White House Special Assistant and Serial Plagiarizer, Timothy S. Goeglein, Busted on Education Piece for Hometown Paper

I got clued in on this from Think Progress, and when I went to the blogger who broke the story, it seems there are more and more examples turning up as web sleuths dig them out.

From Think Progress:

Yesterday in a column for The News-Sentinel, Timothy S. Goeglein — a special assistant to President Bush — referenced Eugene Rosenstock-Hussey, a former professor at Dartmouth College. Curious about the obscure reference, blogger Nancy Nall googled the name, only to find that full sections of Goeglein’s 16-paragraph essay were copied nearly word-for-word from a 10-year old Dartmouth Review essay by Jeffrey Hart. Confronted about the plagiarism, Goeglein told The Journal Gazette that “it is true” he copied Hart and that he is “entirely at fault.”

Scroll down here at Nancynall.com for updates on the thievery.

More Spent for Prisons in 5 States Than Higher Ed

From Inside Higher Ed:

For years now, educators have been warning that U.S. society might soon be spending more on prisons than colleges. In five states, that moment has arrived, according to a report released Thursday by the Pew Charitable Trusts.

Those states are (in order of spending the most proportionally on prisons in 2007): Vermont, Michigan, Oregon, Connecticut and Delaware. The state spending the least on prisons relative to higher education was Minnesota, where for every dollar spent on higher education only 17 cents was spent on corrections. The average for all states was 60 cents, nearly double the 32 cents spent 20 years earlier. Only three states saw gains in spending on higher education, relative to corrections: Alabama, Nevada and Virginia.

The report, by the Pew Project on the States, urges state legislators to reconsider policies — such as mandatory sentences — that force states to devote funds to building and managing prisons. The period over the last 20 years in which many states imposed new sentencing rules and saw their prison populations swell has seen a growing gap between spending rates on corrections and higher ed. During the last 20 years, corrections spending has increased by 127 percent on top of inflation, while spending on higher ed has increased only 21 percent.

Some regional variations are present — although higher ed spending appears to be always falling behind prison spending. In the Northeast, inflation adjusted spending increased 61 percent on corrections and dropped 6 percent on higher education over the last 20 years. In the West, spending on both increased, but by 205 percent for prisons and 28 percent for higher education. . . .

Milwaukee Voucher Program Fails to Improve Test Scores

From Americans United for Separation of Church and State:

February 27th 2008
A new study of the Milwaukee school voucher program shows that children receiving publicly financed tuition at religious and other private schools perform no better academically than their peers in public schools.

The results are surely disappointing for voucher supporters. Their premise rests on the assumption that children removed from “failing” public schools will fulfill their academic potential at private schools.

The Milwaukee Parental Choice Program (MPCP) gives over 18,000 low-to-moderate-income students up to $6,501 to attend one of 120 participating schools. The Wisconsin legislature predicts the program will cost taxpayers $120 million this school year.

So, do voucher supporters have a leg to stand on? Do vouchers improve students’ academic performance?

The new study’s comparative analysis of standardized tests scores suggests not. The data show that children who transfer to private schools using MPCP vouchers fare no better than their peers who stay behind in so-called “failing” schools.

“The baseline results indicate,” reports the study, “that MPCP students in grades 3 to 5 are currently scoring slightly lower on the math and reading portions of the [state scholastic aptitude test] than their [public school] counterparts.” Results from students in grades 6-9 were statistically equal.

The report didn’t have good news for Milwaukee’s education system as a whole, either.

Indeed, both public school students and MPCP students scored “well below the 50th percentile nationally.” Given the same standardized tests, both sets of students generally scored in the 33rd percentile, or below 2/3 of their peers nationwide.

So, these similarly situated groups of students fared alike when compared to each other and dismally when compared to students from all walks of life across the country. Maybe the question isn’t how we can redistribute students in similar educational environments, but how can we improve similarly situated students’ over all living and learning environments.

What about the Religious Right’s fondness for vouchers? I’ve always suspected their members are pro-voucher because they siphon money from public schools to their sectarian schools.

The program is undoubtedly a boon to religious schools in the Milwaukee area. Eighty percent of participating schools, the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel reports, are religiously affiliated. Perhaps unsurprisingly, a solid majority of those – 70 per cent – are affiliated with the Christian religion. The remaining handful is associated with other religions, including Islam and Judaism.

Although researcher Patrick Wolf calls the project “the most comprehensive evaluation of a school choice program ever attempted,” he and his co-authors make clear that there is still much research to be done. This is the first of 36 reports scheduled to be released as part of the “School Choice Demonstration Project” and I suspect future data will corroborate those released his week. Then maybe we can make the debate less about free-market economics and religious education, and more about our children’s future.

By Lauren Smith

Fenty/Rhee Certifed by Patronizing Judge as King/Queen of DC Schools

If you like your public school budget process entirely removed from the public, DC has your model. From WaPo:

By Theola Labbé
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, February 28, 2008; Page B04

A D.C. Superior Court judge ruled yesterday that the public has no right to see the District's education spending plan for the coming fiscal year until Mayor Adrian M. Fenty submits it to the D.C. Council with the entire city budget.

Before the mayoral takeover of the school system, parents and others could access the system's spending proposals in the fall and could lobby the elected D.C. Board of Education on funding and program changes. Their comments were taken into consideration before the board submitted its budget to the mayor.

"I know the plaintiffs are frustrated," Assistant Attorney General Robert C. Utiger said. "In years past, they got information that they're not getting now, and that's a result of the change in the governance structure."

The arguments in the case, in which parents and advocates sued Fenty and Schools Chancellor Michelle A. Rhee for not disclosing the fiscal 2009 education spending proposal, once again raised questions about the role of public input in the schools. This has been a recurring point of contention since Fenty assumed control in June.

For example, the takeover law called for a chancellor selection committee, but Fenty named Rhee to the post without its assistance. Months later, when Fenty and Rhee announced school closings, parents and D.C. Council members were upset at not being included in the planning.

At issue yesterday was whether Fenty and Rhee had to comply with the same laws that applied to the board. The board was required to release its budget before it was sent to the mayor, although education officials sometimes missed the submission deadline.

. . . .

In denying the requests from the advocates, which included ordering Rhee to release all her budget documents, Retchin said the schools takeover law "is a sea change as to how budget is created."

But the judge commended the parents for their testimony, saying she was sensitive to their frustrations, and said they would be able to give their feedback to the D.C. Council once the mayor submits his budget, which is scheduled for March 20.

But by then it wouldn't matter, said council member Marion Barry (D-Ward 8), who was granted special permission to speak because he was not a party to the case.

"Once the city council gets the budget, of course they have a right to testify, but by then it's too late," Barry said. "It's very difficult for a parent to make that kind of change at that point. What they want is to have input before." . . . .

With 2,300,000 Americans in Prison, Will MS-NBC Develop An Incarcerated American Idol?

Truly a shame. But what a business opportunity!

And then there is the exploitative MS-NBC with its hours and hours each week of prison desensitzation programming. What's next? Televised waterboarding? How about an Incarcerated American Idol? I know of a ready-made audience of 2.3 million viewers. Sponsored by Honeybuns? I know I shouldn't give them ideas.

From WaPo:

More than one in 100 adult Americans is in jail or prison, an all-time high that is costing state governments nearly $50 billion a year, in addition to more than $5 billion spent by the federal government, according to a report released today.

With more than 2.3 million people behind bars at the start of 2008, the United States leads the world in both the number and the percentage of residents it incarcerates, leaving even far more populous China a distant second, noted the report by the nonpartisan Pew Center on the States.

The ballooning prison population is largely the result of tougher state and federal sentencing imposed since the mid-1980s. Minorities have been hit particularly hard: One in nine black men age 20 to 34 is behind bars. For black women age 35 to 39, the figure is one in 100, compared with one in 355 white women in the same age group. . . .

. . . .Florida, which nearly doubled its prison population over the past 15 years, has experienced a smaller drop in crime than New York, which, after a brief increase, reduced its number of inmates to below the 1993 level. . . .

Spellings, "Right Now Today"

What does she demad? 100% proficiency! When does she demand it? Right now, today!

Wonder if anyone shared this graphic with the Secretary last week, as she was ostensibly in Jefferson City to pump NCLB. (With the Missouri Senate caving to the ABCTE lobby last evening, who knows what else?)

Based on the rate of proficiency gain in reading since NCLB began in 2002, Madame Secretary, Missouri children will never reach 100% proficiency in reading, much less in 2014. What are they smoking, indeed. From KOMU:

JEFFERSON CITY - U.S. Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings was in Jefferson City Thursday to drum up support for keeping the No Child Left Behind Act.

Spellings talked with Missouri education officials about the necessity for children to be able to count and read. She made it clear that she thinks the No Child Left Behind Act is working towards that goal.

"I don't know about you, but I want my child on grade level right now today. Right now today," said Spellings. . . .

Will Missouri Take a Leap Backwards on Teacher Quality?

I have posted a number of pieces here on ABCTE, that ED-sponsored effort to gut professional teacher preparation programs and the teaching profession by offering a de-skilled and de-professionalized version of teachers with a credential earned solely on the basis of having a Bachelors degree and passing a test. No teacher training, no methods courses, no student teaching.

If you doubt that ABCTE is aimed to bust the profession at any cost, read these linked posts above to see how then-Sec. Rod Paige approved ABCTE as a route to being "highly qualified" before ABCTE even had developed a single test. Ah, those were the days, weren't they! Well, they haven't gone away, I am afraid.

At a time when teachers are leaving the profession because they refuse to abuse children with constant testing while neglecting real learning, at a time when those teachers are leaving the profession in the greatest numbers from the poorest schools that need the best teachers the most, at a time when politicians give constant lip service to a living wage for teachers and extra incentives for the best teaching in the most challenging schools, will the Missouri House go along with Senate to align themselves with another Bush Administration pet project to eviscerate the teaching profession, while turning their backs on the children who need the most highly qualified teachers? All in the name of addressing a teacher shortage created by an NCLB steamroller that has pushed out those teachers who refuse to become test factory guards.

Will they approve a model of teacher non-training based on passing a Pearson-administered test and paying a fee? Will they tell poor parents that courses in child development, history of education, methods courses, student teaching, educational psychology, don't matter for teachers of their children? That their special needs child is taught by a teacher who became a special ed teacher by passing a test? Because surely if this scam passes the Missouri legislature, it will not be the parents of the middle class or the wealthy who get those teachers who become highly qualified by paying to pass a test.

Here is a link to a story from the Post-Dispatch by Lee Logan, who was punked, I'm afraid, by someone who told him that ABCTE requires applicants to complete methods courses and 60 hours of observation to get their miracle credential. Chris Bale, with ABCTE, assures me that this is not a requirement, so bring your $750.00 test fee and come on down!

JEFFERSON CITY — The Missouri Senate gave final approval to a bill that would make it easier for people to switch jobs to become teachers, after hours of debate Wednesday evening.

Sen. Joan Bray, D-University City, had been postponing a final vote on the bill, saying she feared it would lower the quality of the state's teachers.

"It's degrading to the teaching profession," Bray said. "We give up, as a state, our rights to determine the quality of our teachers in the system."

The bill's sponsor, Sen. Luann Ridgeway, R-Smithville, said the measure addressed a critical teacher shortage.. . .

Spellings Skewered by Congressional Committee

From Chronicle of Higher Education:

Education Secretary Faces Fire on the Hill Over Budget Recommendations

Washington — Education Secretary Margaret Spellings appeared before the House of Representatives Appropriations Committee today to deliver budget testimony, the last time she will do so in defense of a budget by President Bush. Both sides appeared to be glad it was over.

Ms. Spellings endured a full two hours of criticism from both Democrats and Republicans on the panel’s education subcommittee, facing complaints of insufficient funds for dozens of education programs in Mr. Bush’s budget for the 2009 fiscal year, which begins October 1.

In addition to complaining that grade-school programs such as those mandated under the No Child Left Behind law were being shortchanged, subcommittee members vented frustration over recommended cuts or minimal increases in such areas as the Carl D. Perkins Vocational and Technical Education program, support for historically black colleges, and programs that help college-bound high-school students.

Democrats were harsh, with Rep. Jesse L. Jackson Jr. of Illinois calling the administration’s budget priorities “a bunch of garbage,” and Rep. Rosa L. DeLauro of Connecticut saying she was glad today was the last time she had to hear Ms. Spellings defend the president’s priorities. But Republicans were barely kinder, with Rep. John E. Peterson of Pennsylvania saying the administration’s budget “puts a zero priority on technical education,” and Rep. Dennis R. Rehberg of Montana accusing Ms. Spellings of neglecting American Indians. “I don’t know what you guys are smoking over there,” Mr. Rehberg told Ms. Spellings, “but it just ain’t working.”

Ms. Spellings fought back by telling lawmakers that the administration, at a time of fiscal constraint, has been emphasizing larger-scale programs with a proven ability to work, such as Pell Grants, while cutting back on programs that federal analysts have found to be ineffective or too small to produce significant results.

“There is a preference toward statewide activities at the department, as we saw in the aftermath of Virginia Tech, that can be more strategic, more effective,” Ms. Spellings said, “because they are looked at in the context of state laws.” —Paul Basken

Say what??

Education Week's History of Cozy Establishment Advocacy

Education Week's incestuous relationship with the Washington education establishment has finally been called out in a strong letter that challenges their ideologically-driven treatment of public school issues in their annual trademark piece called Quality Counts. With the kind of unacknowledged advocacy that Ed Week engages in regularly, who needs an editorial page!

The Letter:

IT’S TIME FOR EDUCATION WEEK TO CEASE ITS VIOLATION OF BASIC JOURNALISTIC ETHICS

The editors of Education Week claim to be objective journalists, but with their Quality Counts publication, they abandon objectivity and promote the standards-and-testing industrial school paradigm of No Child Left Behind (NCLB). In this context, they are no longer reporters; they have chosen to act as advocates.

The editors of Editorial Projects in Education (EPE), the nonprofit that publishes Education Week, say that their mission is to “help raise the level of awareness and understanding among professionals and the public of important issues in American education. We cover local, state, and national news and issues from preschool through the 12th grade.” Education Week does not publish its own editorials, and it claims not to advocate for particular ideological or policy positions.

Yet for more than a decade EPE has published its Quality Counts (QC) annual volume, purporting to assess the condition of American public schooling from a neutral and fair-minded vantage. Education Week has presented Quality Counts (QC) as if it were any other piece of journalism, that is, a piece of reporting. But a quick inspection of the 2008 volume reveals the dishonesty in this presentation. Quality Counts is not reporting in any normal sense of the word. Rather it is advocacy. Its assertions and conclusions often support particular policy positions. A few examples reveal these characteristics.

• QC embraces the position that state academic standards are a positive force in schooling (p. 45). This is an ideological position. QC offers no evidence to support this position. While most corporate and political leaders and many school leaders embrace this position, many educators and parents believe that standards constrain learning more than they enable it, that standardization of learning is an antiquated artifact of the 20th century that hinders creativity and the personalization of learning.

• QC accepts the criteria of an unpublished review of state standards conducted by the American Federation of Teachers, dated October-November 2007 (p. 45). This review judges state standards in terms of the following attributes: “clear, specific, and grounded in content.” Here QC is embracing an advocacy position of the AFT. To employ an unpublished document that cannot be reviewed is also bizarre for a publication that calls itself journalistic.

• QC awards positive scores to states that “assign ratings to all schools…” and “sanction low-performing schools. (p. 47). These are additional advocacy stances. There is no evidence that, for example, Florida’s crude A-F rating system does anything for children other than intensify test preparation. Nor does QC offer evidence that sanctioning “low-performing schools” does anyone any good.

• QC advocates for the ideological position that “all high school students…(should) take a college-preparatory curriculum to earn a diploma…” (p. 48) This is yet another value-based position, not reportage. While some politicians and educators support this goal, others note that a more differentiated high school curriculum is likely to better serve the very diverse high school population, particularly since a large percentage of new jobs in the decades to come will not require a college degree.

• QC awards points to states where “teacher evaluation is tied to student achievement” (p. 51). Such a policy is extremely controversial, given that many educators and analysts agree that efforts at this sort of simplistic cause-and-effect delineation both distort the complexity of causation in the schooling process and increase pressure for schools to become test preparation factories.
  

These examples and others in Quality Counts display the profound ideological bias in this document. In this volume the EPE editors— Virginia Edwards, the editor and publisher; Gregory Chronister, the executive editor; Lynn Olson, the executive project editor; Karen Diegmueller, the managing editor; and Mark W. Bomster, the assistant managing editor—are not journalists engaged in good faith, objective reporting. They are powerful advocates for a particular school ideology: state standards, the simplistic labeling of schools based on narrow indicators and the “sanctioning of low-performing schools,” “teacher evaluation tied to student achievement,” and so on—seemingly the whole industrial paradigm of schooling, from Ellwood Cubberly to George W. Bush.

If these EPE editors are not willing to publicly acknowledge their work as advocates in their yearly publication of Quality Counts, how can we trust the fairness of what they present each week in Education Week?

We call on Ms. Edwards and her colleagues to rectify this situation in which Education Week pretends to be a neutral reporter but actually engages in advocacy. Two obvious remedies come to mind.

1. EPE could cease to act as an advocate and thus cease to publish advocacy pieces such as Quality Counts.
2. EPE could play by the rules just as every other newspaper does and establish an identified editorial function. Then it would need to separate its reporters from its editorialists. Even the Wall Street Journal and the New Hampshire Union-Leader meet this standard.

It’s certainly long past time for Ms. Edwards and her colleagues to give up this charade of objectivity and play by the same journalistic rules as everyone else.

David Marshak
Philip Kovacs
Susan Ohanian
Jerry Bracey
William Spady
Deborah Meier

NCLB Background

Nice piece by David Gunther from the Bonner County Daily Bee:

SANDPOINT -- When President Bush signed the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) into law on Jan. 8, 2002, he was riding a tide of overwhelming bipartisan support from Congress, which passed the legislation by a vote of 381-41 in the House and 87-10 in the Senate.

The Democratic chairmen of both the House and Senate education committees, Rep. George Miller and Sen. Edward Kennedy, stood behind the president at the signing ceremony. Dozens of Republicans hailed the law as the new benchmark for improving performance in public schools.

Initial support was so widespread that then-Secretary of Education Rod Paige called the National Education Association (NEA) "a terrorist organization" when the union came forward with concerns about how the legislation would impact the classroom.

Six years later, Miller has pledged to seek "significant revisions" in the law, while Kennedy finds himself in a very small minority fighting to reauthorize NCLB this year -- something even administration officials say is highly unlikely. Quoting current Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings, lawmakers have broken ranks with the president and now profess publicly that they merely "held their noses" when they voted for NCLB in the first place. . . .

More here.

Michelle Rhee Takes the Expensive Corporate Welfare Charter Route

Had Fenty and Rhee looked up the road in Philadelphia, they would have learned that charterizing already has been tried and found no better and more expensive. In Philly, the City has paid more to operate 40 corporate charters while they are producing no better test scores than the publics they were intended to replace. In some cases, scores are worse. But who needs empirical evidence when you have corporate socialism on your side.

For Rhee and Fenty, however, nothing short of a public recall by voters or a citywide school strike will stand in the way of their privatization scheme, which is being directed on a nationwide scale by Gates and Broad billions. Rhee is on record as assuring Council that she will have control of the corporate welfare charters that she is now soliciting, even though there is clear evidence now that she can't keep up with her present duties, much less with the added burden of micromanaging 27 corporate welfare schools. Last week, for instance, she made excuses for deadlines missed on hiring an outside evaluation outfit for the schools and for being lax in bringing forth a budget. She is five months late on both counts, while managing to turn an expected surplus into a $100,000,000 deficit. Looks like she will need plenty more Broad-Gates bucks to keep this charade from collapsing before it can become institutionalized.

Wonder if anyone in Congress is noticing what is going on?

From WaPo:

By V. Dion Haynes
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, February 26, 2008; A01

D.C. Mayor Adrian M. Fenty and Schools Chancellor Michelle A. Rhee are seeking educational management firms or universities to possibly run some or all 27 schools whose students chronically perform poorly.

At a news conference yesterday with Fenty (D), Rhee said she has entered discussions with several nonprofit businesses and universities to work with the schools in the fall, although she only disclosed one, Mastery Charter Schools of Philadelphia. The Washington Post reported in November that she had approached Mastery, and Green Dot Public Schools of Los Angeles and St. Hope Public Schools in Sacramento, about managing some failing high schools.

It would be the first time the school system employed a private firm to run a school. Outside organizations manage schools in other cities.

In an interview, Rhee said she does not consider her proposed arrangement to be privatization because she would retain authority over what an outside partner would do. The organizations could "bring in their best practices, structures, schedules, curricula and themes," she said. "Ultimately, I have control over all the schools."

Rhee offered few details about the proposal. She said she has not determined how much a private-firm partnership would cost or how many organizations would run an entire school or programs in it. The District has hired such groups as America's Choice to provide extensive programs to improve schools, said Mary Levy, a local expert on school reform. . . .

Public Responds to Boston Globe Editorial Insults to Teachers

From the Boston Globe:

RE "MAKE charter schools a priority" (Editorial, Feb. 22): Innovation and choice are great. The inequitable distribution of resources is not. While charter schools have an upside, they do not serve all students, including our most disadvantaged, disabled, and challenging children.

When was the last time a charter school committed itself to a severely disabled student when the expense was extremely high? When was the last time a regular school kicked out a poorly performing student and sent him or her to a charter school? The Commonwealth should encourage the development of effective charter schools. It also must insist that regular public schools receive the funds required to allow them to be competitive while they remain committed to our most challenging students.

Finally, stop saying charter schools are more innovative and successful. I've worked in schools serving the most challenging students anywhere, and I've been associated with charter schools that work hard to keep challenging kids off their rolls. Real innovation is found in schools where teachers develop the strategies required to educate extremely diverse students. The greatest success comes when you turn around unmotivated, failing students, not when you sustain students who are already motivated and capable.
SID SMITH, Superintendent, Malden Public Schools

IT IS a mystery to me why the Globe feels it necessary to continually insult public school teachers. In your editorial championing charter schools, you end by labeling pre-1993 teaching as "torpid." Do you seriously believe that all public school teachers were uninspired paper pushers before 1993? Do you also believe that moving toward more standardized testing has made Massachusetts teachers more creative and effective?

It's one thing to advance an educational agenda, but the Globe lowers the bar of public discourse when it resorts to sweeping put-downs of public school teachers across the state to make its point.
JOHN V. CALLAHAN, Jamaica Plain

Suspicionless Drug Testing and the Surveillance Society Come to Hillsborough High

Through ED grants, the Bush Administration has passed out free tax money in the hundreds of millions of dollars to school systems (click map to enlarge) to put in place drug testing programs that trample the privacy rights of students who are presumed guilty of drug abuse until proven innocent by random testing. This intensification of the Surveillance Society based on intimidation and fear is not only contrary of our history of individual rights, but it teaches acceptance of these intrusions without ever having a single lesson on them in the classroom.

Such policies are based on interpretations of Veronica v. Acton (1995), which opened the door to susipicionless drug testing of students. Writing for the three dissenters on the Supreme Court, Sandra Day O'Connor

observed that mass suspicionless searches of groups had been found unconstitutional throughout most of the court's history, except in cases where the alternative—searching only those under suspicion—was ineffectual. She concluded that the school's policy was too broad and too imprecise to be constitutional under the Fourth Amendment.

Will parents organize in Hillsborough to protect the privacy rights of their children? Will teachers make this intrusion a subject of discussion in U. S. Government class? Will a single student call the ACLU to inquire about filing a lawsuit? Or none of the above?

From the Star-Ledger:

by Seung Min Kim/The Star-Ledger
Monday February 25, 2008, 11:20 PM

Hillsborough High School students who play sports, join after-school clubs or want parking permits will now be subject to random drug testing to keep those privileges.

Throwing out the old policy that only tested students if officials suspected drug use, the Hillsborough Township Board of Education voted 5-3 tonight for a random drug testing policy at the high school to go into effect this fall.

Under the policy, students who participate in extracurricular activities or apply for a parking permit would be entered into a computerized pool that would randomly select names for testing during the year.

Students who test positive would be required to meet with a counselor and would face suspension from their extracurricular activities.

"We need to put some obstacles in place," said board member Wolfgang Schneider, who voted for the policy. "We have some in place already, but we need more because obviously kids have found a way to get around it."

About 70 percent of the 2,500 students at Hillsborough High School would qualify for testing. The tests use either urine or saliva to detect drugs or alcohol in the system.

Testing would cost about $9,000 a year, officials have said. To ease the financial burden, board members have said the district may apply for a portion of an estimated $12.5 million in federal funds to help offset the cost.

The Incredible Shrinking Curriculum

Press release from CEP:

WASHINGTON—February 20, 2008—Last summer, a groundbreaking report verified what many in the education and policy communities had long suspected: that a majority of the nation’s school districts were increasing time spent on reading and math in elementary schools since the No Child Left Behind Act became law in 2002, while most of these districts cut back on time spent on other subjects. Today, a follow-up report issued by the Washington, D.C.- based Center on Education Policy provides an unprecedented look at the magnitude of those changes.

In its earlier report, CEP found that a majority of school districts—62 percent— had increased time for English language arts (ELA) and/or math in elementary schools since school year 2001- 02. Meanwhile, 44 percent had increased time for ELA and/or math at the elementary level, while simultaneously cut ting time from one or more area s including science, social studies, art and music, physical education, recess, and lunch. CEP’s new report, Instructional Time in Elementary Schools: A Closer Look at Changes for Specific Subjects, examines the size of the shifts in those districts, in order to determine just how extensive the changes were.

According to the report, districts increasing time for ELA and math had done so by an average of 43 percent , or about three hours each week. To make room for the added time for ELA and math, districts reducing time in other areas averaged cuts of about 32 percent across those subjects, nearly 2.5 hours each week. Some of the districts reduced their time in one subject, while other districts decreased instructional time in several areas.

“We knew that many school districts had made shifts in the time spent teaching different subjects since the No Child Left Behind was enacted, but we had little evidence of the magnitude of these changes within those districts,” said Jack Jennings, president and CEO of CEP. “Digging deeper into the data, we now know that the amount of time spent teaching reading, math and other subjects has changed substantially. In other words, changes in curriculum are not only widespread but also deep.”

Colorado Students Worse Off After 6 Years of NCLB

Commentary by Angela Engel in the Denver Post:

By Angela Engel
Article Last Updated: 02/24/2008 08:30:21 PM MST

In 2000, Citizens for Quality Public Education published "Senate Bill 186 and The Truth About Colorado Educational Reform," a report warning about the consequences of grading schools based solely on standardized test scores.

Under the leadership of Gov. Bill Owens, SB 186 was passed anyway. At that time, my daughter, Sophie, was 4 months old. The following year, the federal No Child Left Behind was enacted.

Since then, everything the report cautioned concerning high-stakes testing has come to pass: narrowing curriculum, negative school climates, disenfranchised teachers, frustrated parents, and children who quickly losing sight of the value of their own education.

Not only were the Citizens for Quality Public Education correct, but all of the outcomes associated with education reform over the past decade have demonstrated failure. Consider the following:

• Dropout rates have increased significantly. Since the implementation of high-stakes testing, including NCLB and SB 186, Colorado's dropout rate has nearly doubled, from 2.4 percent in 2003 to 4.5 percent in 2006.
• Students now have fewer course electives. A survey by the Center on Education Policy found that since the passage of NCLB and high-stakes testing, 71 percent of the nation's school districts have reduced the hours of instructional time spent on history, music and other subjects.
• Recess has been reduced or canceled. According to the National Parent Teacher Association, nearly 40 percent of U.S. schools have either canceled recess or are considering doing so because of the time constraints of standardized testing and budget cuts. Over the past 12 years, DPS has decreased physical education time by an average of 40 minutes per week.
• More than a dozen schools have been closed down. High-stakes testing promised to close the achievement gap, but instead districts are closing schools predominantly in low-income areas. Cole Middle School is on its third conversion in a decade, now that KIPP has abandoned its students. Before SB 186, Cole was a thriving school for the performing arts.

By all indicators, the state's version of school reform has not worked. Even test scores have remained mostly flat, despite the millions spent on McGraw-Hill tests, curriculum guides, and after-school tutorials. Littleton and Cherry Creek, some of the highest performing districts in the state, haven't been meeting federal guidelines for "adequate yearly progress."

The biggest complaints of parents include large class sizes, too much homework, insufficient time for our children to eat lunch or play outside, decreases in programming, and stressful learning environments. These complaints are echoed in the appallingly high turnover of teaching staff.

Assessments aren't the problem; high-stakes testing is. And there is a difference. In very simple terms, the problems we are facing today are the result of an education system that has been redesigned to serve the state. We need a system that serves our children.

Standardization and high-stakes testing rest on a paradigm of uniformity and conformity. If we graduate an entire generation proficient on a single skill set and mindset, we will have failed because our future will depend upon adaptability, imagination and collaboration.

The danger of this game is that it reinforces the misconception of a failing educational system, when what we really have are failing priorities and policies. We can no longer afford to defer the responsibility of our children to a one-size-fits-all test, or "all or nothing" reforms.

This session, Sen. Mike Kopp will introduce Sernate Bill 61, requiring exit exams for 11th-graders. Sen. Peter Groff is sponsoring Senate Bill 130, establishing a two-tiered system for accountability while maintaining the real barrier to innovation: CSAP.

It didn't work in Florida and it won't work in Colorado. Quality doesn't rely on doing the wrong thing better. Before adding more layers of legislation, our government representatives first need to clean up the mess they've already created.

Sophie is 8 years old now; our children simply can't afford to wait any longer for the legislature to come to terms with its mistakes.

Angela Engel is project director for the Children's Action Agenda.

Virginia Plans for NCLB Secession

May the force be with them:

By Richard Quinn
The Virginian-Pilot
© February 25, 2008
RICHMOND

The General Assembly is flirting with abandoning a landmark federal law that governs schools in the United States.

The decision could make Virginia the first state to set a deadline – summer 2009 – for planning a pullout from the No Child Left Behind Act, which ties billions of dollars to federally mandated testing standards in public schools.

State politicians have balked at some of those standards in the past few years. Gov. Timothy M. Kaine has signed bills asking the U.S. Department of Education to waive parts of the federal law.

Most of those exemptions were granted, but the notable ones that have not been approved frustrate educators and annoy legislators.

This year, some politicians want to up the ante.

Both the Senate and the House of Delegates are working with bills that say that if the state’s waiver requests aren’t granted, Virginia’s Board of Education would develop a plan to withdraw from NCLB by July 2009. Delegates have approved the bills, even adding language to one seeking to recoup federal tax money if the state withdraws.

Senators keep deleting the deadline, leaving the bills – SB490 and HB1425 – more open-ended. Legislators from both chambers will have to negotiate a compromise for a bill with a deadline to make it to the governor’s desk.

Kaine hasn’t said what he would do with the measure, which could cost Virginia more than $350 million a year in federal aid.

Del. Steve Landes, R-Weyers Cave, the bill ’s sponsor in the House, said that now is an opportune time to take a stand, with the NCLB law up for renewal and a new president taking office in January 2009 .

“We’ve done everything we can think to do,” said Landes, who has pushed the issue along with Sen. Emmett Hanger Jr., R-Augusta. “We’re at the point … this is it, we’ll move forward on a plan to get out unless you provide the relief.”

The brinkmanship in Virginia is typical of the friction NCLB has caused nationally, said David Shreve, federal affairs counsel for education for the National Conference of State Legislatures. Shreve said he thinks Virginia would be the first state to set a formal deadline to pull out of the law. . . .

Charter Schools, Corporate Welfare, and the Shortage of Oversight

Editorial from the Dallas Morning News on needed changes to state charter school laws and the resistance that tax dollars can buy:

If state lawmakers want a textbook case for tougher academic and financial oversight of charter schools, they need look no further than the now-failed Lynacre Academy.

As far back as 2002, the southern Dallas charter school for at-risk children inflated attendance figures to the Texas Education Agency. Under pressure, it repaid the state $200,000.

Three years later, state auditors found more inaccurate attendance records and evidence that the school still owed about $750,000.

For two years, TEA haggled with the school over the money. Lynacre filed bankruptcy in the fall and closed last month, leaving TEA and other creditors seeking payment and students scurrying for a new school at midyear. Lynacre had missed academic targets six consecutive years, one of only two charter campuses in the state with such an abysmal record.

It's a stunning and avoidable failure that must not be allowed to continue. Last session, state Sen. Florence Shapiro sponsored a bill to make it easier for Texas to close low-performing charter schools and send more money to successful charter schools. The measure passed the Senate but never reached the full House, the fifth time in the past four years that a charter reform bill hit a brick wall in the House.

Mrs. Shapiro blamed the bill's demise on "colleagues in the House with ties to low-performing charter schools." A main opponent was Rep. Sid Miller, R-Stephenville, whose wife founded and operated a troubled charter school in Stephenville. . . .

Democracy Is Not a Spectator Sport

by Joe Lucido:

DEMOCRACY IS NOT A SPECTATOR SPORT

In this stormy political season many topics have been touched on by the presidential candidates: the Iraq war, the economy, health care, etc. However, the one topic that has been left off the radar is education. Unfortunately, this subject is in dire need of full coverage by the press and our candidates because of the negative impact of the current law on our children in the classroom. If parents truly knew the research that has been released, but never given its just due, their initial decision to support the federal No Child Left Behind act would continue to fade.

As an educator of ten years, I can attest to the dramatic changes that I have seen in students over that period of time. Many students, were, for the most part, creative thinkers with independent minds that strove to come up with answers that made sense to them. They also showed an ability to approach a problem from various angles and come up with a solution that was correct, while still mastering standards. In this era of standardized testing "accountability", these precious elements gave begun to fade dramatically. I see students who wait for answers to be given to them, are less confident in their thinking capabilities, are less able to follow simple instructions, have much less patience, and even have shown an increase in behavior and health problems.

Discussions amongst other educators from Fresno area districts, as well as nationwide, have illuminated the same traits. Some teachers have told me about the removal of blocks from their kindergarten classrooms because it was told to them that, "Blocks won't be on the test." In other schools, playhouses have been removed citing the same reasoning, yet that reasoning defies all research and logic which states that children need socialization skills in order to be complete learners. The Center on Education Policy has shown that 44% of public schools have cut back on recess time, science and social studies in the name of testing practice. This evidence is a concerning and tangible reality.

A new study by researchers at Rice University and the University of Texas-Austin finds that "Texas' public school accountability system, the model for NCLB, to be a dismal failure. Each year Texas public high schools lose at least 135,000 youth prior to graduation -- a disproportionate number of whom are African-American, Latino and English-as-a-second-language (ESL) students." The study shows "as schools came under the accountability system, which uses student test scores to rate schools and reward or discipline principals, massive numbers of students left the school system." Here in the state of California, the drop out rate has increased 4% since the inception of high stakes accountability. Dr. Stephen Krashen from USC has pointed out that overall student performance has flatlined and even dropped in most grade levels since the law has been in place.

What can our community do about this? Many parents feel powerless in the face of lawmakers that make such drastic decisions about public education. However, not all have been silent. Parents in Chicago are planning on keeping their kids home in the face of their unjust local tests, and in Michigan the city of Pontiac's public schools have recently won a judgement against the NCLB law. Here in California, Lindsay schools have turned down funding to protect quality teaching practices that have been threatened by a myopic focus on standardized testing. There are many other situations nationally that display parent disenfranchisement with the current education focus.

It is the LAW in California that parents can choose to opt their children out of testing, if they see it fit. Schools are supposed to inform them of this during the year, but many fail to do so for fear of repercussions by the federal government. Even State Superintendent of Instruction Jack O'Connell has stated, "I want to remove the penalty against schools where parents do not want their children to participate in state testing," O'Connell said. "It concerns me that the Bush Administration apparently does not support the rights of parents in this regard, because NCLB unfairly penalizes those schools where parents exempt their children from testing." If you are interested in understanding more about the impact of the NCLB law on students and want to know more, please attend the Chavez Literacy Conference at Fresno State on March 28-29th. Parents have rights and should use them without fear. Let's strive to protect our public education system.

Joe Lucido
Educators and Parents Against Test Abuse (Fresno, CA)
Educator Roundtable

Testing Boycott in Illinois

Posted on Common Dreams:

Published on Friday, February 22, 2008 by The Daily Herald (Illinois)

Boycotting NCLB: In Effort To Protect Students Illinois District Will Refuse Test Dist. 93 Against Giving Tests To Kids Still Learning English

by Emily Krone

A DuPage County school district could be the first in Illinois — and perhaps the nation — to refuse to administer mandatory state exams to students who haven’t yet mastered English.

The boycott by Carol Stream Elementary District 93 would be an act of civil disobedience against the state’s decision to force English learners to take the same tests as their fluent peers.

Nearly 10 percent of the district’s 4,300 students were categorized as having limited English skills in 2007.

The federal No Child Left Behind law requires that all public schools annually test all students in select grades.

District 93 officials say they’re willing to break the law this spring to shield students from the frustration and humiliation of taking an exam not designed for them.

“The board believes it’s appropriate to do that,” District 93 Superintendent Henry Gmitro said. “While there may be consequences for the adults in the organization, we shouldn’t ask kids to be tested on things they haven’t been taught.”

Illinois dropped the test that was designed for English learners this fall, after the U.S. Department of Education made a final ruling that the test wasn’t an adequate measure of state learning standards. The old test was written in simpler English.

As a stopgap measure, English learners will take standard assessments with some special accommodations, such as extended time and audio recordings, while Illinois develops a test that will meet federal guidelines.

Politicians and educators throughout Illinois have aggressively opposed the move, predicting it will cause districts to fail and face serious sanctions under the federal accountability law.

A group of Chicago parents plans to keep their children home during the March testing, while local school officials have petitioned state lawmakers for a one-year reprieve for English learners. And, some other superintendents say they also would consider a boycott.

But District 93 administrators are the first school employees to say publicly they will not administer the test to some students, Illinois State Board of Education spokesman Matthew Vanover said.

Indeed, the district could be the first in the nation to mount this type of challenge, though others have rejected federal money in order to opt out of the high-stakes tests.

A Wisconsin teacher made national news last year when he protested the emphasis the law places on standardized testing by refusing to administer the exams — for a single day. Threatened with termination, he proctored the exams the second day.

“The frustration is widespread, but this action is unique, to the best of my knowledge,” said Robert Schaeffer, public education director for the National Center for Fair and Open Testing.

Schaeffer said his group supports parents, students and educators who take such stands, but does not push them to do so because of the risks.

Vanover said he couldn’t speculate on what penalties the state might hand down.

“We would encourage them to move forward with the testing and give these students an opportunity to share what they have learned,” Vanover said. “And once those students have done that to best of their ability, the test should end.”

Though the law says the test must be administered, it doesn’t stipulate that students must finish the test.

U.S. Department of Education spokesman Chad Colby said a boycott could jeopardize the district’s federal funding. And, he said, it would undermine the law’s intent, which is to hold schools accountable for what students learn.

District 93 received about $631,000 from federal sources during the 2005-06 school year, slightly more than 1 percent of its total revenue.

Other suburban school officials said they would consider a boycott as they continue to weigh their options.

The Marquardt Elementary District 15 school board in Glendale Heights has authorized Superintendent Loren May to make the final decision on whether to administer the tests.

“There’s no clear pathway on what may or may not happen,” May said. “It’s about making a decision about what’s best for the children.”

© 2008 The Daily Herald

Testing and the Death of Play

Guess what? Play is required for the healthy development of children. Imagine that.

From a Morning Edition story yesterday on NPR:

. . . .Change in Play, Change in Kids

Clearly the way that children spend their time has changed. Here's the issue: A growing number of psychologists believe that these changes in what children do has also changed kids' cognitive and emotional development.

It turns out that all that time spent playing make-believe actually helped children develop a critical cognitive skill called executive function. Executive function has a number of different elements, but a central one is the ability to self-regulate. Kids with good self-regulation are able to control their emotions and behavior, resist impulses, and exert self-control and discipline.

We know that children's capacity for self-regulation has diminished. A recent study replicated a study of self-regulation first done in the late 1940s, in which psychological researchers asked kids ages 3, 5 and 7 to do a number of exercises. One of those exercises included standing perfectly still without moving. The 3-year-olds couldn't stand still at all, the 5-year-olds could do it for about three minutes, and the 7-year-olds could stand pretty much as long as the researchers asked. In 2001, researchers repeated this experiment. But, psychologist Elena Bodrova at the National Institute for Early Education Research says, the results were very different.

"Today's 5-year-olds were acting at the level of 3-year-olds 60 years ago, and today's 7-year-olds were barely approaching the level of a 5-year-old 60 years ago," Bodrova explains. "So the results were very sad."

Sad because self-regulation is incredibly important. Poor executive function is associated with high dropout rates, drug use and crime. In fact, good executive function is a better predictor of success in school than a child's IQ. Children who are able to manage their feelings and pay attention are better able to learn. As executive function researcher Laura Berk explains, "Self-regulation predicts effective development in virtually every domain."

The Importance of Self-Regulation

According to Berk, one reason make-believe is such a powerful tool for building self-discipline is because during make-believe, children engage in what's called private speech: They talk to themselves about what they are going to do and how they are going to do it.

"In fact, if we compare preschoolers' activities and the amount of private speech that occurs across them, we find that this self-regulating language is highest during make-believe play," Berk says. "And this type of self-regulating language… has been shown in many studies to be predictive of executive functions."

And it's not just children who use private speech to control themselves. If we look at adult use of private speech, Berk says, "we're often using it to surmount obstacles, to master cognitive and social skills, and to manage our emotions."

Unfortunately, the more structured the play, the more children's private speech declines. Essentially, because children's play is so focused on lessons and leagues, and because kids' toys increasingly inhibit imaginative play, kids aren't getting a chance to practice policing themselves. When they have that opportunity, says Berk, the results are clear: Self-regulation improves.

"One index that researchers, including myself, have used… is the extent to which a child, for example, cleans up independently after a free-choice period in preschool," Berk says. "We find that children who are most effective at complex make-believe play take on that responsibility with… greater willingness, and even will assist others in doing so without teacher prompting."

Despite the evidence of the benefits of imaginative play, however, even in the context of preschool young children's play is in decline. According to Yale psychological researcher Dorothy Singer, teachers and school administrators just don't see the value.

"Because of the testing, and the emphasis now that you have to really pass these tests, teachers are starting earlier and earlier to drill the kids in their basic fundamentals. Play is viewed as unnecessary, a waste of time," Singer says. "I have so many articles that have documented the shortening of free play for children, where the teachers in these schools are using the time for cognitive skills."

It seems that in the rush to give children every advantage — to protect them, to stimulate them, to enrich them — our culture has unwittingly compromised one of the activities that helped children most. All that wasted time was not such a waste after all.

Corporate Welfare Charter Schools in Minnesota Minus Taxpayer Approval

When will a state legislature stop the thievery that is destroying public education? From the Star-Tribune:

More than one in nine of Minnesota's charter schools have taken advantage of a loophole in state law to buy or build their own buildings using public money intended to help them lease space. The loophole allows charter schools to bypass the voter approval that traditional school districts need before buying or building schools.

The charter school lease aid law was passed in 1997 to help charters rent space and compensate for the fact those schools can't levy taxes or use bond measures to buy property.

Of the state's 180 charter schools, more than 20 have used lease aid to get a permanent site. From PACT Charter School in the northwest metro area to Paideia Academy in the southeast, charters are setting up affiliated nonprofit corporations to own the buildings, financed with corporate bonds, leased back to the schools and paid for with state lease aid.

And an expanding lease aid budget, set against a general education fund struggling to keep up with inflation, could trigger a debate between legislators seeking to rein in the lease aid fund and charters who say it is still a poor substitute for direct ownership of a building. . . .

. . . .Rep. Mindy Greiling, DFL-Roseville, chairwoman of the House K-12 Education Finance Division, was one of the lease aid bill's sponsors along with current Department of Education Commissioner Alice Seagren.

Greiling said she still supports lease aid, but added, "Any time you give a group an inch, they can take a mile." Ownership of buildings was an unintended consequence of the law, she said.

Seagren, a Republican who served from 1992 to 2004 in the Legislature, said charter schools owning buildings through nonprofits is a mechanism for charters to obtain suitable space when none is available for rent.

She also pointed out there has been no legal challenge to the practice. But a 2003 legislative auditor's report recommended lawmakers review it.

Deborah Parker Junod, project manager of that audit, said charter schools that use nonprofits to own buildings are "clearly circumventing the law." . . . .

Sonny Perdue Leads Assault on Georgia's Public Schools

Collusion and Corruption, both with capital Cs. From the Atlanta Journal-Constitution:

By ALLENE MAGILL
Published on: 02/18/08

In what might be the biggest "bait and switch" in many years, Gov. Sonny Perdue's three-year-plus effort known as Investing in Educational Excellence (IE2) has been translated into legislation sponsored by House Education Committee Chairman Rep. Brooks Coleman (R-Duluth).

Something got lost in translation.

Launched as a way to revisit the 20-year-old Quality Basic Education funding formula for the state's public schools, the IE2 task force spent more than three years gathering information, traveling the state, holding public hearings and visiting schools. Their work, they told us, was to develop new cost models based on best practices in the elementary, middle and high schools.

The questions they were asking seemed reasonable: What are the current best practices in our schools? What does it cost to operate such a school? What should be the state share and what should be the local share of those costs?

They were also going to re-examine the funding partnership between the state and local districts, a relationship that has grown increasingly tense as the state share of education funding has retreated substantially, forcing local systems to seek additional funding to replace vanished state funds.

Some months ago, the IE2 group released a cost model for the elementary schools. While not perfect, the model seemed to be a substantial improvement from current practice. We praised the work of the task force at that time. Education leaders across the state anxiously were awaiting the cost models for the middle and high schools as well as the other items on the IE2 agenda such as recommendations for innovations in funding high-cost programs for special education students or students from impoverished backgrounds.

Instead, Coleman's legislation, touted in a news release issued by Perdue's office, "sets up a system of performance contracts that allow for greater flexibility in return for increased accountability."

Say what? Who changed the subject? How did we go from funding to flexibility?

There is already plenty of charter school (read flexibility) legislation on the books — most of which we have supported. The "flexibility" Coleman's legislation refers to would give districts a choice of the current local-state relationship, a charter-schools relationship similar to legislation passed a few years ago, or a systemwide charter system based on the 2007 bill passed at the behest of Lt. Gov. Casey Cagle.

Flexibility in how districts spend state funds that have been decreased over the past four years by more than $1.6 billion is a pretty thin product for a three-year "investing in educational excellence" task force. What investment? While overall funding for student growth and the faculty required to teach the added students has increased, virtually all other aspects of education funding have been neglected or substantially reduced.

We are operating our schools in 2008 using a funding formula created in the mid-1980s. Does this make sense to anyone? Through IE2 and Coleman's legislation, Perdue and his task force have not only "kicked the can down the road" for more than three years, they have, with the collusion of Coleman — at the 11th hour — changed the subject. Our public schools, and the 1.6 million students who attend them, deserve better.

A Great Reason to Vote for Hillary

From the New York Sun:

By ELIZABETH GREEN
Staff Reporter of the Sun
February 15, 2008 updated 2/16/08 10:21 am EST

Senator Obama said this week that he is open to supporting private school vouchers if research shows they work.

"I will not allow my predispositions to stand in the way of making sure that our kids can learn," Mr. Obama, who has previously said he opposes vouchers, said in a meeting with the editorial board of the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel. "We're losing several generations of kids, and something has to be done."

Education analysts said Mr. Obama's statement is the closest they have ever seen a Democratic presidential candidate come to embracing the idea of vouchers. Vouchers are taxpayer-funded scholarships that allow families to opt out of public school and use their government-allotted education dollars to attend a private school instead. They are despised by teachers unions, powerful players in Democratic politics.

When Mr. Obama filled out questionnaires for both national teachers unions last year, the American Federation of Teachers and the National Education Association, he told the unions that he did not support vouchers. But on Wednesday Mr. Obama opened his remarks to the Journal-Sentinel's question on vouchers by saying he had to admit that he has been a "skeptic" of vouchers.

He said he was astonished to learn that a voucher program in Milwaukee had never been tested in a longitudinal study to find out whether it had helped children or not. "If there was any argument for vouchers it was, all right, let's see if this experiment works, and then if it does, whatever my preconceptions, my attitude is you do what works for the kids," Mr. Obama said. . . .

Teachers Working Two Jobs to Make Ends Meet

From the Miami Herald:

When Randolph Chancy took a job with Miami-Dade County Public Schools last year, he expected teaching would be a labor of love.

But he wasn't prepared for just how much labor would be required.

For Chancy, the $38,000-a-year salary he collects from the district is not enough to make ends meet. So every day after school, the science teacher races to a pathology lab in Miami Lakes, where he works a second job as a lab technician.

''I'm a young, black male with a background in the sciences; I figured I could make a difference as a teacher,'' said Chancy, 30, a favorite among students at the Linda Lentin K-8 Center in North Miami. ``I just never thought it would be this hard.''

''It's crazy. It's all day, every day: Go! Go! Go!'' sighed Erin Hanson, a third-grade teacher at Sawgrass Elementary in Sunrise who also works two nights and Saturdays selling purses and accessories at the Kate Spade store in the Sawgrass Mills Shopping Center. ``You run yourself ragged.'' . . . .

The Unhidden Costs of Charterizing

From the Intelligencer:

This school year, it’s costing the Pennridge School District more than $600,000 to pay for the 70 students living in its borders who attend charter schools.

Next year, that cost will top $900,000.

“We’re spending money for programs we have no control over,” said Superintendent Robert Kish.

Control is just one grievance officials in school districts have with charter schools. Words like accountability and funding inequity quickly follow suit. . . .

Refusing the Child Abuse of High Stakes Testing

An ER reader asks (thanks Dr. Kovacs):

Is there a specific provision of the law that allows parental/student boycott of the tests? Because schools are penalized if they don't have a 95% participation rate, are there any repercussions on the students or parents who boycott? or is it strictly a "school punishing" issue? What about truancy? [Members of a local civic group have asked these questions. (I suppose, as teachers, we would get in trouble for encouraging such actions.)]

While state statutes require state tests to be administered, there are few specifics related to requirements of children to take them in elementary school. Of course, in the most repressive regimes like Louisiana and New York City that require students to pass exams to be promoted to the next grade or to graduate, opting out may have consequences for which parents and students should be aware. Most state statutes, however, are silent on the issue of opting out. The most reliable way to find out your local policy on parental rights and student testing is to read the local board policy or call the Superintendent's Office and ask.

In terms of teachers getting in trouble for encouraging such action, I think that teachers must be guided by an ethical commitment to do what in the best interest of children, or at least to certainly allow no harm to come to children. If violating this ethical imperative is the only way to stay out of trouble or to keep your job, then I would suggest that the system does, indeed, need replacing--and that acts of protest and civil disobedience are not only justified but called for. "Just following orders" as a reason to act in a morally reprehensible manner has not been a viable excuse ever since Nuremberg. Any person who does not recognize this truth has traded the mantle of educator for the handcuffs of the prison guard, and they are no better than the abusers whose policies are causing damage to children now and in the future.

Here is some good info on resistance offered by Mothers Against WASL.

To find the following document, go this Washington State Public Instruction site and enter "refusing" as a search. This is the text of the Word document you will find:

Refusing Testing

The law states that public schools are required to administer the assessments to students enrolled in the specified grades and subjects, the assumption apparently being that participation on the part of the student or approval on the part of the parent would not be an issue. Because it is not specifically addressed in the legislation, agency policy adopted after the question arose has been that students may refuse to participate or their parents may refuse to have their children tested. The policy further requires the school to request that the refusal on the part of either the student or parent be put into writing by the parent and kept on file at the school or district office. It is also recommended that the parent be requested to include the reason for not wanting the child tested. If any parent is unwilling to put the refusal in writing, the school should document that the request was made but the parent would not put the refusal in writing. This refusal will not avoid any consequence for not testing, such as WASL scores on transcript or failure to graduate.

Because the number of students meeting, exceeding, or failing to meet the standards is based upon enrollment, the percentages for the schools and districts are impacted by refusals. The significance of the impact is proportional to the number of students that should be tested vs. the number of those same students who were not tested for whatever reason. This aligns with the federal “No Child Left Behind” legislation.

The Washington State Legislature has dictated that all schools teach to the Essential Academic Learning Requirements. Schools and teachers are not required to create a distinct curriculum for students whose parents have asked not to be tested on the WASL. Schools are not obligated to provide an alternate curriculum or other lessons to students refusing testing during the time the WASL is being administered.

From Mothers Against WASL: Text of sample permission form to refuse test:

To: ________________________________, principal

__________________________________ School;

My student, ____________________________, will not be participating in WASL testing during the current school year. I understand that it is my legal right as parent/guardian to opt ______________________________ out of state testing.
I also understand that the school will provide appropriate, alternative learning activities during testing times. I do not want any record of WASL testing in my student’s permanent file.

It is unfortunate that the school will receive a zero for my student’s untaken test, but this is the responsibility of the Washington State Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction. Please contact OSPI with your concerns regarding this policy.

Thank you for your cooperation in this matter.

Parent signature: ____________________________ Date: ______________

cc district superintendent, classroom teacher

Latino Parents in Chicago to Lead Testing Boycott?

What most parents don't know is that they have full legal authority to keep their children home, rather than subjecting them to the abusive tests that the numbskull politicians keep shoving on children and parents and schools.

While Wall Street, Congress, and the White House remain unaccountable to anyone for an unnecessary war, for illegal spying, for the mortgage crisis, for sanctioned torture, for the ecological disaster, for increasing poverty, for jobs exported, for crushing national debt, for no health care for 50 million Americans, for segregated schools, for crumbling national infrastructure, for unprecendented corporate-government corruption, and for oppression of the poor and minorities, they expect Latino children in Chicago to be accountable for tests they cannot read, just as they expect poor children in Camden to perform the same as the middle class children in Cherry Hill. Could any situation be more insane??

The only way parents are going to get any attention to their plight is to boycott the tests. Keep your children home, and this NCLB child abuse, along with the testocracy that it has inspired, will collapse like a house of cards. Parents truly have the power to end the madness.

The story from Chicago Sun-Times:

Angry Chicago Latino parents threatened Tuesday to keep their kids home on test day next month if state education officials insist on giving students who are still learning English an achievement test in English.

Facing threats of federal sanctions, state officials were ordered last October to give the same state tests native English speakers take to some 60,000 Illinois public school kids who haven’t yet mastered English.

During a news conference Tuesday at the Logan Square Neighborhood Association, about two dozen Latino parents charged that the test mandate is “unfair,’’ “anti-immigrant’’ and “anti-bilingual education.’’

They were joined by State Sen. Iris Martinez (D-Chicago), who said the federal government was “trying to take this program [bilingual education] away from us’’ by forcing children to take a test in English before they are fluent.

“This is a way of attacking children who don’t understand the language,’’ said Martinez, who is pushing a resolution to delay the test for a year.

Previously, Illinois kids in bilingual education programs for less than three years took an alternative state test in English.

But last October federal education officials ruled that test did not meet federal No Child Left Behind standards. They ordered Illinois bilingual education students who have been in public schools for more than a year to take the same tests native English speakers take, starting March 3.

Speaking through a Spanish-English translator, parent Erika Soto said her third-grade daughter is “very smart, but because of this test, she is going to be labeled a failure. So how is she going to feel?’’

Parents raised their hands in agreement Tuesday when asked if they would keep their children home rather than have them take the new test.

“We have to push them to pay attention and if this is the way to get them to pay attention, I will do it,’’ said Leticia Barrera, parent of a Monroe Elementary third grader.

Barrera’s daughter, Arely, said she did poorly on practice tests, and is worried she’ll tank the real thing.

“I’m scared,’’ said Arely, age 9. “I think I’m going to fail. I’m not prepared to do the test.’’ . . . .

A Century and a Half After Darwin, Florida Considers Adding Evolution to Science Curriculum

Big vote coming up February 19. From the Orlando Sentinel:

Evolution has been a cornerstone of biology for more than 100 years, but don't try to tell that to many of the thousands of people who posted comments on Florida's Department of Education Web site.

"The last time I went to the zoo, the monkeys weren't evolving into man," read one comment.

"Evolution is not proven and we should not brainwash our children with this concept," stated another.

The State Board of Education is to vote Feb. 19 on controversial new science standards that for the first time would require teaching evolution in Florida's public schools. The new standards are intended to beef up lackluster science education in schools.

The standards list evolution as one of 18 "big ideas" students must understand by the time they graduate. They call evolution the "fundamental concept underlying all of biology" and say it is "supported by multiple forms of scientific evidence."

But those academic phrases have ignited a theological controversy across the state. . . . .

Charter School Industry Demanding Free Rent in South Carolina

Yep, it's a movement. A clip from an op-ed in the Charleston Post and Courier by Rev. Joseph Darby:

The Post and Courier has recently carried plenty of good news about the Charleston Charter School for Math & Science. The past few months have seen exceptionally ample reminders of the invitation for applications and ample coverage of the first "lottery" to select students.

On Friday, Jan. 25, it was reported that state Rep. Chip Limehouse had filed a bill that would forbid school districts from charging charter schools rent for lease or use of a building owned by a school district, noting that his action was spurred by the decision to charge rent to the Charter School for Math & Science.

On Tuesday, Jan. 29, it was reported that the Charter School had hired a principal and two administrators and that 47 percent of the initial enrollment forms returned were for minority students.

On Wednesday, Jan. 30, there was editorial praise for Mr. Limehouse's bill and for school board member Gregg Meyers' statement that he is ready to vote to rescind the school board's decision to charge rent to the charter school.

The unprecedented wave of positive reporting on the Charter School for Math & Science has been admirably crafted, but I did want, in the midst of the positive media spin, to note a few other things.

It should be noted that should Mr. Limehouse's legislation passes, the result would be an unmitigated disaster for public education in South Carolina. School districts that are already stretching scare dollars to build and equip traditional public schools would be required to stretch them even farther to cater to charter schools — not just by providing available buildings, but possibly by providing everything from science labs to stadiums. My hope is that even if Mr. Limehouse wishes to cater to charter schools that will only serve a fraction of our state's children, he will also work for adequate and equitable funding for every school district in South Carolina. . . .

. . . .It should also be noted that the reported 47 percent minority enrollment in the Charter School for Math & Science is not official evidence of diversity because the school district has taken no steps whatsoever — beyond tying the building rent amount to diversity — to track diversity at the Charter School for Math & Science. The founders of the charter school have, in fact, indicated in the past that they are resistant to any objective measure of diversity being a requirement. . . .

L.A. to Force Public Schools to Give Corporate Charter Schools Space

Apparently that most recent$12,000,000 gift by Eli Broad to Green Dot Public Schools, Inc. was not enough to provide the EMO with school facilities, even though it obviously was enough to buy a 4-3 vote by LAUSD to force their own public schools to turn over public school space to Green Dot's corporate charters.

Never mind that public school teachers will lose their rooms and have to teach from carts. And never mind that there is no research to demonstrate the veracity of CEO Steve Barr's public relations campaign lies that his Green Dots are performing miracles in LAUSD. The corporate takeover is simply being ignored, even by national newspapers like USA Today, who tout Green Dot, Inc., even with zero evidence of school effectiveness.

Will someone have the guts to stop or even question the corporate takeover of American schools How about you, Hillary? Barack?

From the LA Times:

More Los Angeles campuses will have to make room for charter schools, even if some teachers are forced to give up their classrooms and become roving instructors, under a litigation settlement approved by the Los Angeles Board of Education on Tuesday.

The agreement requires the school district to inventory all properties and work directly with charter schools to find space on or off campus. Charter advocates say finding and paying for facilities is their No. 1 challenge.

The settlement signals "new cooperation" toward serving all students -- whether they attend a charter or a traditional school, supporters said.

"We share the pain of overcrowding equally," said Caprice Young, president of the California Charter Schools Assn., a party to both suits. "We in the charter school movement recognize that the Los Angeles Unified School District has a space crunch, and we all have to work together to create great facilities for all kids."

Agreeing to the possibility of roving instructors, called "traveling teachers," was perhaps the major -- and most controversial -- concession by the school district. Because of classroom shortages, these teachers move from room to room with cartloads of materials throughout the day, an intensely unpopular assignment.

The school district could provide no figures on how many teachers travel, but their numbers have declined dramatically in recent years with the construction of new schools and declining enrollment.

Two lawsuits were filed in May under a state law that calls for public school campuses to be "shared fairly." Charters are independently run public schools freed from many provisions that govern other schools, including adherence to union contracts and district curriculum.

The school board approved the settlement by a 4-3 vote after a closed session.

Board member Richard Vladovic dissented, recalling the time he "traveled" as a middle school teacher early in his career. "I couldn't spend the time I wanted to focus on my lessons and on meeting with students and counseling them," Vladovic said. "I felt my students got cheated." He also worried that traditional schools would lack needed space and flexibility to improve their schools.

Before the litigation, the two sides had been split on facilities, especially with L.A. Unified dealing with its own classroom seat crunch. Currently, 143 district schools operate on a year-round schedule, and 42 have a shortened school year. Even after the district completes a $12.6-billion school construction program, adding about 165,000 seats, officials say some schools will remain overcrowded.

At newly constructed district schools, officials have rarely considered charter school needs, except in rare cases when seats are left over. And no existing school was to be significantly hindered by a charter. Moreover, the review of available space was partly an honors system, with principals disclosing whether or not they could house a charter school.

Over the last decade, charter schools have operated out of churches, high-rises, warehouses and portables slapped down in parking lots. They are supposed to model academic innovation, but officials also saw another benefit.

"Charters could go into storefronts," said board member Julie Korenstein, who voted against the settlement. "They were increasing space so our [traditional] schools would become less overcrowded. Putting them back on our campuses does just the reverse."

L.A. Unified now oversees 125 charter schools with 47,000 students, more charters than any school system in the nation. About a dozen are in district-owned facilities. These include three of the 10 small high schools operated by Green Dot Public Schools, which filed the lawsuits along with PUC Schools, six charter parents and the charter association.

"In other cities, people offer facilities if we come," said Green Dot founder Steve Barr. "We should be looking at this strategically -- together."

The settlement aims at that goal, substituting a five-year plan for a cumbersome, almost ad hoc process that gives charter schools little advance notice on availability, and then guarantees space for only one year. The agreement, which leaves many details to the future, relies much on good faith.

Negotiators for the charter schools said they made numerous concessions and that the terms of the agreement do not represent their view of state law. Board member Yolie Flores Aguilar said the settlement protects "our schools from staying on or going back to [year-round schedules], making sure we don't bus kids out of their neighborhood or put students back in portables."

Charter advocates said they expected the agreement to open up many more new and existing campuses to charter schools, which is precisely what critics worry about.

"This is the kind of thing that makes everyone in the school business crazy," said Scott Plotkin, executive director of the California School Boards Assn. Charter schools are "the interlopers here. They land from outer space, get kids to sign up and now they say, 'We want special accommodations made for us.' "

The agreement still needs the formal approval of other parties to the suit, including parents and the boards of the charter schools.

Georgia Charter School Bill (HB 881) to Bypass Local School Boards While Taking Their Funds

The editorial board of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution calls it the "charter school hustle." The idea is quite simple: 1) deny district school boards the right to have input on new charter school applications by putting the decision in the hands of a committee of ed industry toadies who have been appointed at the state level, and 2) to put state and locally- appropriated school funds into the hands of the corporate charter school operators. This represents nothing less than anti-democracy at work. Call it fascism or corporate socialism, but whatever you call it, it is virulently antidemocratic:

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Published on: 01/31/08

Lawmakers bristle over dictates to the hinterlands from the state folks in Atlanta. Except, of course, when the lawmakers themselves are the ones in Atlanta trampling local control.

And that's exactly what the House Education Committee did this week when it endorsed a charter school law that allows applicants to bypass local school boards and pitch their case to a new state seven-member commission nominated by the governor, lieutenant governor and speaker and approved by the state school board.

While the state school board can now overrule a local board and sanction a charter, that new school is not entitled to the tax dollars raised locally for education, only to the state and federal shares. Under House Bill 881, charters get the whole caboodle — state, federal and local dollars. (The bill obfuscates this issue with some cloudy language, but local tax dollars are in the mix.)

HB 881 represents a frontal assault on the constitutional powers of school boards and a shift of critical decision-making to a political commission that will have no firsthand knowledge of the district's needs, the local system's own development plans or whether the charter applicants have any credibility or relationships in the community.

Nor will the commission have any accountability to local voters, who, if angry over their school board member's resistance to charters, could always vote the rascal out of office. Those voters will have no recourse against the actions of this commission, which will operate in de facto anonymity, most likely in a nice suite of state offices in Atlanta.

As the sponsor of HB 881, state Rep. Jan Jones (R-Alpharetta) maintains that the Legislature had to intervene because too many school boards were "indifferent, disinterested and occasionally hostile to charter schools." Of 28 charter school applications last year, she said local school boards approved only two.

A charter school is a public school that operates according to a contract that's been approved by a local board of education. In exchange for great flexibility, the charter school must meet the performance objectives spelled out in the charter or face closure. Nationwide, there are 4,000 charter schools, serving a million students. Georgia has 71 charter schools, four of which were approved by the state board of education.

Some local school boards have indeed treated charter schools as unwashed and unwelcome cousins and thrown too many obstacles in their path. However, some charter applications deserve rejection because they weren't ready or weren't realistic.

It's also worth noting that the same Legislature now lamenting how traditional public schools resist innovation has imposed so many constraints on school systems that they can't even change brands of paper clips without triplicate request forms.

Those House members eager to strip school boards of control should consider their response if the federal government, citing the General Assembly's dangerous dereliction of water conservation, waded into the issue, created the action plan and handed the bill to the state. The steam coming out of lawmakers' ears would tarnish the Gold Dome.

In a great act of chutzpah, the General Assembly is wresting control from school boards at the same time it's dumping more of the financial burden for education on them. The message to the local districts seems to be "pay more, say less." Nor have lawmakers considered any of the nuanced and contradictory evidence about the efficacy of charter schools. Yes, there are wonderful charter schools in Georgia, although some of the most impressive were existing public schools that converted to charter status. DeKalb's Chamblee High School and Cobb's Walton High excelled long before adding the word "charter" to their names.

One of the four House Education members who voted against HB 881 because of its disregard for local control, state Rep. Mike Keown (R-Coolidge), said, "Anything about charter schools is going to pass this year. It's like a runaway train."

And that's the real problem — the Legislature's single focus on charter schools as the key to improving education. Without a review of the research, lawmakers have adopted the position that Georgia's arid education landscape will bloom anew by seeding hundreds of new charter schools. Rather than getting into the hard work of reforming schools, lawmakers are settling for renaming them.

In a new book due out next month, "Spin Cycle: How Research Gets Used in Policy Debates, The Case of Charter Schools," Columbia University professor Jeffrey R. Henig cautions, "Policy-makers need to know that charter schools are neither a panacea nor poison. ... If charter schools have consequences — good or bad — they are incremental, less powerful than consequences flowing from other variables, and contingent on circumstance, policy design, administrative implementation, and local context."

No matter if they are traditional or charter, effective public schools must have adequate funding, well-prepared and smart teachers, passionate leaders, targeted help for struggling students and a hands-on, relevant curriculum.

Until the General Assembly and the governor are willing to furnish those critical needs, schools in Georgia can be called anything they want — except successful.

— Maureen Downey, for the editorial board

Despite the Segregationist Supreme Court Majority

New issue of The Integration Report from the Civil Rights Project, now at UCLA:

The Integration Report, issue 3
February 11, 2008

The previous issue of The Integration Report focused on the importance of maintaining desegregation plans in light of the June 2007 Seattle/Louisville decision that limited the use of race in student assignment plans. One of the two school districts involved in that case, Jefferson County, KY, released a proposal for a temporary assignment plan last week that seeks to preserve the school system’s racial diversity. Jefferson County, a metropolitan district that includes the city of Louisville, provides a possible model for other districts looking for strategies to sustain racial integration in their schools.

The Jefferson County school district recently outlined system-wide goals that will guide current and future student assignments. These goals include: diversity, quality, choice, predictability, stability, and equity.1 Using geography instead of race, school officials grouped clusters of elementary schools together and established a school-level guideline of between 15 and 50% of students from certain geographic areas. These targeted residential areas serve students with income and parent education levels below the district average, as well as a racial composition of at least 45% of students of color.2 Importantly, the criteria for defining geographic areas broadens the district’s original conception of diversity to include socio-economic status, educational attainment of parents, and the consideration of all racial categories, instead of the former two-race distinction between African American and white students. . . . .

Brits Offer Window on National Curriculum Problems

As the growth model/national curriculum wing of the ed industry edits pitches for the next Administration, it may be worth considering Britain's experience with a national curriuclum in a realm much smaller and much less heterogenous. A clip from a really fine piece in the Guardian:

The national curriculum is 20 years old. Do we still need it? A new inquiry plans to investigate. Janet Murray reports

Tuesday February 12, 2008

The national curriculum, 20 years old this year, is to come under the scrutiny of a comprehensive inquiry announced last week by the commons select committee on children, schools and family. There have been several reviews on specific issues, most notably the Nuffield review of 14-19 education in 2003, and, more recently, the key stage 3 and primary reviews, but none took a broad overview.

This inquiry will ask the big questions. It will consider whether there should be a national curriculum at all, how it might be improved, and how well it fits in with other policies and strategies. Certain issues have been highlighted for discussion, such as the impact of testing and assessment regimes and the implications of personalised learning.

News of the inquiry has largely been welcomed by educationists but, with a new secondary curriculum due to come into force in autumn, some people question its timing.

The problem, says Mick Brookes, the general secretary of the National Association of Headteachers (NAHT), has been a one-size-fits-all approach that has hampered creativity in the classroom. Chris Keates, general secretary of the National Association of Schoolmasters Union of Women Teachers (NASUWT), adds: "There is much of merit in the national curriculum, but the major problem faced by teachers is that it is inflexible and overcrowded."

And with teachers under increasing pressure to "teach to the test", children are missing out on vital parts of their education, such as art, music and outdoor education, says John Bangs, head of education at the National Union of Teachers (NUT). "At the moment, testing seems to be the only way of gathering evidence of children's progress." . . . .

U. S. Military: Be All That You Can Be--But Without an Education

The thinly-disguised racism and classism that characterizes today's "scientifically-based" education testing movement offers a steady stream of desperate dropouts, pushouts, and squeakers-by for military recruiters to pick from. Now in a moment of rare candor, the military actually tells us why it is against the new G.I. Bill being proposed in Congress. From Inside Higher Ed:

While momentum is growing in Congress to pass a new GI Bill, adding education benefits for a generation of veterans serving in Iraq, the Pentagon and Bush administration are opposed. The reason? The Boston Globe reported that it is fear that better education benefits would discourage those who have the option to leave from re-enlisting. The Globe quoted Robert Clarke, assistant director of accessions policy at the Department of Defense, as saying that “the incentive to serve and leave” might with better education benefits “outweigh the incentive to have them stay.”

TFA Becomes Part of Spellings' Echo Chamber

The Teach-for-awhile-liberal-resume-builders of America have wisdom to spare after their many weeks in the classroom. But, then, that's more than the Secretary has.

From the Houston Chronicle:

The teachers' ideas would have been blasphemous in some circles: Test students more. Start an alternative union.

The sounding board was U.S. Education Secretary Margaret Spellings, who met with teachers and alumni of Teach for America on Friday in Houston. The program sends recent college graduates into the nation's toughest schools for two-year teaching stints.

"I knew we could learn something from these teachers," Spellings said, nudging a staff member. . . .

New Jersey's Middle School Slurry

Take one of the best public elementary state school systems in the nation. Remove its rich curriculum ingredients and double the amounts of math and phonics. Add teachers and children and place in pressure cooker over high heat. Stand back and assure the audience we are going to enjoy something great in five years.

This is the recipe repeated in every state of the Union with the Bush-Paige-Spellings cookbook, and now everyone is wondering why our 8th graders resemble tasteless vanilla paste. What chefs we are.

From the AtlanticCity.com:

TRENTON - The state Department of Education has nine years of test results for eighth-graders - and they're nothing to get excited about.

The test, called the Grade Eight Proficiency Assessment, or GEPA, has been administered since 1999, and results over time show little progress. The statewide math passing rate has improved 7 percent, to a still disappointing 68.4 percent. The language arts passing rate actually has dropped a few points from 77.3 percent to 73.7 percent.

The state DOE on Wednesday released the results of the 2007 state tests in grades three through eight and 11. The results show gains are being maintained in elementary school, but passing rates drop off in the middle grades and are holding about even in high school. "We are encouraged by the progress in elementary school," Education Commissioner Lucille Davy said Wednesday. "But there are issues at the high school level. Working with students who are well below grade level is a difficult task, and high school test performance over time is also relatively flat."

Davy was especially pleased with improvements in the elementary level passing rate for special education students, as well as minority children, most of whom live in the state's poorest districts. But they are still passing at a far lower rate than the general student population, and the minimum passing rate required to meet federal No Child Left Behind regulations increases this year. But Davy said a new secondary school-reform initiative will have to begin with the middle school curriculum. Test results show a substantial drop in passing rates starting in sixth grade.

While test results improve a bit in high school, there is concern that many struggling students already have dropped out, mentally if not physically. "You can't go through grades six through eight without continuing to develop, then expect to get to high school and have them fix it all," she said. Deputy Commissioner Willa Spicer said the improvements at the elementary level show that better instruction in the classroom generates better test results, and that improvement now must expand to the middle schools. . . .

Check results. If ingredients are unrecognizable or if a significant portion has cooked away, don't worry. Return remaining mixture to pressure cooker and add four more years of heat. We are going to have something delicious, I assure you.

Five Years Hence

Britain began their testing orgy five years before us Yanks, under the leadership, by the way, of Sir Michael Barber, who now runs the Bloomberg-Klein little shop of testing horrors. From the Independent:

The first significant and independent study of Britain's primary schools since the 1967 Plowden Report has exposed just how widespread the culture of testing has become within our education system. The Primary Review, overseen by the Faculty of Education at the University of Cambridge, found that primary school children in England were subjected to far more assessment than their peers in other developed countries. According to the report, external testing in England takes place more frequently, begins at a younger age, and covers more subjects than testing in schools overseas. It is also a more "high stakes" system than any other comparable educational system, which means that the fortunes of schools are heavily bound up with how pupils perform in their assessment tests.

This is unlikely to surprise parents, who have long been complaining that their school-age children seem to be on a never-ending treadmill of assessments and exams. There are nationwide statutory tests for children at ages seven and 11. At secondary school, this is followed by further tests at age 14, and then GCSEs and A-levels at 16-plus. It is little wonder that there has been a considerable backlash against compulsory testing.

Some national testing is, of course, necessary. And, as the report shows, all developed countries have some system for measuring attainment before pupils sit major public exams in their teens. Schools must be held to account. If pupils are not progressing as well as those elsewhere, this must be brought to light. Too often in the past, failure was concealed by insufficient assessment.

But the pendulum has swung too far in the other direction. Many teachers find themselves doing little else than priming and preparing pupils for the next round of tests. This stifles creativity and is a terrible way to engender a love of learning among children. The system is also counter-productive from an educational perspective. Pupils are increasingly being "taught to the test". They become adept at jumping through hoops but not at thinking for themselves. As an Ofsted report on maths teaching in secondary schools put it: "Although students are able to pass the examinations, they are not able to apply their knowledge independently to new contexts, and they are not well prepared for further study."

At the heart of the problem is the fact that our testing culture appears to be politically, rather than educationally, driven. Government ministers like tests and the constant stream of results they produce because it enables them, in their dealings with the media, to point to rising educational standards. The publishing of school "league tables" is another political, rather than educational, tool. These exist so that ministers can claim credit for schools "moving up" the tables. But these ranking tables merely force teachers and headteachers to concentrate on tests to the detriment of other aspects of school life. The testing culture is thus a product of two of this Government's greatest vices: an obsession with presentation and an instinct towards top-down control.

Just because other countries do things differently does not make it right that we should emulate them. But the evidence suggests many other nations are doing a better job of educating young people than us. According to latest figures from the Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development, Britain has been slipping down the international table for quality of learning in maths and reading. Complacency is entirely inappropriate.

Teachers are against constant testing. Parents are dissatisfied with the pressure it puts on pupils. Examiners are also unhappy. Ken Boston, the chief executive of the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority, has suggested moving towards a sampling system. The only players still clinging to the wreckage of the present testing arrangements are ministers. It is time for them to let go.

Presidential Candidates' Question # 3: Environment

Question for all the candidates:

While there is no doubt that schools at all levels should provide children and adults with the skills to "compete in the global economy," there is even a more compelling and immediate need to prepare children and adults to "cooperate in the global ecology." Troubling, irrefutable scientific evidence tells us that unless the global warming problem is solved, all the economic preparedness that we can muster will be for naught as coastal cities go under water and large numbers of animal species go extinct and large portions of the earth become uninhabitable. Ecological science, lifestyle awareness, and environmental career goal setting must begin in early childhood and remain a prominent priority through high school if civilization is going to solve the problem of climate change before we pass the tipping point of no return.

What will your administration do in terms of specific initiatives to give "cooperation in the global ecology" the same educational priority as "competition in the global economy"?

More Details on Dallas Charter School Fraud

From Dallas Morning News:

The former superintendent of a Dallas charter school that collapsed in bankruptcy filed for personal bankruptcy herself shortly after she left the school in 2006, court records show.

Delores Beall, who ran Lynacre Academy, filed for Chapter 13 bankruptcy in July 2006 with nearly $200,000 in outstanding debt, including mortgages and credit card payments, according to bankruptcy filings.

The case is still open.

Ms. Beall opened the charter school in southwest Dallas in 1999 and ran it until 2006.

After leaving her position as school superintendent, she filed for bankruptcy in federal court. Then, she filed a lawsuit in state district court against a Lynacre staff member and school board members. The suit alleges that she was fired for no reason and is owed back pay because school officials broke her employment contract.

School officials filed counterclaims accusing her of fraud and failing to fulfill her duties as superintendent. That case was moved to federal court last year in connection with her bankruptcy proceedings.

Ms. Beall has not spoken publicly since Lynacre Academy closed its doors last Friday because of insolvency. She has not responded to requests for interviews. Billy D. Price, her bankruptcy attorney, did not respond to phone messages Thursday.

"There was some very bad mismanagement that went on," said Shari Bruce, the board's president.

The dispute between Ms. Beall and Lynacre board members centers on $750,000 that the school owes the state for inflating attendance figures during the 2003-04 and 2004-05 school years. . . .

Dallas Charter Closes: Students Hurt, Teachers Hurt, Taxpayers Left Holding Empty Bag

More fiasco reported by Dallas Morning News:

By KAREN AYRES SMITH / The Dallas Morning News
kayres@dallasnews.com
No one knows how much of the $750,000 that a defunct Dallas charter school owes Texas taxpayers will be recovered, state education officials said Wednesday.

When Lynacre Academy shut its doors Friday, school leaders had been in talks with the Texas Education Agency for two years about returning money that the state awarded the school based on inflated attendance figures in the 2003-04 and 2004-05 academic years.

TEA Commissioner Robert Scott said it's not uncommon for schools to overestimate attendance figures before a school year begins. But most districts settle up with the state the following summer and return the state funds they received for students who never attended school.

Lynacre Academy filed for bankruptcy before paying its debt. So, TEA is now one of several creditors lined up looking for its money.

"I don't have a clear picture of what their financial assets are," Mr. Scott said. "We will do whatever we can to recoup the taxpayers' money, but I can't be sure what we'll be able to get."

The school filed for bankruptcy amid ongoing talks about repaying the TEA debt. Agency and school officials said the attendance reporting problems could partly be the result of failing to properly report absences.

A bankruptcy judge ruled last week that the state agency could begin recouping the debt by limiting its payments to the school.

Shari Bruce, the school board's president, said it would have been impossible for the district to pay teacher salaries and other operating expenses without receiving its usual state payment.

Ms. Bruce said school board members had still hoped they could work out a long-term payment plan with the state when they decided to start classes this school year.

"Needless to say, I'm beginning to think that maybe at the beginning of this year we should have given up," she said. "It seems like a lot of teachers have been hurt and a lot of students have been hurt. It's a very hard situation."

Lynacre's unexpected closing last week sent 73 students in search of new schools.

TEA and school officials had met several times to discuss how the school could retire its hefty debt. Part of those discussions focused on the school's plans to sell more than 200 acres near Henderson in East Texas.

The school sold the property in May, but David Anderson, a TEA lawyer, said the state never received any funds.

Ms. Bruce said the school sold the property for $330,000 and needed the money to run its everyday operations and summer school, and to pay off other debtors.

"We had hoped to pay them some of that, but due to the pressing financial situation, we did not," Ms. Bruce said.

As school board president, Ms. Bruce said, she felt bad about not being able to pay the debt. She had hoped to build enrollment enough to make the school financially stable and pay off its creditors.

Mr. Scott said charter school directors often lack experience in overseeing a school's finances, which has caused significant problems in some schools.

The state authorized charter schools more than a decade ago to offer an innovative and competitive alternative to traditional public schools.

But the promise has not been kept by some of the companies that operate charters. . . .

Presidential Candidates' Question # 2: Charter School Privatization

Thank you for taking my question.

When Eli Broad and Bill Gates announced last year that they would inject $60,000,000 to "force education to the forefront of the 2008 presidential campaign," their Strong American Schools program was launched. Some prefer to call their effort Strong-Arming American Schools, since their money appears directed toward remaking public education by turning schools into charter schools, which operate as non-profit and for-profit corporate entities funded by public dollars but without local school board oversight and without the benefits and salaries of teachers in the regular public schools. Recently, for instance, Eli Broad gave $12,000,000 to spread charter schools in L.A.

There are huge sums of corporate money, venture capital (with tax credits), and foundation grants going to fund charter school startups acoss the country. Even the U. S. Department of Education has earmarked $273,000,000 for charter schools in next year's budget. What they all have in common is less public oversight and control by locally-elected school boards, fewer benefits and less job security for teachers, fewer services for special needs children, even more focus on test scores, and less adequate facilities for drama, sports, and other school activities.

The one big advantage of charter schools? They are cheaper, about 20 cents on the dollar cheaper.

Now here is my question, and thank you for your patience. Given the fact that charter schools give up so much in return for the promise of corporte efficiency, and given the fact that the research consisently shows their academic achievement based on test scores no better, and sometimes worse, than the regular public schools, is 20 cents on the dollar enough to recommend them for the urban children, urban parents, and urban teachers who already have been shortchanged ever since slavery?

What is your position on charter schools, and what will you do to make sure that public schools in urban and poor areas aren't replaced by this new efficiency model of corporate schools and year-round test preparation? And would you send your own children or grandchildren to one of these schools?

Presidential Candidates' Question # 1: Poverty and Performance

Now that it is clear that the campaign moves on, I have a few questions that might spice up the remaining debates beyond the dead boilerplate and the he said, did not, repartee.

Thank you for taking my question. And this question is for all candidates:

Our poorest children in the public schools face insurmountable challenges that threaten their future, as well as the future of their schools. It is an indisputable fact, for instance, that family income is positively correlated with student achievement, with state and district level test scores showing the correlation without exception, as do SAT and ACT scores: the lower the family income, the lower the test scores, and the higher the family income, the higher the test scores.

At a time when public school households across the nation are, indeed, getting poorer, NCLB demands test scores go higher and higher. While experts agree, without exception, agree that these demands can't be met, and that most public schools will fail by 2014, and while most urban and poor rural schools are being turned into abusive test prep chain gangs, politicians refuse to confront the truth for fear of being accused of the "bigotry of low expectations."

My question is this (and thank you for your patience): Do you see poverty as the problem that has to be addressed in order to raise student achievement? And if you do see poverty as a problem related to the achievement gaps, what will you do to reduce poverty in urban and rural neighborhoods and to help raise family incomes, which would constitute the grandest kind of education reform--one that does more good than harm?

Respectfully submitted,
Jim Horn

Playing the Hope Card, Doing the Knowledge

Last night I watched Obama in Boston on CSPAN. And sure enough, it was just like his rally in New Jersey, which was a chance for me to see one of the very few integrated public gatherings (other than a football game) since I moved here 5 years ago. And as he turned trump after trump to dash the doubters of his audacious mission to transform a dispirited and fearful America, I was inspired, I was moved.

He made a compelling case for why he and we should not wait, and as he did so, I thought about a comment I overheard the other day by one of those New Jersey ladies: "If Obama wins, the blacks will be getting kind of an attitude." This was one of those ladies who is not afraid to ask her real estate agent to keep blacks from buying in her cul-de-sac, the same lady who is married to the electrical contractor who gets red in the face when talks about all the money being poured down the drain in those Abbot districts, where funds are going to rebuild the schools that have never been integrated, the same funds that allow the same electrical contractor to spend a couple of hours at the gym during the work day complaining how the public funds are wasted.

When Obama talked about education, he was less inspiring. He talked about success stories in the urban schools in the same way as the blind sorority girls at Ed Trust, who believe that if teachers, parents, and children try and wish hard enough, they can overcome the effects of poverty that show up every time they take a test, every time they have to dodge bullets on the way home from school. I think Obama would be one of those Gates-Broad embracers, someone who could be sold a bill of goods by using the KIPP chain gang model of "work hard, be nice" or get out of my school. I worry about that, but I am not sure Hill and Bill would be any different.

I know that Obama is inspiring a whole new generation to the challenge of re-imaging the Dream. That is, no doubt, one of his highest trumps. But, you know what? When I look at the devastation of the past eight years, I think it might require some adults to get this train back on the rails.

And yet, I think Obama has thought deeply about the problems in store. One line that is central to his message is that he cannot do it alone. He wants to instigate a bottom up movement, he says, a ground swell that will sweep aside the corporate opposition to change.

Yes, I think that Obama has thought some about these issues, but I don't know about the rest of us. When I think about how different an Obama rally looks from the grocery store, the church, the school, the university, the street of America, I wonder how much we know about what we know and what we do, and I wonder, too, if there is not a great deal more to learn for all of us about our own good feelings and egalitarian impulses when we are at those political rallies--where it is safe and cool, too, to have a dream. I wonder if the same enthusiasm will be translated to change on the street, in the school. Maybe that is where it has to start, though, maybe that is where the fire will be re-lit, maybe that is where the knowledge will begin again.

We affirm that at the core of all the troubles we face today is our very ignorance of knowing. It is not knowledge, but the knowledge of knowledge, that compels. It is not the knowledge that a bomb kills, but what we want to do with the bomb, that determines whether or not we use it. Ordinarily we ignore it or deny it, to sidestep responsibility for our daily actions, as our actions--all without exception--help bring forth and validate the world wherein we become what we become with others, in that process of bringing forth a world. Blind to the transparency of our actions, we confuse the image we want to create with the being we want to bring forth. This is a misunderstanding that only the knowledge of knowledge can correct. --Maturana & Varela, 1998, p. 249.

From "Small Schools" to "Turnaround Teams": The Corporate Takeover Rushes Forward in Chicago

Educator-journalist, George Schmidt offers an update here on the continuing corporate takeover of public schools in Chicago. It would seem that the privatizers have opted to move away from their "small schools" takeover plan to a new strategy called "Turnaround Teams."

It is much more efficient and less time consuming than the bottom up creation of small schools via new charters. In large urban areas where the mayor has already achieved a dictatorship over the schools, it is a simple matter to use the NCLB guaranteed failure data to fire and replace administrators who have been trained in the Gates-Broad business model.

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By George N. Schmidt
Copyright 2008
Substance

Between January 24 and Thursday, January 31, the Chicago Board of Edu-cation hosted two major press conferences. The first, on January 24, was hosted by Chicago's public schools CEO Arne Duncan at the headquarters of the public school system at 125 S. Clark St. three blocks south of Chicago's City Hall in the Loop.

The second, on January 31, was hosted by CPS officials and Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley, at an elementary school — now called the "Sherman School of Excellence" — on Chicago's South Side.

Both press conferences were to tout what Chicago officials are hailing as the new "turnaround model" for fixing "broken" schools. According to the new "model", high schools whose test scores have remained low will be transformed by firing their current staffs and replacing those staffs with cadres of teachers and principals. The cadres will come from an outfit called the "Academy for Urban School Leadership" (AUSL), which is now in the business of "turning around" so-called "failing" schools, must as corporate "turnaround specialists supposedly have turned around failing corporations.

And although AUSL is housed currently in two Chicago public schools and is using public schools students as part of the training ground for its cadre, it is as corporate as any public school activity can get.

On January 31, with the Mayor of Chicago standing proudly on the side, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation announced that "Turnaround" was the new Gates model for corporate "school reform," and that Chicago would be the launching pad for the new model.

Almost lost in the media buzz was the fact that one of the schools being turned around had just spent six years as the proving ground for the most recent Gates corporate "school reform" model — Small Schools. On January 23, at the Board of Education meeting, Chicago schools CEO Arne Duncan announced that he was recommending that Orr High School, which has spent most of the 21st Century as the "Orr Campus" housing four (this year reduced to three) "small schools" had failed. What that meant was that at the end of this school year, the Orr teachers and principals will be fired and replaced, wholesale, by the "Turn-around Specialists" from AUSL.

The abandonment of the 'Small Schools Model' was difficult to tease out of the two events.

At the Board of Education meeting on Wednesday, January 23, Chicago Schools CEO Arne Duncan had made a presentation about the 'Turnaround Model.' Just as he had earlier proclaimed "Small Schools" as the way to fix low scoring inner city schools (between his appointment in 2001 and the end of 2007), so Duncan now proclaimed that the "Turnaround Model" had worked at the Sherman school (even though it was only put into Sherman in September 2006).

Once the proclamations had been made, the media and Chicago's corporate and political leaders moved fast to shift the narrative.

Small Schools are Out.

Turnarounds are In.

At the January 23 meeting of the Chicago Board of Education, all that anyone got was Power Point and some anecdotal testimonials from Duncan and two "Turnaround" principals.

It was not until Duncan's January 24 press conference that reporters were able to ask questions about the 'Turnaround Model' and its relation to 'Small Schools.' The reason was that one of the two high schools to be reconstituted using the 'Turnaround Model' has been using the 'Small Schools Model' for most of the decade.
According to Arne Duncan and Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley, the Small Schools at Orr High School have "failed", but the "Turnaround" (which will involve re-creating Orr from the Small Schools it was turned into seven years ago into one big high school again) will certainly succeed.

For all intents and purposes, Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley has now abandoned the "Small Schools Model" after nearly ten years of it. Ironically, and to the chagrin of many politicians and even some difficulties at the Gates Foun-dation (which funded some of the Small Schools sctivites in Chicago for most of the decade), Small Schools are out. Chicago now wants to have a group of cor-porate officials train cadre of "turnaround specialists" to take over schools that are "failing" and whip them into shape.

While Daley was planning to abandon Small Schools (and get $10 million from the Gates Foundation to promote his latest program), the Governor of Michigan was announcing that she was promoting Small Schools (partly as a re-sult of a recent visit to Chicago during which school officials forgot to tell her Chicago was getting rid of Small Schools) and New York was continuing to dis-mantle large schools and create small ones at a faster pace than ever before.

The January 24 press conference hosted by Arne Duncan was the first time any reporters had a chance to confirm that Small Schools was out. It was at the January 31 press conference that the whole story — and the new narrative to accompany the shift — was in. The press conference was held at the "Sherman School of Excellence" which is (supposedly) Chicago's first "turnaround school."

The January 31 press event included the usual adulation for Chicago's supposedly successful corporate school reform programs, all controlled by Chicago's City Hall. The event also included an announcement by the Gates Founda-tion that Gates was giving $10 million to fund the "Turnaround" center, a Chicago thing called the Academy for Urban School Leadership, founded by mil-lionaire Martin (Mike) Koldyke. Koldyke is the former head of the Chicago School Finance Authority and the Chicago School Reform Authority. One of his contributions to Chicago's corporate version of "school reform" more than a decade ago was to pay Checker Finn hundreds of thousands of dollars every year to be the lead consultant on Chicago's school reform.

The "Turnaround" model is less than two years old, by the way. It was put into Sherman Elementary School, a K-8 school located in one of the bleaker sections of Chicago's vast South Side ghetto, after CPS closed Sherman for "academic failure." From the opening of the "Sherman School of Excellence" (the new name of the school now that it's been placed in the hands of the Academy for Urban School Leadership) the turned around Sherman has had a great deal of corporate media attention, including a three-part series in the Chicago Tribune last September and recent hagiographic coverage on NPR (courtesy of Chicago Public Radio). Not mentioned in the hype, of course, is that there are as yet no data -- let alone significant trend data -- to validate any claims about the place. As with many of the miracles Chicago has announced since corporate school reform began here in 1995, they announce it and then craft the narrative to fit.

The trouble with the new iteration of the corporate narrative in Chicago is that it is banging up against the last one.

For the past decade, Gates money has been funding a great many "small schools" initiatives across Chicago, especially in the high schools. These have taken two main forms, all of them in the general high schools of the inner city.

In a few Chicago high schools (Orr; South Shore; Bowen; DuSable), the schools were broken up into "Small Schools". Each Small School had its own part of the building. Each had its own principal and administration. The result was that a building like Bowen High School (where I was teaching -- and serving as union delegate and school security coordinator -- when I was purged from CPS nearly ten years ago after the mayor and Paul Vallas had me sued for a million dollars for publishing the odious and ridiculous CASE tests) becomes three "Small Schools." Each had its own principal, office staff, and assorted other over-head.

Not surprisingly, the dollars always ran out before the virtues of small-ness got to the classroom in terms of smaller class sizes or additional staff for the most challenged kids, so things remained fundamentally the same. The teachers and other staffs sodiered on despite the contradictions, with only Substance ever mentioning some of the stranger results (including that huge internal administra-tive overhead). Small Schools was (were?) by definitiion a good thing, and mil-lions of Gates and other outside dollars flowed into them.
Orr High School, in Chicago's West Side ghetto (Pulaski and Chicago ave-nues) was unique among the Small Schools experiments. It became four Small Schools on the "Orr Campus." One of them was a "military academy" (the Phoe-nix Military Academy) where the kids wore Army uniforms and supposedly had extra discipline courtesy of that military them. The others had other themes, and the whole place, which had once been "Orr High School" became the "Orr Campus."

The Orrs (as many people have called them) had another distinction: every year, in October or November, its "Principal for a Day" was Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley. Principal for a Day is a major event every year in Chi-cago. Corporate, civic, and athletic leaders (many celebrities) spend a morning in a school, hang out with the principal and some teachers, do photo ops in class-rooms, and generally have a nice day before going for a massive downtown dinner where everyone thanks everyone else. The most recent Principal for a Day events have had more than 1,000 participants (for out total of 600 schools).

Every year, Mayor Daley went to the Orrs, often after proclaiming how important Small Schools were for transforming "failing" schools.

Two years ago (November 2, 2006), I ran into Daley during the Orr Principal for a Day event and covered his media remarks. Orr had covered most major bases in its Principal for a Day people. One was Victoria Chou (University of Illinois at Chicago). Another was Torey Malatia (Chicago Public Radio). Daley was the main one, though.

In addition to doing Principal for a Day, Daley was going to make a major announcement about some U.S. Education Department money coming into Chi-cago. The November 2006 announcement was that money was coming from the Bush administration to establish programs of merit pay for teachers and princi-pals).

But the November 2, 2006, event had an unusual twist, one that left the of-ficials standing before the TV cameras silent for a brief moment. Daley's media people had set up a podium in the main hall of the school, and all the media were supposed to face towards a wall in front of which was Daley's podium. A nice mural was the background. We were facing south (the usual bank of TV cameras; print reporters seated in the front row, knees crossed and notebooks perched) towards the mayor's official portable podium. The school's main en-trance was to our left (east) and a cross hall was to our right (west) leading to the school lunchroom.

Daley began speaking. Then a major gang fight broke out less than a hundred feet from where they had set up his podium. Everything stopped while Daley was poised to announce some more U.S. Department of Education dollars for Chicago's miracle school reforms.

The press corps waited, in some cases with pens poised. I was the only re-porter who went down the hall to witness a platoon of security people rushing in to suppress the gang fight while the mayor and assorted others began to drone on. (CPS had provided three different security teams for Orr that day).

Three security people quickly shut a door and blocked me from taking photographs of the fight or of its quick suppression. Both were making quite a bit of noise. I got a few photographs, but mostly they show a swarm of security through a door tackling brawling students, while other security tried to block my camera. Within two minutes, calm had been restored.

When I turned east and looked back at the carefully prepared scene of the Mayor's media event, every other reporter was still perched facing Daley's po-dium. Many were busily ignoring the very loud interruption taking place a short distance away. I returned to the press pack and continued taking notes and pho-tographs. It was clear that whatever benefits had happened at the "Orr Campus" as a result of Small Schools, an end to the violence that comes with the drug gangs on Chicago's West Side was not one of them.

Over the years, it became clear that there had been very little movement or "improvement" of the kind measured by test scores and other "matrices" of "data driven management" — at Orr or at any of the other major Small Schools experiments in Chicago.

As far as test scores went, at Orr or any other the other Small Schools CPS had created during that iteration of corporate school reform, the bottom was still the bottom.

The reason has been simple.

During the same time Orr and the others have been forced to take the leftover kids, Chicago has been increasing the number of selective enrollment schools at the high school level. The intensity of selection prior to 9th grade has never been harsher in Chicago. Neglect of the general high school; slight privi-leges for others.
This process began almost as soon as Mayor Daley was given dictatorial control over Chicago's schools (1995).

It began first as a series of "college preparatory magnet high schools" (the number of which has doubled since Mayor Daley took over CPS in 1995). Between 1997 and 2001, Chicago opened five "new" "College Preparatory Magnet High Schools" — Northside College Prep; Walter Payton College Prep; Jones College Prep; Lindblom College Prep (con-verted form Lindblom Technical High School); Martin Luther King College Prep; and Gwendolyn Brooks College Prep. These were added to a smaller number of selective enrollment high schools that had been created two decades earlier as part of the city's desegregation programs. All of the exclusive college prep school in Chicago select their students on the basis of test scores, leaving everyone else behind for the general high schools (like the Orrs).

Since 2002, the Daley administration, through the Board of Education and CEO Arne Duncan, has also expanded selective Charter High Schools (foremost right now, a group called the "Noble Street Network of Charter High Schools").

The most dramatic transformation of any high school in Chicago took place at Martin Luther Kind High School. By 1997, Kind High School (like Orr to-day) was one of the five "worst" high schools in Chicago (as measured by test scores). Within three years, Chicago had transformed King into one of the best? How? By kicking out all of the students who had attended the old King High School and replacing them with students who had high test scores.

Naturally, the students who would have attended King High School but were now excluded had to go somewhere, and they went to Phillips, DuSable (which became "Small Schools"), and Tilden high schools. Scores at those three schools, already low, dropped further. Additionally, gang violence increased as the growing number of selective enrollment high schools got rid of kids who were disruptive, sending them to the schools of last resort, the general high schools.

More and more, children from families with resources were applying to the city's selective high schools (which can usually kick out the "bad" kids after they've pre-screened their 9th graders). At the same time, a new class of high school student — called by some the "leftover kids" — were being crammed into the city's 40 or so general high schools. The creation of an elite cadre of high schools (which select students on the basis of test scores) left the "leftover kids" (a phrase you'll hear in Chicago, not just in New Orleans) for the general high schools, including those that had gone to Small Schools (and a less major thing, "small learning communities").
Despite all the Small Schools hype, the Orr Campus stagnated. Orr was a victim on the city's north side of the same forces that had created the problems exported from King High School to Phillips, DuSable and Tilden on the South Side. At places like Orr, things had deteriorated to the point where they couldn't keep the gangs quiet even on a day when Mayor Daley — Orr's Principal for a Day — was there with his entourage from City Hall, CPS, and the U.S. Depart-ment of Education to announce how "merit pay" was going to solve the prob-lems of inner city education.

A little more than a year after the gang brawl at Orr down the hall from Mayor Daley's carefully staged media event, Orr's doom was announced. On January 30, 2008, Mayor Daley announced that Chicago was now promoting "Turnaround Specialists" for "troubled schools" and one of the first he would be closing was — Orr.
He told a major press conference that he was glad that the Gates Founda-tion was giving Chicago another $10 million for school reform. This round of money is going straight to the "Turnaround" group, a quasi corporate cult called the Academy for Urban School Leadership. Even the Chicago Sun-Times asked what happened to Small Schools, and why Orr was being closed when Orr had done what it was supposed to have done during the last iteration of sure fire how to fix it school reform things.

Daley ignored the question, Gates dodged it, and when I asked whether Daley was going to meet with the Orr teachers and explain why they were being fired after having done Small Schools for the better part of the decade, Daley's press people ended the event without answering my question (or the follow up question I had for the fraudulent parent they cart around with them to sing the praises of their newest thing).

Spellings Asks for Different Judges in NCLB Case

If you don't like the ruling, just put in an order for some more judges. From the NYTimes:

One month after a three-judge panel of a federal appeals court revived a legal challenge to the federal No Child Left Behind law, Education Secretary Margaret Spellings said she would ask the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, in Cincinnati, to convene a larger panel to reconsider that ruling. In its 2-to-1 ruling on Jan. 7, the Sixth Circuit said that school districts in Michigan and several other states had been justified in their 2005 suit that argued the law required them to pay for testing and other programs without providing sufficient federal money.

DC Parents Plan More Demonstrations Against Fenty-Rhee Closures

From WaPo:

With prayer, song and chants, more than 100 D.C. students, parents and supporters took their displeasure over a proposal to close 23 schools to the school system's headquarters yesterday in the latest show of opposition to the plan.

The group, much smaller than the 5,000 students who would be affected by the closings, braved a brisk early morning wind to pray that God would "turn the hearts" of Mayor Adrian M. Fenty and Chancellor Michelle A. Rhee. Several police officers escorted the marchers from the headquarters, on North Capitol Street, to E Street and on to another set of government buildings at Judiciary Square.

There, D.C. Council members Harry Thomas Jr. (D-Ward 5) and Marion Barry (D-Ward 8) joined the protest. "There are some people in this government who care about the rights of everyone," said Thomas, "and want to make sure that every neighborhood school gets what it deserves."

Barry and Thomas later sent a letter to Fenty (D) asking him to stop the closings process and set up additional meetings with parents and others. The letter said activists are planning more protests.

"Your failure to change course will likely result in continued agitation and take away the focus, time and energy from much needed educational reforms," the council members wrote. . . .

Bloomberg Slashes School Funds But Not Consultants

From the NYTimes:

Principals across New York City turned on their computers Thursday morning to discover that because of Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg’s new budget proposal, their budgets had been slashed overnight by sums ranging from $9,000 to $447,587. And they reacted with unvarnished fury, while frantically scouring for places to cut spending.

One principal, Steven M. Satin of Norman Thomas High School in Manhattan, sent a protest by e-mail to the deputy schools chancellor in charge of finances, calling the cuts “an outrage and a disgrace and a slap in the face to everyone given the task of providing the best education we can for our students.” He forwarded his message to colleagues, and they in turn shot back replies ranging from outraged to scornful to sardonic.

“Might they also consider reducing what they pay in no-bid contracts for testing, ARIS, and any number of consultants living large on the backs of our students,” a Brooklyn principal wrote. “How much more do NYC public school students and their families have to give up?” ARIS is the acronym for an $80 million computer system that is used to compile and analyze student test scores and other data.

The e-mail messages were provided to The New York Times by a principal who wanted to show the depths of anger among principals but who did not want to be identified for fear of retribution by the Education Department or colleagues. In another sign of discontent, the principals’ and teachers’ unions, joined by elected officials, took to the steps of City Hall on Thursday to denounce the cuts. And in interviews, principals said they were carefully weighing what was expendable.

Asked what he would cut, Barry M. Fein, the principal of the Seth Low Intermediate School in Brooklyn, responded, “My throat.” . . . .