The Nation Exposes Obama's Cynical Education Gambit

Broad Inauguration Party in Washington D.C., Tuesday, Jan. 20, 2009. (Photo/Stuart Ramson)

While many of us were out busting our humps to gather up a few dollars and votes for the change we thought we could believe in, the Harvard boys were cutting backroom deals with the multi-billionaire oligarchs to fully engage their plan to corporatize American public education, beginning with the urban schools.

There is no wonder that Spellings and Paige were running around breathless and wild-eyed, even as it became clear that McCain was going down. The insiders knew the Bush charter plan would not only go forward under Obama, but it would be slammed into overdrive by the clan of vulture capitalists and tax credit leeches who paid plenty to play the high stakes game for control of American schooling.

From The Nation's Dana Goldstein, where the story picks up on Obama's decision to invite the three stooges to the White House recently to proclaim the new post-partisan victory for philanthro-capitalism, disguised neatly under the banner of civil rights--with one particularly well-paid civil rights advocate getting a half-million for his time:

. . . the single-mindedness--some would say obsessiveness--of the reformers' focus on these specific policy levers ["free market competition"] puts off more traditional Democratic education experts and unionists. As they see it, with the vast majority of poor children educated in traditional public schools, education reform must focus on improving the management of the public system and the quality of its services--not just on supporting charter schools. What's more, social science has long been clear on the fact that poverty and segregation influence students' academic outcomes at least as much as do teachers and schools.

Obama's decision to invite representatives of only one side of this divide to the Oval Office confirmed what many suspected: the new administration--despite internal sympathy for the "broader, bolder approach"--is eager to affiliate itself with the bipartisan flash and pizazz around the new education reformers. The risk is that in doing so the administration will alienate supporters with a more nuanced view of education policy. What's more, critics contend that free-market education reform is a top-down movement that is struggling to build relationships with parents and community activists, the folks who typically support local schools and mobilize neighbors on their behalf.

So keenly aware of this deficit are education reformers that a number of influential players were involved in the payment of $500,000 to Sharpton's nearly broke nonprofit, the National Action Network, in order to procure Sharpton as a national spokesman for the EEP. And Sharpton's presence has unquestionably benefited the EEP coalition, ensuring media attention and grassroots African-American crowds at events like the one held during Obama's inauguration festivities, at Cardozo High School in Washington.

"Sharpton was a pretty big draw," says Washington schools chancellor Michelle Rhee, recalling the boisterous crowd at Cardozo. Rhee is known for shutting down schools and aggressively pursuing a private sector-financed merit pay program. Some of the locals who came out to hear Sharpton booed Rhee's speech at the same event, despite the fact that her policies embody the movement for which Sharpton speaks.

The $500,000 donation to Sharpton's organization was revealed by New York Daily News columnist Juan González on April 1, as the EEP and National Action Network were co-hosting a two-day summit in Harlem, attended by luminaries including Chicago schools CEO Arne Duncan. The money originated in the coffers of Plainfield Asset Management, a Connecticut-based hedge fund whose managing director is former New York City schools chancellor Harold Levy, an ally of the current chancellor, Joel Klein. Plainfield has invested in Playboy, horse racetracks and biofuels. But the company did not donate the money directly to Sharpton. Rather, in what appears to have been an attempt to cover tracks, the $500,000 was given to a nonprofit entity called Education Reform Now, which has no employees. (According to IRS filings, Education Reform Now had never before accepted a donation of more than $92,500.) That group, in turn, funneled the $500,000 to Sharpton's nonprofit.

If one person is at the center of this close-knit nexus of Wall Street and education reform interests, it is Joe Williams, who serves as president and treasurer of the EEP's board and is also the executive director of Education Reform Now. But it is through his day job that Williams, a former education reporter for the Daily News, exerts the most influence. He is executive director of Democrats for Education Reform (DFER), a four-year-old PAC that has gained considerable influence, raising $2 million in 2008 and demonstrating remarkable public relations savvy.

The group's six-person team works out of an East Forty-fifth Street office donated--rent-free--by the hedge fund Khronos LLC. In recent months, DFER has had a number of high-profile successes, chief among them a highly coordinated media campaign to call into question the work of Obama education adviser Linda Darling-Hammond, once considered a top contender for the job of education secretary. During the same week in early December, the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal and Boston Globe published editorials or op-eds based on DFER's anti-Darling-Hammond talking points, which focused on the Stanford professor's criticisms of Teach for America and other alternative-certification programs for teachers. Less than two weeks later, Obama appointed DFER's choice to the Education Department post, Chicago schools CEO Duncan.

During campaign season, DFER donated to House majority whip James Clyburn, Senator Mark Warner and Virginia swing district winner Representative Tom Periello, among others. The organization regularly hosts events introducing education reformers like Rhee and Fenty to New York City "edupreneurs," finance industry players for whom education reform is a sideline. DFER is focused on opening a second office, in Colorado, a state viewed as being in the forefront of standards- and testing-based education reform. The group successfully promoted Denver schools superintendent Michael Bennett to fill the Senate seat vacated when Obama named Ken Salazar as interior secretary. Bennett led the school system with the highest-profile merit pay system in the nation.

During the Democratic Party's national convention in Denver this past August, DFER hosted a well-attended event at the Denver Museum of Art, during which Fenty, Booker, Klein, Sharpton and other well-known Democrats openly denigrated teachers unions, whose members accounted for 10 percent of DNCC delegates. With Clyburn and other veteran members of Congress in attendance, many longtime observers of Democratic politics believed the event represented a sea change in the party's education platform, the arrival of a new generation. While progressive groups such as Education Sector, Education Trust and the Citizens' Commission on Civil Rights have long attempted to push free-market education reforms to the Democratic Party, it is only with the arrival of DFER that the movement has had a lobbying arm with an explicit focus on influencing the political process through fundraising and media outreach.

"For a lot of groups that are dependent upon both private money and government money, there's a tendency not to want to get involved in the nitty-gritty of politics," Williams said in a March 31 phone interview from Denver, where he was meeting with Colorado politicians, setting the stage for DFER's expansion there. "Our group--what we do is politics. We make it clear: we're not an education reform group. We're a political reform group that focuses on education reform. That distinction matters because all of our partners are the actual education reform groups. We're trying to give them a climate where it's easier for them to do their work."

The education reformers who came to prominence in the 1990s, including the founders of Teach for America and the Knowledge Is Power Program, the national charter school network that fought unionization in one of its Brooklyn schools, often went to great lengths to portray themselves as explicitly apolitical. Nevertheless, "a lot of those people are, politically, Democrats," says Sara Mead, a DFER board member and director of early childhood programs at the Washington-based New America Foundation. "One of those things that DFER does that's really important is to help give those people a way to assert their identity as Democrats. It's important for those groups' long-term success, but also for Democrats, to the extent that some of these organizations are doing really good things for the kids whose parents are Democratic constituents. It's important that those organizations are identified with us rather than being co-opted by Republicans, as they were in the past." . . . .

So let's see, if I am working for a an outfit like KIPP or TFA, and I don't want to proclaim my political allegiance, I can funnel money through DFER to pay off the politicians who will make the decisions that favor the benefactors and oligarchs who are funding my programs. Is this what you might call non-identity politics??

I think this must signal the end of the two party system, since it no longer matters which party you belong to--in the end, the oligarchs will buy either.

Has Howard Dean announced for 2012 yet?? As an Independent?? He's a shoo-in.

Tennessee Democrats: Tell Arne Duncan to Take His $100 Million and Go to Hell With It

The squeeze is on. Duncan has begun using the $5 billion federal slush fund to bribe his way to the successful corporate takeover of urban schooling in America. With the Feds now acting as front men for the Oligarchs (Gates, Broad, Waltons, etc.), the decision to be faced by state and local governments alone is simply this: to reenergize the public responsibility to offer humane public schools to all children or to turn the education of poor children over to corporate welfare schools that offer two tracks: test prep chain gangs or prison prep chain gangs.

There is no evidence to demonstrate that the corporate solution being proposed offers any pedagogical or social advantage over a renewed commitment to public schools. The KIPP cult-for-culture model being held up as the exemplar for can never work on a large scale, and Duncan knows it.

The short-term advantage of accepting the Duncan bribes signals a capitulation of public responsibility in a democratic state to provide for the equal education of its citizens. To accept the Duncan bribes is to invite the advancement of publicly-sanctioned, corporate-controlled apartheid schools for America. Don't do it.

From the Tennessean:

. . . .Democrats blocked a bill last week that would have made thousands of impoverished students in the state's 11 largest school districts eligible to enroll in charter schools. Lawmakers said they felt the expansion was too much too soon.

But the Obama administration disagrees. Education Secretary Arne Duncan said Thursday that Tennessee's stance could jeopardize the state's shot at millions of dollars set aside to encourage school innovation.

"We want to reward those states that are willing to lead the country where we need to go and are willing to push this reform agenda very, very hard," Duncan told The Associated Press. "And the states that don't have the stomach or the political will, unfortunately, they're going to lose out."

Charter schools are publicly funded but operate independently of local school boards, giving them more flexibility with staffing rules and school curriculum.

Under state law, charters can accept only low-performing students, students from low-performing schools and, in some cases, low-income students in early grades.

A bill introduced this year would have opened charter schools to any students receiving free and reduced-price lunch in the state's 11 largest districts, making about 73 percent of Metro Nashville's 75,000 students eligible. Currently about 20,000 Nashville students, or 27 percent, are eligible to attend charters, though less than 1 percent are enrolled, according to the Tennessee Charter Schools Association.

President Barack Obama has specifically called for changes to enrollment rules and said he believes restrictions hamper innovation. Opponents say charter schools cherry-pick the best students and siphon resources from regular schools because taxpayer dollars follow the student. . . .

One News Story = How Many Good Science Lessons?

For civilization to survive, we must adjust our focus from yammering on about preparing children to compete in a global economy to something that is inclusive of preparing children to cooperate in the global ecology. There will be no global economy or any other economy unless CO2 emissions are scaled back to a sustainable level.

Here is one news story that could spark a half-dozen related science lessons, that could who knows, help to make it possible for our grandchildren to build happy lives for their children, rather than hope to survive an anguished hell on earth. From HuffPo:

Energy Secretary Dr. Steven Chu recently made headlines by calling for the widespread use of "cool roofs" as a smart way to combat climate change.

The idea was oversimplified in the news media as simply "painting the world white," but that is not what Secretary Chu suggested. In fact, it is a caricature of what could be an important way to offset our carbon emissions. Secretary Chu is correct in suggesting we pursue cool roofs, and I hope more people will learn about this new strategy and consider adopting it for their homes and businesses.

If nothing else, a white or cool roof will save you up to 20 percent on your air conditioning bill and it's hard to argue with that. Over its lifecycle, a new white roof costs no more than a traditional roof.

The basic idea behind cool roofs is simple and recognized for centuries by the ancient Greeks and Egyptians. Dark colors absorb more heat than light colors. It's for this reason that people living in the tropics wear light-colored clothes and the same reason you don't lean on a black car on a hot day. Similarly, darker colored roofs retain more of the heat from sunlight within our atmosphere. But light roofs reflect more of that light straight back into space. Therefore, making roofs lighter in color increases their solar reflectivity and directly offsets CO2 emissions.

The potential savings are both huge and surprising. My colleagues and I have estimated that replacing urban roofs with solar-reflective materials in tropical and temperate regions of the world would offset 24 billion tons of CO2.

Let me explain. The average US roof is approximately 1,000 square feet and lasts for about 20 years. A white roof produces a one-time offset of 10 tons of CO2 and would eliminate emissions from one car for more than 2.5 years. Considered on a national scale, the equivalent would be eliminating two billion tons of CO2 emissions or removing 20 million cars off the road for 20 years. From a global perspective, replacing dark roofs with cool ones would be equivalent to taking half the world's cars - 300 million vehicles -- off the road for 20 years or reducing 24 billion tons of CO2 emissions for the same period.

That may sound too good to be true, but it is possible.

Because most large, modern cities have dark roofs, roads, and parking lots, they tend to run 5-10% hotter and create the "urban heat island" effect. Cool roofs mitigate the "urban heat island" effect and improve outdoor air quality and comfort. Light-colored roofs have other benefits. Most importantly, they lower temperatures inside of homes and businesses, thereby reducing the need for air-conditioning during the hot summer months. That translates to additional savings in CO2 emissions.

Since 2005, California building standards have required that any flat roof on a new building be a white roof. The California will soon also require new residential roofs to have cool colors as a way to reduce cooling costs. In an effort to cut its power costs, the city of Phoenix recently invested $28,600 of its $4.3 million in housing funding from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act to apply reflective white paint on the roof of a public housing complex.

Simply put, a cool roof will save money for homeowners and businesses through reduced air conditioning costs. The real question is not whether we should move toward cool roof technology: it's why we haven't done it sooner.

Kudos to Dr. Chu for examining the science and embracing this sensible approach in combating climate change.

Dr. Art Rosenfeld is a member of the California Energy Commission.

A look at Chicago schools under Duncan

also posted elsewhere

Every now and then it is useful to step back from the hype and the spin and see what people on the ground have to say about important issues. In the case of education policy, we should not forget that George Bush gave us Rod Paige and the so-called Texas Miracle (which never was) as the argument for passing into law No Child Left Behind.

Obama has chosen his basketball buddy Arne Duncan as Secretary of Education. Duncan is an exemplar of several things (1) mayoral control of the school system; (2) a non-educator put in charge of education. The track record of both is not particularly sanguine.

But rather than merely my saying so, perhaps you will take the words of someone on the ground in Chicago. Wade Tillett is a Chicago public school parent and teacher who also blogs about Chicago schools. The piece below appeared on his Bubble Over Network, the name of which comes from the ubiquitous use of bubble-in mass produced tests. I have Wade's permission to reproduce the entire piece, and I will add a few comments of my own at the end.

Flunk, retain, drop out

Written by Wade on May 27th, 2009

Soon scores from a small portion of the Illinois Standards Achievement Test (ISAT) will come back.
The booklet sent out with ISAT says “No person or organization shall make a decision about a student or educator on the basis of a single test.” (1)
Despite this, Chicago Public Schools (CPS) trusts this test to override our own teachers in deciding the future of our children.
For third, sixth and eighth graders, our promotion policy automatically flunks at least one in four children based on a thirty or forty question test. (2)
At the end of summer school, CPS is five times more likely to retain a child for the next year if they are African-American than if they are white. (3)
By retaining a student, CPS increases that child’s chance of dropping out by 29%. (4)
Chicago Public Schools spends $100 million dollars every year on this policy. (5)
Extensive research shows that it DOES NOT WORK. Repeating a grade does not help children succeed. (4)
Why do we continue to threaten eight-year-olds and tell third-graders they are failures? Why do we make students cry, throw-up, and finally quit?
Chicago Public Schools should use the $100 million it spends every year on holding back kids to instead provide what students really need: caring professionals with the time and resources to find out what works for each of them. Our children need advocates, not inflexible policies spit out of a machine.
CPS should stop using standardized test scores to override all other considerations in making student grade promotion decisions. I encourage anyone who agrees to sign the petition. And I encourage other parents to contact Parents United for Responsible Education if your child is forced to go to summer school.

1. 2009 ISBE ISAT Professional Testing Practices for Educators booklet

2. CPS policy sends any student below the 24th percentile to summer school.

3. http://pureparents.org/data/files/retentionreport09.pdf

4. http://www.fairtest.org/chicago-research-criticizes-retention-test-driven-improvement

5. $10,000 per student per year times approximately 10,000 students retained

Here's what is scary. Chicago is the model for what Duncan wants to do to American education. What has been done in Chicago since Richie Daley got mayoral control of the schools, first under Paul Vallas (who also imposed his "magic" on Philadelphia and New Orleans, but who is really interested in elective public office) and then under his one-time assistant Arne Duncan, has NOT addressed issues like the achievement gap that plagues poor, minority students. There is extensive evidence in the peer-reviewed literature of the negative consequences of retention, and that is without even considering the scope of retention system-wide in Chicago. The use of one-shot high-stakes multiple choice tests - which may or may not truly be standardized - to make the determination of who is retained is contrary to what the psychometricians responsible for the creation of the tests say is appropriate use of their tests.

The idea that anyone at below the 24th percentile is automatically required to attend summer school is also troublesome, unless there is an independent determination that at such a level the student is unable to function at the appropriate level for the next grade. It seems like an arbitrary cutoff without sufficient justification. Even if one presumes that the test is an accurate measurement of meaningful skills and knowledge, by that rationale we are assuming that just under 1/4 of all of our students are not succeeding sufficiently in regular school settings. If that is true, perhaps the answer is to address the deficiencies in the schooling received during the school year. Of course, the track record in Chicago has been instead to reconstitute troublesome schools, then not include their performance in the evaluation of the system on grounds that it is a "new school" so comparison with previous years' test scores is meaningless. Thus the Chicago Public Schools mask the lack of progress under many years of mayoral control.

That we are doing this to relatively young children, marking a significant portion as failures early in the school career is an abomination - the failure is not theirs, it is ours, all of us, for allowing this to occur.

I will not attempt to rationalize the disparate impact of these policies by race. Wade points that out clearly.

Testing, then analyzing test results and applying punitive sanctions has not yet proven successful within cities and state nor across the nation. While some advocates of the NCLB approach brag on "improved" scores at the elementary level in NAEP (the National Assessment of Educational Progress), such improvement is tenuous at best. The amount of improvement at the elementary level is less than in the previous cycle, that previous cycle having covered a period most of which occurred before NCLB. There is no improvement demonstrated at the upper grades. And even in the lower grades, the so-called achievement gap has not closed - minority children still lag behind as they did before - for this it is worth remembering that the ostensible purpose of NCLB was to close those gaps, to ensure that poor and minority children were not shortchanged on their education.

People in Chicago have been trying to warn the rest of us since before Obama became a candidate for president. Parents United for Responsible Education (PURE) has done yeoman's work in documenting the real story behind the supposed success of the various initiatives in Chicago.

Wade Tillett's piece is but one of a series of alarums to which we should pay heed. As Arne Duncan continues on his listening tour around the nation, people should be prepared to challenge him on the real record in Chicago.

In the last presidency we learned how badly our nation's educational system could be damaged by propagating a failed model. I fear we confront a similar challenge right now.

Learn, and then speak out, for the future of our public schools.

Peace.

Philanthrocapitalists in Philadelphia; Arne Smiles

     According to Philadelphia Inquirer reporter Martha Goodall, the KIPP Philadelphia program has received a $4.6 million grant from the Charter School Growth Fund, a non-profit funded by leading philanthrocapitalists.  Backed by many of the same funding sources, KIPP is also negotiating with the district:

KIPP officials are talking with the Philadelphia School District about playing a possible role in Superintendent Arlene Ackerman's academic-reform initiative, Imagine 2014. Her plan includes the option of converting more troubled district schools into charter schools with successful operators such as KIPP.

Somewhere, Arne Duncan is smiling at Philadelphia's attempt to grab some of his "Race off the Cliff" funds.  In the future, grants like these can also be matched dollar-for-dollar by the "Innovation Fund" in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009.  Schools the philanthrocapitalists deep appropriate for urban minorities get their own slice of corporate welfare while public schools face the chopping block. 

     The grant certainly appeases the guidelines set by the Coalition for Student Achievement's guidelines for using the stimulus dollars and the Philanthropy Roundtable's guide for charter schools (cleverly titled "Charter Schools 2.0," a tribute to the data-idiots driving education reform).  

     The philanthropic community plays by their own rules and operate outside the realm of accountability.  Like young KIPPsters, the American public is trained to dream of wealth and riches; questioning the wisdom of the wealthy is hardly permitted.  But there are certainly reasons to be skeptical of the philanthropic community, as outlined in this article by Joan Roelo.  It may take another round of philanthropic failures before the general public begins to collectively question their reform efforts.  The business model of reform - competition, merit-pay, union-busting, and data-driven - might be a great system for programming computers but it's a terrible system for an inherently humanistic endeavor.  

     Gates is looking to the future.  Here is his dream of childhood.  Does it match yours?

Bloomberg's School Dictatorship Challenged

From Arthur Goldstein, aka NYC Educator, writing in the Daily News:

BY ARTHUR GOLDSTEIN
SPECIAL TO THE NEWS
Sunday, May 24th 2009, 4:00 AM

As a teacher in an A-rated school, I believe mayoral control has been an absolute disaster.

Absolute power corrupts absolutely. Our federal and state governments have checks and balances so no one person has total control, which is a synonym for dictatorship.

City kids need reasonable class sizes and decent facilities. Under Mayor Bloomberg, class sizes just took their biggest leap in 10 years.

Some people say class size doesn't matter, but even the best teachers can give more attention to 20 kids than 34. The fewer kids I have, the more individual attention each one gets.

Under this mayor, charter schools get the best of everything, including small classes and new technology.

My high school was built to hold 1,800 but enrolls 4,450 students. My kids sit in a crumbling trailer, with no technology and often no heat in the winter. So much for efficiency.

The mayor says it's his way or "the bad old days." That's a false choice. We need a system that works better than what we have.

We need a chancellor who works for the kids, not the mayor. The chancellor needs to fight for what's best for kids whether or not the mayor agrees. He can't do that if the mayor can fire him for not following his orders.

A few years ago, the mayor fired two members of the Panel for Educational Policy who had the nerve to disagree with him.

Consequently, the PEP is a mayoral rubber stamp. No mayoral appointee dares to stand up for kids.
This mayor boasts about accountability. Teachers are accountable. Principals are accountable, but the only time the mayor is accountable is once every four years.

That's not enough, particularly for a man who is prepared to spend $100 million to buy reelection and who scoffed at the voters by changing the term limits law they twice affirmed.

Four more years of this system guarantees the privatization and destruction of public education in New York City. That's a prospect we should all oppose.

Arthur Goldstein teaches English as a Second Language at Francis Lewis High School in Queens.

Update on NCLB and Military Recruiters

A clip from an informative post by Rachel Natelson at Huffington Post:

. . . .To be eligible for federal funding under the terms of No Child Left Behind (NCLB), public high schools must offer military recruiters "the same access to secondary school students as is provided generally to post-secondary educational institutions or to prospective employers." Far from equalizing access, however, this policy has authorized military personnel to wage aggressive and unmonitored recruiting campaigns in the schools least likely to promote college and civilian employment opportunities. Targeting schools in high-poverty districts, which lack the resources to advise students on alternative options, military recruiters do not so much complement civilian representatives as supersede them.

Federally funded schools not only must offer recruiters access to their premises, but also must provide the military with household contact information for all students. While the law grants students and parents the right to "opt out" of the latter requirement by withholding their personal information, this safeguard rests entirely on the efforts of local school officials and provides no meaningful enforcement mechanism. It also fails to regulate the manner in which recruiters interact with students in the hallways, cafeterias, and classrooms of their schools.

A 2007 survey conducted by the NY Civil Liberties Union paints an especially worrisome portrait of military recruiting under No Child Left Behind. According to its findings, 40% of high school students polled failed to receive recruitment opt-out forms from their schools and an additional 33% were unsure if their schools made such forms available. More disturbingly, 21% of freshman, sophomore, and junior respondents and 27% of 12th graders reported the use of class time by military recruiters. Nearly half of respondents at selected schools reported that they did not know to whom they could report recruiter misconduct, and a third were unable to identify a school official to advise them of the risks and benefits of military enlistment.

. . . .

On-campus recruiting practices, meanwhile, continue to beg for increased oversight. One Army recruiting pamphlet, for example, explicitly instructs recruiters to "coordinate with school officials to eat lunch in the school cafeteria several times each month," and to "deliver donuts and coffee for the faculty once a month... [to] help in scheduling classroom presentations and advise teachers of the many Army opportunities." While "tangible inducements" to minors may now be a forbidden tactic in credit card marketing, military recruiters continue to ply students with key chains, hats, and t-shirts in pursuit of their goals. . . . .

Michelle Rhee's Crystal Ball Worth $27 Million

After 49 years of declining enrollment in DC Schools, Michelle Rhee is finding it difficult to make the case for her projected increase in enrollment next year. Particularly since she has left D. C. Council entirely out of the loop in her murky deliberations and arbitrary decision making.

With charter schools having established a predictable history in DC of siphoning off public school students every year since they began, Rhee now wants City Council to buy into her crystal ball gazing that has projected an increase in public school enrollment next year, even as the charter schools expect to add another 3,000 or so of DC's public school students.

And if she doesn't get the extra $27 million she wants for her invented reality, Rhee has publicized plans to make cuts in individual schools, rather than tamper with the corporate bureaucracy that she has constructed around her at central office. From WaPo:

. . . . The council voted May 12 to hold back $27 million of the system's $760 million budget for 2010, claiming that Rhee's enrollment forecast -- which calls for an increase of 373 students to a total of 45,054 after years of steady decline -- has been inflated to squeeze more money out of the District. The council's projection, based on the downward trend of the past three years, puts the student population at 41,541. The District's burgeoning public charter schools estimate that they will enroll 28,066 students, up from 25,363 this year.

The council is not challenging the charter estimate. It presumes that much of the charter growth is continuing to come at the expense of traditional public schools, which is why it doubts Rhee's projection.

"I am simply asking, where are 3,000 new students going to come from?" chairman Vincent C. Gray (D) said at the May 12 hearing. "I am going to go out this afternoon and look to see if there are 3,000 parachutes coming out of the sky."

Rhee has waged an aggressive public and private campaign to roll back the council's decision. She has lobbied members individually and targeted local school budgets -- rather than central offices -- for cuts should the $27 million reduction stand. Spreadsheets posted on the D.C. schools Web site break down the potential impact school by school.

That has turned the heat up on council members, who are getting anxious calls and e-mails from constituents. But it has also strained Rhee's relations with local school communities, which worked for months with Rhee's staff on developing the 2010 budget and wonder why she hasn't looked more closely at the central office bureaucracy for cuts.

. . . .

Negotiations between the two sides are expected to continue this week.

The dispute is playing out in an atmosphere of escalating tensions between the council and Rhee's boss, Mayor Adrian M. Fenty (D), over virtually everything from board appointments to baseball tickets. There is particular resentment with what many members regard as a lack of transparency and responsiveness from the chancellor's office. Although the 2007 mayoral takeover of the schools vests power in Rhee and Fenty, the council feels it has been cut out of its oversight role.

The work that Rhee commissioned from the think tanks was completed weeks ago but not shared with the council this spring when it was deliberating the school budget. The study was made available to members and staff last Monday.

"Why is it that it takes us setting aside money to get them to come to the table and explain things?" asked council member Mary M. Cheh (D-Ward 3). "How can we possibly exercise oversight when we don't have accurate information?" . . . .

Bloomberg/Klein CEO Model Flunks Test

It only takes someone who knows nothing or cares nothing about the learning needs of children to dream up this capitalist version of the principalship, where school leaders pore over endless test data most of the day looking for ways to manipulate meaningless numbers in order to project enough confidence in their bottom line to continue their bonuses and the iron-fisted control of the two-bit oligarchs who decide their futures. The American public school: meet Wall Street.

Well, the early numbers are in for those who only believe in the numbers, and Bloomberg's experiment may only be described as a bust by anyone outside the sanitized ether of the Broad-Gates think tank, where the whitest and the brightest of Harvard and Yale MBAs hatch their monstrous little ideas for poor children they only know through freshman sociology texts they once rushed through on their way to make the world safe for next generation of greed merchants.

The New York Times has the story. Here are a few of the most telling chunks:

One of Mr. Klein’s proudest achievements is luring promising candidates to the toughest schools by providing more autonomy in exchange for accountability through test scores and other data.

But an analysis by The New York Times of the city’s signature report-card system shows that schools run by graduates of the celebrated New York City Leadership Academy — which the mayor created and helped raise more than $80 million for — have not done as well as those led by experienced principals or new principals who came through traditional routes.

A separate Times analysis shows that since 2002, opening hundreds of new schools and raising salaries have swelled the principals’ payroll 43 percent after adjusting for inflation. The average salary among the current 1,500 school leaders tops $133,000, 10 percent higher than their 1,200 counterparts in 2002 in inflation-adjusted dollars, even as the median household income nationally has risen only marginally.

An average of 649 students are under each principal’s purview, compared with 879 six years ago; pay per pupil, then, has jumped to $205 from $138 in 2008 dollars.

. . . .

As New York State lawmakers consider whether to renew the 2002 mayoral control law, which expires June 30, one proposal on the table would revive the district superintendents, now largely powerless, to more closely supervise and support principals.

For all of New York’s recent focus and investment in school leadership, more than a quarter of teachers said in city surveys last spring that they did not trust their principals or consider them effective managers, and more than a third of those leaving the system cited the quality of school leadership as among the main reasons. “Perceptions of principal leadership skills are drivers of attrition,” an internal report concluded.

Teacher turnover has been higher at schools run by Leadership Academy principals — over the summer of 2007, nearly a quarter of these principals lost at least a third of their teachers, compared with 9 percent of other principals — though some see that as evidence the new leaders are shaking things up. Iris Blige, a graduate of the first class of the Leadership Academy, has seen at least eight assistant principals and dozens of teachers leave the Fordham High School of the Arts since she took over in 2004; she was the subject of an angry protest in March.

In interviews with three dozen principals, former principals and education experts, many said the newfound ability to select faculty was invaluable, but painted a portrait of a job that has grown complex and unwieldy.

. . . .

But while Ms. Gaines Pell’s school earned an A from the city this fall, The Times’s analysis shows that Leadership Academy graduates were less than half as likely to get A’s as other principals, and almost twice as likely to earn C’s or worse. Among elementary and middle-school principals on the job less than three years, Academy graduates were about a third as likely to get A’s as those who did not attend the program.

While Academy graduates do tend to be placed in some of the city’s lowest-achieving schools, the report-card system has built-in controls to account for that, emphasizing progress over performance and comparing schools with similar demographics. Still, Sandra J. Stein, chief executive of the Leadership Academy, said the cards — the city’s primary accountability measure — are not a fair gauge of her graduates because, as she put it, “it takes time to reverse a downward trend.”

. . . .

Peter McNally, executive vice president of the principals’ union — which has generally supported the mayor’s reforms — said the biggest complaint from members was “that they spend more time looking at the data than in classrooms observing and supporting instruction.” Indeed, many had deep reservations about a system in which, as one principal put it, “my report card is my boss.”

“If teaching and learning become about credits and grades, it’s not about learning,” said Jill Herman, who retired last year after three decades as a teacher, principal and network leader.

. . . .

Peter McNally, executive vice president of the principals’ union — which has generally supported the mayor’s reforms — said the biggest complaint from members was “that they spend more time looking at the data than in classrooms observing and supporting instruction.” Indeed, many had deep reservations about a system in which, as one principal put it, “my report card is my boss.”

“If teaching and learning become about credits and grades, it’s not about learning,” said Jill Herman, who retired last year after three decades as a teacher, principal and network leader.

. . . .

Elana Karopkin left Brooklyn’s Urban Assembly School for Law and Justice last summer, at 32, for a charter school group, saying she was physically and emotionally “exhausted” from what she described as a “Herculean task.”

And Michelle Harring, 62, retired last year after nearly a decade as principal of the Earth School on the Lower East Side, complaining of too much time spent “belaboring the testing statistics” or on the computer as well as bureaucratic reshufflings that left her scrambling to figure out whom to call for what.

“The job had many more pressures coming from lots of different directions, that I often felt took away from my time as a person who supported both teachers and the children in the classroom,” she explained. “I think of C.E.O.’s as people for whom the bottom lines are numbers and profit lines. I don’t think principals should be C.E.O.’s.”. . . .

Non-Profit Charter Schools Want Public Dollars, Private Operations

Dunc was in San Francisco this past weekend for another of his rousing speeches, this time as open pitchman for the oligarchs who now own the U.S. Department of Education.

According to Arne, the "dramatic reform" of American public education will depend upon the assistance of "non-profit organizations." What he means, of course, is that the only public schools the oligarchs are willing to support with their massive campaign contributions are ones that make money for the corporate sleaze who want to do their dirty work and thievery on the public dime but out of public sight.

The most popular tactic for achieving non-transparency among the non-profit charter scammers is to hire a for-profit EMO to run the charter school, and then to claim that bookkeeping and personnel records are beyond public scrutiny.

This is just what happened at the largest "non-profit" charter school in Pennsylvania, the Chester Community Charter School. Had it not been for a new a new state agency created by the state government, reporters for the Inquirer would probably still be waiting for records they requested, while the corporate vultures continue to stage their blocking actions in the courts.

Here's the whole story:

By Dan Hardy
Inquirer Staff Writer
Chester Community Charter School, the state's largest nonprofit charter, must make public a wide range of information about pay and profits going to its for-profit management company, the Pennsylvania Office of Open Records has ruled.

The decision by the new state agency created to hear Right-to Know Law cases came this month in response to an appeal The Inquirer filed after the Delaware County school with 2,150 students denied a request for the information.

Randi J. Vladimer, Chester Community Charter's attorney, wrote Friday in an e-mail that the school "is still exploring its options with respect to this matter," which could include an appeal to Delaware County Court. For that reason, "it would be inappropriate for the charter school to make any statement at this time," she wrote.

The ruling was among more than a dozen recent decisions that break new ground under the state's new Right-to-Know Law, defining public access to information from private companies and other nongovernmental entities performing work for public agencies, according to Gayle Sproul, president of the Pennsylvania Freedom of Information Coalition, a nonprofit advocacy group.

The statute, which took effect in January, explicitly grants public access to records created and held by private companies and nongovernment entities doing government work, which had not been expressly covered under the old law.

The new law, Sproul said, creates "a sea change - there's a great
difference."

The decision in The Inquirer case is the latest development in a legal battle over the newspaper's contention that it has the right to review the charter school's financial records.

In January, The Inquirer filed a Right-to-Know Law request with Chester Community Charter, asking among other things for names, titles, salaries, and all other payments or expenses and benefits paid to all employees of Charter School Management Inc. from 1998 to the present. Charter School Management is
a private, for-profit company owned by Vahan H. Gureghian, a lawyer and Republican fund-raiser who serves on the boards of the University of Pennsylvania and the Philadelphia Regional Port Authority. His management company has a contract with Chester Community Charter to run virtually all aspects of the school.

The newspaper also asked for records showing payments to Gureghian and other top Charter School Management officers, as well as records showing the company's profits.

Because Charter School Management is a private company that hires all school employees and manages the school's finances, it has been able to keep many details of its financial operations secret.

That contrasts with most charter schools, which don't contract out all operations and typically disclose extensive information about their finances through their federal nonprofit earnings statements, which all nonprofits must make public.

Vladimer, the charter school's lawyer, opposed The Inquirer's
Right-to-Know claim, arguing to the Office of Open Records that "these requests seek information regarding the salaries, benefits, expenses, and business transactions of a private management company, not a public charter school."

But the office rejected her argument, saying in a May 8 decision that Charter School Management "has contracted with the charter school to provide what is otherwise a governmental function" and "any records it maintains in performance of or directly related to that function are public records and must be provided."

The case has been complicated by a defamation suit that Gureghian and his company filed against The Inquirer in January and by the bankruptcy filing by the newspaper's parent, Philadelphia Media Holdings L.L.C., in February.

Gureghian alleged in the defamation suit that failed business talks between him and Inquirer publisher Brian P. Tierney motivated articles late last year that questioned the school's use of public funds.

In the articles, The Inquirer cited state records showing that of $60.6 million in public subsidies paid to Gurgehian's company since 1999, the portion going to business and administration was consistently among the highest for charter schools in Pennsylvania, and its spending percentage on instruction was
among the lowest.

Inquirer editor William K. Marimow defended the paper's coverage "on an issue of public importance" and said Tierney had no involvement in the stories. Tierney's attorney, Scott K. Baker, general counsel for Philadelphia Media Holdings, called the suit baseless and denied that Tierney had been in negotiations regarding a business transaction.

For this article, The Inquirer e-mailed written questions to several Gureghian representatives, seeking comment.

A. Bruce Crawley, a spokesman for the Chester Community Charter School and for Charter School Management, did not respond. Neither did Clifford E. Haines, a lawyer representing Charter School Management in the defamation suit.

After a hearing in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in April, Judge Jean K.
Fitzsimon agreed to suspend several lawsuits against the newspaper, including Gureghian's, pending resolution of the bankruptcy case. Her order had the effect of halting the legal discovery process in the case.Vladimer, the charter school's lawyer, subsequently wrote to the Office of Open Records, saying that The Inquirer's information request was "a blatant and improper attempt to circumvent the discovery process" by seeking information that the newspaper wanted for its use in the lawsuit.

She asked the Open Records Office to quash The Inquirer's request.The office rejected that argument, noting that the Right-to-Know Law request had been filed before the bankruptcy and that Judge Fitzsimon had said she would not enjoin reporters from reporting on school activities.

In a later bankruptcy hearing, when the matter came up again, Fitzsimon told Edmond M. George, another attorney for Gureghian and Charter School Management, that she said did "not know why you felt compelled to send" a transcript of the earlier hearing to the Office of Open Records, "other than to serve as an interference in their reporting."

George said that was not the filing's intent.

The Right-to-Know Law dispute was not the only time the management company has claimed that the newspaper's reporters should not be allowed to look into the school's activities.

Aileen Campbell, a lawyer for the management company, tried to bar an Inquirer reporter from an April 28 arbitration hearing in Delaware County over a contractual dispute between the charter school and a former teacher.

Stephen H. Gold, the arbitration panel chairman, replied: "He has an absolute right to be here. This is an open courtroom," and rejected the request.

Aussies Ready for Failed American Testing Model

From theage.com:

Philip Riley
May 25, 2009
EDUCATORS appear to make the worst learners. Evidence for this can be found in the recent decision by the National Curriculum Board (Education, May 18). The board has decided that all students will now be judged by a single standard every year — a one-size-fits-all approach. The effect, if not the aim, of this decision will be to limit the influence of individual teachers on students. It will force teachers to conduct tests for external examination, and just as happened in the US the tests will
become the curriculum.

Sensible teachers will adopt a "teach to the test" instruction method because their job and promotion prospects will rely on these scores. And, just as in the US, our version of "no child left behind" will widen, not lessen the educational gap between the haves and have-nots. So instead of following the US model, why don't we learn from its mistakes and follow a better educational approach?

Educational scholar David Berliner from Arizona State University recently presented studies showing the failure of the "teach to the test" method of instruction. Across America, schools with the most disadvantaged children have been abolishing recess and shortening lunchtime to 15 minutes in an attempt to lift test scores by direct instruction. And the result? On 46 of 47 measures studied by Professor Berliner, achievement has been slower than before it was introduced.

His conclusion is that education based on high-stakes testing is counterproductive. Why, then, has our NCB opted for the US model?

Imagine for a minute what life will be like if we adopt the wrong national curriculum and force compliance through high-stakes testing. In 10 to 20 years we will realise that we made a mistake by putting all our eggs in one basket. Where is the evidence that uniformity equals quality? Not in nature, not in business, not in research.

The overwhelming evidence from history shows that diversity, not uniformity, equals strength and sustainability over the long term. Diversity allows species to survive unforeseen circumstances, and diversity offers new possibilities which had not, perhaps could not, be imagined.

Forecasters suggest that a child in his first year of school this year will be employed in a job, and probably an industry, that does not yet exist. What specific knowledge (curriculum) does that child need to learn next year? Which, if any, tests will help that child to develop and when should they be applied? And, who should make these decisions? What can we learn from other countries' answers?

Finland, which topped the latest round of international comparisons (PISA), succeeded by training, trusting and supporting their teachers — and by less, not more, testing. Finland only takes the cream of its graduates into teacher training. Nine out of 10 who apply do not gain entry. Then they train them well. Every teacher has a master's-level qualification. On graduating, teachers are trusted to get on with the job they have been employed to do.

That Finland is monocultural and therefore advantaged against other countries in the PISA results must be considered, but may be somewhat of a straw man. For example, multicultural Tower Hamlets, until recently the most underperforming borough in the UK, is now the most improved and sits above the UK average. Its fortunes changed by doing pretty much what Finland did. It filtered teachers at the point of entry, and supported them to do their work.

Another monocultural country, China, has an inflexible curriculum based on the "uniformity equals quality" assumption. The laws of probability suggest that if a prescribed curriculum is the right way to go, China should be collecting the most Nobel Prizes by the sheer weight of numbers of students produced. In fact it has won only four. The same number as Finland. Australia has nine Nobel laureates.

The lessons learned from diversity tell us that it is likely that no one has the right answers for education. So let's not put all our eggs into one basket but create many baskets tailored to the needs of the students in the classrooms around the country by the people who know them best: their teachers. And, properly fund teacher training and continuing professional development so that our current education system can produce the best teachers for the next generation. Then we should leave it to principals to get on with the job of finding, encouraging and supporting the best teachers for their schools and their contexts. This is what Tower Hamlets did and we might do better by following its example.

Dr Philip Riley is a lecturer in the faculty of education at Monash
University.

Obama Taps Former Broad Fellow for High-Ranking Position; Ex-Gates Officials Make Room for Her at the DOE

     The Obama Department of Education already contains a number of former Gates officials.  Wouldn't it be a more well-rounded department if there were, say, some Broad fellows?  But just a few days ago...  (From the White House press room, May 19, 2009):

Thelma Melendez de Santa Ana, Nominee for Assistant Secretary for Elementary and Secondary Education, Department of Education
Dr. Thelma Melendez is currently serving as the Superintendent of Schools in the Pomona Unified School District in Pomona, CA. Her work on improving teaching and learning, and accelerating student performance, also includes work with the Stupski Educational Foundation and the Annenberg Foundation. She has written numerous articles for national education publications, and is an accomplished speaker on the role of school administrators, the achievement gap, women in education, and the issues of race and class.  She earned a Bachelor of Arts, Cum Laude, at UCLA, a Doctorate in Philosophy at the University of Southern California, participated in several graduate programs in school administration and leadership, and was a Broad Urban Superintendents Academy fellow. [My bold]

As the Assistant Secretary for Elementary and Secondary Education, Melendez will report to Duncan about "all matters relating to elementary and secondary education."  Her training as a Broad Fellow will come in handy as she advises Duncan on  No Child Left Behind; maybe she'll help Arne come up with a new name for the law while he's trekking across the country on his Magical Listening Tour.  

The Nike School Innovation Fund - Corporate Philanthropy, Corporate Tax Breaks, Corporate Socialism

[Cross posted at SchoolsMatter and OurGlobalEducation.com]

     Nike, the global athletic giant based in Oregon, announced a $9 million "School Innovation Fund" back in January of 2007. The Portland Public Schools received $1 million a year over three years, "the largest contribution by a business in the history of PPS." The grant directed $250,000 for a five week "summer kindergarden academy," half a million for "Leadership Teams" in the middle and high schools, and $250,000 to "support a pilot project to recruit and train school business managers" (all quotes from Nike's site).

     How nice of Nike to give away their hard-earned profits. After paying their shareholders, paying taxes, and paying their employees, the company still manages to find $9 million to give to schools (Portland, Beaverton, and Hillsboro public schools). Wait a second, did I say taxes?

     See, Nike doesn't really pay their fair share of taxes. Sure, they gave away $9 million over three years but they also managed to not give to public funding in other ways. Other very significant ways.

     This all has to do with tax policy and how Oregon determines taxable income. I'll let Michael Leachman of the Oregon Center for Public Policy explain:

January, 2007

"Single-Sales" - A Modern Robber Baron

by Michael Leachman

When your W-2 form arrives, think of this: Certain multistate corporations are paying much less in corporate income taxes today because Oregon has changed the way multistate firms calculate state income taxes on their profits. That means you pay more than your fair share.

Multistate corporations make profits in more than one state, so there needs to be a way to decide how to allocate their profits for state taxation purposes. States have different rules around this. Most states use a formula that considers the state’s share of a corporation’s total property, payroll, and sales.

Prior to 1991, Oregon used a formula that equally weighted the three factors – property, payroll, and sales. In 1991, Oregon switched to a formula that “double-weighted” the sales factor. The change produced a tax break for companies that had a high share of their property and payroll in Oregon but a small share of their total sales in the state. Companies with sales in Oregon but little property and payroll here saw their taxes increase.

In 2001, Oregon began phasing in a “single-sales factor” formula. Under this formula, only in-state sales relative to all US sales matter in determining how much of a company’s profits are apportioned to and thus taxable by Oregon; it doesn’t matter how much of their property or payroll is based in Oregon. The Legislative Assembly in 2005 cut short the phase-in process and fully phased-in the “single-sales” formula for tax years starting on or after July 1, 2005.

How much did this tax change save Nike? (From Leachman):

Take Nike, for example. Nike lobbied for the switch to single-sales factor apportionment and it’s easy to see why. At the Oregon Center for Public Policy, we conservatively estimate that Nike's 2006 tax cut from "single-sales" was over $16 million. Other prominent, profitable firms such as Intel also received a massive tax break from "single-sales." When large, profitable businesses reduce their tax obligations, small businesses and individuals get stuck with paying more of the cost of state services.

The link in Leachman's article shows how Nike managed to avoid paying between $16 million and $23 under the "single sales" tax policy in 2006 alone. This saved Nike a bundle of cash while stripping Oregon's state budget of the same amount of funding. The state used 42.5% of our general fund to support public education between 2005 and 2007 while Nike continued to give less and less.

     But this is more than Nike not paying state taxes. Nike can lobby for laws that limit their contribution to the state's operating budget (which is by far the biggest financial supporter of public education, far more than federal support and local support) and then turn around and announce that they've decided to give away $9 million to support public education in ways they see fit. This brand of corporate philanthropy is used mostly as a marketing tool, as described here in an article written by Beaverton teacher Rachel Clouse that details her experience with Nike (the article is from the 2004/2005 winter issue of Rethinking Schools, so Clouse's experience was probably from the 2003-2004 school year).

     Who wins in this setup? Nike, hands down. Oregon gets screwed out of millions of dollars, our schools suffer, and Nike gets great publicity. Portland's media members are too busy coddling up to district officials to connect these kinds of dots, instead focusing on isolated pieces of information. As an added kick in the pants for those of us working in the PPS district: our newly elected board member, Pam Knowles, served on the advisory committee for Nike's corporate giving program (Knowles comes to the board after serving as the COO of the Portland Business Alliance). The revolving door linking the business community and the corporate school reform community continues.

Duncan's Testimony

Duncan's testimony is largely a summary of previous statements.  He begins the session with a discussion related to the recent report about student safety (this GAO report, released Monday, outlines).  "I was deeply disturbed by some of the testimony coming out of yesterday's hearing," Duncan said.  Was he disturbed by the reports about KIPP Fresno?  The physical safety of our children is certainly important; the psychological and emotional safety should be a deep concern as well, a concept ignored by the charter chain gangs and philanthrocapitalists.  We've banned pedagogical approaches that employ corporal harm; I hope we eventually outlaw pedagogical approaches that are psychologically and emotionally degrading, the kind of education designed to break children down instead of recognizing our human capacity and inherent value of every child.

This testimony is only what Duncan hopes to do - but he'll be backed by philanthrocapialists and the business community.  His endless stream of bogus statistics and questionable logic needs to be demystified so that the rest of America can see that the Education Emperor is not wearing any clothes:

Secretary Arne Duncan Testifies Before the House Education and Labor Committee

FOR RELEASE: May 20, 2009

Speaker sometimes deviates from text.

Thank you Chairman Miller, Representative McKeon, and all the members of the committee for the invitation to be here today. It is my pleasure to share with you President Obama's plan for American education. It is a comprehensive plan that meets the educational needs of our youngest citizens from cradle to career. If we are going to be successful in rebuilding our economy, our early childhood programs need to prepare our youngest children for kindergarten so they're ready to start reading and learning, our K-12 schools need to make sure our students have all of the academic knowledge and skills that they need to enter college or the workforce, and our higher education system needs to offer whatever advanced learning students need to be successful in a career, whether they will become a plumber, a teacher, or a business executive. As federal policymakers, we need to improve preparation for college and expand college access and completion by increasing financial aid so that students of all income levels can pay for college without taking on a mountain of debt.

I'm proud to work for a President who has created a comprehensive agenda that addresses the needs at every level of our educational system, from expanding access to high-quality early childhood programs to improving the rigor of the academic programs in our K-12 schools to making college more affordable and accessible.

We have gotten off to a fast start. Through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, we have laid the groundwork for reform on the K-12 level and made an early down payment on expanding access to early childhood education and increasing student aid for college students. The law made available almost $100 billion for education. That money will help prevent layoffs, fill holes in state and local budgets, and provide financial aid to college students. The money is needed to help our economy in the short term, but reforms efforts driven by these funds will be the key to our long-term economic success.

Under the State Fiscal Stabilization Fund, states will receive $48.6 billion to supplement their own budgets during these difficult economic times. The Recovery Act says that states must spend most of that funding on education. $39.8 billion of that should go to schools.

I want to assure you that I will be scrutinizing how states spend their stabilization money to make sure they are focused on education. I have heard that some states plan to use their stabilization money so as to maintain their rainy day fund and that others may rely on their stabilization grants to pay for tax cuts instead of investing in reforms. I will do everything in my power to reject any schemes that would subvert the intended purpose of the Recovery Act, which is to help schools through the economic downturn and push reform, thereby ensuring our economic prosperity in the future. When reviewing applications for the Race to the Top Fund, we plan to consider whether a state used their stabilization money to aggressively push reforms.

In addition to helping states solve their budget problems, the stabilization fund lays out a path to reform. To receive their money, states must make four commitments that are essential to reforming our K-12 schools. They will improve the effectiveness of teachers and make sure the best teachers are in the schools that need them the most. They will promise to improve the quality of their academic standards so that they lead students down a path that prepares them for college and the workforce and global competitiveness. These standards need to be aligned with strong assessments. In addition, states must work to ensure that these assessments accurately measure the achievement of English language learners and students with disabilities.

Under the third assurance, states must commit to fixing their lowest-performing schools. Finally, states must build data systems that can track student performance from one year to the next, from one school to another, so that those students and their parents know when they are making progress and when they need extra attention. This information must also be put in the hands of educators so they can use it to improve instruction. Right now, according to the Data Quality Campaign (DQC), Alabama, Arkansas, Delaware, Florida, Louisiana, and Utah are the only states that are reporting to have comprehensive data systems meeting the basic elements of a good system. With $250 million in the stimulus and another $65 million in our annual budget for fiscal year 2009 and again in fiscal year 2010, we expect these numbers to continue to grow, which is vital for reform.

In addition to the stabilization money, the Recovery Act gave us $5 billion to spur innovation in states and districts. Through the Race to the Top Fund, we will be awarding $4.35 billion in competitive grants to states built around the four pillars of reform outlined in the stabilization fund. Through the What Works and Innovation Fund, we also will be awarding $650 million in competitive grants to districts and non-profit organizations to scale up successful programs and evaluate promising practices.

Our fiscal year 2010 budget will expand our commitment to reforms in several important ways, addressing the needs from early childhood through K-12 education.

Under the Title I program, we will provide $1.5 billion for the School Improvement program. This money is vital for helping states and districts address problems in schools in the most trouble. We already have $3 billion for this program from the Recovery Act and another $545 million from fiscal year 2009. By adding $1.5 billion in fiscal year 2010, we'll have more than $5 billion to address the problems of our lowest-performing schools. I'd like to set a goal to turn around 1,000 low-performing schools a year for each of the next five years. I don't want to invest in the status quo. I want states and districts to take bold actions that will lead directly to the improvement in student learning. I want local leaders to find change agents who can fix these schools. I want them to provide incentives for their best teachers to take on the challenge of teaching in these schools. And where appropriate, I want them to create partnerships with charter school operators with a track record of success. I want superintendents to be aggressive in taking the difficult step of shutting down a failing school and replacing it with one they know will work. We've proposed a $52 million increase in funding to develop and expand successful charter schools.

Many of you have heard me say that I believe education is the civil rights issue of our time. I truly believe every child is entitled to a high-quality education. I will work closely with the Office of Civil Rights to make sure that we properly review compliance in all programs and policymaking.

The fiscal year 2010 budget starts new programs and expands existing ones to address our priorities in early childhood education and literacy. We will create the $300 million Early Learning Challenge Fund that will award grants to help states set up the support and services necessary to build quality early childhood education. We will provide $500 million in grants through Title I to help districts use their Title I money to establish and expand preschool programs. We will expand the Striving Readers program from a small $35 million program focused on middle school and high schools to a $370 million program that addresses the reading needs of children in elementary schools as well. The program will take a comprehensive approach to reading instruction, ensuring that students develop the basic skills as well as the reading comprehension that is so vital to their success in high school and beyond.

We also continue our focus on promoting the teaching profession. With $517 million in our fiscal year 2010 budget, we will continue and expand our support for local efforts under the Teacher Incentive Fund to develop comprehensive strategies for recruiting, preparing, rewarding, and retaining effective teachers. We also request $10 million to plan new Promise Neighborhoods, modeled on the successful Harlem Children's Zone. We are committed to acting on the evidence. And we request $72 million more for the Institute for Education Sciences, so we can identify what works based on rigorous research.

Our agenda from early childhood through 12th grade is focused on helping states do the right thing. And that's appropriate because States are responsible for establishing systems of education through the 12th grade. It's our role to make it a national priority to reform schools and help states and districts do that.

For more than 40 years, the federal government has played a leading role in helping students pay for college. Continuing this vital role, the total amount of aid for students has increased by $32 billion since President Obama has taken office. By subsidizing loans and by providing work-study programs and, most importantly, giving Pell Grants to low-income students, the federal government is fulfilling the dreams of students who want to go to college but might not be able to pay for it. President Obama has set a goal that, by 2020, the United States once again will have the highest proportion of college graduates in the world. That's an achievable goal but, to do that, we have to make college affordable.

The Recovery Act made an important down-payment on our plans to expand student aid. The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act provided $17.1 billion so we could raise the maximum Pell award from $4,731 to $5,350. It also added $200 million to the Work-Study program, providing colleges and universities with additional money to provide jobs to students to help with their college and living expenses.

In our fiscal year 2010 budget, we make three important and permanent changes to ensure students have access to student aid and loans. The first thing it will do is move the Pell Grant program from a discretionary program into a mandatory, appropriated entitlement. This approach will provide more certainty to students and families applying for student aid about the aid that's available to them. In addition, the Pell Grant amounts will grow annually at a rate higher than inflation so that it keeps up with rising college costs.

The second thing this budget does is address the problems with the Federal Family Education Loan (FFEL) program. I think we can all agree that the FFEL structure is broken and the federal student loan programs are in need of a dependable, cost-effective way of providing college-bound students and their families with the resources they need to meet the growing cost of postsecondary education. The direct lending program is the best way to do that. Through it, we are able to leverage the government's lower cost of funds to finance and originate student loans and private-sector expertise to service the loans. The President's proposal provides a comprehensive and reliable solution for today's students while saving taxpayers over $4 billion a year. It will be more stable and efficient – reducing risk for students and lowering costs for taxpayers.

The third thing we are doing is boosting the Perkins loan program from $1 billion to $6 billion per year. The number of students served will rise from 500,000 to 2.7 million – and the number of schools that can participate in the program will increase from 1,800 to 4,400, which also means that we will serve more students. Also, to help keep college affordable our Perkins proposal allocates funds to schools based on their role in keeping tuition down and providing grant aid to needy students. This further builds upon Congress' recent mandate to create watch lists of colleges with high or excessive increases in tuition.

In closing, I'd like to remind you of one thing the President said when he addressed Congress in February. "In a global economy where the most valuable skill you can sell is your knowledge, a good education is no longer just a pathway to opportunity -- it is a prerequisite."

Thank you for your support so far in ensuring that our children and young adults have the education they need to ensure they enter the workforce with the knowledge and skills they need to be successful and to help rebuild our economy.

Philanthropy Gathering

ABC news and IrishCentral.com both published news reports about a secretive gathering of billionaires in New York City.  Bill Gates and Warren Buffet extended the invitations to their fellow billionaire pals (including Eli Broad) to discuss the economic climate and share about their work in philanthropy.  From ABC news (link here):

Meeting of America's Richest About 'Need,' Attendee Says

Oprah Winfrey, Bill Gates, Warren Buffett Discuss Coming Together 'to Do More'

By RUSSELL GOLDMAN and EILEEN MURPHY

May 20, 2009—

Under a cloak of secrecy, some of the world's wealthiest people gathered in an unprecedented meeting early this month in New York City "to see how they can join together to do more," according to one attendee.

Invited by the world's two richest men Bill Gates and Warren Buffett, along with David Rockefeller, a Who's Who of American wealth and influence gathered around a long table in a window-lined private room overlooking the East River on May 5.

"The overwhelming reason for the meeting was need -- that was the issue that galvanized everyone to participate," Patricia Stonesifer, senior advisor to the Gates foundation's trustees, Bill and Melinda Gates and Warren Buffett, told ABCNews.com. "This was a group very committed to philanthropy coming together to see how they can join together to do more."

Gates and Buffett were joined by billionaire moguls Oprah Winfrey, Ted Turner and New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg along with heavyweight philanthropists George Soros and others.

Together the attendees have donated more than $70 billion to charity since 1996, according to the Chronicle of Philanthropy.

...

"It was meant to be a private exchange but it wasn't a secret really, just a private meeting," Stonesifer said.

First reported by IrishCentral.com, ABCNews.com confirmed each of the attendees' presence at the meeting held at the residence of the Rockefeller University president on the campus of the Manhattan medical school.

It lasted about five hours, beginning in mid-afternoon and continuing through dinner, Stonesifer said.

"This particular group had never come together as a group before but many of the attendees had met in the past either individually or in smaller groups -- but never all at once," she said. "This was a great discussion and they agreed to continue the dialogue and meet again in the future. There were a lot of good ideas."

She said that the discussion "ranged from emergency relief efforts to scholarship efforts, to U.S. education efforts to global health." Another attendee who asked to remain anonymous described the meeting as "a private gathering of friends and colleagues to share their history and excitement about their philanthropy. [It was] a group together discussing a range of things they are working on."

When again asked about the meeting following ABC News.com's initial report Mayor Bloomberg said he sometimes holds private meetings that are "not going to be on the public schedulues. There are meetings all over this city and there are some very powerful people in this city."

Gates already has a number of his education buddies working in the DOE.  The $650 million "Innovation Fund" is headed former LearnNow co-founder and CEO Jim Shelton (the for-profit LearnNow was sold to Edison just before Edison's stock tumbled).  The $4.35 billion "Race to the Top" fund is headed by former New Schools Venture Fund partner Joanne Weiss (NSVF was an early supporter of LearnNow and made a couple of loans to the company before Edison took over) and Gates is the biggest supporter of NSVF (over $50 million donated).  

More importantly, this congregation of wealthy businesspeople has the financial power to sway policies in ways that can run counter to the democratic process.  For all their talk of accountability in education, Gates & Co. remain accountable to no one but themselves. Gates came to my home city of Portland, Oregon in the early 2000s to reform our high school system (in the poor neighborhoods at least) with the help of our then-superintendent Vicki Phillips - who is now heading Gates' domestic education programs.  Phillips and her like-minded reformers swooped into Portland, shuffled schools around (converted to the K-8 model in the poorest neighborhoods), and left town for greener pastures.  Phillips listened to no one but the business community.  For all their work, Gates now declares the "small schools" model a failure and has moved on to the charter school movement.  These decisions were not made with public input; Phillips listens just as well as Arne "Change NCLB's Name but Not the Details" Duncan.  

We all have a right to closed-door meetings, but only a very small handful of us have the financial capital to sway public policy.  When monied interests can align themselves in ways that multiply their strength, we end up with a class of oligarchs.  As Justice Brandeis said, "We can have a democratic society or we may have the concentration of great wealth in the hands of the few.  We cannot have both."  This rings particularly true in the realm of education policy.  

Corporate Welfare Venture Fund Specialist to Lead Duncan's "Race Over the Cliff" Fund

With $5 billion burning a hole in his pocket and with the ed industry leeches like Whittle lined up at the feeding trough and with the Oligarchs tapping their sharp pencils on the edge of their desks, Arne announced yesterday that a bundler from the corporate tax evasion outfit, the New Schools Venture Fund (NSVF), would be in charge of handing out the dough.  

NSVF is a "non-profit" clearinghouse of sorts for corporate cash looking to generate tax credits in ways that shape social policy to benefit the corporate ideology of unrestrained greed.  Does the appointee know anything about schools?  No, but she's from Princeton.  It should be quite a party:

FOR RELEASE: May 19, 2009

Contact: John White, (202) 401-1576,john.white@ed.gov

Citing a track record of innovative ideas with rapid and effective implementation, U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan today announced that Joanne Weiss will lead development of the "Race to the Top Fund" to catalyze innovation and restore America's global leadership in public K-12 education.

Weiss has a record of success in investment strategy and management assistance that includes a portfolio of investment ventures at the New Schools Venture Fund, a national nonprofit venture philanthropy firm, during the last eight years. She also led the organization's research agenda and oversaw operations.

"Recruiting successful professionals from the entrepreneurial community is one way we will change the culture and our way of doing business at the Department of Education," Secretary Duncan said during a videoconference today with the audience at the annual NewSchools Venture Fund annual Summit in Pasadena, Calif. "We may never have an opportunity like this again to dramatically improve our country's educational system with huge investments in a few strategic areas to make changes that are deep and foundational."

"Joanne will help us push a strong reform agenda that is entrepreneurial in spirit, providing carrots and sticks, to change the way we do business, and fundamentally turn around underperforming schools in ways that last for decades," Duncan said.

Throughout her career, Weiss has helped to pioneer innovative work to increase the effectiveness of teaching and learning processes. Prior to joining NewSchools Venture Fund, she was CEO of Claria Corporation, an e-services recruiting firm that helped emerging-growth companies build teams quickly and well. Weiss has spent 20 years in the design, development, and marketing of technology-based products and services for education. She was senior vice president of product development at Pensare, an e-learning company that created business innovation programs for the Fortune 500 market. Prior to Pensare, she was co-founder, interim CEO, and vice president of products and technologies at Academic Systems, a company that helps hundreds of thousands of college students prepare for college-level work in mathematics and English.

Weiss holds a degree in biochemistry from Princeton University.

From CEDU to Brown Schools to Camelot Schools, Inc.

Click chart to enlarge. From story by Maia Szalavitz, Mother Jones, August 20, 2007.

Much of the brainwashing, behavioral cruelty, and psychological abuse that is so common in "tough love" and "no excuses" school environments of today was inspired by an anti-drug treatment cult called Syanon. Synanon's methods inspired a number of residential treatment and "educational" centers, one of which was CEDU, a questionable outfit that was bought by the Brown Schools in 1998. At that time the CEO of the Brown Schools was a successful entrepreneur, John Harcourt, Jr.:

“It is this Company’s goal to provide the highest quality specialty behavioral and educational services to our country’s youth,” Riley said. “With the newly-formed Educational Services division that was created with the recent acquisition of CEDU, the country’s leading provider of therapeutic and emotional growth education; The Brown Schools has significantly strengthened its commitment to children and their families.”

In the letter below to consultants for the operation, Harcourt basks in the recent acquisition of CEDU. From ZoomInfo:

Posted by by Cindy White from letter of John P. Harcourt, Jr. President and CEO, CEDU Family of Services, The Brown Schools on Tuesday, 10 November 1998, at 9:09 a.m. (eastern time)

October 26, 1998

Dear Consultant:

It has now been a couple of months since the Brown Schools acquired the CEDU Family of Services. What an exciting couple of months it has been! In this short transition period, I have had a chance to speak with a number of our parents, consultants, and others regarding the alliance. I hear a lot of the same questions from one person to the next, and thought it might be helpful for me to address some of these questions with you.

As many of you know, the histories of both CEDU and the Brown Schools are remarkably similar. Both organizations continue to be driven by values, passion, and the dedication to their individual founders. Both are committed to making families whole again. Of course, these are precisely the factors that drove The Brown Schools to acquire CEDU.

While the Brown Schools and CEDU share similar histories and values, both organizations respect the differences in those whom we serve: children, families and consultants. We recognize the unique differences between The Brown Schools and CEDU in methodologies, philosophies, and procedures of both organizations. As such, I would like to assure you that we have no intention of changing the fundamental missions or procedures of either organization. We look to creatd strength in our differences and in the variety of diverse options we provide for families. To do this, it is vital that each organization remain unique.

At CEDU, we will strive for an even higher level of service to our referrals. To that end, I am pleased to report that Saul Rudman, who had announced his intention to resign his position as Marketing Director prior to the acquisition, will be working with CEDU and The Brown Schools as a Consultant to help us achieve our goals.

Of equal interest to you, I am delighted that Lori Armbruster will continue on as CEDU's Director of Consultant Services. We will be adding a Consultant Services Manager in Southern California to assist you with referrals, updating, communication, and visits at CEDU High School and Middle School. Lori will also oversee this position and will always be available to assist you.

Jude Rudolph will move from her position as Admissions Director at ASCENT to the new position of Regional Service Coordinator in Denver, Colorado. Jude will work closely with families and professionals in Colorado, New Mexico and Arizona. Paul Johnson, whom you may already know, will be dedicated to meeting your communication and enrollment needs at ASCENT. Those of you who know Ranel Hanson will be pleased to know that she will continue her role as Parent and Alumni Services Director.

I look forward to seeing those of you who will be at the Fall IECA Conference in Atlanta. In the meantime, please feel free to call anyone at CEDU, including myself, with any questions you may have. Thank you for your support of our work in the past. Please help us to serve you and your clients even better in the future.

Sincerely,
John P. Harcourt, Jr./s/
President and CEO
CEDU Family of Services
The Brown Schools

CEDU did, indeed, go bust in 2005, along with Brown Schools that owned it. Through a number of legal manipulations, CEDU/Brown avoided settling a number of lawsuits involving mistreatment, sexual abuse of employees, deceptive practices, etc. From the Austin American Statesman in 2005 via this site:

In recent months, three Austin lawyers say, Brown Schools Inc. offered to settle claims by their clients for everything from sexual abuse by its employees to deceptive business practices.

But there was a catch, according to the lawyers: Brown Schools said the plaintiffs had to accept less money and delayed payments so that the Austin-based company, which operates facilities for troubled children, could avoid bankruptcy, a filing that would likely have left the families with nothing.

On March 25, Brown Schools filed for Chapter 7 liquidation in Bankruptcy Court, jeopardizing all of the payments. Most of the company's facilities have closed, putting 700 employees out of work. . . .

Where did the CEDU/Brown assets go, and where did the Brown School leaders end up? The Brown Schools leaders, including John Harcourt, ended up running Camelot Schools, with the same finesse, we may assume, that they ran the Brown/CEDU operation.

So where am am I going with all this? A few days ago the Philadelphia Inquirer reported that a Philly charter school, consultant, Brien Gardiner, had committed suicide. Gardiner was under investigation for thievery and other forms of corruption related to his work for a number of charter school outfits, including one called Camelot Schools of Pennslyvania. Gardiner had been instrumental in guiding Camelot to part of the $40 million that Philadelphia schoolman, Paul Vallas, was paying out to have Philadelphia's "high-need" students professionally handled.

This is where this little story gets interesting, because in the news piece below from May 14, there is some clear indication that some of the school district officials in Philly smell something rotten about this Camelot deal. With Gardiner dead and the contract up for renewal, this has turned into quite a little corporate charter school mystery:

From the Philadelphia Inquirer:

By VALERIE RUSS
Philadelphia Daily News
russv@phillynews.com 215-854-5987

PHILADELPHIA School District officials are reviewing the background of a company with $13.1 million in contracts to run three alternative schools, after a city councilman raised concerns about the firm's ties to treatment centers at which five students died.

The company, Camelot Schools of Pennsylvania, also had ties to Brien N. Gardiner, founder of the Philadelphia Academy Charter School, who had been under federal investigation when he committed suicide yesterday.

On Tuesday, during budget hearings at City Hall, Councilman James Kenney asked the district to reconsider renewing its contracts with Camelot Schools, saying that he had heard reports that the firm was managed by some of the same executives who once ran problem-plagued centers for troubled children.

Five students at those centers died after being physically restrained, according to a Texas teachers' union official.

"When you're talking about issues related to child safety, I just want them to make sure they look under every rock," Kenney said yesterday.

In 2000, a 9-year-old Nevada boy died of a heart attack a day after he was held facedown by employees at the Laurel Ridge Treatment Center, in San Antonio, Texas, for throwing a temper tantrum, the San Antonio Express-News reported at the time.

Laurel Ridge was run by the Brown Schools, a now-defunct company that operated 11 treatment centers in several states for children with emotional and behavioral problems, according to Gayle Fallon, a top official of the Houston Federation of Teachers.

Camelot Schools has contracts worth $13.1 million to run the Excel Academy, an alternative school for "over-age" high school students on Bustleton Avenue, near Harbison, in the Northeast; and two disciplinary schools, Daniel Boone, at 26th and Jefferson streets, Strawberry Mansion, and Shallcross, at Woodhaven Road near Knights, in the Far Northeast.

Todd Bock, Camelot senior vice president for education services, said yesterday that he and others had been officers of both firms, but adamantly denied that his firm was the latest incarnation of Brown Schools, which went bankrupt in 2005.

"Camelot Schools is not Brown Schools," Bock said yesterday. "That's like the difference between IBM and Apple. They never have been affiliated.

"Whoever is putting that piece of information out clearly does not have the facts correct . . .

Facts correct! You need some correct facts, Todd? Here are some facts for you and your creepy outfit that should be shut down with the rest of the school prisons that our tax money funds all over the country. IBM and Apple? Great analogy, Todd--since both perform exactly the same functions.

From a cached page at Zoom Info on the main of Camelot Schools, Inc.

John Harcourt – President and CEO
Mr. Harcourt has been the President and CEO of the Company since he and a partner acquired the business in 2002. Previously, Mr. Harcourt was the President and CEO of The Brown Schools, Inc., a 60 year-old company that provided educational and therapeutic services to children and adolescents. Prior to joining The Brown Schools, he was President and CEO of Rock Creek Center, a psychiatric hospital focused on children’s needs. Earlier in his more than 30-year healthcare career, Mr. Harcourt served as Executive Deputy Director of the NY State Office of Mental Health and the COO of the Illinois Department of Mental Health and Developmental Disabilities. [ This email address is being protected from spam bots, you need Javascript enabled to view it ]

Dayna Stewart – Vice President of Corporate Development
Before joining Camelot in early 2006, Ms. Stewart was Vice President of Marketing, Development & Oversight of Implementation for Childhelp, Inc., where she managed multi-state operations for programs in California, Arizona, Tennessee, Virginia and Michigan. Her responsibilities included operations, finance, marketing, referral development, contract negotiations and board management. Prior to that, she was Vice President for Marketing and Development at MHM Services, a business that provides mental health services for correctional facilities. Ms. Stewart was formerly associated with The Brown Schools as Vice President for Development where she was responsible for acquisitions and development and Cornell Corrections, Inc. where she was responsible for marketing and development for the juvenile division. [ This email address is being protected from spam bots, you need Javascript enabled to view it ]

Rod Young – Chief Operating Officer
Mr. Young joined the Company in 2005 as Chief Executive Officer of Desert Springs Medical Center. He was previously employed as Vice President, Public Education Operations and Vice President, Administrative Services at The Brown Schools/CEDU Education, a position he held for 6 years. From 1986 until joining The Brown Schools, he held Human Resources Executive positions at Per-Se Technologies, a medical software company, and Charter Behavioral Health Systems. [ This email address is being protected from spam bots, you need Javascript enabled to view it ]

Todd Bock - Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer, Camelot PA
Mr. Bock joined Camelot PA in 2003. He was previously employed by the Glen Mills Schools (a behavioral institution for children) and more recently at the Brown Schools. Mr. Bock holds a B.S. from Kutztown University of Pennsylvania and has over 10 years of management experience operating for-profit educational programs for at-risk youth. His recognized specialty is the management of school programs for children with behavioral, emotional and developmental challenges. Under John Harcourt’s direction at the Brown Schools, Mr. Bock developed a public school partnership program with the school district of Houston, TX. The Houston program was highly successful and allowed Mr. Bock to apply his discipline and behavioral expertise to a public school environment, a model that the Company has successfully extended to Philadelphia. [ This email address is being protected from spam bots, you need Javascript enabled to view it ]

Timothy Kenna – Vice President of Finance / CFO
Mr. Kenna joined Camelot in late 2004. He has 25 years of experience in the healthcare field. Prior to joining the Company, Mr. Kenna was CEO and CFO at Fort Lauderdale Hospital, a private psychiatric hospital located in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. Prior to his Fort Lauderdale experience, Mr. Kenna held CFO positions at three other private psychiatric hospitals located in New York, Illinois and Texas. He has a B.S. in accounting from the University of Wisconsin. [ This email address is being protected from spam bots, you need Javascript enabled to view it ]

Camelot in now operating in New Orleans. It seems that everywhere Paul Vallas goes that Camelot is not far behind? Plenty of those "high need" students still living in those poisoned FEMA trailers.

How Would Duncan Provide Oversight for a Charter School Treasurer Like Carl Shye?

Obama/Duncan can't get enough of those charter schools, where entrepreneurial spirit and bold action must never be mistaken for slimeball corruption and recklessness. Right? The story of one treasurer and three charter schools in Dayton, Ohio--from the Dayton Daily News:

DAYTON — Sixteen teachers and staff of New City charter school are wondering how their medical bills will be paid after learning Friday their health insurance had been dropped because the school had failed to pay the premiums.

In a May 15 letter to staffers that accompanied their paychecks, school administrators blamed the cancellation on school Treasurer Carl W. Shye, who also oversees the books for two other fiscally troubled charter schools in Dayton.

“Mr. Shye, the school treasurer, failed to send in the payment in a timely manner,” the letter provided to the Dayton Daily News said.

Contacted Monday, Shye said, “I have absolutely no idea what you’re talking about,” and that he would call back. He did not.

New City board Chairman Scott Nekrosius said he assumed bills were being paid and he was “surprised” Friday when he learned of the cancellation.

“We’re going to solve this problem as best we can,” he said.

The letter confirmed suspicions of teacher Kyle Muntzinger, who said his health insurance company has rejected more than $69,000 in claims this year related to the birth and health problems of his infant son. He said it’s the second time this school year his health insurance has lapsed at New City, a charter school for 130 students in grades kindergarten through eight.

“This is just an add-on to a miserable year of trying to catch up and fix problems,” Muntzinger said, adding that three of his paychecks have bounced this year, too.

New City Superintendent Robert Burns said the health policy lapsed May 7, while Muntzinger said his research shows it lapsed Feb. 28.

The canceled insurance policy is one of several fiscal problems for New City School, 1516 Salem Ave.

School leaders say the school is on the mend financially, but the most recent state audit available paints a dire picture of the balance sheet and books managed by Shye Jr., a Columbus-area accountant who is also treasurer for Arise Academy and Nu Bethel Center of Excellence.

According to Ohio Auditor Mary Taylor’s audit of New City’s 2007 school year, the school was $202,319 in debt, didn’t have documentation for $30,146 in disbursements and it didn’t have the chief executive’s approval for $217,506 in expenditures. It didn’t reconcile bank statements monthly or properly document “several deposits,” nor did it have a capital assets list or provide proof it carried insurance with the Ohio Bureau of Workers Compensation.

The bureau said Monday it couldn’t find evidence that New City carries the BWC insurance.

Nekrosius said the school has improved since that audit.

“We’re holding our own,” he said. “We’ll come out even at the end of the year.”

The Dayton Daily News has reported similar troubles at Arise Academy, a dropout/recovery high school at 1 Elizabeth Place, and Nu Bethel school at 3560 W. Siebenthaler Ave.

Shye said then that he made some mistakes, but he attributed most of the problems to state funding issues, school administrators and computer problems.

Ask Arne About This Longer School Day Plan

The results are in on Rudy Crew's $100,000,000 gamble. From the Miami Herald (ht to Monty Neill):

BY KATHLEEN MCGRORY
KMCGRORY@MIAMIHERALD.COM

A $100 million investment in Miami-Dade County's lowest performing public schools failed to boost student achievement, according to the school district's final report on the program.

The School Improvement Zone was a three-year push at 39 elementary, middle and senior high schools throughout the county. Students participated in a specialized reading program and had a longer school day than students at other schools. They also had a longer school year.

The zone was former Superintendent Rudy Crew's pet project. It was praised in education circles across the country.

But the investment yielded few results when it came to student performance on the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Tests, according to the district analysis.

And both students and teachers said they were exhausted by the extra hour a day in the classroom and the heavy workload.

Preempting Duncan's Prevarications

Duncan will be testifying before Congress tomorrow, no doubt repeating the same dog-eared sheaf of lies and exaggerations that the minions of the oligarchs, Gates and Broad, have handed him to read. It would be too much to ask, I suppose, that Dunc do some homework tonight by reading yesterday's story by the AP's Libby Quaid, whom I owe an apology for assuming that she was continuing in the tradition of former AP ed writer and lapdog of Margaret Spellings, Ben Feller. Ms. Quaid, I apologize, humbly.

So let me recommend Quaid's piece to anyone not on the Gates/Broad Christmas list, along with another piece that was posted by Dr. Bracey at Huffington Post on May 12. Together they will help neutralize the poison that Obama and Duncan, WaPo and the NY Times, have continued to pour into the education mix, even after Bush has moved to his own undisclosed location to await indictment for war crimes.

Some clips, first from Libby Quaid:

. . . .Here is a look at recent statements about the standing of the U.S. educational system and how they square with the facts.
———
TEST SCORES
Obama says the rest of the developed world is passing America by. "Our schools continue to trail other developed countries and, in some cases, developing countries," he told the National Academy of Sciences on April 27. "Our students are outperformed in math and science by their peers in Singapore, Japan, England, the Netherlands, Hong Kong and Korea, among others."

That is not the whole story.

The U.S. does trail the most high-achieving countries, mostly developed nations in Asia such as Singapore, Taiwan and Japan.

But the U.S. holds its own in the group that comes next, a group of developed countries that, depending on the test, includes England, Germany and Russia.

In fact, the U.S. has gained on some of its toughest competitors since 1995, making bigger strides in math than Singapore and Japan, and in science than Japan.

That is according to the most recent international tests, the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study, or TIMSS, the study Obama was citing. A lead TIMSS researcher took issue with the idea the U.S. is trailing.

"Certainly, our results do not show the United States trailing the developed world by any stretch of the imagination," said Ina V.S. Mullis, a Boston College research professor and co-director of the study.

"The Asian countries are way ahead of the rest of developed countries, but mostly the developed countries are relatively similar," Mullis said. "And the United States might be one of the leaders of that group, depending on whether you're talking about math or science in the fourth- or the eighth-grade."
———
MORE TEST SCORES
Obama also delivered this dismal news: "Another assessment shows American 15-year-olds ranked 25th in math and 21st in science when compared to nations around the world."

Bill Gates Sr., co-chairman and trustee of his son's Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, used similar figures in a National Public Radio interview last month when he said, "The condition of our public education is very, very poor."

At issue is the Program for International Student Assessment, or PISA, which is given to 15-year-olds in 30 developed countries.

Obama's numbers are correct, but perhaps misleading. PISA is not designed to measure what children have learned in school. Instead, it measures how well kids apply math to real-world problems, which could be learned in school, but also at home or elsewhere.

In contrast, the other test Obama cited, TIMSS, is designed to measure how much math children have learned in school.

Because of that difference—a big one in the world of educational research—experts including the Brookings Institution's Tom Loveless have cautioned against lumping PISA results together with other test scores. Loveless serves on the U.S. advisory board for PISA and is a representative to the group that administers TIMSS.
———
SCHOOL TIME
Obama's education secretary, Arne Duncan, says American kids don't spend enough time in school.

"Our children are competing for jobs against children in India and China today, and those children are going to school 25, 30 percent more than us," Duncan said at Brookings this past week.

Obama himself said in March: "Our children spend over a month less in school than children in South Korea every year. If they can do that in South Korea, we can do it right here in the United States of America."
The president is in luck: The U.S. already is doing it.

South Koreans do have a longer school year, measured in days. But Americans actually spend more time in school. The average U.S. eighth-grader has 1,146 instructional hours a year, compared with 923 hours a year in South Korea.

In fact, the U.S. has more instructional hours than many better-performing countries, though that raises a separate question about how well American schools spend classroom time.

A longer school year would shorten summer vacation and perhaps minimize the summer learning loss that hurts struggling students. Duncan is urging school districts to consider a longer year.

The school-time data come from the Education Department, which relied on information from the group that administers TIMSS.

As for Duncan's comparison, the department says there isn't reliable data on how much time Chinese or Indian children spend in school.
———
GRADUATION RATES
Helping more students finish college is a priority among the many philanthropies that work on education issues. In a December speech at George Washington University in Washington, D.C., the younger Gates said the U.S. problem is acute.

"In the case of college education, we were No. 1 in the world 20 years ago in the percentage of young adults with a postsecondary credential. Now we're number 10 and dropping," Gates said.

Obama said this in March: "In just a single generation, America has fallen from second place to 11th place in the portion of students completing college. That is unfortunate, but it's by no means irreversible."

The college figures come from various tables provided by the Paris-based Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, which runs the PISA test of 15-year-olds.

But those figures are misleading for several reasons, said Cliff Adelman, a former Education Department researcher now at the Institute for Higher Education Policy.

—They are based on entire populations, not on what actually happens to students who enter college in a given year. Graduation rates in a large, growing country such as the U.S. will not look as good as those of a smaller country whose population is declining.

—Countries have different definitions for who is counted; for example, some exclude noncitizens, while the U.S. includes them.

—Since 2000, many European countries have switched to three-year degrees from four-to-six year degrees, making their rates look better than before.

What about high school? There again, international comparisons present similar problems. Other countries have more complex systems with many different types of high schools and can limit who is admitted.

No one disputes that the U.S. high school dropout rate, 1 in 4 kids and worse among minorities, is awful.
But as with other international comparisons, measuring the U.S. against the rest of the world is like comparing apples and oranges.

And now, from Bracey:

I have not the expertise to address the merits of President Obama's speech to Congress on the issues of the economy. I do claim some expertise on education. He blew it.

He accepted the same garbage that the propagandists, fear mongers such as Lou Gerstner, Bill Gates, Roy Romer, Bob Wise, Craig Barrett and many others--God help us, Arne Duncan?--have been spewing for years.

Obama said, ""Right now, three quarters of the fastest-growing occupations require more than a high school diploma, and yet just over half of our citizens have that level of education. Scary, huh? Not really. This statistic was a favorite of ex secretary of education of education Margaret Spellings, about whom we can all express a sigh of relief that the operative word is, "ex."

If you look at the Bureau of Labor Statistics stats on job projections, it is almost true (but not really) that what Obama said is right. But there are two hugely compromising factors that make this statistic much less fearsome that it first appears:

1. The definition of "more than a high school diploma" is a weasel phrase, an incredibly slippery statistic. It does not mean a B. A., an Associates Degree, nor even a year of on-the-job training. The BLS projects that the overwhelming majority of jobs to be created between now and 2016 will require "short term on the job training." That's one week to three months.

2. The "fastest-growing occupations" account for very few jobs. For every systems engineer, we need about 15 sales people on the floor at Wal-Mart (and we have three newly minted scientists and engineers for every new job in those fields). The huge job numbers in this country are accounted for by retail sales, janitors, maids, food workers, waiters, truck drivers, home care assistants (low paid folk who come to take care those of us who are getting up in years), and similar low-trained, low-paid occupations. Note that I did not say these people are "low-skilled." As Barbara Ehrenreich showed after she spent two years working in "low-skilled" jobs, there really is no such thing (see her Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America).

"We have one of the highest high school dropout rates of any industrialized nation, and half of our students who begin college never finish."

Because test scores no longer work to prove American school failure, the statistic of choice to prove what a lousy job we're doing is the graduation rate. How dare those European and Asian nations have the audacity to recover from World War II! The dropout rates across nations are, so far as I can tell, incomparable, since secondary school programs in other nations range from two to five years. In other nations, once students finish the equivalent of 8th grade, they are tracked into vocational, technical or precollege programs whereas American students go to comprehensive high schools (although, as we all know, there is plenty of informal tracking within those).

Many people do not complete college for many reasons. One of my major regrets as a researcher is a failure to follow up, in the late 60's, on groups of students who failed to complete their education at Temple University, a center city school in Philadelphia vs. those who finished on time--at the time restrictions to access to personal data were much freer. The standout statistic in the data I looked at was that the SAT scores of those who finished in four years was only infinitesimally higher than those who had dropped out or been dismissed for academic reasons.

I also don't know much about college completion rates in Europe, but do know that you can hang around as a student at the Sorbonne in Paris forever. Incidentally, you want a riot in Europe? Try imposing college tuition.

The World Economic Forum, and the Institute for Management Development, two Swiss think tanks, rate the U. S. as the most globally competitive nation in the world, IMD using 50+ nations, WEF, 135. What things will look like when their new rankings emerge from the current catastrophe this fall is hard to say. But looking at tests, high-scoring Iceland is an economic basket case. High-scoring France is on strike. And even higher-scoring Japan, the idol that "A Nation At Risk" prostrated itself to in 1983 because its test scores surely ensured economic prosperity, endured a "lost decade" of recession starting around 1990 and, in 2007 was in recession once again. Japan's students still ace tests.

When will we ever learn?

Kathy Reidlinger, NOLA Charter Schools' Top Scammer

Kathy Reidlinger's $200,000+ salary as CEO of a New Orleans charter school (why wouldn't they call it Lusher?) surpasses the previous top scammer trophy held by Eva Moskowitz, who raked in $371,000 for managing four Harlem charter schools in 2007.

The Times-Picayune continues the coverage in the Sunday edition:

For a quarter-century before Hurricane Katrina, Kathy Riedlinger held one of the most coveted jobs in the New Orleans school system: principal of Lusher Elementary, the Uptown magnet school. But neither she nor her peers at other public schools were ever going to get rich.

In 2004, Riedlinger earned a base salary barely topping $60,000, though with stipends she boosted her take to $91,488, according to her tax form.

That number skyrocketed after Lusher became an independent charter school in the dark days after the flood. Lusher's new board of directors -- whom Riedlinger helped choose -- would soon grant her more money than most district superintendents.

This year, Riedlinger will haul in $203,556, including a $5,000 yearly car allowance. That doesn't include a possible performance bonus, such as the extra $10,000 Lusher's nonprofit board granted Riedlinger last year. The school's attorney, James Brown, declined to comment on whether she would get a similar sum this year. "That's in the discretion of the board. That's all I'm authorized to say," Brown said. . . .

Why would a successful public magnet school decide privatize itself as a corporate charter? Here is a little background from a thoroughly-researched piece by Carl Bernofsky that introduces the other players in this corporate welfare movement by rich white folks: Tulane University and Johnson Controls--and FEMA under BushCo.:

Tulane's other ambition is to create an exclusive high school that would employ its own personnel and be financed by the state [37]. Activists have labeled the plan racist because the new school would primarily benefit the children of Tulane professors at the expense of other public schools that are seriously underfunded [38]. Despite employment practices by Tulane that would conflict with policies negotiated between the Orleans Parish School Board and the American Federation of Teachers for school employees, some school board members endorsed Tulane's participation in establishing a new high school [39].

With the prospect of further access to public funding, Tulane began to insinuate itself into the New Orleans Public Schools (NOPS) with devices such as a new Internet library resource "offered only to educators in the New Orleans Public School District..." [40]. Although Tulane does not have a school of education, it began "testing the waters" by sending student observers into various public schools and by enlisting the cooperation of Kathy Riedlinger, principal of Lusher Extension School [41]. It also installed a business program into the John McDonogh High School curriculum [41].

Exercising powers newly afforded him by Senate Act 193, Superintendent of Schools Anthony Amato quietly negotiated with Tulane to make it a "partner" in a new Lusher High School that would be housed in an uptown school building (Sophie B. Wright Middle School), whose current students would be displaced [42]. Public outrage following disclosure of this "under-the-radar" scheme was a factor that contributed to Amato's abrupt resignation [42].

Well-organized Lusher parents, determined to sever the school's relationship with a dysfunctional central administration now in crisis, drafted a proposal to convert Lusher into a publicly-supported charter school administered by a private board selected by the school's parents. In a move toward self-imposed privatization, Lusher teachers overwhelmingly agreed to give up their representation by the teachers' union in exchange for a system of accountability to an untried administrative board with which they will now have to negotiate salaries, working conditions and benefits and depend upon to resolve disputes and grievances [43]. Presumably, the new Lusher board will be empowered to set student enrollment qualifications, hire and dismiss teachers at will, receive private funding, expand to upper grade levels, create alternative programs, and enter into relationships with other academic institutions.

. . . .

Dismissing the role played by the five local universities that actually operate departments of education (University of New Orleans, Loyola, Dillard, Xavier and Southern University at New Orleans), Isaacson, himself a Tulane graduate, declared Cowen to be "the hero when it comes to New Orleans education." [53] Cowen made it clear that, "his only focus when it came to public education was to find a school available in January 2006 for the children of Tulane faculty and staff." [65] However, despite this narrow focus, he was honored with the prestigious Shofar Award of New York's Central Synagogue for his leadership in rebuilding "the city's public education system" as well as "[h]is determination to save the City of New Orleans..." [66]. The reality is that by the end of 2006, the lack of concern for children of the city's poor resulted in a failure to meet the educational needs of many students and caused the flight of many teachers from some of the city's dysfunctional state-run schools. [67].

With a selective enrollment policy and first preference given to the children of professional staff at Tulane, Loyola, Dillard and Xavier Universities [68], places at Lusher Charter Schools were rapidly filled, forcing some parents in the Lusher district who were not connected with those universities to look elsewhere for schools to educate their children [69]. About 44% of Lusher's students were children from families of Tulane employees [70].

What remained was repairing the storm-damaged facilities that Lusher Charter Schools would occupy, particularly the Alcee Fortier High School building, which was in disrepair even before the storm and which required an estimated $10-15 million to refurbish [71]. This was solved by soliciting Johnson Controls Inc. to repair Lusher's elementary school and assist with the fund-raising needed to renovate the upper-grade facility. Johnson Controls complied [72]. The engineering company was eager to make amends to a city shaken by a corruption scandal that involved an earlier $81 million contract with City Hall [73,74], and it saw an opportunity to become a major player in the reconstruction of other storm-damaged New Orleans' institutions, businesses and infrastructure [72,75]. Both Tulane and Johnson Controls understand how to profit from investments and how to wield power for their financial advantage, so their alliance seemed natural. On the other hand, New Orleans' elected officials appeared ineffective and demoralized when they relinquished power to the traditional elite and accepted a firm so recently mired in corruption. The reelection of Mayor Ray Nagin on May 20, 2006 suggests a level of comfort by the white and business communities with the existing city administration [76].

From a political process unique to New Orleans, of the $52 million in FEMA money allocated for all schools in Orleans Parish, $16 million was used to renovate Alcee Fortier High School building for the upper grades of Tulane-affiliated Lusher Charter School [77].

As far as the future of public education is concerned, the Bush administration, eager to promote privatization of the public schools, awarded $20.9 million in September, 2005 and $23.9 million in June, 2006 to the state of Louisiana, much of it earmarked for charter school development in Hurricane-Katrina affected areas [78]. The teachers union is being eliminated or marginalized by charter schools, and the "recovery-district schools" will largely be operated by the state. That leaves only a handful of schools that will, for now, be retaining their collective bargaining rights [79]. More than a year after Katrina, Judge Ethel Simms-Julien denied a complaint that about 7,000 fired New Orleans public school employees were not given proper consideration for jobs after the state took over 107 of the city's 128 public schools.[80]. On December 6, 2006 Tulane announced the establishment of the Scott Cowen Institute for Public Education Initiatives [81], ostensibly to assist the state with educational policy decisions and perhaps collaborate in government-funded projects [82]. On February 14, 2007 construction began on the $1.9-million, 11,000-square-foot Goldring Performance Arts Center at Lusher Charter School [83]. . . . .

Philanthrocapitalists Speak, Duncan Listens

     Secretary of Education Arne Duncan recently announced his hope to see 5,000 schools turned around during the next five years.  Increases in federal spending directly tied to school restructuring (firing entire staff; closing the school; turning the school over to charter operators; or new curriculum materials) will drive this intended reform.  Duncan's plan for school turnarounds should not be a surprise given his tenure in Chicago, the current DOE's connections to various philanthrocapitalists, and the political climate in Washington.  

     Take, for example, this recent document put out by the Coalition for Student Achievement, a group funded by (among others): Business Roundtable, Center for American Progress, Democrats for Education Reform, NewSchools Venture Fund, Stupski Foundation, Gates Foundation, Business Coalition for Education Excellence, Commission on No Child Left Behind, Broad Foundation, Fordham Institute, and Center on Reinventing Public Education.   The reform agenda pushed in "Smart Options: Investing the Recovery Funds in Student Success," was constructed during an early 2009 meeting in Washington, D.C (p. 2). Many notable education entrepreneurs, philanthropic foundations, think tanks representatives, and a number of the most noteworthy education reformers attended the meeting: TFA representatives, NewSchools Venture Fund CEO and California State Board of Education President Ted Mitchell, NewSchools Venture Fund partner Jonathan Schorr, Green Dot CEO Steve Barr, and New Teacher Project CEO Timothy Daly; four Gates Foundation representatives, two Broad representatives (although Andrew J. Rotherham is not listed as representing the Broad Foundation even though he serves on their board); Thomas B. Fordham's Chester Finn, and Education Sector's Chad Alderman and Rotherham; Michelle Rhee, NYC Chancellor Joel Klein and the NYC COO, and the Louisiana Superintendent Paul Pastorek.  And don't forget to throw in two McKinsey & Co. representatives for a touch of global management flavor.  Their cumulative thoughts were summarized in "Smart Options" and proposed as a blueprint for education reform.  

     The document notes that "nearly 5,000 schools (or about 5 percent of all U.S. public schools) are now in at least Program Improvement 5 status" (p. 26)  But districts and states have avoided firing the entire staff of a school, closing the school, or turning the school over to charter management organizations.  Speaking about national education, KIPP, Green Dot, Uncommon Schools, Yes Prep, and Aspire are specifically mentioned as "high-performing schools serving high-poverty students" before the document calls for governors and state officials to "Aggressively close poor-performing schools and replace them with new high-performing schools." [their bold](p. 27)  Many other ideas - from teacher reform to national standards to data-driven instruction - are shared with Duncan's like-minded reformers.  These may not be Duncan's words - but this outline could easily be confused with an official outline of the DOE's plans for education reform and the unprecedented $100 billion.

     There is not an ounce of evidence to suggest these kind of reform efforts will work.  But the Philanthropy Roundtable operates with its own set of rules - just check the guiding principles of the Philanthropy Roundtable, listed on page 139 of this recent document.  The reform efforts are guaranteed to do one thing and one thing only: apply market mechanisms to public education. Markets are a great way to do some things - but not a way to provide equitable, high-quality public services to everyone.

Welcoming New Contributor, Ken Libby

I am happy to welcome Ken Libby as a new contributor to SM. Ken is a month away from getting his Masters in the Art of Teaching from Lewis and Clark's Graduate School of Education in Portland, Oregon. Hey, West Coast!

Here's Ken:

My entire work history involves children - three years as a part-time nanny, summer camp counselor, work with children and grief, teaching assistant in an expensive private school, and student-teacher in the Portland Public Schools. My diverse work experience has led me to see education as a deeply personal, social, and transformative process when done correctly; it can also be stale, violent, and forceful when behaviorism and testing strip away all that is human from schooling.

The emerging leaders of my generation (I'm 26) have always known economic prosperity - the MTV era of marketing, the internet and tech explosion, and the endless search for more and greater profits. There are alternatives to No Child Left Behind, charter schools, privatization, and high-stakes testing. I hope my generation can learn from the mistakes of our past and ignore the endless reform ideas of the business world and other economic interests in an attempt to address issues of global and national significance - poverty, climate change, and violence.

Welcoming Kenneth Bernstein, aka teacherken

I am happy to welcome another Ken as a new contributor to SM.

Take it away, Ken (in the third person):

Kenneth Bernstein began fulltime teaching in 1995 after a career in data processing and a varied background including service in the Marines, selling cars, selling incense in Greenwich Village (it was the '60s), and other odd and interesting occupations, all of which he thinks broadens his perspective as a teacher. With degrees in Music, Religion, and Education, naturally he teaches Social Studies (in which he has National Board Certification). He blogs on a variety of topics at a variety of places (including at their initiative at the New York Times) where usually he writes as "teacherken" although occasionally under his own name. ABD in Educational Administration and Policy Studies, he promises never to inflict his proposed dissertation upon the unsuspecting world. But beware, he is spreading across the internet.

Peace

Brown v Board of Education after 55 years

Fifty-five years ago today the Supreme Court of the United States unanimously issued Earl Warren's opinion in Brown v Board of Education of Topeka, in which it stated unequivocally that

Separate educational facilities are inherently unequal.

And yet even after 55 years the promise of the Brown decision we still have not overcome what is effectively a system of educational apartheid.

Below the fold I am offering the text of a piece by Sam Chaltain, the National Director of The Forum for Education and Democracy. I am going to urge you to read carefully his words. I will offer a few additional comments of my own, but the primary purpose of this diary is to make Sam's statement more widely known.

Doesn’t Every Child Deserve a High Quality Education?
By Sam Chaltain


On May 17, America will mark the 55th anniversary of Thurgood Marshall’s historic victory in Brown v. Board of Education. If Marshall were alive, however, he would urge us to stop celebrating 1954 and start accepting responsibility for our complicity in the creation of a “separate but equal” education apartheid system – with one method of instruction for the poor, and another for the privileged.

In theory, the Brown decision represents the most hopeful strains of the American narrative: working within a system of laws to extend the promise of freedom, more fairly and fully, to each succeeding generation. “In the field of public education,” the unanimous Court wrote, “the doctrine of ‘separate but equal’ has no place,” and the opportunity to learn “is a right which must be made available to all on equal terms.” The Chicago Defender proclaimed May 17, 1954 as “the beginning of the end of the dual society in American life and the system of segregation that supports it.” Marshall himself remembered feeling “so happy I was numb.”

In practice, integrated schools today are as much of a dream now as they were then, and the subject of segregation has all but disappeared from the national conversation about education reform. Worse still, many of the newest and most promising schools in our nation’s cities are actually increasing the racial stratification of young people and communities – not lessening it.

Providing ‘separate but equal’ facilities, it seems, has once again become an acceptable justification for allowing an inequitable schooling system to exist. In this system, some schools receive ample funding, while others scrape by. Some schools are filled with passionate, experienced educators, while others are flooded with passionate, inexperienced rookies. And while one child is being taught that the key to success is finding the right (multiple-choice) answer to other people’s questions, another is learning that success comes from finding his voice and discovering his rightful place in the world.

Which child is more likely to do well in life, and in a democratic society?

Ostensibly, this inequity was what the Court ended in 1954. But legal changes tend to outpace social changes, and so in 1973 the Court was again asked to intervene, this time when a group of poor Texas parents claimed that their state’s reliance on local taxes to determine per-pupil expenditures violated the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment. A state court agreed, but the U.S. Supreme Court, in a narrow 5-4 decision, reversed.

The unfair distribution of resources, Justice Potter Stewart conceded, “has resulted in a system of public education that can fairly be described as chaotic and unjust. It does not follow, however, that this system violates the Constitution.”

Justice Lewis Powell agreed. “Though education is one of the most important services performed by the state, it is not within the limited category of rights recognized by this Court as guaranteed by the Constitution.” If it were, Powell conceded, “virtually every State will not pass muster.”

For Justice Marshall, a sitting member of the Court he had stood before two decades prior, that was precisely the point. “The Court concludes that public education is not constitutionally guaranteed,” he wrote, even though “no other state function is so uniformly recognized as an essential element of our society’s well being.”

Marshall understood that without equal access to a high-quality public education, democracy doesn’t work. “Education directly affects the ability of a child to exercise his First Amendment rights,” he explained. “Education prepares individuals to be self-reliant and self-sufficient participants in society. Both facets of this observation are suggestive of the substantial relationship which education bears to guarantees of our Constitution.”

After so many years and so little real change, something new – perhaps even something drastic – needs to be done.

What if Powell and Stewart were wrong? What if we made the guarantee of a high-quality public education our nation’s 28th Constitutional Amendment? Is that the game-changer we need to make the promise of Brown a reality, 55 years later?

Sam Chaltain is the National Director of The Forum for Education & Democracy, a national education “action tank” committed to the public, democratic role of public education — the preparation of engaged and thoughtful democratic citizens.

(follow Sam on Twitter)

Let me start by noting again the words of Justice Powell, that Though education is one of the most important services performed by the state, it is not within the limited category of rights recognized by this Court as guaranteed by the Constitution. And still today, more than a quarter century after that opinion in San Antonio Independent School District v. Rodriguez, it is still true, as Powell wrote in 1972, that virtually every State will not pass muster.

Some states guarantee a free and appropriate public education in their state constitution, although such guarantees were often from a time when such education was only through the 8th grade.

We have come out of a two-term presidency where the focus on No Child Left Behind as the supposed means of addressing the inequity that is still pervasive in America's schools has had the unfortunate effect of narrowing the educational opportunities for many children of color. The recent scores on the National Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP) show that while scores at the elementary level have risen somewhat (albeit less than in the previous periodic assessment covering a time when NCLB had only briefly been in effect), the gap between white and black had not closed and at the high school level there had been no significant change in performance. In short, we are still leaving many children behind. And in the meantime we are robbing them of access to the arts, which are not tested, and incredibly to history and civic education, which also are not part of the calculation of Adequate Yearly Progress under NCLB, and hence get ignored inr restricted in favor of more time to raise scores on those tests whose results do get included.

I teach government. Thus the words of Thurgood Marshall in dissent are to me quite relevant: Education directly affects the ability of a child to exercise his First Amendment rights. Our students need to understand those writes to be fully participating citizens helping shape their own future and the future of this nation. Marshall recognized this: Education prepares individuals to be self-reliant and self-sufficient participants in society. Both facets of this observation are suggestive of the substantial relationship which education bears to guarantees of our Constitution.

But these ideas are not new now, nor were they when Marshall expressed them in 1972. Let me offer a selection from Warren's opinion in Brown that remains as relevant today as it was 55 years ago:

Today, education is perhaps the most important function of state and local governments. Compulsory school attendance laws and the great expenditures for education both demonstrate our recognition of the importance of education to our democratic society. It is required in the performance of our most basic public responsibilities, even service in the armed forces. It is the very foundation of good citizenship. Today it is a principal instrument in awakening the child to cultural values, in preparing him for later professional training, and in helping him to adjust normally to his environment. In these days, it is doubtful that any child may reasonably be expected to succeed in life if he is denied the opportunity of an education. Such an opportunity, where the state has undertaken to provide it, is a right which must be made available to all on equal terms.

We must remember that despite the unanimity of the Brown decision there was strong resistance. I write these words from the Commonwealth of Virginia, which after the succeeding Brown 2 decision of 1955, which said that segregated school systems must be integrated with all deliberate speed chose a path of "massive resistance" repeatedly articulated in the editorial pages of a major newspaper, the Richmond News Leader, penned by the very articulate editor James Jackson Kilpatrick. We often forget that Topeka was only one of 5 districts involved in the Brown case. There were two parallel decisions, because one case came from our national capital which since it was note a state had to be decided on somewhat different legal grounds as it was in Bolling v Sharpe. The other states, besides Virginia, included South Carolina and Delaware. The Virginia situation is illustrative of how difficult it has been to achieve racial equity in public schools. The General Assembly had allowed the closing of public schools that were to be integrated, but this was ruled unconstitutional in 1959, whereupon the General Assembly repealed compulsory school attendance and left it to local option. That meant either integrated public schools or no public schools. Prince Edward County, which had been the subject of the Virginia case combined into Brown, chose to be the sole Virginia district that abandoned public education. From May 1, 1959 until in 1964 the Supreme Court of the United States ruled unconstitutional governments making grants to private (segregated) schools, Prince Edward County had no public schools.

Too many do not know the history of that time. The decision 55 years ago today did not magically erase an era of racial discrimination in education. While it might no longer be de jure on racial grounds today, the inequity of schools serving primarily or exclusively minority populations is not so much better, despite the various federal and state efforts that have been made. The process of of addressing the failures of such schools has inextricably become a political football used by some to advance causes that have little to do with the meaningful education of children whose economic situations give them less access to educationally related activities outside of school, and whose in-school education has increasingly been narrowed to preparation for tests to "prove" we are offering an education, even if the unstated purposes on the part of many advocates are things like destroying the legitimacy of (and hence the support for) public education and destruction of teachers unions as a force both in educational policy and in politics.

Education is essential if we are to remain a liberal democracy. It is one of the few ways we can empower all of our citizens to something beyond a dependence on the whims of corporations whose sole purpose is maximizing their profits. Education should prepare people for a future that is more than merely for the workforce, but also for civil society, for the body politic, for the future of America.

We have come 55 years since the Brown decision was issued. We have not yet come close to fulfilling the promise contained in Warren's sweeping opinion. Despite the unanimity of the Court in 1954, we have never achieved a consensus on the purposes of public education, nor do we have a willingness to make the commitment necessary to achieve the promise of the right to a high quality public education.

Perhaps pursuing a federal Constitutional Amendment is the only way of refocusing our attention as a nation to what Brown was supposed to help us achieve. Certainly the public discussion that would ensue from exploring that option would benefit the nation, whether or not we ever ratify such a proposal.

Warren wrote in Brown that

To separate them from others of similar age and qualifications solely because of their race generates a feeling of inferiority as to their status in the community that may affect their hearts and minds in a way unlikely ever to be undone.

Allowing clearly inferior educational opportunities, even if nominally not done specifically on racial grounds, nevertheless still has the same impact. Students are not idiots - they quickly realize that the inferiority of their facilities, in some cases teachers, and in many cases quality of instruction indicates that society does not truly care about them despite the rhetoric about leaving no child behind, of overcoming the disparity that is apparent when we look even at gross indicators like test scores. Their hearts and minds are still battered by the inequity a continuing part of the experience of far too many children of lesser economic circumstances. They may be children of color in inner cities. They may be whites in economically distressed rural communities. They are often children in schools on the reservations in which many Native Americans still grow up.

Regardless of race or location, when we do not offer them a high quality education, we betray the basic principles of our Constitutional system and give lie to the promise of the Brown decision.

Fifty-five years. We have come somewhat. We have not come far enough.

Peace.

Disaster Capitalism Paying Off Big for Charter School CEOs in New Orleans

The Times-Picayune has a great piece of reporting on the Wall Street school model coming to maturity in New Orleans. Huge CEO salaries, secrecy, and no oversight. Paul Vallas must be as proud as the corporate stooge, Paul Pastorek, who runs the exploded state school system. New LEAP test numbers are due next week, and the charter EMOs will have whole new set of targets for next year.

by Brian Thevenot, The Times-Picayune
Saturday May 16, 2009, 9:54 PM

Now in control of their own budgets, many New Orleans charter school boards have invested heavily in school leaders, with a few paying well into the six-figure range, doubling or tripling the salaries that principals earned under the old regime.

Atop the pay range sits veteran Kathy Riedlinger, head of Lusher Charter School, who earns $203,556, including a $5,000 yearly car allowance. Lafayette Charter School's Mickey Landry, recruited from a prep school in a national search, is No.¤2 at $186,000.

At Ben Franklin High School, Principal Timothy Rusnak, also recruited nationally, earns $150,000 annually. And Jay Altman, chief executive of FirstLine Schools, earns $132,000 to oversee both S.J. Green and Arthur Ashe charter schools.

. . . .

Riedlinger's $203,556 compensation package, for instance, approaches that of Recovery District Superintendent Paul Vallas and exceeds the $160,000 earned by Orleans Parish School Board Superintendent Darryl Kilbert. Brian Riedlinger, who until recently served as superintendent of the nine-school Algiers Charter School Association, earned $190,000 yearly. Brian Riedlinger is Kathy Riedlinger's ex-husband.

The pay increases have gone mostly unnoticed, in large part because of the difficulty in tracking spending under the system's diffuse governance structure.

As a result, key school leaders, including the principals themselves; superintendents Vallas and Kilbert; Orleans Parish School Board President Woody Koppel; and Louella Givens, New Orleans' only representative on the state board of education, were all surprised to learn of the top salaries.

Givens said she recently asked a colleague on the Board of Elementary and Secondary Education about principal salary information, but was rebuffed.

"I was essentially told that, because charters are independent, they have freedom to set salaries however they want," she said. "When I find out that some of these places are operating like little kingdoms, I think this kind of information should be readily available to the public. You assume there's oversight, but apparently there isn't." . . . .

Busing to Achieve Apartheid Schools

The oligarchs running the bogus Education Equality Project paid for 70 buses to bring busloads of hornswoggled poor people to Washington, DC to watch Arne's over-the-hill gang promote segregation via charter school, all the while advocating for equality on a day marked to remember the now-esiscerated Brown v Board of Education decision.

Here's a clip from today's Washington Post with a quote from the brains of the bunch, Newt Gingrich:

"I know it's possible to educate every child from every background," Gingrich said to loud applause from the largely African American crowd that had come to Washington in 70 buses from 22 cities. "We're not telling you what the answer is. But we're telling you to keep changing until you find a solution."

Anything to avoid the real problem of poverty, he thought.

The "Pre-Brown" Quality of the Education Equality Project

In a display of moral blindness that ignorantly ignores the re-segregation of American schools while, yet, clamoring for the "No Excuses" apartheid chain gangs of KIPP, political relics like Gingrich, Sharpton, and Bloomberg are parading their tough guy solutions around Washington today in hopes a generating a grassroots movement for the corporate takeover of American schools. If anything could be more ridiculous, I can't think of it.

There was this reaction Thursday by Errol Louis in the New York Daily News:

Thursday, May 14th 2009, 2:08 PM
Fifty-five years after the Brown vs. Board of Education Supreme Court decision that struck down laws segregating public schools by race, there's intense pressure by local and federal authorities to close the persistent education gap between white students and their black and Latino counterparts.

The fight is about to shift into high gear, with the White House pledging $5 billion to turn around 5,000 failing schools and the Education Equality Project co-founded by the Rev. Al Sharpton and Schools Chancellor Joel Klein holding a rally in Washington this weekend framing the struggle to fix schools as a continuation of the civil rights movement.

It's a commendable goal that, I fear, will not be reached as long as we continue to ignore the 800-pound gorilla in the room: the entrenched segregation in housing and employment that leads, as day follows night, to concentrated poverty and separate-but-unequal test scores and dropout rates.

So long as we accept segregated cities, suburbs and workplaces as the natural order of things, there isn't much point in being surprised that barely half of all black and Latino kids graduate high school (compared with 78% of their white counterparts).

All available evidence shows that leaving black and brown families in isolated, impoverished neighborhoods creates a dense thicket of social problems - including educational failure - that resist easy solutions. That is why the struggle for civil rights was always understood to be a sprawling, multifront attack on laws, commercial practices and cultural attitudes.

But the broad movement of the past has been replaced by a relatively narrow education discussion in which the price of admission for those who want to be taken seriously is to say as little as possible about race, injustice or discrimination.

Leaders of the education equity fight end up going through mental and political contortions to argue that America can and must end one system of racial injustice - while leaving all others untouched, unchallenged and intact. There is no discussion, for instance, of the disgraceful residential segregation that leaves so many urban neighborhoods - including here in New York - virtually all-white or all-black.

You rarely hear about government agencies enforcing the fair housing laws or working to reduce employment discrimination. On the contrary, the Bloomberg administration continues to battle in court against the federal Justice Department, stubbornly defending the hiring practices that created New York's 92% white Fire Department.

"America's thinking about education has taken on a strangely pre-Brown quality," writes Richard Kahlenberg, a fellow at the Century Foundation. "There exists a solid consensus among researchers that school segregation perpetuates failure, and an equally durable consensus among politicians and policymakers that nothing much can be done about it."

Another educational skeptic, James Forman Jr., son of the civil rights leader, says that we too often fixate on a model project like the Harlem Children's Zone or the KIPP charter schools while ignoring the question of whether there is even close to enough political will and money to take the models to scale.
"For too long, I am afraid, the answer has been to trumpet the success of a spectacular school or teacher and shout, 'No More Excuses,' or 'It's Being Done.' But that alone will not work," Forman writes in the current Boston Review. "There are more than 19 million low-income students in this country. That is the problem we have to solve."
I have the greatest personal respect, and highest hopes, for the efforts by Klein, Sharpton and the new education secretary, Arne Duncan, to improve public education. But they and the rest of us have to stop kidding ourselves about what it will take to end inequality in America.

39 Teachers Hauled Off to Jail by L. A. Police: Students Walk Out in Support

From KTLA in Los Angeles:

Police arrested dozens of people, including teacher's union president A.J. Duffy, during a protest rally in downtown Los Angeles.

The protesters. most of them teachers, were part of a planned sit-in at the district headquarters.

"We're being arrested to send a message to the district and the city that they have the money ... parents are going to be upset when they go to school next year and classrooms are 50 and 60 kids," said A.J. Duffy, president of United Teachers Los Angeles, as he was being led away by police.

The protesters were arrested for blocking a public street, said Los Angeles Police Department Officer April Harding.

Officers searched the protesters, handcuffed them and loaded them onto an LAPD bus for processing.

LAUSD Superintendent Ramon Cortines said earlier he was pleased the union had agreed to abide by the court order and call off the one-day strike.

"We are united in our goal to educate our students," he said. "We have to start working together. A climate of us-versus-them hurts everyone, especially our students. I am committed to reaching out and personally working with Mr. Duffy to resolve any issues."

Another rally is expected outside the district's headquarters after school is dismissed this afternoon.

About 700 more teachers than usual called in sick today in the Los Angeles Unified School District. On a normal Friday in May, about 2,300 of the district's 34,000 teachers would be out of class.

The teachers' union Thursday requested hundreds of substitutes -- that it planned to pay for -- to allow selected teachers to leave class to participate in acts of civil disobedience, some of which were intended to lead to arrests.

Students have also joined the fray, walking out of class at several high schools and holding sit-ins in support of teachers.

About 500 students at Garfield High School in East L.A. walked out of campus this morning and sat in the central yard. Later, the students were moved to the bleachers, and a sound system was provided by the school so students could discuss why they didn't want teachers laid off.

The group dispersed after a break and about 150 returned to the bleachers afterward.

At Jordan High School in South L.A., some 200 students gathered in the quad to show their solidarity with teachers and another 200 at Maywood Academy in Maywood walked out of class.

Shortly after the nutrition bell rang at 11 a.m. at Franklin High School in Highland Park, hundreds of students chose not to return to their classrooms.

The school board voted last month to authorize thousands of layoffs, including teachers, to close an estimated $600 million budget deficit. The exact number of potential layoffs has been gradually lowering as district officials crunch numbers and offer early retirement packages to teachers and other employees.

From the UTLA website:

..AND WE'RE NOT DONE YET!
After school today, all UTLA members, parents and the community are urged to join us as we converge on LAUSD headquarters to show support for our detained colleagues. Be there right after school!.

Authoritarianism As a Solution for "Maturing" Democracy

The strangling of public education by the casino capitalists, the vulture philanthropists, and the Harvard Business School would have been a slam dunk had the New Authoritarians not been side-tracked by an economic meltdown of their own creation. And even though the catastrophe has not been fully realized yet, there is enough pain to cause most Americans to question the groupthink and genuflecting to greed that treats our democratic institutions like mature business ventures in need of a management makeover or a personnel swapout or a new CEO to bring that entrepreneurial blood to the surface--all that is needed, according to the case study copyists at the Harvard Business School and the Harvard School of Ed, where ideas are copied from the copyists across campus.

This kind of misplaced analogizing by businessmen who know nothing about educating children, or who have other more important priorities, has been around for a hundred years, but only since Reagan have the meddlers and misanthropes actually had a chance to operationalize their stupid and dystopic notions. Ironically, the profiteers' own self-created economic depression could serve to stop the shoving of public institutions over the cliff and our democratic souls with them.

The signs are everywhere that fewer and fewer are believing Arne Duncan's superflous superlatives anymore, and the oiliness of oligarchs like Gates (see the June Harper's Magazine) and Broad becomes more apparent as they implant their manipulators like the uber-macho Steve Barr into the public sphere to do their private and self-serving dirty work. U. S. News has even taken notice of the potential bankruptcy in letting the bankrupt lead:

. . . .Assuming that $5 billion is enough dough to "turn around" some of the nation's worst public schools—and that the turnaround can be done in five years—would such an intervention even work? Besides firing and replacing staff or handing the schools over to charter school operators, Arne Duncan has yet to offer any specific examples of what a "school turnaround" would actually consist of. The mantra most recited by Education Department officials now is "bold action" in persistently low-achieving schools, but what does that actually mean?

Would simply replacing teachers and principals work? If all the other factors in a low-achieving student's life—family, neighborhood, social life—were to remain constant, would substituting an outstanding teacher for an ineffective teacherreverse the achievement levels? Are good teachers and principals all that is needed to turn around struggling schools, the majority of which are in impoverished communities where the parents might not have the time to help their children succeed in school? (Another interesting approach to "shut down" failing schools has recently been mounted by Steve Barr, who is gathering petitions from frustrated parents to convert Los Angeles public schools into charter schools.) What would teachers unions say about the potential massive firings of teachers in an effort to turn around failing schools? . . . .

Will Authoritarian Control of Detroit Schools Let Duncan Sleep Better?

(Photo: Clarence Tabb Jr. / The Detroit News)
In terms of one-man rule, Detroit has been there, done that. In 2004 voters overwhelmingly rejected mayoral control and put an elected school board back in charge. Unfortunately, that did not stop the blowing up of the system as NCLB's impossible explosive devices (IEDs) continued to wreak havoc in the schools. The current $300 million dollar deficit is the result of parents fleeing the effects of the onslaught.

Now Dunc and the vulture philanthropists have moved in, advocating for dictatorial control of the schools in order to make sure the school buses run on time and the corporate charter franchises are given free rein.

Too bad Wayne County Commissioner, Keith Williams, did not get to meet Dunc yesterday:

While Duncan met with state and local leaders this morning, other local representatives and parents met with Peter Cunningham, assistant secretary for communications and outreach for the federal education department.

Wayne County Commissioner Keith Williams said poverty is a big concern in Detroit. Others raised the problems of gangs in schools, and text messaging in classrooms.

"If you can solve the poverty issue, you will solve the education issue," he said.

Cunningham said the secretary and his team generally see education as the way out of poverty.

Cunningham also raised the issue of whether mayoral control was a consideration here in Detroit. Williams said mayoral control isn't the answer.

"We don't need a takeover," he said. "We need cooperation."

A little history of the Detroit situation from the Detroit Free Press:

. . . .DPS has been under mayoral control before. In 1999, a state law gave the mayor power to appoint six of Detroit's seven school board members. The other was the state superintendent or his designee. The board had no financial powers, solely existing to hire, evaluate and fire the chief executive officer who ran the district.

In 2004, Detroit voters became the nation's first to repeal a school takeover, giving power back to an 11-member elected board. Those against mayoral control resented Lansing legislators for passing the law, calling it a racist power grab for control of the district's $1.5-billion construction bond.

Freman Hendrix, adviser to Bing, a former mayoral candidate and the first president of the reform school board appointed by then-Mayor Dennis Archer in 1999, said frustration and apathy favor mayoral control. "I think the mood is different now, the city is beat down now," he said.

After 3 1/2 years under an elected board, DPS has an estimated $305-million deficit, and the governor, in March, took financial control from the school board for the next year. DPS has lost 45% of its students in the past 10 years, fueling the financial problems.

Wednesday's meeting with Duncan came one day after Bobb announced that 29 of DPS's 200 schools will close for good this summer -- bringing the five-year total to 100 closed buildings. An additional 40 schools will be restructured; some may be placed under control of private companies.

Duncan, a supporter of mayoral control, is the former chief executive officer of Chicago Public Schools. In that city, Mayor Richard Daley appoints the CEO and school board. . . .

KIPP Abuse Will Not Continue, At Least Not in Fresno

Any KIPP school is doomed that does not polish the public relations image that is so carefully projected nationally in order to sell urban parents on replacement of public schools with the no excuses cage schooling of the cheap KIPP knockoffs. KIPP Fresno, which faced ethical, legal, and moral challenges following an investigation by Fresno Unified, has decided to pull the plug. For a history of the case, go here and read posts from the bottom up.

A single newspaper, if you want to call the Fresno Bee a newspaper, has reported the closing, even though the reporter did not mention the moral meltdown that eventually assured the shuttering of this bad news site that threatened to further stain the chimerical image that the Oligarchs' PR machines have produced.

It is not at all surprising the KIPP board would blame Fresno Unified for KIPP's own refusal to submit the necessary paperwork to renew its charter. From the local ABC affiliate:

By Gene Haagenson
Fresno, CA (KFSN) -- Three of the schools five board members came to a meeting Tuesday night to explain the school's plight to parents and students. With apparent regret, the board voted to close the KIPP Academy. Board Director Steve Gile called for the vote.

"This is going to be a roll call vote. Dr. Chong ... I vote to close. Dr. Jones, I vote to close. I vote to close as well. Motion's carried 3 zero."

A few parents argued the school needed to keep on fighting. But the board members said the situation was hopeless. In addition to KIPP's financial troubles, the previous administration had failed to draw up plans for the schools continued operation. Those plans needed to be presented to Fresno Unified for approval, this week and board members said there was not the time or money to get it done.

. . . .

The KIPP Academy opened in 2004. One of 60 such schools across the country. But early this year, the Principal Chi Tschang resigned amid allegations he mistreated students. But supporters say the school was producing results. Higher test scores, and happy students. Like 7th grader Rosa Espinoza, "I didn't want it to close because I really like the school."

Will Robot Teachers Be Oligarchs' Next Bold Initiative?

Think of it! No retirement or health benefits, no salary, no resistance, no getting off-message, no departure from the script, unlimited abuse capacity, no reservations about working in communities where you have dodge bullets to get to school, and no faculty meetings for the school CEOs who can enjoy endless basketball games in between consultation with IT.

From Reuters:

Saya, the female humanoid robot, taught a science and technology lesson to a class of 10-year-old pupils at Kudan Elementary School in Tokyo.

With her neat brown hair, pink lipstick and skirt suit, the robot, created by scientists at Tokyo University of Science, has been designed to resemble as human a form as possible.

Using a range of programmed movements from eyebrow arching to smiling, her face is capable of expressing six basic emotions in the classroom – surprise, fear, disgust, anger, happiness and sadness.

While Saya's creator Professor Hiroshi Kobayashi said the robot's main purpose was to highlight the joys of technology to children, he also said it would benefit schools suffering from a shortage of human teachers.

"In the countryside and in some small schools, there are children who do not have the opportunity to come into contact with new technology and also there are few teachers out there that can teach these lessons," said Professor Kobayashi.

"So we hope to be able to develop this robot so it can be remotely controlled to teach these classes."

Saya was initially created to work as a receptionist in Japanese companies five years ago but was recently reprogrammed by scientists into its latest incarnation as a schoolteacher.

Obama-Duncan Go with the Failed Chicago Solution

From PURE (ht to Monty Neill):

Obama plan to close 5,000 schools illogical

President Obama needs to hear some noise from us here in Chicago because he has just about lost his natural mind with this idea. He's getting behind the destructive strategies of Renaissance 2010 in a way that may just destroy the heart and soul of hundreds of communities across the US.

Obama wants to see 5,000 schools closed and "turned around." Yeah, you know, he wants to take what Fed Ed Head Arne Duncan has done here in Chicago

...which hasn't worked...

and multiply it about 100 times across the U.S..

And he's going to use the precious stimulus money - you know, the money that's supposed to help create new jobs - to fire thousands of experienced teachers.

Duncan says that "The point is to take bold action in persistently low-achieving schools."

Boldly go where?

I disagree. I think the point should be to try to do something that works, not to BOLDLY go expand a program that doesn't work and actually creates worse problems.

For example, William J. Mathis, adjunct associate professor of school finance at the University of Vermont and a superintendent of schools, reviewed the existing body of research on each of the five NCLB restructuring options (the final sanction for failure to meet adequate yearly progress) and found that

• “there is little or no evidence to suggest that any of these options delivers the promised improvements in academic achievement”" and
• “negative side effects are frequently recorded including increased segregation, substantial, short-term drops in achievement scores and organizational instability.”

Need to hear more?

Laura Varlas wrote this about another presentation at the recent Education Writers' Association conference:

"In a later panel, University of Chicago professor Charles Payne presented data from his latest book, So Much Reform, So Little Change, which emphasizes the importances of maximizing schools' social capital, and how many reform efforts neglect this keystone to supporting any lasting improvements.

"Payne said in schools with low academic achievement, building high levels of trust makes academic improvement three times as likely than in schools with low levels of trust among educators and students. He cited a ten percent improvement in graduation rate in schools where students say they know and trust their teachers.

"The way schools are being closed in Chicago has eroded an enormous amount of social capital by not including parents in the process. These parents care about their kids and schools, and have been marginalized by people doing things for their children, without including them in the process."

It can't help the level of trust, either, when the entire school staff is fired and replaced. Illogical.

What to do instead?

We agree with Dr. Mathis and will forward his recommendations on to Obama and Duncan:

• stop expanding the number of charter schools and relying on takeovers, privatization and other restructuring efforts for school improvement, and
• focus on making sure that all schools have adequate resources and support so that they can improve, and support such proven strategies such as early education, smaller class size, small school communities, intense personal intervention, and strong counseling and social support systems.

Reach out to Arne

Let's all start communicating our concerns to the President and to Arne- he must miss us, after all.

You can e-mail the President at http://www.whitehouse.gov/CONTACT/

Here's Arne's contact info:

Primary Phone:

(202) 401-3000

Principal Office: (OS) Office of the Secretary

Department of Education Organizational Structure and Offices

E-Mail Address: arne.duncan@ed.gov

Location

Region: HEADQUARTERS

Building Name: LBJ EDUCATION BUILDING

Building Address: 400 Maryland Avenue, SW, Washington, DC 20202

Room Number: 7W311

Duncan Names Republican Charter Crusader to NAEP Governing Board

From WCTV:

ATLANTA – U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan has appointed Governor Sonny Perdue to the National Assessment Governing Board. The board sets policy for the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), sometimes referred to as “The Nation's Report Card.”

The 26-member panel includes a bipartisan group of governors, state legislators, local and state school officials, educators, business representatives and other citizens. While members are chosen by the secretary of education, the board remains independent of the department.

“Governor Perdue will be a great addition to the board,” Secretary Duncan said. “During his two terms as governor, he has maintained and expanded on ambitious initiatives to improve education for children from the cradle to college. We look forward to his contributions to the board.” . . . .

With the Dunc so intent upon accurate data systems, how could anyone be a better pick than Sonny? From last year:

By ALAN JUDD, HEATHER VOGELL
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Published on: 05/25/08
About 36,000 Georgia eighth-graders tried but never passed the math test required for high school admission in 2006 and 2007. After that, state officials have no idea what happened.

The state doesn't know how many of those students were promoted despite failing the mandatory test. It doesn't know how many repeated the eighth grade. It doesn't even know how many of them dropped out of school.

Despite the high-stakes nature of Georgia's Criterion-Referenced Competency Tests, which cover subjects that students in certain grades must pass before moving up, the state doesn't track the ultimate outcome of those who fail.

Instead, the state lets each of Georgia's more than 180 local school systems decide whether to promote students who fail the required tests, after an appeals process that may vary from district to district. But some school systems — such as Gwinnett County, the state's largest — say they don't keep up with the failing students, either.

As a result, while state officials suggest that most of the 36,000 students were promoted, they acknowledge that's just an assumption.

. . . .

The fate of students who failed since 2006, the first year the math test helped determine promotion to high school, took on new relevance as details emerged last week about a colossal failure rate on this year's exam.

Forty percent of the state's eighth-graders — roughly 50,000 students — failed the math test this spring, twice as many as in each of the past two years. The state's schools superintendent, Kathy Cox, said the math results, which are preliminary, would stand.

But Cox invalidated social studies scores for sixth- and seventh-grade students, 70 to 80 percent of whom failed. Unlike eighth-grade math, the social studies exam does not count toward promotion.

Cox blamed a vague curriculum for the social studies results, but she defended the math test as appropriately rigorous. . . .

The high failure rates have enraged parents and teachers and created uncertainty for tens of thousands of students who must decide whether to go to summer school before taking the test again. . . . .

But we know its not Sonny's management skills that impresses Duncan. It is Perdue's backroom expertise to get passed huge expansions of the state charter school law, the most impressive, perhaps, allowing whole school systems go convert to charter systems. Teacher contracts, staffing requirements, libraries--poof! Now that's the kind of change that Gates and Broad can believe in.

Again, from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution on Sonny's charter exploits in Georgia, where even supporters of charters find his actions appalling:

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.

The Dirty and Dangerous Secrets of The Classical Academy of Colorado Springs

Below is an example of what can happen when school corporations, non-profit or for-profit, are given free rein to operate schools as they see fit, without the regulations and oversight of publicly-elected officials charged with the effective, efficient, and ethical operation of schools in ways that protect students, parents, and teachers from the abuses of school CEOs and corporate boards that operate with the same level of transparency as the Wall Street casino capitalists who inspired this whole corporate welfare charter movement to begin with.

What did it take to finally get someone to look into this? Parents had to go to the Colorado State Department of Education. The story from the Colorado Springs Gazette, and below that relevant sections of the Report, available here.

SUE McMILLIN
May 8, 2009 - 8:51AM
Complaints that The Classical Academy's insular community created an environment where racism and religious intolerance were allowed to go unchecked raises questions about whether the charter school is welcoming to all students, according to a report released Friday.

The report to the Colorado Department of Education, triggered by parents' complaints, also found fault with the school's accounting practices, noted possible conflicts of interest with administrators who run a charter-school consulting business on the side and said the school failed to properly respond to allegations of sexual and physical assaults and bullying.

It concluded that while the school has high academic achievement, the "investigation revealed major areas of concern about management, safety and security of students."

TCA President Mark Hyatt said he welcomed the scrutiny because outside recommendations can help make the school better.

"I think there are some very positive things that can come out of this," Hyatt said. "The fact that we've already started some of these things confirms that we're on the right track."

The CDE paid independent consultant James Sauls, of Colorado Springs, $9,500 to look into allegations made against the TCA by parents who said they turned to the state because the school and Academy School District 20 ignored their issues. TCA is a D-20 charter school with about 2,900 students on three campuses.

Hyatt said the school recently had several workshops and speakers on character and inclusiveness and just this week had a training session with Safe 2 Tell on reporting procedures. Safe 2 Tell is a statewide hotline where people can anonymously report threatening behavior.

Hyatt also said that he believes administrators and the board do a good job of listening to parents' concerns but that sometimes parents don't like the outcome of those discussions.

But parent Lisa Reece said the school sometimes ignores issues - and the law. She reported in October 2005 that her then-10-year-old daughter had been sexually assaulted at the elementary school.

After repeated inquiries with TCA's elementary school principal about what was being done, Reece said she went to a D-20 administrator in April 2006 when she learned it had not been reported to the police.

Friday's report said TCA failed to follow procedures regarding reports of sexual and physical assaults. In the Reece case, the report said, there was no evidence that an in-house investigation had been conducted, as school officials claimed. The police investigation was inconclusive, the report said.

"I definitely feel vindicated," Reece said Friday. "I feel my daughter has been vindicated.

The principal was so worried about TCA's image that she jeopardized my daughter's safety."

Hyatt said the principal and a school psychologist investigated the assault and determined that no crime had been committed, so they didn't report it to police. . . .

From the Report:

INQUIRY AND INVESTIGATION INTO
AREAS OF CONCERNS LODGED
BY PARENTS AND FORMER TEACHERS
LODGED AGAINST THE LEADERSHIP OF
THE CLASSICAL ACADEMY

The Organizational Effectiveness Consultants of Colorado Springs were contacted on 19 March 2009 by Deputy Commissioner, Dr. Ken Turner, of the Colorado Department of Education to discuss conducting an inquiry into several concerns that surfaced in Academy School District Twenty’s Charter School, The Classical Academy. Parents and former teachers of The Classical Academy provided CDE with concerns in six general areas in which an investigation could be conducted by the Department. The complainants assert that TCA leadership:

• Failed to take appropriate corrective action in responding to and halting a pattern of racial and religious discrimination, sexual and physical assault, bullying of students and parents, drug and alcohol use, and threats against staff and students.

• Failed to acknowledge and halt a pattern of cover up and retaliation by TCA staff in response to complaints lodged by TCA students and parents.

• Failed to exercise appropriate oversight and show good faith when investigating reported improprieties.

• Failed to eliminate conflicts of interest.

• Failed to demonstrate financial transparency and implement adequate financial controls.

• Failed to demonstrate adequate accountability, maintain open records, and provide the public with access to documents and information.

. . . .

FINDINGS
The Classical Academy, a Charter School of Academy School District 20, is a school that is providing an excellent academic curriculum to the students in its charge. The school’s standards of high academic achievement equal or exceed other charter schools in the state. The faculty and staff are competent and have the experience to provide adequate supervision and educational programs for students to learn. However, this investigation revealed major areas of concern about management, safety and security of students and are itemized below.

Board of Directors: This investigation revealed that the Board of Directors seldom visits the classrooms of the schools (except for their individual children’s rooms). Their once per month meeting does not provide its constituents with concise information whether good or bad thus giving the impression that “something is being held back from the patrons.” The Board purports to assist “parents” but in practice appears to mean only those who are “loyal” to th administration of the school. The Board appears to be unaware of or unable to resolve the bullying issue in the schools. The Board is a reactionary agency and not a proactive agency that provide policies which are preventative or prescriptive in nature to provide for the safety and security of all students. This Board’s concern for racial and sexual equality is suspect as there appears to be little concern about providing guidelines for ethnic minority hiring in the schools.

TCA Leadership: Failed to take appropriate corrective action in responding to and halting a pattern of racial discrimination. There is little indication that diversity of thought for other ethnic groups, their heritage, ideas or values in an educational setting is a part of the goals of the school. The question is whether the school is creating an environment that is hospitable to all students. Do the behaviors of staff, (including hiring process) reflect a desire to have a diverse faculty? The leadership purports to espouse character building as one of its prime goals, and appears to do a commendable job in this area, however, it brings into question their commitment to respecting differences. ASD 20 AND TCA BOARD WILL WANT TO FOLLOW UP ON CONCERNS THAT EMERGED IN THE AREA OF RACIAL,DISCRIMINATION REGARDING HIRING.

Failed to take appropriate corrective action in a timely manner in responding to sexual and physical assaults. Law enforcement officials were not notified of an alleged assault on a female student by her male classmate in a timely fashion. School officials did not follow proper protocol and allegedly conducted an in-house investigation which was never found. TCA BOARD MAY WANT TO FOLLOW UP BY MONITORING HOW WELL PROCEDURES ARE FOLLOWED IN THE AREA OF SEXUAL AND PHYSICAL ASSAULTS IN TCA.

Failed to take appropriate corrective action in responding to and halting a pattern of bullying of parents and students. Two elementary principals and one high school principal were accused of verbal abuse to three parent volunteers and one tutor during meetings with them at separate meetings called by the principals. Two were afraid and were driven to tears because of the outburst. ASD 20 AND TCA BOARD WILL WANT TO FOLLOW UP ON CONCERNS THAT EMERGED IN THE AREA OF EFFECTIVE COMMUNICATION OF SCHOOL ADMINISTRATORS.

Failed to take appropriate corrective action in responding to a pattern of drug and alcohol use. NO CONCERN EMERGED THAT WARRANTS FOLLOW UP INVESTIGATION BY THE DISTRICT.

Failed to take appropriate corrective action in responding to and halting a pattern of threats against students and parents. There were two teachers who were “threatened” by students of TCA. Threat assessment teams conducted threat assessments in accordance with school policy. In one instance the teacher was not satisfied with the team’s results, but the team deemed the threat to be of a low level of probability, this was verified by the police incident report. The second case was satisfactorily handled by the threat assessment team and police report supported the team’s assessment. A brick with a note attached was thrown through the window of a TCA family’s home. Investigation made with no arrests made. The family continually felt “harassed” by persons in the community. TCA WILL WANT TO FOLLOW UP ON CONCERNS THAT EMERGED IN THE AREA OF THREAT ASSESSMENT AND FOLLOW THROUGH.

Failed to acknowledge and halt a pattern of cover up and retaliation by staff in response to complaints lodged by TCA students and parents. Although six parents/volunteers provided this investigation with their perception of this concern, none could cite actual examples where retribution was a fact. At a Board of Directors meeting in February 2008, complainants provided an example of taunting, disrespect, and jeering by other patrons in attendance when a parent gave her comments about the retaliation her daughter had experienced by her peers. TCA BOARD WILL WANT TO FOLLOW UP ON CONCERNS THAT EMERGED IN THE AREA OF CHARACTER BUILDING FOR STAFF, PARENTS, VOLUNTERS AND OTHER ADULTS OF THE SCHOOL.

Failed to exercise appropriate oversight and show good faith when investigating reported improprieties. The Board did not follow its own policy when information was brought to their attention regarding a possible sexual and physical assault on a female student in 2006. TCA BOARD WILL WANT TO FOLLOW UP ON CONCERN THAT EMERGED IN THE AREA OF SUPERVISION OVERSIGHT OF REPORTED IMPROPRIETIES.

Failed to eliminate conflicts of interest. Two employees of TCA charged personal business expenses to their school accounts while on business trips to promote their business. Business cards were also made in their offices using school computers. There was no repayment made to the school. ASD 20 AND TCA BOARD WILL WANT TO FOLLOW UP ON CONCERN THAT EMERGED IN THE AREA OF CONFLICT OF INTEREST.

Failed to demonstrate financial transparency and implement adequate financial controls and the concern that TCA leadership failed to demonstrate adequate accountability, maintain open records, and provide the public with access to documents and information. This investigation could not ascertain the depth of this concern. TCA policy of providing patrons access to the financial records and publishing monthly reports for public use is practiced.

NOTE: The essence of these concerns is fraught with much skepticism and half-facts. The information gathered by the investigation appears to contain the proper documentation required in accordance with State Finance Statutes; however, the practices of the principal officials are vague and misleading. A former TCA parent alleged that there is a commingling of PTO funds with Titan Trust Funds which are controlled by the TCA Building Corp. Investigators were provided with the Articles of Incorporation and By-Laws of the TCA Building Corp, but it did not provide information on the accountability of the funds cited above. (See Appendix C) This investigation could not ascertain the depth of this concern. TCA policy of providing patrons access to the financial records and publishing monthly financial reports is practiced.

Did a pattern emerge whereby the administration, staff, and /or board applied discretion in a way that would lead a reasonable person to conclude that a duty to care was ignored or that concerns were unreasonably minimized? YES. The investigation took testimony from fifty-one respondents, four for a second interview. Of these, the majority support the claims of failure on the part of the TCA leadership. Investigator received another twelve unsolicited telephone requests for interviews from persons wishing to be interviewed if they could be assured that their information would remain anonymous. No assurance could be given thus interviews were not taken from them. Interviews were also conducted with two former students and one present student, who accompanied their parents to their interview. One student was interviewed telephonically with permission from parents but was not able to provide any information on the investigation. Nine parents were contacted to gain permission to interview their student. Only one responded and that was a negative response. Others did not acknowledge or return telephone messages.

Is there sufficient policy guidance at the district or school level? YES. However, it is the opinion of this investigator, follow through to ensure that policy implementation is adhered to is lacking until a situation occurs that warrants an investigation or inquiry.

The Most Recent Research on the Charter School Solution

The following clips are from the 2009 Rand study (funded by charter champion, Bill Gates) of charter schools in eight states: Florida, Illinois, Ohio, Colorado, Texas, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and California. With results like these, it is hard to find any pedogical reason to embrace Oligarchs' solution for urban charter reform schooling. Plenty of ideological reasons and economic reasons, but no test score advantage. Notice, in particular, the results from Chicago, where the Dunc's charter performamce miracles were enough to get him appointed as the Oligarchs' Secretary. Right.

What Effect Do Charter Schools Have on Test-Score Gains for Students Who Transfer Between Traditional Public Schools and Charter Schools?

. . . .In five out of seven locales, these nonprimary charter schools are producing achievement gains that are, on average, neither substantially better nor substantially worse than those of local TPSs. In Chicago (in reading) and in Texas (in both reading and math), charter middle schools appear to be falling short of traditional public middle schools. Results that include charter schools at every tested grade level (i.e., those that start in kindergarten as well as those that serve exclusively middle- and high-school grades) are, in most cases, similar to the results that are limited to nonprimary charter schools, providing no evidence that charter-school performance varies systematically by grade level.

The inclusion of kindergarten-entry charter schools in the analysis makes a substantial difference to our estimate of their achievement impacts in only one location. In Ohio, as in most of the other sites, the average performance of nonprimary charter schools is indistinguishable from that of nonprimary TPSs. But when the K-entry charter schools are included in the analysis, the estimated impact of Ohio’s charter schools is significantly and substantially negative. The dramatically lower estimated performance of Ohio’s K-entry charter schools appears to be attributable not to grade level per se but to virtual charter schools that use technology to deliver education to students in their homes. Virtual schools constitute a large part of the enrollment of K-entry charter schools in Ohio, and students have significantly and substantially lower achievement gains while attending virtual charter schools than they experience in TPSs. This result should be interpreted cautiously, because students who enroll in virtual charter schools may be quite unusual, and their prior achievement trajectories may not be good predictors of their future achievement trajectories (pp. xiii-xiv).

. . . .

Randomized experiments are often considered the gold standard in research because, by assigning subjects randomly to the treatment condition or control condition, they ensure that differences observed later are the result of treatment rather than the result of background differences between the subject groups. A few studies are beginning to examine oversubscribed charter schools that randomly admit students through lotteries. For instance, Hoxby and Rockoff (2004) found that four Chicago charter schools that admitted students by lottery were outperforming TPSs as measured by students’ subsequent achievement. Later, Hoxby and Murarka (2007) used a similar design to evaluate 47 charter schools in New York City and likewise found a small positive achievement effect for students attending charter schools. Abdulkadiroglu et al. (2009) found that a subset of charter middle and high schools in Boston that used admission lotteries also found positive impacts (sometimes large). And Mathematica Policy Research is engaged in a federally funded national study of oversubscribed charter middle schools that admit students by lottery; results are not yet available (see Mathematica Policy Research, undated).

These lottery-based studies have strong internal validity: Researchers can be confident that the participating charter schools caused the achievement advantages for the students who were admitted in their lotteries. But although the studies should produce internally valid and reliable results for the set of charter schools and students examined, they may have limited implications for charter schools that lack lengthy waiting lists and do not use lotteries to admit students. In other words, these studies have weak external validity. Charter schools with lengthy waiting lists might well be those that are better than average. Indeed, the only study that has begun to examine the issue found that charter schools using admission lotteries appeared to be more effective than charter schools that were not oversubscribed (Abdulkadiroglu et al., 2009) (p. 22).

Comment: In other words, charter chains like KIPP that have an unending national advertising campaign and that open one or two stores in urban areas where there are many crumbling schools, have an easier time keeping their desks full, even as 40-60% of students who enter KIPP in 5th grade do not make it to 8th grade at KIPP. Low performers or perpetual "miscreants" can be dumped, allowing in others with parents who are willing to subject themselves and their children to the KIPP treatment. A concentration of high performers become the survivors with the miraculous test scores, and the PR machine starts all over again.

. . . .

Table 3.3 presents estimated impacts for nonprimary charter schools in each of the sites. Of the 14 estimates across the seven locales, 11 suggest charter-school impacts that are indistinguishable from those of TPSs. Three of the estimates are significantly negative, for middle schools in Chicago in reading (at 0.01) and middle schools in Texas in both subjects (at 0.01 in reading and 0.05 in math). High schools are not included in this analysis in Chicago and Texas because test data are unavailable in successive high-school grades in those sites. (Chicago’s high schools are analyzed using a different method in Chapter Four.)

Interestingly, the results for nonprimary schools in Table 3.3 for many of the sites are quite consistent with the results in Table 3.1 that included elementary schools. All of the results that are statistically indistinguishable from 0 in Table 3.1 remain so in Table 3.3. In Milwaukee, the small positive result in math in Table 3.1 declines slightly and loses statistical significance in Table 3.3, but the point estimate does not change much. Similarly, Denver’s positive math effect reduces in magnitude and becomes statistically insignificant. The significantly
negative results in Chicago (reading) and Texas (both subjects) remain significantly negative in Table 3.3.
Ohio, however, presents a different story. The substantial negative results suggested in Table 3.1 disappear when focusing on the subset of nonprimary charter schools. For Ohio’s charter middle schools (our test data in Ohio end at eighth grade, so high schools are not included), estimated achievement impacts are indistinguishable from those of TPSs (pp. 37-38).

. . . .

Those results suggest that the performance of nonprimary charter schools is approximately on par with that of TPSs in most of the sites, though middle schools in Texas and Chicago appear to be falling behind (p. 39.)

. . . .

The analysis suggests that nonprimary charter schools are producing achievement gains that are approximately equivalent to those of TPSs in most locations, with moderately negative effects in math and reading in Texas middle schools and in reading in Chicago middle schools. While our results for Ohio’s virtual charter schools should be viewed with a level of caution because of the uniqueness of the students who attend these schools and because much of the analysis relies on charter schools with primary grades, they suggest that these schools should be examined more carefully because of the poor achievement results. We find support for the conclusion that, in most locations, charter schools do not do well in their first year of operation but subsequently improve (though sometimes this improvement is sufficient only to produce a result that is somewhat less negative than in the first year of operation). Finally, we find that charter schools in most locales have marginally greater variation in performance than TPSs, as measured by the achievement-impact estimate for each school. Ohio is a notable exception: Its charter schools have a much wider range of variation in performance than its TPSs (p. 51).

Reference:
Zimmer, R., Gill, B., Booker, K., Lavertu, S., Sass, T., Witte, J. (2009). Charter schools in eight states: Effects on achievement, attainment, integration, and competition. Santa Monica, CA: Rand Corporation.

Duncan Ready to Bribe Districts to Create 5,000 Charter Schools

And so it would be left to neo-liberals to put the finishing touches on the conservative effort to cede urban schooling to corporate control.

All Dunc needs to get it done is to do away with the local school boards, which he has called for, that could stand in the way of the Gates-Broad plan for urban reform schooling. Does Obama have another bribery fund to pay cities to hand over control of public institutions to mayors and their appointed stooges who have been bought by the Oligarchs?

The million dollar bribery offer story from Libby Quaid, Arne's private press agent at the AP:

By LIBBY QUAID
AP Education Writer
WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Barack Obama intends to use $5 billion to prod local officials to close failing schools and reopen them with new teachers and principals.

The goal is to turn around 5,000 failing schools in the next five years, Education Secretary Arne Duncan said Monday, by beefing up funding for the federal school turnaround program created by the No Child Left Behind law.

Obama doesn't have authority to close and reopen schools himself. That power rests with local school districts and states. But he has an incentive in the economic stimulus law, which requires states to help failing schools improve.

Duncan said that might mean firing an entire staff and bringing in a new one, replacing a principal or turning a school over to a charter school operator. The point, he said, is to take bold action in persistently low-achieving schools.

"Our students have one chance - one chance - to get a quality education," Duncan said in a speech Monday to the Brookings Institution think tank.

"If we turn around just the bottom 1 percent, the bottom thousand schools per year for the next five years, we could really move the needle, lift the bottom and change the lives of tens of millions of underserved children," Duncan said. . . .

As George Schmidt, editor of Substance News, likes to remind us, Duncan is renowned for making up his own facts. Here is a good one, George: there's just over 40 million children total in the public schools in the U. S. Five percent of 40,000,000 would 2,000,000 students, rather than "tens of millions."

A Course on Consumer Capitalism in 20 Minutes

While the education testing industry pushes the size of children's textbooks to limits that will surely surpass the ability of children to carry them on their backs (children's roller boards on Aisle 9), the crisis that is global warming remains a sidebar within the crowded compendiums of more desiccated facts served up in ways most often devoid of meaning. Reform schoolers win again.

So as it becomes increasingly clear for schools to matter, we must take school beyond the no-excuses-no-brains confines where untrained line supervisors wheedle and intimidate their charges to higher and more meaningless production scores in order to get paid. Today's entry: The Story of Stuff, which offers more in 20 minutes on consumer capitalism than children will get in 12 years of classroom neglect. The story of The Story of Stuff from the NYTimes:

By LESLIE KAUFMAN

The thick-lined drawings of the Earth, a factory and a house, meant to convey the cycle of human consumption, are straightforward and child-friendly. So are the pictures of dark puffs of factory smoke and an outlined skull and crossbones, representing polluting chemicals floating in the air.

Which is one reason “The Story of Stuff,” a 20-minute video about the effects of human consumption, has become a sleeper hit in classrooms across the nation.

The video is a cheerful but brutal assessment of how much Americans waste, and it has its detractors. But it has been embraced by teachers eager to supplement textbooks that lag behind scientific findings on climate change and pollution. And many children who watch it take it to heart: riding in the car one day with his parents in Tacoma, Wash., Rafael de la Torre Batker, 9, was worried about whether it would be bad for the planet if he got a new set of Legos.

“When driving by a big-box store, you could see he was struggling with it,” his father, David Batker, said. But then Rafael said, “It’s O.K. if I have Legos because I’m going to keep them for a very long time,” Mr. Batker recalled.

The video was created by Annie Leonard, a former Greenpeace employee and an independent lecturer who paints a picture of how American habits result in forests being felled, mountaintops being destroyed, water being polluted and people and animals being poisoned. Ms. Leonard, who describes herself as an “unapologetic activist,” is also critical of corporations and the federal government, which she says spends too much on the military. . . .

Green Dot Public Schools, Inc.: Don't Tase Me, Bro

If the KIPP brainwashing camps are the cultural replacement solution for brown and poor middle schoolers, the choice among the oligarchs for the high school reform school model of containment is the Broad/Barr invention, Green Dot Public Schools, Inc. Caroline Grannan has a response to the recent Barr profile in the New Yorker, which discusses, among Barr's many manly exploits, last fall's Green Dot takeover of John Locke High School from LAUSD. My favorite clip from Grannan's piece:

Post-takeover [at John Locke], the article reports: "Green Dot [has] blanketed the school with guards from a private security firm, club-bouncer burly, carrying handguns and pepper spray. ... Guards have occasionally displayed a heavy hand. Twice this year, they pepper-sprayed students..."

I wonder what public commotion would ensue if private security guards hired by a public school repeatedly pepper-sprayed white middle-class students – but oh well, these are only poor minorities. The outcry would probably be considerable if the guards were vendors for LAUSD, too, but charter-school Teflon protects Green Dot.

And I’ll bet my firstborn that if Green Dot owns up to two pepper-spraying incidents, there have been far more. Gosh, how idyllic. And critics call KIPP the "Kids in Prison Program" -- Green Dot is mounting a challenge for that title. I know; the supporters’ view is: whatever works. Don’t tase me, bro!
.
This snippet also caught my eye: [Barr] "started a citywide group called the Los Angeles Parents Union, an activist alternative to the Parent-Teacher Association, in the hope of mobilizing foot soldiers for Green Dot's escalating war against the district. He even put a school-board member on his payroll – ‘a mole,’ Barr said -- to report back on closed meetings."

"Escalating war against the district." Gee, that’s good for our kids and schools. And is it actually legal to pay a school board member to reveal information about closed sessions? Whatever works.

If this experiment succeeds, great, and we’ll all learn a lot. Perhaps this will be the one that will transform urban public education. Will it show us that what all our schools need is to be blanketed with burly private security guards wielding handguns and pepper spray? And wage escalating wars against our school districts? What a cheering scenario. Whatever works.

Over 20,000 Florida Seniors Denied Diplomas by State Exit Exam Policy

We know of the dropouts, and some have heard of the pushouts--those that are forced out of school so they won't bring down school test scores and, thus, threaten AYP. But there is another group of losers in the testing derby who we may call the testouts. Florida has over 20,000 testouts this year, and to save a million bucks, the State of Florida will offer no summer retakes this year for the high school exit exam that the testouts failed.

If 20,000 seniors walked out of schools across Florida on the same day, that would be a big story, yes? In Florida, the shocking and shameful facts for the Sunshine State testing factories earn a sidebar in the Miami Herald, which was more intent on talking about the 5,590 seniors from South Florida that will not get their diplomas because of the state exit exam.

From the sidebar:

Florida high-schoolers must pass the reading and math sections of the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test to graduate with a standard diploma. The last chance for students who wanted to graduate with the rest of the class of 2009 was in March -- and for the first time, students won't have a chance to retake the exam until October. Here is how they did:

Miami-Dade

Of 4,874 seniors who took the reading test, 877, or 18 percent, passed.

Of 1,927 seniors who took the math test, 424, or 22 percent, passed.

Broward

Of 1,896 seniors who took the reading test, 303, or 16 percent, passed.

Of 700 seniors who took the math test, 154, or 22 percent, passed.

Florida

Of 22,925 seniors who took the reading test, 4,585, or 20 percent, passed.

Of 8,540 seniors who took the math test, 2,220, or 26 percent, passed.

SOURCE: Florida Department of Education

The Three Stooges Go to Washington: No One Is Laughing

(AP Photo/Charles Dharapak)
No, no, not Curly, Moe, and Larry--those guys were hilarious.

I am talking about the distinctly not-funny have-beens, Al, Mike, and Newt, who have been serving as front men for the Business Roundtable's hoax they call the Education Equality Project.

The Washington Post was so eager yesterday to print the story about the "post-partisan" pimping for the Gates/Broad urban apartheid education agenda that they posted the news before it even occurred--but then, when your corporate media empire is built on the backs of children bowed by the growing testing burden, you can't be too eager to make sure this effort to universalize urban reform schools across the nation succeeds.

Gingrich and Bloomberg we could have predicted to lead the charge on this U. S. Chamber of Commerce/Civil Rights cause of the 21st Century, but Sharpton?? Everyone knows he is an equal opportunity opportunist, but can a black man who has often spoken eloquently about Civil Rights really lead a march on May 16 that makes a mockery of Brown v Board of Education? When the Supreme Court declared 9-0 fifty-five years ago that separate schools are "inherently unequal." Sharpton yesterday, as reported in the NYTimes blog, The Caucus:

“Fifty-five years after Brown versus the Board of Education, there’s still a difference in how students get up in the morning and go to school,” Mr. Sharpton said. “Some are treated differently. Some are funded differently. Some face different principles [sic], different teachers. There is a difference in the quality of education.”

I would look worried, too, Al. Does Sharpton really believe that his peers and history, alike, will not harshly judge his complicity in the re-institutionalization of apartheid schools, where black children, this time around, are manhandled under a punishing and de-humanizing regimen of behavior control, intellectual sterilization, and cultural castration in cheap corporate charter schools that save the Bloombergs of the world 20% of their education tax bill? Will Sharpton feel the ground move under his feet as Dr. King and all those who died for an integrated and equal society roll en masse in their graves?

Teaching Children to Hate School

If children were only technically-precise production copies, there might have been hope for the innately-naive business model for education based on management, input, measurement, and manipulation. But children, alas, are only made of miracle protoplasm capable of being bringing forth worlds in immeasurable ways, even as they are herded, mishandled, branded, and penned again year after year. At their core, these little firing bundles of temporal neuronal ensembles have many developmental nodes that wither from neglect as idiot programmers scratch their heads as to why their projects cannot be debugged.

Meanwhile, at the center of children's little pulsing innervated kernels is the phylogenetic imperative encoded in their DNA to grow, to expand, to self-organize, to learn, to exercise the autonomy that defines them as organisms. By middle school, the majority of urban male children have a plan, and it doesn't include more of the same sub-routine of baffling bullshit.

Here is a clip from a piece on the "dropout problem" or, more precisely, the reform school problem, in The Notebook by Ron Whitehorne, obviously a teacher with some experience in dealing with miracle protoplasm:

. . . .Absenteeism is lowest in 4th grade. The rate increases by one-third between fourth and eighth grade, and almost doubles again in ninth grade. It continues to be the case that a significant number of students do well in the primary grades, begin to lose interest and fall behind in the middle grades, and stop going to school in droves when they reach high school. Current “data-driven” reform strategies haven't adequately tackled that problem.

In contrast, underlying the small schools movement – like the middle schools movement of the 1980s – is the understanding that adolescents have particular needs, and that education needs to take these into account. Young people want greater independence and more relevance. A curriculum that is strong on real-life connections and problem-solving, a school climate that promotes trust and responsibility, and the active involvement of teachers and staff with their students are the marks of student-centered small schools. Creating the kind of curriculum and climate that will overcome the alienation of students who now experience school as failure, boredom, and frustration is not easy. It will never be done as an add-on to a heavy diet of test prep.

In the Hornbeck era, Philadelphia schools were encouraged to create small learning communities (SLCs) that were supposed to embody these small-school values. As is so often the case with top-down change, it happened mostly in form and only infrequently in substance. But at my school we got grant funds to create viable, thematically based small learning communities. I was part of a four-person team that kept the same students from sixth through eighth grade and organized instruction thematically. We saw improved attendance, behavior, and engagement in learning from our students.

The teachers remember this period as our “best years.” As for the students, there is no data I can cite. But I ran into a student a couple of years ago who had successfully graduated from high school and was supporting a family. After we exchanged pleasantries, tears welled up in his eyes, and he told me that his years in middle school as part of our team had been the best years of his life. When I probed further, he said he felt valued, supported, and successful.

Too many students, once they make the passage from the primary grades, do not feel valued, supported, and successful – and act accordingly. But this lesson is, at best, an afterthought for clipboard-wielding, data-driven NCLB proponents.

When our school was one of a number of schools slated for restructuring in 2002 as part of the state takeover, our leadership team met with the administrator for restructured schools. I told him we had done some things right, like SLCs, and we needed to try to retain these strengths. He waved his hand, said we had tried “all that,” and it was time to move on.

Well, we've moved on, and while some real gains have been made, there is little evidence that a high-stakes, test-driven program is going to turn our high schools (or our middle schools) around. Many things are needed, including a major infusion of resources. But we also need to look at the essential lessons of successful small schools and small learning communities and make them a central focus of school reform.

Bring the Bush-Cheney War Criminal Gang to Justice

Is there anybody in the Obama Administration who can read this and then advocate for letting these arrogant war criminals off the hook for their betrayal of the concept of humanity and their shredding of the Constitution? If so, they will have become one and the same.

From Raw Story:

United States interrogators killed nearly four dozen detainees during or after their interrogations, according a report published by a human rights researcher based on a Human Rights First report and followup investigations.

In all, 98 detainees have died while in US hands. Thirty-four homicides have been identified, with at least eight detainees — and as many as 12 — having been tortured to death, according to a 2006 Human Rights First report that underwrites the researcher’s posting. The causes of 48 more deaths remain uncertain.

The researcher, John Sifton, worked for five years for Human Rights Watch. In a posting Tuesday, he documents myriad cases of detainees who died at the hands of their US interrogators. Some of the instances he cites are graphic.

Most of those taken captive were killed in Afghanistan and Iraq. They include at least one Afghani soldier, Jamal Naseer, who was mistakenly arrested in 2004. “Those arrested with Naseer later said that during interrogations U.S. personnel punched and kicked them, hung them upside down, and hit them with sticks or cables,” Sifton writes. “Some said they were doused with cold water and forced to lie in the snow. Nasser collapsed about two weeks after the arrest, complaining of stomach pain, probably an internal hemorrhage.”

Another Afghan killing occurred in 2002. Mohammad Sayari was killed by four U.S. servicemembers after being detained for allegedly “following their movements.” A Pentagon document obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union in 2005 said that the Defense Department found a captain and three sergeants had “murdered” Sayari, but the section dealing with the department’s probe was redacted.

Perhaps the most macabre case occurred in Iraq, which was documented in a Human Rights First report in 2006.

“Nagem Sadoon Hatab… a 52-year-old Iraqi, was killed while in U.S. custody at a holding camp close to Nasiriyah,” the group wrote. “Although a U.S. Army medical examiner found that Hatab had died of strangulation, the evidence that would have been required to secure accountability for his death – Hatab’s body – was rendered unusable in court. Hatab’s internal organs were left exposed on an airport tarmac for hours; in the blistering Baghdad heat, the organs were destroyed; the throat bone that would have supported the Army medical examiner’s findings of strangulation was never found.”

In another graphic instance, a former Iraqi general was beaten by US forces and suffocated to death. The military officer charged in the death was given just 60 days house arrest.

“Abed Hamed Mowhoush [was] a former Iraqi general beaten over days by U.S. Army, CIA and other non-military forces, stuffed into a sleeping bag, wrapped with electrical cord, and suffocated to death,” Human Rights First writes. “In the recently concluded trial of a low-level military officer charged in Mowhoush’s death, the officer received a written reprimand, a fine, and 60 days with his movements limited to his work, home, and church.”

Another Iraqi man was killed in a US detention facility on Mosul in 2003.

“U.S. military personnel who examined Kenami when he first arrived at the facility determined that he had no preexisting medical conditions,” the rights group writes. “Once in custody, as a disciplinary measure for talking, Kenami was forced to perform extreme amounts of exercise—a technique used across Afghanistan and Iraq. Then his hands were bound behind his back with plastic handcuffs, he was hooded, and forced to lie in an overcrowded cell. Kenami was found dead the morning after his arrest, still bound and hooded. No autopsy was conducted; no official cause of death was determined. After the Abu Ghraib scandal, a review of Kenami’s death was launched, and Army reviewers criticized the initial criminal investigation for failing to conduct an autopsy; interview interrogators, medics, or detainees present at the scene of the death; and collect physical evidence. To date, however, the Army has taken no known action in the case.”

Death from interrogation is hard to separate from simple detainee death while in US custody. But one particular case stands out that seems to have fallen by the wayside — the murder of CIA “ghost” detainee named Manadel al-Jamadi, who was tortured to death by a CIA team at Abu Ghraib in 2003.

“Pictures of Abu Ghraib guards Charles Graner and Sabrina Harman posing with al-Jamadi’s dead body, the so-called Ice Man, were among the most notorious of the Abu Ghraib photographs published in April 2004,” Sifton notes. “A CIA officer named Mark Swanner and an interpreter led the team that interrogated al-Jamadi. Nine Navy personnel were also implicated. An autopsy conducted by the U.S. military five days after al-Jamadi’s death found that the cause: “blunt force injuries complicated by compromised respiration.”

“Reporting by The New Yorker’s Jane Mayer and NPR’s John McChesney revealed that al-Jamadi was strung up from handcuffs behind his back, a torture tactic sometimes called a ‘Palestinian hanging,’” he adds. “After an investigation, the CIA referred the case to the Department of Justice for possible criminal prosecution of the CIA personnel involved, but no charges were ever brought. Prosecutors accused 10 Navy personnel of the crime; nine were given nonjudicial punishments, such as rank reductions and letters of reprimand, and a 10th was acquitted.”

Additionally, Sifton notes the CIA may have had some close calls with detainees nearly dying during interrogations: the May 10, 2005, Bush Administration torture memo by Stephen Bradbury notes that doctors were nearby to perform a tracheotomy if during waterboarding the suspect is approaching death.

“Most seriously, for reasons of physical fatigue of psychological resignation, the subject may simply give up, allowing excessive filling of the airways and loss of consciousness,” Bradbury wrote. “An unresponsive subject should be righted immediately, and the integrator should deliver a sub-xyphoid thrust to expel the water. If this fails to restore normal breathing, aggressive medical intervention is required….’”

The memo says CIA doctors were on hand with necessary equipment to perform a tracheotomy if necessary during waterboarding sessions: “[W]e are informed that the necessary emergency medical equipment is always present—although not visible to the detainee—during any application of the waterboard.”

Broad's Lapdog, Steve Barr, Gets the Call to Start in Duncan's Billion Dollar No-Bid Game

Sharon Higgins has it at Perimeter Primate. Here's a clip, but don't stop with this:

The latest to come out is an article in The New Yorker about Green Dot Public Schools and its founder and chairman, Steve Barr. The piece was written by Douglas McGray of the New America Foundation, a D.C. based policy institute which includes education reform as one of its key issues. Green Dot was founded in 1999. In 2006, billionaire philanthropist Eli Broad gave Green Dot $10.5 million to open up 20 more schools. It currently operates 18 high schools, mostly in L.A.

Years ago, Barr became friends with Reed Hastings, the founder of Netflix. Hastings funded Green Dot’s launch. Hastings also helped to start the New Schools Venture Fund, an organization which additionally received $22 million from the Gates Foundation in 2003 to “create systems of charter schools through nonprofit charter management organizations.”

Hastings and Don Shalvey are the co-authors of the California Charter School Initiative introduced to the legislature by Assemblyman Ted Lempert and signed into law in 1998. This repealed the 100-school limit of California’s 1992 charter school legislation. With the cap raised for the number of charter schools in California, Hastings and Shalvey then co-founded Aspire Public Schools and started engaging in even more pro-charter activities.

Steve Barr calls Shalvey one of his “Most Influential People,” along with former California Governor Pat Brown. Incidentally, Barr named one of his dogs “Jerry Brown.” Other connections are that Broad and Hastings donated generously to State Superintendent Jack O’Connell’s campaign, and that Jerry Brown set up two charter schools in Oakland early during his tenure as mayor, Oakland School for the Arts and the Oakland Military Institute. He continues to aggressively advocate for these two schools and keeps them pumped up with extras. I’ve heard enough at Brown's public appearances to know that he despises the form of Oakland's traditional public schools.

According to the McGray article, this past March,

… Barr got a call from the new Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan. He [Barr] flew to Washington, D.C., at the end of March, for what he expected to be a social visit. At the meeting, Duncan revealed that he was interested in committing several billion dollars of the education stimulus package to a Locke-style takeover and transformation of the lowest-performing one per cent of schools across the country, at least four thousand of them, in the next several years. The Department of Education would favor districts that agreed to partner with an outside group, like Green Dot. "You seem to have cracked the code," Duncan told Barr.

And according to the New Yorker’s abstract

This month, Barr expects to meet with Randi Weingarten, the president of the American Federation of Teachers (A.F.T.), and her staff and outline plans for a Green Dot America, a national school-turnaround partnership between Green Dot and the A.F.T. Their first city would most likely be Washington, D.C.

But now let’s turn to basketball. . . .

Bloomberg's Just In Time Kindergarten Inventory System Enrages Parents

As I said below to Anonymous below, when parents get together and make their impassioned voices heard, pols listen and act. Now it is up to NYC parents to keep the heat up. It helps, of course, that these are middle class parents. From the NYTimes:

By ELISSA GOOTMAN

With outraged parents planning to take to the steps of City Hall on Wednesday to protest the placement of hundreds of children on waiting lists for their neighborhood kindergartens, New York City Education Department officials scrambled on Tuesday for a solution. But as word spread of the leading plan — moving prekindergarten classes out of Public Schools 41 and 3 in Greenwich Village, and replacing them with extra kindergartens — the effort seemed to backfire, inflaming parents rather than placating them.

Andrew Jacob, an Education Department spokesman, acknowledged that officials were considering relocating the prekindergartens scheduled to open at the two schools but said “there hasn’t been any decision.”

But Cara Negrycz, a painter, said that at 7:15 p.m. Tuesday, a P.S. 3 school official told her that her son would not be able to attend prekindergarten there because the program was being canceled to make way for kindergartners.

“They kicked the stool out from underneath me, and now I’m just hanging here,” she said. “I put this all on Bloomberg.”

Henry Sidel, whose son is on a joint waiting list for the two schools and who is president of a new group called Kids Shut Out, said the proposal “does not solve the overcrowding problem at all.”

“It still puts way too many kids in the same space and creates overcrowding in the older grades,” he said, “and it is just a last-ditch political maneuver by the Department of Education to make themselves look better at this moment where there is so much public outrage.”

Christine C. Quinn, the City Council speaker, whose district includes Greenwich Village, said that after she got word of the plan, she asked to meet with education officials to discuss the situation and express her “tremendous issues” with efforts to displace prekindergartners.

“I have a real issue with solving the kindergarten problem at the expense of prekindergartners,” she said. “We need to solve this in a more collaborative, collective way, not pitting one grade against the other.”. . . .

Dear Anonymous Parents

I received this letter from a parent who wishes to remain anonymous. Below is my response.


On Tue, May 5, 2009 at 9:33 PM, __________ wrote:

Dr. Horn,
Have you seen the study commissioned by our school CEO? Try here. Some of our existing school inventory is being "given" to charter school operators (not clear on the terms, if they rent,etc.) Our newspaper, what's left of it (Baltimore Sun) doesn't seem to care, and the edu-blogger at The Sun is clearly biased toward charters (like Jay Matthews). I enrolled my son at one of the most prominent charters in town (run by a team of hucksters, in my opinion) and rue the day I did. I am opposed now on philosophical grounds, but there doesn't seem to be much organized opposition to the "charter school movement" as they call themselves.

I also recently saw C-Span's Book TV panel featuring the Jay Matthew's book about KIPP with the KIPP CEO in which they constantly talked about how many schools they had and that they were basically unstoppable. I saw your review of that book and am encouraged a few people must be seeing things clearly.

My family's experience with a charter (a KIPP wannabee) was more in line with your interpretation. My son was enrolled at that charter for two years. The CEO wrote letters to the parents asking them to be "faithful". We were lied to, manipulated, even pressured to write supportive letters about the school to get their contract renewed (I declined). These people are professional school jockeys, intent on taking over the Baltimore City Public Schools (I heard the CEO of the charter say just that) How do citizens stand up to that kind of onslaught, especially in a city like Baltimore?

Please don't publish my name on your blog, this is a small town, I have school-age kids and the shadow of the charters is growing! I do have the sense that much of what they do is smoke and mirrors, but I've seen families pushed out of them (I guess mine was...) and it was very upsetting. Maybe that's part of the problem - the people who care have kids that could be hurt by the chaos caused by charters, and people who don't have kids don't have an opinion.

thanks
anonymous
__________________

Dear Anonymous Parent,

Thank you for your letter and sharing of the charter news from Baltimore. You are right, of course, that public education is under attack from an anti-democratic band of corporate welfare capitalists comprised of big spending vulture philanthropists and testing corporations, the professional parasites running the social capital investment funds and foundations, corrupt politicians looking to build their own political capital, and, finally, parents like you whose unfortunate cowardice makes you complicit and victim at the same time. Most of all, you are victim of your own excuses about trying to protect your children as a legitimate reason for not getting involved in the battle to make your child's education better.

When I hear the fear expressed in letters like yours, I always think back to the black parents in the the 1950s and 1960s who wanted to protect their children, too. They wanted to protect them from a second-rate education, second-class citizenship, third-rate jobs, and first-rate patronizing bigotry. In order to protect those children's futures, however, they had to make the conscious choice to send them through the throngs of ugly, screaming white racists carry clubs and guns, only to be turned away from white schoolhouse doors.

In case you've forgotten or have never been taught (history has never been on the Test), President Eisenhower called out the 101st Airborne Division in defiance of Gov. Faubus of Arkansas, who had activated the National Guard to make sure the black children of Little Rock would not be allowed to go to school with whites. Still, parents sent their children, tip-toeing through broken glass and absorbing the insults of wild-eyed haters. And for the first year after integration of Little Rock High, the black children who had the courage and whose parents had the courage to demand better, absorbed the hatred of peers as individual children had their own individual 101st Airborne guard to go with them to classes. These were parents interested in their own children's futures, and the children of the generations to come.

So please don't tell me about your fear for your child. You are simply caught up in the pandemic of cowardice that has made sheeple of the American electorate, sheeple who refuse to stand out from the crowd or to move off the path of least resistance. And in supporting the pillaging of public schools by the corporate goons, you have turned your back on those who made the sacrifice 40 and 50 years ago, just as you have turned your back on your own children's future that you would, otherwise, protect.

Get off your ass and get involved if you really care about your children. When parents (voters) like you band together and demand something better than the cheap, segregated charter chain gangs and KIPP knockoffs, the conversation in Washington and in Baltimore will change very quickly. But not until then.

You and other parents have the power to change schools. Your children are their only customers.

Sincerely,
Jim Horn

Duncan To Begin NCLB Tour

Yesterday the Washington Post, the only national newspaper kept afloat by the testing industry, offered the testing industry's new leading stooge, Margaret Spellings, (move aside Rod Paige), a chance to paste her well-worn and practiced lies about NCLB into the editorial pages of the Post. And yesterday, Aaron Pallas at Gotham Schools wasted no time in making a liar of the liar in an understated and studious post. Here's a teaser:

The first figure below shows reading scores in grades 4 and 8 on the main NAEP from 1998 to 2007. (Keep in mind that the NAEP scale goes from 0 to 500, so this figure may exaggerate the size of the trends over time.) In the fourth grade, the average score increased by six points between 2000 and 2002, then stabilized, and finally increased by two points from 2005 to 2007. The 2007 average score is significantly higher than the scores in 2005, 2003, 2002 and 2000. In the eighth grade, the average score held steady between 1998 and 2002, and really hasn’t budged much since then. The 2007 average of 263 is significantly higher than the 2005 average of 262, but is identical to the 2003 average of 263, and is actually a point lower than the 2002 average of 264. The best summary here is that the scores have been essentially flat since 1998. [click chart below for better view]

Today the Post has Libby Quaid's news piece on Call-me-Arne's announced NCLB "listening" tour, which offers the Dunc a chance to sell national testing, teacher pay-per-score plans, endless data gathering, and corporate welfare charters--all in the name of hearing the people speak. A couple of clips:

Duncan gives the law credit for shining a spotlight on kids who need the most help. No Child Left Behind pushes schools to boost the performance of low-achieving students, a group that typically includes minority kids, English-language learners and kids with disabilities.

"Forevermore in our country, we can't sweep those huge disparities with outcomes between white children and Latino children and African-American children, we can't sweep those under the rug ever again," Duncan said.

That spotlight has been shining brightly, Arne, even for white folks like me and you, since Brown v Board of Education. For a while we paid attention to them, but when St. Reagan alighted in Washington, we began to look, instead, at how Civil Rights and school integration screwed up our schools. Since then, we have been working hard to shine the spotlight elsewhere, away from the poverty and racism that created the disparities, preferring to focus the interrogation lamp, rather, on the victims and on the only American public institution remaining that was created with the vision of educating children of all classes together.

So sure, Arne, we can sweep it under the rug, just as long as the goal of ending poverty is pushed aside by efforts to blame children, teachers, and schools for the effects of poverty that your Administration continues to have plenty of empty "empathy" for. No problem.

Yet Duncan has many criticisms of No Child Left Behind, and he has plenty of company. Opponents insist the law's annual reading and math tests have squeezed subjects like music and art out of the classroom and that schools were promised billions of dollars they never received.

Critics also say the law is too punitive: More than a third of schools failed to meet yearly progress goals last year, according to the Education Week newspaper.

That means millions of children are a long way from reaching the law's ambitious goals. The law pushes schools to improve test scores each year, so that every student can read and do math on grade level by the year 2014.

"What No Child Left Behind did is, they were absolutely loose on the goals," Duncan told the Education Writers Association, meeting in Washington. "But they were very tight, very prescriptive on how you get there.

"I think that was fundamentally backwards," he said.

Duncan said the federal government should be "tight" on the goals, insisting on more rigorous academic standards that are uniform across the states. And he said it should be "much looser" in terms of how states meet the goals.

The education community is watching closely to see just what Duncan means by "tight" and "loose." So far, the administration has offered few clues.

Is there some kind of thought disorder going on here? Is the impossible goal of 100% proficiency by 2014 not impossiblie enough?? And excuse me, Arne, but this business of "looser" in terms of how states get to your "more rigorous" standards is the same philosophy W. sold in 2001. A quote from Bush's original NCLB proposal available here:

If schools are to be held to high standards, they must have the freedom to meet those standards (p. 7).

Agora Cyber Charter School Sued by State of Pennsylvania

From the Philadelphia Inquirer:

by Martha Woodall
INQUIRER STAFF WRITER

The Pennsylvania Department of Education yesterday filed suit against Agora Cyber Charter School in Devon, alleging fraud and breach of fiduciary responsibility by its board of trustees.

The civil complaint maintains that cyber charter's board entered into improper contracts with the Cynwyd Group LLC., a management company that was co-created by Agora's founder Dorothy June Brown "for the purpose of making money from managing and operating the school."

According to documents filed in Commonwealth Court, the state Department of Education has concluded that Agora "is operating in such a grossly unlawful and improper manner" that if the department continued making payments of taxpayer funds, it "would be "facilitating and enabling Agora in the perpetration of ongoing and pervasive unlawful and improper conduct."

Brown declined comment and Board Chairman Howard Lebofsky could not be reached.

. . . .

Based on current enrollment, Agora officials have projected that the charter's revenues will total about $41 million in taxpayer funds this school year. The management contract calls for Brown's company to be paid 7 percent of gross revenues. The fee could be as much as $2.8 million this school year.

The education department also has contacted all 500 school districts in the state directing them to send tuition payments for Agora students from their districts to the escrow fund instead of to the school, the suit said.

The suit asks the court to declare that the Agora board, which is dominated by associates of Brown, violated terms of its operating charter and state law by contracting with her management company.

Brown's Cynwyd Group not only has a management contract with Agora but owns the school's administrative offices on Chestnut Street in Devon. The school pays $25,000 per month in rent.

The suit contends that Agora's board of trustees "participated in a scheme to defraud" the department and had "defrauded Agora students by entering into a lease that was far above fair market value" and paying Cynwyd Group a management fee when "little was done by Cynwyd. . ."

The complaint, which was signed by Education Secretary Gerald D. Zahorchak, also asks the court to replace Agora's board.

"Agora's students will not be impacted by our decision in any detrimental way," Zahorchak said in a statement today. "Moving forward, these students will continue to have the same curriculum and day to day education experience to which they have become accustomed." The school's academic program is administered under contract by K-12 Pennsylvania, LLC, a for profit education company.

By state law, the education department has oversight responsibility for the 11 cyber charters that provide online instruction to students in their homes.

The suit is an outgrowth of an investigation the department launched in response to complaints from several Agora parents seeking information about the school's finances and the role that Brown and Cynwyd Group played in Agora's operations.

A state team, including the department's top lawyer and two auditors, spent a day in mid-March at the cyber school's administrative headquarters reviewing documents and interviewing staff, including Brown.

State officials followed up with a visit two weeks later to Brown's business offices in Bala Cynwyd, and continued seeking information related to Agora's operations, sources with knowledge of the investigation said.

Brown, who initially was Agora's chief executive officer, is Cynwyd Group's senior consultant to the cyber school and an ex-officio member of the charter board.

Federal criminal investigators and the Philadelphia School District's inspector general also are examining Agora's finances, the sources said.

In January, Brown and Cynwyd Group took the unusual step of suing six Agora parents, including those who complained to the state, for slander, libel and civil conspiracy. The Agora Parent Association also named in that suit, which is pending in Montgomery County. . . .

It's Not Vanilla Ice, But the Abstinence Only Crowd Finds It Cool Enough

From Raw Story:

H/T to RH Reality Check, which has more on the insanity you'll witness when you press play on the video below ...

They call him Keith Deltano, an abstinence "educator" and comedian who apparently gets paid to spread lies about prophylactics and threaten to smash kids genitals with cinder blocks. (Which is basically what happens to all those people who catch a VD, right?)

This is the cutting edge of abstinence education programs ... Many of which are funded by tax dollars. (Not sure if this guy is or not, but it isn't uncommon for school districts to pay people like Deltano for presentations your kids will mock for years to come.)

Here's the guy's Web site. Just try to keep your pants on.

-- Stephen C. Webster

Oligarchs Pouring Cash into Weingarten's AFT "Innovation" Research Fund

Weingarten is always given credit for thinking several steps ahead, and I don't doubt it. Sadly, she is willing to sacrifice her membership and the future of teachers' rights to earn herself a seat, several steps ahead, of course, as, hmm, how about Secretary of Labor, 2013. From Ed Week:

Four private foundations—the Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation, the Ford Foundation, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation—will partner with the American Federation of Teachers through its Innovation Fund, representatives of the foundations and the AFT announced this afternoon.

The private-foundation contributions, in addition to the AFT's down payment of $1 million, bring the fund's total to $2.8 million. Funds are available for local affiliates to "incubate promising ideas to improve schools," AFT President Randi Weingarten said.

She gave a couple of possible examples: Districts and teachers could propose a new way of evaluating teachers that would incorporate evidence of student achievement. Or they could come up with a school-turnaround model akin to the Fresh Start project in Chicago or the now-defunct New York City chancellor's district.

Both Weingarten and the foundation folks spoke a lot about the importance of working together and collaboration. Weingarten, clearly echoing her National Press Club speech earlier this year, said the accepted applications will be "different, innovative, unique, out-of-the-box, and, yes, have a risk attached to them.". . . .

KIPP Houston's Chief Corporate Welfare Schemer

There is something at KIPP for every oligarch, whether conservative or liberal. For neo-lib oligarchs like Gates and Broad, there is the minority melting pot angle, where children of the poor are stripped of their cultural connections to take on the uniform of corporate culture, grounded in the glassy-eyed and sunnyside optimism guaranteed by the Seligman happiness treatment. And then there's plenty, too, for the right-wing oligarchs like the Waltons and "chief growth architect" of the Houston KIPP Miracle, Leo Linbeck III, who see in KIPP the chance to train children away from their families and values, which they view as petri dishes for socio-cultural pathologies, all the while indoctrinating them in behavioral codes grounded in compliance and subjugation and guaranteed by, yes, the same Seligman happiness treatment.

Caroline Grannan has a piece on growth architect and wingnut, Leo Linbeck III. Charming:

. . . .In his spare time, Linbeck is an adjunct business prof at Stanford and Rice universities, along with his activities building the KIPP empire. From his bio: "Leo is also very involved with KIPP, one of the most successful public charter school programs in the U.S. He has been the "Chief Growth Architect" at KIPP: Houston, leading the development of a plan to grow to 42 KIPP:Houston schools in the next 8 years."

Jesse Alred, a veteran Houston teacher whose questions about Teach for America I posted a few days ago, told me about some of Linbeck's interesting nuggets of political wisdom.

"Mr. Linbeck co-founded the Free Enterprise Institute," Alred told me by e-mail. "This group holds well-funded conferences trying to bringing high school teachers together with conservative scholars. I attended one my second year of teaching for the free food, and they were promoting the idea that government intervention contributed to and prolonged the Great Depression."

Alred shared some Linbeck wit and wisdom with me -- commentary Linbeck has posted on the Belmont Club, an online discussion group of Houston conservatives. It's political commentary, it's free speech and I respect that. Some of it is eye-catching, though.

"Should Obama win and enter Washington as Napoleon entered Moscow, the question is how our nation will respond. If we leave our nation to the conquering hero, it will most assuredly burn - figuratively, and perhaps literally as well. ...

Most of us still believe that America truly is a shining city on a hill, and we work hard to preserve this vision in our hearts, our families, our local communities, and our nation.

Admittedly, Obama and his Democrat allies in the Congress can encourage us to abandon our dreams. They can attempt to tax, regulate, and muzzle dissent, hoping to gain more control over us. They can loosen the bindings that tie our fates together, hoping that when left to our own devices we will be too weak to respond to their challenges. They can divide us into castes, and pit one group against another, hoping that our energies will be expended upon each other instead of true reform.

Speaking only for myself, I am preparing not for abandonment, but for a siege. It is inevitable that Democrats, once in total control, will overreach and awaken the spirit of our Founders that lives within the hearts of all true conservatives. At that point, the pushback will come.

But this time, rather than pushing for a takeover of Washington to get our share of the spoils, we must use our power to eliminate the spoils."

http://pajamasmedia.com/richardfernandez/2008/10/21/operation-grand-slam/

94 Percent of British Teachers Vote to Boycott Testing Next Year

It's official and not close. Thank God for the moral courage of these teachers to act on their convictions. The boycott is happening unless British officials agree to entirely new assessments.

Will the NEA and AFT suits notice, or are their swollen heads too far up their arses to have any hope of extraction? From The Telegraph:

Head teachers have voted overwhelmingly to back a boycott of national tests for seven and 11 year olds, rounding off one of Labour's worst weeks in office.

The move is a personal blow to Ed Balls, the children's secretary, whose speech to the National Association of Head Teachers annual conference just before the vote failed to placate school heads who want to see "an end to the tyranny of annual testing".

A joint boycott by heads and classroom teachers could spell the end of Sats, taken by about 1.2 million primary schoolchildren every year.

Despite warnings from the Government that the action would be "unlawful" and urging from Mr Balls to "act responsibly", 94 per cent of delegates at the conference in Brighton voted to support a ballot of members for the disruption of next year's tests.

Heads believe the papers in English, maths and science have narrowed the curriculum and damaged teaching and learning.

Sue Sayles, a past president of the Association, said: "It is our moral duty to show Ed that we have balls."

Steve Iredale, a primary head teacher from Barnsley, who proposed the motion condemned the ritual of annual testing and the use of flawed data to judge schools and heads.

"It is a mechanistic education system which reduces children's learning to numerical nonsense," he said. . . .

The Sunny Side of the Depression for Corporations: Cutting Wages and Benefits

Today's Washington Post has a story on the new strategy by corporations to use the Depression that their greed and incompetence created as reason enough to cut wages and benefits of those workers lucky enough to still have a paycheck. This follows on the heels of recent developments by banks to use some of the billions in federal bailouts to buy up foreclosed properties, rather than to loan money to citizens trying to buy homes. All of this is occurring as bank lobbyists use more bailout dough to buy up enough votes from crooked Senators of both parties to halt modifications in the bankruptcy law last week that could have saved 1.7 million homeowners from foreclosure. As Durbin admitted last week, banks "frankly own the place."

Meanwhile, kids hoping for college must contend with a minefield of crooks and gougers from the Sallie Maes of the world, ready to victimize those who can't afford to pay their own way without loans. And their younger brothers and sisters--well, they continue the cram as the Business Roundtable's cheap charter movement picks off more and more poor public schools for corporate welfare conversion, all with the blessing of the Obama Administration. Which brings us back to the subject of cut wages and benefits for workers, yes?

Finally, following a voucher link on my Google Alerts, I came across a summary in the Miami Herald of Florida legislative action during the current session that just ended. These two actions were stacked together in the list of "accomplishments" for Florida's illustrious body of corporate stooges:

- Strengthen a private school voucher program for children from low-income families by giving insurance companies dollar-for-dollar credits against premium taxes for donations to the program, now supported solely through similar corporation income tax credits.

- Require public school students who lose or damage textbooks to pay 100 percent of replacement costs instead of 50 percent to 75 percent under present law.

No write-down for students losing a book, but some pretty good action for corporations with giving programs to shut down public schools.

Preserving Play is a Serious Issue

Here is chunk from an insightful piece in tomorrow's NYTimes Magazine (ht to Monty Neill):

. . . .A survey of 254 teachers in New York and Los Angeles the group commissioned found that kindergartners spent two to three hours a day being instructed and tested in reading and math. They spent less than 30 minutes playing. “Play at age 5 is of great importance not just to intellectual but emotional, psychological social and spiritual development,” says Edward Miller, the report’s co-author. Play — especially the let’s-pretend, dramatic sort — is how kids develop higher-level thinking, hone their language and social skills, cultivate empathy. It also reduces stress, and that’s a word that should not have to be used in the same sentence as “kindergartner” in the first place.

I came late to motherhood, so I had plenty of time to ponder friends’ mania for souped-up childhood learning. How was it that the same couples who piously proclaimed that 3½-year-old Junior was not “developmentally ready” to use the potty were drilling him on flashcards? What was the rush? Did that better prepare kids to learn? How did 5 become the new 7, anyway?

There’s no single reason. The No Child Left Behind Act, with its insistence that what cannot be quantified cannot be improved, plays a role. But so do parents who want to build a better child. There is also what marketers refer to as KGOY — Kids Getting Older Younger — their explanation for why 3-year-olds now play with toys that were initially intended for middle-schoolers. (Since adults are staying younger older — 50 is the new 30! — our children may soon surpass us in age.)

Regardless of the cause, Miller says, accelerating kindergarten is unnecessary: any early advantage fades by fourth grade. “It makes a parent proud to see a child learn to read at age 4, but in terms of what’s really best for the kid, it makes no difference.” For at-risk kids, pushing too soon may backfire. The longitudinal High/Scope Preschool Curriculum Comparison Study followed 68 such children, who were divided between instruction- and play-based classrooms. While everyone’s I.Q. scores initially rose, by age 15, the former group’s academic achievement plummeted. They were more likely to exhibit emotional problems and spent more time in special education. “Drill and kill,” indeed.

Thinkers like Daniel Pink have proposed that this country’s continued viability hinges on what is known as the “imagination economy”: qualities like versatility, creativity, vision — and playfulness — that cannot be outsourced. It’s a compelling argument to apply here, though a bit disheartening too: must we append the word “economy” to everything to legitimize it? Isn’t cultivating imagination an inherent good? I would hate to see children’s creativity subject to the same parental anxiety that has stoked the sales of Baby Einstein DVDs.

Jean Piaget famously referred to “the American question,” which arose when he lectured in this country: how, his audiences wanted to know, could a child’s development be sped up? The better question may be: Why are we so hellbent on doing so?. . . .

Back to the Future of Education Reform

After reading the Dunc's remarks to the (Corporate) Education Writers Association two days ago, I was interested to look back at the ed rhetoric that was circulating a hundred days after Bush came to town. Looking back in the NY Times archive, I found this piece that could have written yesterday, even though it is reporting from 20 years ago, just after Bush I wound up the Charlottesville Conference with governors at UVA--a fateful meeting that would give the reigns of American education to the technocratic, amoral hucksters of the Business Roundtable. Since then nothing has changed in terms of federal ed policy except, of course, the generational tightening of the thumb screws on students and teachers as each subsequent version of "accountability" measures fails to produce the advertised future.

And now, the thumb screws are about to be turned down once more, as the Dunc visits Detroit, a district blown up by the last 7 years of AYP bombs. The solution: tighten the screws again:

Duncan told The Detroit News that education in Detroit will be corrected only by raising expectations the district places on students and teachers.

"What's going on there is a national disgrace, and we're not going to change it without raising the bar," he said. "Detroit is not going to get where it needs to go without raising standards."

As you read the following from September 29, 1989, think Obama for Bush and Weingarten for Shanker and Former-President Clinton for Governor Clinton. Everything else has the same eternal freshness that comes with never-ending denial by antiquarians turned to face in the opposite direction (Marquard, 1987):

President Bush and the nation's Governors agreed today on the need to overhaul the nation's education system by creating a set of goals that will focus on eliminating illiteracy, reshaping curriculums and holding teachers accountable for their performance.

''We believe that the time has come, for the first time in U.S. history, to establish clear, national performance goals, goals that will make us internationally competetive,'' said the joint statement issued here at the end of a two-day meeting called by Mr. Bush to discuss education. The statement was written by the White House staff, Administration officials and a bipartisan group of governors.

Earlier today, in a speech to the governors, Mr. Bush said: ''The American people are ready for radical reforms. We must not disappoint them. ''Education is our most enduring legacy, vital to everything we are and can become,'' Mr. Bush said. . . .

. . . .''This is a major step forward in education,'' said Mr. Bush, standing near the sun-drenched steps of the rotunda on the University of Virginia campus. ''We've reached agreement on the need for national performance goals, on the need for more flexibility and accountability, the need for restructuring and choice.''

Obviously bowing to pressure from the Democratic governors, Mr. Bush added that the Federal Government was committed to ''more Federal support'' for preschool programs like Head Start for poor children. . . .

. . . .Mr. Bush won praise from several union leaders.

Albert Shanker, president of the American Federation of Teachers, said Mr. Bush's speech ''defined a vision of education that was not public relations.'' . . . .

. . . .Mr. Bush had called the rare meeting with the governors largely because of the consensus with the Government and the education establishment that American schools were in turmoil and that the education system was increasingly lagging behind those of other industrial democracies. More Than Three R's

In his speech at midday, Mr. Bush said his Administration envisioned ''tradition-shattering reform in five areas.''

''First, I see the day when every student is literate,'' he said. ''But literacy should mean more than the 'three R's.' We must be a reading nation. We must grapple with the hard sciences.''

Mr. Bush also said students ''must do more than identify names on a multiple-choice question. They must understand the generosity of Andrew Carnegie, the genius of Alexander Graham Bell and the heroism of Rosa Parks.'' . . . .

* Giving parents more choice in selecting the schools they want their children to attend. ''Children differ in their interests, learning styles and capabilities,'' said Mr. Bush. ''I see the day when choice among schools will be the norm rather than the exception.''

* Developing more accountability, where teachers, principals and administrators must clearly answer for poor performances. ''We must now evaluate ourselves on a tougher grading curve, one that includes that other major industrial nations,'' Mr. Bush said.

* Exploiting the potential of every student, not only those who are gifted, but also the ''average students'' and the disadvantaged.

''Some of our reforms and experiments are sure to come up short,'' said Mr. Bush. ''But for too many of our schools, experimentation is preferable to the status quo, because the status quo could scarcely be worse.''

''After two centuries of progress,'' Mr. Bush told the governors, ''we are stagnant.''

How Bloomberg's School Business Model Went Bust

We can imagine clearly now with more than a twinge of real pain what things could have been like if Grover Norquist's puppet, George Bush, had had his way and turned over all of Social Security to Wall Street to handle. Now we can see what the real meaning of social safety net is, just as we can once again see the undisguised meaning of what "free markets" mean.

Now we see, too, that the religious fervor among New York City Business Roundtablers for school charterization and the spread of more private schools was based on the same kind of wishful greed that enabled the destruction of the American economy, again. The Bloomberg-Klein braintrust believed they could continue to shrink the public school system as those market forces we used to hear so much about shoved their way in to replace the white public schools that would have been abandoned for more upscale private boutiques that could be easily afforded in the economy that only went up. What would be left of the public system would be a conglomeration of cheap charter chain gangs for the poor, all run by corporations at public expense.

Bloomberg-Klein could never imagine there could be circumstances that would have the white middle class again enrolling their children in public schools. And, of course, the current outrage among middle class NYC parents who can no longer afford private school for their kindergartners is the outcome. Unfortunately, for Bloomberg, he cannot call up the shop floor and have more public kindergartens manufactured by month's end. Oh, well--maybe New Yorkers will have had enough of lawyers and MBAs running the schools.

The story from the Times:

As a growing collection of Manhattan’s most celebrated public elementary schools notify neighborhood parents that their children have been placed on waiting lists for kindergarten slots, middle-class vitriol against the school system — and Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg — is mounting.

Parents are venting their frustrations in e-mail messages and phone calls to the mayor, local politicians and the schools chancellor, Joel I. Klein (“You have unleashed the fury of parents throughout this city with your complete lack of preparedness,” read one father’s recent missive, which he shared with The New York Times). Some plan a rally on the steps of City Hall for next Wednesday afternoon (“Kindergartners Are Not Refugees!” proclaims a flier), and some are taking it upon themselves to scour the city for potential classroom space.

The outpouring of anger comes as state lawmakers consider whether to renew mayoral control of the city school system, which expires in two months, and Mr. Bloomberg is seeking a third term in part on his education record.

“I got a call from Mayor Bloomberg’s campaign about yadda yadda yadda was I going to vote for him,” said Beth Levison, a documentary filmmaker whose son is No. 79 of 90 on a combined waiting list for Public School 41 and Public School 3, both in Greenwich Village. “As a parent who has a child with no place to go next year, no indication of where he’s going to go next year as a result of the mayor taking control of education, I said absolutely not.

“You would think that Bloomberg, who is a businessman, knows how to manage inventory like this,” Ms. Levison continued. “My kid isn’t just a bottle of vodka, but this is about inventory.”. . . .