Other kinds of financial incentives, such as paying teachers extra to work in high poverty districts or scarce fields like math or science, can't really be considered "merit pay" systems in the common parlance. Those are incentives to attract people to certain districts or fields. Pay for performance means an adherence to some type of evaluative standard, whether it be test scores or supervisors' evaluations (which are bound to be tied to test scores). And that's the problem.

The use of test scores for evaluation of teachers is fraught with difficulties that should be obvious to any outside observer. First among them, you can't pick your students upon whom your salary might depend. Those in favor of merit pay often use the private sector as a comparison point, saying essentially that most people are paid by how hard they work or how many cases they win or how much they sell. And all that's true. But a salesman isn't forced to spend his time on customers who clearly don't want to buy his products. Lawyers don't typically take cases they can't win. But the logic of paying teachers based on performance is similar to saying to a car salesman, "here are 30 adults chosen at random. Your salary depends on being able to sell all of them cars -- a standard car, at that -- regardless of their needs, desires, or ability to pay." Or to tell a lawyer, "you must win the next 30 cases that walk through your door, using limited resources, regardless of the merit of their suits, or the expense required to prosecute their cases."

Teachers don't get to choose who walks in their doors, like the hapless lawyer or car salesman in the examples above. It's the luck of the draw. Teachers (good ones) certainly believe all children can learn, and want them to. But success in terms of test scores depends on many factors, mostly too obvious to mention, outside the teachers' control. Not the least among these, and perhaps less obvious to outside observers, is the support of fellow practitioners. In many cases, a child's learning requires the support of others besides just the classroom teacher. It depends on an administrator who can effectively create an climate for learning in the school. It may depend on reading specialists who can help students comprehend their textbooks. It may depend on intervention specialists who help devise strategies for learning disabled students to make more effective gains. It even depends on successful foundations provided by teachers in previous grade levels. How do merit pay advocates propose to disaggregate the work of a classroom teacher from the support staff around her? For that matter, how would art, music, physical education or special education teachers be judged under a pay for performance system? Would we need to implement standardized tests in those areas?

I could go on and on about practical and logistical difficulties associated with merit pay. But the strongest arguments against it are philosophical. At a time when many progressives are questioning the effectiveness of high stakes testing mandated by NCLB, should we really be talking about entrenching that drill and test regime taking over education today by connecting it to teacher compensation? The real debate today should be about whether the schools created under they tyranny of NCLB are the kinds of schools we want to have. Do we really want high stakes tests driving our definition of education? And driving our definition of quality teaching?

I am always suspicious of merit pay arguments because they seem to insinuate that a teacher's effort is dependent upon his or her level of compensation. Instead of rewarding teachers for maximizing student achievement -- as most would insist they are trying to do anyway -- the right approach would be to reward activities that help teachers become better trained and more competent. For example, most local salary structures reward teachers for attaining a higher level of education -- teachers who earn a Master's degree earn more than teachers with similar experience who do not. Likewise many states offer annual stipends to teachers who achieve National Board Certification, a rigorous process which requires teachers to demonstrate and reflect upon their classroom practices. These sorts of rewards make sense to teachers: they understand the connection between professional development and effective instruction.

I find that merit pay advocates also hope that a compensation structure will do that job of evaluating teachers that should properly be done by effective building administrators. We shouldn't simply withhold monetary rewards from teachers who are ineffective: we should help them improve or evaluate them out of the profession. The canard that teachers' unions protect bad teachers from dismissal is not true: bad administrators protect bad teachers from dismissal or non-renewal. But teacher evaluation is more complicated than simply looking at test scores. It requires careful examination of specific teacher behaviors in the classroom, of how a teacher relates to students, and his or her command of the subject matter they are teaching. This cannot be judged simply by looking at test scores, which may be high in some cases in spite of uninspiring instruction: it requires an effective and highly skilled administrator who knows what she is looking for when she observes a teacher interacting with her students, and who is skilled at helping teachers improve. In short, pay for performance provides an easy way out when quality supervision of instruction is what should really be taking place.

Finally, the discussion of merit pay in the context of a presidential campaign continues a disturbing trend of increasing federal involvement in local decision making. Teacher salary structures and evaluation practices are negotiated locally between a board of education and a bargaining unit under the broad general guidelines of state law. If Denver teachers agree to a merit-based system, then good for them. They've decided in agreement with their board on a system that makes sense for them and their community. These kinds of contractual decisions are and should remain local, not the subject of federal intervention. An important reason why the NEA objects to merit pay proposals is precisely this -- that it takes away control from a local bargaining unit to decide their own fate. If Barack Obama truly believes that education proposals need the support of teachers, then those proposals should continue to be locally decided, not a subject of debate in a national election, unless it is clear that the debate is purely philosophical, and not bearing on any public policy he would enact as president. The federal government certainly has in important role in education. It establishes policies and guidelines that protect the education of handicapped children, for example, and provides funding to support that education. The federal government supports research in education and provides grants to support high poverty schools. But dictating the terms of local teaching contracts should not be a function of federal policy.

The debate about merit pay isn't the debate we need to be having right now. With the demands for charters and vouchers from the right, and the ongoing problems facing education in high poverty districts, the very existence of public education is being threatened. We need to be talking about why public education still matters, and what it should look like in the 21st century. Gimmicks like pay for performance are only getting us off track.

The Bush-Miller NCLB Brew: Tastes Worse, More Bloating

According to President Bush and his sidekicks on the Hill, Senator Kennedy and Congressman Miller, we are at the midterm of their treacherous education reform course that the world now jokingly refers to as No Child Left Behind. And even though everyone in Washington knows this cynical and cruel privatization plan is as rotted as a carp in the September sun, the big question remains as to whether the Congress will sacrifice America’s public school system and this generation of learners for the sake of preserving a hideous and utterly transparent veneer of legislative bipartisanship that is somehow supposed to conceal the putridness of Washington's current political reality.

If Congress had any guts and good sense, they would scrap this worst education policy in American history and start over with a new ESEA. Since there is neither enough guts nor good sense to make a difference, the only remaining choices are to say no to reauthorization, which would allow a new President and a new Congress to take up this issue in 2009, or to say yes to a hodgepodge of bandaids for the middle class schools that do not even pretend to block the hemorrhaging of the most vulnerable schools with the most vulnerable children in the most vulnerable communities.

What Bush, Kennedy, and Miller all would like to offer the poor are cheap charter schools that save 20 cents on the dollar in public expenditure and that are operated by non-profits that readily accept corporate donations that are good as gold for tax credits. The continuation of the unreachable goal of 100% proficiency in NCLB's working draft will guarantee a continuing stream of failures, or “high priority redesigns,” which will be accomplished as follows:

HIGHPRIORITYREDESIGN.—To redesign a school designated as High Priority, the local educational agency shall, consistent with State law—‘‘(A) close the school, which at the discretion of the local educational agency may be reopened, including reopened as a charter school, following a comprehensive redesign of the instructional program and the staffing of theschool, and which also may include alternative governance arrangements; or‘‘(B) replace all or some of the school’s leadership and staff, and significantly revise the instructional program in the subject areas for which the school was identified under paragraph (1). ‘‘(C) enter into a formal contract with anintermediary who will have the authority to administer the school; or ‘‘(D) require the school to enter into a contract with a nonprofit entity with demonstrated expertise and effectiveness in whole school reform (pp. 227-228 Miller-McKeon reauthorization draft)

But what happens then if the charter school does not perform any better than the public school it replaced, a possibility that is made more likely be a host of research showing charters no better or worse in raising test scores. Well, the draft version now being circulated has included what would seem as a gaping loophole that state legislatures may take advantage of to get the AYP monkey off their backs, once they convert urban public schools to charter schools:

‘‘(N) ACCOUNTABILITY FOR CHARTER SCHOOLS.—The accountability provisions under this Act shall be overseen for charter schools in accordance with State charter school law (p. 52).

Will we allow this crime to happen? Send your comments. Email Congressman Miller to say SCRAP IT AND START OVER!!!!!!!

Kozol to Teachers: Be Subversive

From Salon:

Teachers: Be subversive

Jonathan Kozol, author of "Letters to a Young Teacher," talks with Salon about why No Child Left Behind squelches learning and about reading Rilke's sonnets to first graders.

By Matthew Fishbane

Aug. 30, 2007 | School days, writes Jonathan Kozol, should be full of "aesthetic merriment." But instead, too many of America's 93,000 public schools, particularly those in the inner cities, are what the poet Gwendolyn Brooks once called "uglifying," brimming with demoralizing indignities. Those indignities -- and also the acts of "stalwart celebration" that surface in classrooms across the country -- are the topic of Kozol's latest book, "Letters to a Young Teacher."

Kozol, who will turn 71 this year, has written about race and class in the classroom before, most recently in 2005's "The Shame of the Nation" -- and in his latest work, an undercurrent of anger still simmers. But rather than descend into polemic, Kozol returns in "Letters" to his teaching roots, using a correspondence with a teacher he calls Francesca as a chance to pay tribute to the men and women who devote their lives to children every day.

Francesca herself is "semi-fictionalized," a stand-in for the young educators -- almost all women -- who have been writing in remarkable volume to Kozol over the years. Still, Kozol insists that Francesca "is a very real person," "marvelously well-educated" and certified as a teacher. Written for an audience that is just becoming politically engaged, their exchange gives Kozol a forum in which to address No Child Left Behind, high-stakes testing, vouchers and other privatizing forces in public schools -- while at the same time leaving ample room to praise and celebrate the inspiring, human qualities he encounters in teachers, "empathetic principals" and, of course, kids.

From page to page, the focus of Kozol's "Letters" shuttles from the mundane to the profound -- from loose teeth to the democratic aims of education -- in a thoughtful first-person that echoes another "buoyant spirit" of New England: Henry David Thoreau, who wrote in "Civil Disobedience," "as for supporting schools, I am doing my part to educate my fellow countrymen now." And in fact, Kozol's goals -- in calling for "a sweeping, intellectually sophisticated political upheaval" -- are no less lofty.

Salon spoke to Kozol from his home in Byfield, Mass., about the fun of first graders, the trouble with "utilitarian" teaching, and why No Child Left Behind is "the worst education legislation" in 40 years.

Unlike some of your previous books, "Letters" strikes me as being more about teachers than students.

Yes, that's true, although the students -- especially because they're young and so delightfully impertinent -- force their way into the story repeatedly. Like most teachers, Francesca talks about the children all the time.

But it's true, the main purpose of the book is to describe what it's like to be a young teacher just beginning in an inner-city school at a time when there are unprecedented pressures, in part because of No Child Left Behind. It records a year of correspondence and visits with an irreverent young woman who also happens to be an excellent teacher. I think of the book as an invitation to a beautiful profession.

Can you really call it an "invitation" when a huge part of your work is describing the many challenges teachers face in urban schools?

Well, teachers have been profoundly demoralized in recent years and are often treated with contempt by politicians. There's a great deal of reckless rhetoric in Washington about the mediocrity of the teaching profession -- and I don't find that to be true at all. We are attracting better teachers and better-educated teachers today than at any time since I started out in 1964.

I emphasize teachers because they are largely left out of the debate. None of the bombastic reports that come from Washington and think tanks telling us what needs to be "fixed" -- I hate such a mechanistic word, as if our schools were automobile engines -- ever asks the opinions of teachers. By far the most important factor in the success or failure of any school, far more important than tests or standards or business-model methods of accountability, is simply attracting the best-educated, most exciting young people into urban schools and keeping them there.

In your letters, you spend a lot of time reassuring Francesca that it's OK to follow her instincts, or even encouraging her to be subversive, to disregard school policies if they don't make sense to her.

I would say pleasantly subversive. In part that is Francesca's character anyway -- but I do recommend an attitude of irreverence on the part of teachers who are having tests and standards shoved down their throats from Washington. We try so hard to recruit exciting teachers into these schools, but nearly 50 percent of them quit within three years. In order to survive, they need to keep their individuality, their personalities, intact, and they need to fight to defend a sense of joyfulness that brought them to this profession in the first place.

In most suburban schools, teachers know their kids are going to pass the required tests anyway -- so No Child Left Behind is an irritant in a good school system, but it doesn't distort the curriculum. It doesn't transform the nature of the school day. But in inner-city schools, testing anxiety not only consumes about a third of the year, but it also requires every minute of the school day in many of these inner-city schools to be directed to a specifically stated test-related skill. Very little art is allowed into these classrooms. Little social studies, really none of the humanities.

In some embattled school systems these high-stakes tests start in first grade, or even kindergarten, in order to get the kids used to the protocol of test taking -- yet a vast majority of low-income kids have no preschool before they enter kindergarten. According to Marian Wright Edelman of the Children's Defense Fund, less than 50 percent of eligible children are provided with Head Start nowadays, and it's even worse in the poorest inner-city districts. Meanwhile, the children of my affluent Harvard classmates, or their grandchildren, typically have three years of developmental pre-K education. Then a few years later, they all have to take the same exam -- presuming the affluent kids go to public schools -- and so some are being tested on three or four years of education and some on twice as many years.

Is that what you said recently when you went to speak to the Democrats on the Senate education committee?

Yes. I think the tests in their present form are useless, because although President Bush promoted them by saying, "All we want to do is help these teachers see where their students need more help," the results typically don't come back before the end of June. What is the teacher supposed to do when she finally sees the test scores in the middle of the summer, send a postcard to little Shaniqua, saying, you know, "If I knew last winter what I know now, I would have put more emphasis on the those skills"?

I recommended to the Democrats that they replace these tests with diagnostic tests, which are given individually by the teacher to her students. They are anxiety-free and you don't have to wait six months for McGraw-Hill or Harcourt to mis-score them, as they often do. The teacher gets results immediately. And it's not time stolen from education because she actually learns while she's giving this test.

After the Supreme Court decision last June on segregation in Seattle's school districts, you wrote a critical Op-Ed in the New York Times about a transfer provision in No Child Left Behind that says that if a student is in a perennially failing school, that child must be permitted to transfer to a high-performing school. Can you explain your argument?

The idea of the provision is that a child's parents should be able to transfer the child to a successful school in their district if the child's school has proven to be a hopeless failure. The trouble is, there aren't enough schools in overwhelmingly poor and minority inner-city districts to which a child can transfer. So less than 3 percent of eligible kids have transferred during the years since No Child Left Behind came into effect.

I proposed that the transfer provision be amended not only to permit but to require states to make cross-district transfers possible -- so that a student in the South Bronx could be transferred to Bronxville, which is, I have tested in my car, only about a 12-minute drive. It would be a very simple amendment to add and it would drive a mighty blow against the deepening re-segregation of our urban schools, without making any reference to race. Justice Kennedy, in his partial concurrence, pointed out that strategies like these, which are race-neutral, would certainly be constitutional.

How would those changes help to retain the wonderful young teachers you write about?

First of all, it would immediately relieve that sense that there's always a sword above their heads, and that sword is empirically measurable testing. It would relieve the sense that every minute of the day has to be allocated to a predesignated skill. It would free them from the absurdity of posting numbers and the language of standards on their blackboards, which are of absolutely no benefit to a child. As Francesca once pointed out to me, no child's going to come back 10 years later and say, "I'm so grateful to you for teaching me proficiency 56b."

It would free the teachers from all of that, and it would allow these young teachers, most of whom have majored in liberal arts, and who love literature and poetry, to flood the classroom with all those treasures that they themselves enjoyed when they were children, most of them in very good suburban school districts.

You use a lot of military language like "combat," "assaults" and "capitulation" and return again and again to the idea that the administrative brass doesn't know what the grunts are living through. Are our schools really war zones?

Yes, they are. You rightly called teachers "grunts," in that they are the ones who are doing the actual work. In the inner-city schools these classrooms are not simply the front lines of education: They're the front lines of democracy. No matter what happens in a child's home, no matter what other social and economic factors may impede a child, there's no question in my mind that a first-rate school can transform almost everything. So long as the teacher is energized and highly skilled and her personal sense of exhilaration in the company of children is not decapitated by a Dickensian agenda.

I've received at least 30,000 letters, calls and e-mails or written notes handed to me from young teachers in the past two years alone: These teachers by and large are very well-educated and they are highly idealistic. And they know something that the testing and standards experts don't seem to know: namely, that the main reason for learning to read is for the pleasure it brings us, not for the utilitarian payoff of being able to read your orders.

So you take issue with the argument that children need to be prepared for the realities of the marketplace. But isn't that what they will face?

Yes, children do have to be prepared for the economic world -- but the invasion of the public schools by mercantile values has deeply demoralized teachers. I've been in classrooms where the teacher has to write a so-called mission statement that says, "The mission of this school is to sharpen the competitive edge of America in the global marketplace."

Francesca once said to me, "I'm damned if I'm going to" -- I don't think she said "damned," because she's too polite; maybe "darned" -- "treat these little babies as commodities or products. Why should they care about global markets? They care about bellybuttons, and wobbly teeth, and beautiful books about caterpillars." I think we have to protect those qualities.

Most of the teachers we're trying so hard to recruit into these schools, then driving out, tend to be the children of the 1960s generation, and they are steeped in civil rights values, and those who have gone to good colleges and universities come into these schools with what I would call almost a preferential option for minority children of the poor. But no matter what they've read beforehand, they're generally stunned at the profound class and racial segregation they encounter. It's not as if they didn't know that this was the case, but when they're suddenly in a class, as Francesca was, with not a single white child and only three white kids in the entire building, it hits them hard.

Is that how Francesca experienced it?

Francesca and I once had a long talk. I tend to say that we've basically ripped apart the legacy of Brown v. Board of Education, but it was she who first pointed out to me that we haven't even lived up to the mandate of Plessy v. Ferguson, because our schools are obviously separate but they're certainly not equal.

Now, especially with the recent Supreme Court decision [on segregation], there's a sense of profound anger among these teachers. A sense that everything they grew up to believe is good and right is being discarded by our society. They also note that despite all the fatuous claims from the secretary of education, the achievement gap between the races has not closed. And even worse, the cultural gap has actually widened because of the narrowing of the curriculum in these schools.

Francesca, despite the fact that she refused to teach to the test, managed to be very effective in teaching skills, and her children did well. Apparently you don't need to hire Princeton Review to come into your school and use scarce education funds to pay them to create artificial test-score gains.

You're an advocate now. Have you ever considered going back to the classroom yourself?

All the time. When I was visiting Francesca's class, I was jealous of her. When I give lectures what usually happens is some teacher or principal in the audience will grab me at the end and say, "Do you have four hours tomorrow morning before you leave? Would you visit my school?" and I always try to do it. And then I don't want to leave because it really brings my spirits back. I love the unpredictable. I love the whimsical in children. I love it when a child asks me what you might think is a funny question, like, "Do you feel sad because you're old?" Or, "Is it lonesome to write?" It's a wonderful question, don't you think?

I'm still very healthy and I sometimes think I would love to go back and teach first grade or second grade. First grade, under the best conditions, is what I call the miracle year, because that's the year when -- if you're in a reasonably good situation, and if your children have a little pre-K, and if they've had a good kindergarten year -- it's in first grade that you see the children go from knowing letters only as images, the shapes of the letters, to suddenly writing and reading. Writing real sentences and reading real books. That's a miracle to me. To me that's more dramatic than anything that happened to me at my four years at Harvard.

This book revisits some of the topics -- like dealing with unsupportive administrators -- from your 1981 book, "On Being a Teacher." Why did you feel the need to return to those subjects?

Well, I've spent more time with other teachers since then and spent so much time in classrooms that -- I can't quite explain why. I know this book has a political cutting edge and it's going to make me a lot of enemies in Washington from the right-wing think-tank types. I'm sure they won't be sending me any bouquets from the Heritage Foundation, or the Manhattan Institute. But it's the first book I've ever written where I actually enjoyed it every day, and it's because there's enough in it, and because I think of it sort of as an invitation to the dance. I think the book, in a strange way, is kind of a cheerful book. Wouldn't you say so?

Somewhere between naive romance and sophisticated idealism.

I hope it's not naive. It's not a theoretical book, like, wouldn't this be wonderful? or something. It's based on being there. Francesca's kids did well. At the same time, she did not stick to the standards. I don't think there's anything in No Child Left Behind about reading the sonnets of Rilke to first graders.

Rube Goldberg is Alive and Well and Working for George Miller

Sam Dillon in the NY Times offers a sampling of opinions now emerging as readers finish Rube Goldberg's version of NCLB--now unofficially designated as suffering from the deadly disorder known as OCAD (Obsessive Compulsive Accountability Disorder).

Miller, in an attempt to appease his ed industry/Business Roundtable contributors who provide the cash, and his suburban base who provide the votes, has decided to offer up the poor urban schools of America as a sacrifice to the corporate gods, while drawing the line on the charterizing of American schools at the point where the white picket fences start. Buffy and Biff's leafy cul-de-sac schools will be protected by new rules that only the whiter and wealthier parents can afford.

Dillon begins:

As Congress returns next week, leading Democrats are struggling for the formula that can attract bipartisan support to extend the life of President Bush’s education law, No Child Left Behind. In doing so, they are proposing to ease the pressure on suburban schools.

A draft proposal being floated by Representative George Miller, chairman of the House education committee, would soften many of the law’s accountability provisions while maintaining its overall strategic goal: to bring every student to proficiency by 2014 by requiring states to administer standardized tests and to punish schools where scores do not rise.

What I find fascinating is that Sam Dillon, an otherwise able and sound-minded reporter, would type this out on his keyboard and never think to add the unceasing reality check offered by the most serious and informed critics, the testing experts themselves, who unanimously, and to the last psychometrician standing, say that this goal of 100% proficiency is ludicrous, impossible, and guarantees failure. Fascinating, Mr. Dillon, especially since the Washington Post, even the Washington Post, is willing to admit that fact.

I also noticed in this piece that everyone Dillon asks offers an opinion on this Rube Goldberg NCLB draft except the NEA. In what can only be described as a late onset of democratization, the entrenched suits who own NEA have decided to forego an opinion until the NEA has "finish polling its local delegates."

If the NEA had offered such an grassroots opportunity months ago when affiliates were handed an order by Joel Packer not to sign the Educator Roundtable's petition to dismantle NCLB, then perhaps the NEA position would be exceedingly clear by now. As Philip Kovacs suggests, if Mr. Packer would allow and encourage NEA members to provide comments to Congressman Miller to say SCRAP IT AND START OVER!!!!!!!, this abusive NCLB crime against children and public education would not stand another month.