Schools Matter

GUEST BLOG: IDOE–Shrinking State Power to Expose Your Tender Underbelly (UPDATE)

2012-01-27T07:54:00.001-05:00

IDOE–Shrinking State Power to Expose Your Tender Underbelly (UPDATE)

by Douglas Storm

[UPDATE in the body of the text]

Indiana is at the forefront of a concerted and aggressive drive to weaken state power. That sounds good to so many of us, especially those who believe there is a libertarian with a good heart out there. But here’s the trick. The agents of the state of the terms of Mitch Daniels (at least) have worked to make the State itself an onerous body that commits one bad act after another. The government that hates government is in charge of the government. In turn, the people hate the state as well and scream for liberty and freedom and so approve of the measures the state offers for “choice” such as voucher systems and selling public schools to corporate charter groups.

All this does is diminish the capacity of the state as a protector against unequal wealth and power. While we scream about the .01% owning the world and screwing us we are letting our state sell us to those very folks and we are thanking them for it.

An example of the way this is happening:

Today a memo went out to all Indiana Public School District administrators. The memo, titled “Assessment Opt Out Guidance” was authored by the State General Counsel Matt Voors and sent out under the Office of the Chief for Assessment (a chief for change!), Wes Bruce.

The gist, don’t let parents opt their children out of state assessment tests. However, as the memo makes clear, the state has no policy on this particular option. Oddly, the lawyers treat this as if that alone creates the impetus to not allow it. Anyway, as there is no way to make the opting out illegal (currently–one assumes we should look for legislation asap) the tactic suggested by the state is to threaten parents, teachers and school communities with untoward ramifications. We can’t stop you, they say, but we’re going to make your life as hard for you as we can if you do this.

Here is the full text.

M E M O R A N D U M
TO:                 Indiana Superintendents and Principals
FROM:           Wes Bruce, Chief Assessment Officer
Matt Voors, General Counsel
DATE:          January 25, 2011
TOPIC:          Assessment Opt Out Guidance
In recent weeks, we have had several inquiries from schools and corporations about parents who have requested—or in some cases demanded—to opt out their students from participating in state assessments (ISTEP+, IMAST, IREAD-3, ECAs, LAS Links) . There are several social media sites that are promoting the idea of opting out in Indiana. These sites imply that parents may opt out their children from state testing. Indiana law has no such provision.
The following are points you may want to discuss with parents considering opting out their students:
Test scores provide a valid measure of how well students have mastered grade level standards.
ISTEP+ test scores allow us to estimate how much students have grown each school year     by comparing the achievement patterns of students with very similar patterns of content mastery.
At the high school level, opting out denies students the opportunities guaranteed to them by law to demonstrate the needed mastery of Algebra I and/or English 10 required to earn a high school diploma.
Below you will find our policy on the topic of opting out of state assessments, as well as important reminders for parents and for schools.

Indiana Standardized Testing Policy Regarding Opt-out and Absences
Unless a student falls within the very narrow exemptions for homebound instruction and/or medical necessity, Ind. Code 20-32-2 provides that all students enrolled in an Indiana-accredited school are required to participate in state assessments. Indiana does not have an opt-out policy. If a student is absent on the scheduled testing days but attends school on any other days in the test window, the school shall test the student as a “make up.”

Parent Reminders
Parents should be reminded of Indiana’s Compulsory School Attendance Laws, Ind. Code 20-33-2. Specifically, section 28 of the compulsory school attendance chapter provides that it is unlawful for a parent to fail, neglect, or refuse to send the parent’s child to school for the full term, and section 27 of the statute provides that it is unlawful for a parent to fail to ensure that his/her student attends school as required under the compulsory school attendance chapter and establishes the process of initiating an action against a parent for violation. Finally, section 44 provides that violation of the compulsory school attendance chapter is a Class B Misdemeanor. Any absence by a student on scheduled testing dates for the purpose of avoiding testing constitutes an unexcused absence and may constitute a violation of the compulsory school attendance laws.
School Reminders
Schools should be mindful that student participation in state assessments is part of the calculation for A-F category designations. Moreover, lack of participation by any subgroup may have particular negative consequences for accountability calculations.
For additional information, please contact the Office of Assessment at
317-232-2050.

UPDATE: This number in the document goes to FSSA, Revenue Recovery, NOT the Office of Assessment. One is unsure how to respond to this. If intentional it seems somewhat obscene as a prank. Either way, here is the Office of Assessment Chief’s contact information off the IDOE site:

ph: 317-232-9050
fx: 317-233-2196
email: wbruce@doe.in.gov

Let me suggest you call them in order to GIVE THEM additional information, not to get it. Unless the question is Where do you get off?

So, let’s recap: Opt Out and the school suffers, high school kids will have their diplomas withheld, parents can be thrown in jail for 60 days or fined $1k if they trespass the truancy laws.

Nice. That’s called the Bully Policy. But we expect nothing less from Indiana Government. Teachers, may I suggest when you give your mandatory anti-bullying workshops that you use the state as an example of the biggest bully (well next to the Military, the Banks and the federal government that serves them).

Yesterday, we received a newsletter from our school about the upcoming testing schedule. Among the Facts the Gradgrinds sent us was this:

The IREAD 3rd grade test is new this year. We’ve not seen the assessment piece and do not know what the cut scores will be. X discussed this at the family literacy night. 3rd graders who do not pass this test will be retained. They can be retained for up to two years.

What happens after those two years if they don’t pass? Is it like unemployment stats? You know they remove from the numbers anyone who’s “stopped” looking for work. (That keeps the stats lower than they are in reality, don’t you know–so that 9% unemployment is really close to 22%.)

More coercion. The primary goal of any of this is simply to amass data as a weapon.

The state is now corrupt in all ways and has only one intention–disbanding all public accountability. In what they must feel is a clever ruse they “pretend” testing and “measurable” assessment is about accountability. Rather, it’s a chance to weaken the ability of the state to protect its citizens. All the policy behind the education reforms create assessment standards that will automatically Fail as many as 1/3 of public schools. The state will “take-over” these schools and then sell them to corporations. Then corporations will be allowed to be, well, corporations. They will write the very rules that govern them and the state will passively approve.

This is the Corporate plan. The state that cannot protect its citizens–cannot fund its programs–will willingly sell itself to the corporation. Laws have already been passed to protect private property and not people so that one will not even be able to bring civil charges against these actions. The men and women in positions of power in the state now are not your representatives. They are servants of corporate power and they are destroying your one protection against the coercion of wealth and property (we call this a “market ideology”). The state’s agents are selling the state’s power out from under us.

This is and was a Long Con and it is nearing its end.

All of this puts me in mind of this scene in Blade Runner:

Leon: I kinda get nervous when I take tests.
Holden: Don’t move.
Leon: Sorry.
He tries to move, but finally his lips can’t help a sheepish smile.
Leon: I already had an I.Q. test this year… but I don’t think I ever had a…
Holden: Reaction time is a factor in this so please pay attention. Answer as quickly as you can.
Leon: Uh… sure…
Holden: One one eight seven at Hunterwasser…
Leon: Oh… that’s the hotel.
Holden: What?
Leon: Where I live.
Holden: Nice place?
Leon: Huh? Sure. Yeah. I guess. Is that…part of the test?
Holden smiles a patronizing smile.
Holden: Warming you up, that’s all.
Leon: Oh. it’s not fancy or anything.
Holden: You’re in a desert, walking along in the sand when…
Leon: Is this the test now?
Holden: Yes. You’re in a desert, walking along in the sand when all of a sudden you look down and see a…
Leon: What one?
It was a timid interruption, hardly audible.
Holden: What?
Leon: What desert?
Holden: Doesn’t make any difference what desert… its completely hypothetical.
Leon: But how come I’d be there?
Holden: Maybe you’re fed up, maybe you want to be by yourself…who knows. So you look down and see a tortoise. It’s crawling toward you…
Leon: A tortoise. What’s that?
Holden: Know what a turtle is?
Leon: Of course.
Holden: Same thing.
Leon: I never seen a turtle.
He sees Holden’s patience is wearing thin.
Leon: But I understand what you mean.
Holden: You reach down and flip the tortoise over on its back, Leon.
Keeping an eye on his subject, Holden notes the dials in the Voight-Kampff. One of the needles quivers slightly.
Leon: You make up these questions, Mr. Holden, or do they write ‘em down for you?
Disregarding the question, Holden continues, picking up the pace.
Holden: The tortoise lays on its back, its belly baking in the hot sun, beating its legs trying to turn itself over. But it can’t. Not with out your help. But you’re not helping.
Leon’s upper lip is quivering.
Leon: Whatya means, I’m not helping?
Holden: I mean you’re not helping! Why is that, Leon?
Holden looks hard at Leon, a hard piercing look. Leon is flushed with anger, breathing hard, it’s a bad moment, he might erupt. Suddenly Holden grins disarmingly.
Holden: They’re just questions, Leon. In answer to your query, they’re written down for me. It’s a test designed to provoke an emotional response.

Sure, Leon’s a replicant, a creature made by man, a lesser being (oh, wait) and he’s about to blow away Holden (the only recourse here available to the outlaw–the outsider to the law–the one the law turns out) and he’s definitely creepy, but the test will find him out and then he’s doomed…

How do you determine teacher effectiveness?

2012-01-27T01:11:00.000-05:00

How do you determine teacher effectiveness?
Sent to USA Today, Jan. 26, 2012

“States weaken tenure rights for teachers” (Jan. 25) emphasizes the importance of evaluating teacher effectiveness.
A major problem is that these evaluations are often based on students gains on standardized tests, called “value-added” measures.
A number of studies have shown that value-added measures are very unstable: Teachers' ratings based on previous years are weak predictors of test scores at the end of a year with new students. A teacher who succeeds in boosting scores with one group will not necessarily succeed with others. Different tests can result in different scores for the same teacher.
Value-added evaluations also ignore the huge impact of factors beyond the teachers’ control. Finally, there are ways of pumping up test scores without student learning, including teaching test-taking strategies and making sure weak students don't take the test.
Nobody objects to teachers being evaluated on their effectiveness. Using gains on standardized tests is a bad way to do it.

Stephen Krashen
Professor Emeritus, University of Southern California

Sources:
Not stable: Sass, T. 2008. The stability of value-added measures of teacher quality and implications for teacher compensation policy. Washington DC: CALDER. (National Center for Analysis of Longitudinal Data in Educational Research.) Kane, T. and Staiger, D. 2009. Estimating Teacher Impacts on Student Achievement: An Experimental Evaluation. NBER Working Paper No. 14607 http://www.nber.org/papers/w14607;
Different tests result in different value-added scores: Papay, J. 2010. Different tests, different answers: The stability of teacher value-added estimates across outcome measures. American Educational Research Journal 47,2.

Original article:
http://www.usatoday.com/news/education/story/2012-01-25/teacher-tenure-rights-firings/

Tennessee State Board Set to Further Demoralize Teachers and Open the Floodgates to New Lawsuits

2012-01-26T19:55:00.000-05:00

Update 9:34 AM Jan. 27: Last evening the State Board of Education pulled the "Scarlet Letter" reprimand action item from today's agenda.

The commentary below was provided Knoxville, TN educators who prefer (for now) to remain anonymous:

In light of the planned action by the State Board of Education (download pdf from state website here complete with red ink), Knox County educators are bracing for the next shoe to fall from the Haslam/McIntyre(Broad)/Huffman nexus of destabilization, deprofessionalization, and corporatization of public education in the state of Tennessee.

Already, teachers in Knoxville schools administered by quislings from McIntyre’s Leadership Academy are reporting increasingly Orwellian levels of administrative surveillance regarding teacher activities both on and off the clock, with explicit threats of reprimand for any number of murky, undefined “unprofessional” or “unbecoming” activities.

Rumors abound regarding the intent and extent of McIntyre’s office, as well as what offenses might bring a reprimand. [Thus far the State has provided no list of offenses that might yield a public reprimand]. One version to have teacher’s driver’s licenses flagged in order to be informed of possible moving violations committed by KCS employees, as well as of intentions of certain administrators to rid the teaching pool of staff members whose personal, private life choices, or physical appearances may conflict with the values held by fear-fanning politicians or moneyed individuals in the larger community.

Not only do we have the punitive, unproven, critically-flawed, multi-million dollar Milken Brothers TEAM evaluation system (combined with Broad-Stooge McIntyre’s pet project of pay-for-performance APEX program) to marginalize, demoralize, deprofessionalize, and ultimately drive out seasoned, professional educators (those most likely to speak out against the wrongs currently being perpetrated against their students and communities in the name of “reform”), we now have the beginnings of a 19th-century throwback policy by which public school educators can be censured, publicly humiliated, and blacklisted without the benefit of due process for as yet unspecified indicators of “unprofessionalism” and “moral turpitude.”

By using that most dog-eared page from the reformer’s playbook of “getting tough on teachers.” while simultaneously pandering to the most intolerant and prejudiced segments of the local population with the hot-button, evangelical issue of “morality,” McIntyre has demonstrated his commitment to diligently promote the Business Roundtable’s agenda by any means necessary.

Which leaves the educators of Knox County to wonder: What will be the NEXT reason that some Knox County teachers--most likely tenured veterans near the top of the pay scale--will find themselves “out of alignment” with McIntyre’s “vision,” and acted against accordingly? A speeding ticket? A bankruptcy? Holding hands in public? Unsubstantiated allegations related to a divorce or custody dispute? Complaints from a disgruntled parent? Being seen consuming a glass of wine at a restauraunt?

Welcome to the New Dark Ages, brought to you by this generation's efficiency zealots and supporters of plutocracy.

Local story by WATE reporter, Hana Kim:

By HANA KIM
6 News Reporter

KNOXVILLE (WATE) - The State Board of Education could pass a new rule this week that would allow it to publicly reprimand a teacher for misconduct.

However, the initiative is creating some fear that teachers' personal rights would be infringed upon.

If the board passes the agenda on Friday, it will give the board the option to publicly reprimand a teacher for bad behavior. That reprimand will be on the teacher's record permanently so that every school district in Tennessee could find out about it.

School districts are required to turn over a teacher's case for evaluation if there's a misconduct problem.

The board can either suspend or even revoke a teacher's license, depending on the case. The state says a public reprimand would be something in the middle, given out for an offense that is not worth a suspension, but still frowned on.

General Counsel Dannelle Walker deals with most of the state's licensing cases and came up the initiative.

"We have pretty much a small hammer and a big hammer. We want to have like a screwdriver to make it a little bit better, and we are not pulling out the big hammer for such small offenses," Walker said.
However, the initiative is stirring a lot of confusion.

Sherry Morgan, president of the Knox County Teacher's Union, says there isn't a clear definition of what violations would warrant a public reprimand.

For example, could a bankruptcy, a domestic issue or a first time DUI offense be enough for a reprimand?

"They have their professional life. They have their personal life, and are they going to infringe on their personal lives? I honestly think it could ruin their careers," Morgan said.

"It's not going to be frivolous or arbitrary," Walker said. "It has to be in precedent of what we've done before."

Walker says teachers would not be unfairly targeted for bankruptcy or minor issues. . . .

Wanted: Computer of Apple Quality Not Made in Poisonous Factory by Slave Labor

2012-01-26T12:39:00.000-05:00

Yesterday I was at the gym watching on closed caption the story of Apple's cash problems. Seems they have almost a hundred billion bucks (more than most European countries) that they don't know what do with, except to hold it for the next inevitable bankster-inspired economic depression.

Looks like they could at least afford haz-mat suits for the Chinese peasants who get paid pennies to polish their expensive Apples in plants where suicide provides an attractive alternative to a life of hell.

I've been an Apple user for a long time, but I am definitely looking for another option that doesn't run on Gates.

A tiny clip from the NYTimes:

. . . . the workers assembling iPhones, iPads and other devices often labor in harsh conditions, according to employees inside those plants, worker advocates and documents published by companies themselves. Problems are as varied as onerous work environments and serious — sometimes deadly — safety problems.

Employees work excessive overtime, in some cases seven days a week, and live in crowded dorms. Some say they stand so long that their legs swell until they can hardly walk. Under-age workers have helped build Apple’s products, and the company’s suppliers have improperly disposed of hazardous waste and falsified records, according to company reports and advocacy groups that, within China, are often considered reliable, independent monitors.

More troubling, the groups say, is some suppliers’ disregard for workers’ health. Two years ago, 137 workers at an Apple supplier in eastern China were injured after they were ordered to use a poisonous chemical to clean iPhone screens. Within seven months last year, two explosions at iPad factories, including in Chengdu, killed four people and injured 77. Before those blasts, Apple had been alerted to hazardous conditions inside the Chengdu plant, according to a Chinese group that published that warning.

“If Apple was warned, and didn’t act, that’s reprehensible,” said Nicholas Ashford, a former chairman of the National Advisory Committee on Occupational Safety and Health, a group that advises the United States Labor Department. “But what’s morally repugnant in one country is accepted business practices in another, and companies take advantage of that.”

Apple is not the only electronics company doing business within a troubling supply system. Bleak working conditions have been documented at factories manufacturing products for Dell, Hewlett-Packard, I.B.M., Lenovo, Motorola, Nokia, Sony, Toshiba and others.

Current and former Apple executives, moreover, say the company has made significant strides in improving factories in recent years. Apple has a supplier code of conduct that details standards on labor issues, safety protections and other topics. The company has mounted a vigorous auditing campaign, and when abuses are discovered, Apple says, corrections are demanded.

And Apple’s annual supplier responsibility reports, in many cases, are the first to report abuses. This month, for the first time, the company released a list identifying many of its suppliers.

But significant problems remain. More than half of the suppliers audited by Apple have violated at least one aspect of the code of conduct every year since 2007, according to Apple’s reports, and in some instances have violated the law. While many violations involve working conditions, rather than safety hazards, troubling patterns persist.

“Apple never cared about anything other than increasing product quality and decreasing production cost,” said Li Mingqi, who until April worked in management at Foxconn Technology, one of Apple’s most important manufacturing partners. Mr. Li, who is suing Foxconn over his dismissal, helped manage the Chengdu factory where the explosion occurred.
“Workers’ welfare has nothing to do with their interests,” he said.. . . .

What the Hell Is the Tennessee State Board of Education Doing?

2012-01-26T10:22:00.001-05:00

First they came for the teachers. See below:

TennesseeState Board of Education Agenda January 27, 2012 Final Reading Item: IV. G.

LicenseDenial, Suspension, and Revocation Procedure Policy

TheBackground:

Pursuantto State Board of Education Rule 0520-2-4-.01(9)(b) the State Board ofEducation may revoke, suspend or refuse to issue or renew a license for severalreasons listed in the rule.

Currentlyunder the policy, there is no option for the State Board to issue a publicreprimand for a license holder who engages in conduct which may not rise to thelevel of a suspension, but should be discouraged nonetheless. Amending thepolicy to include public reprimand as an option would ensure that thoseinstances of misconduct are not only recorded with the State Board ofEducation, but are also reported to the National Association of State Directorsof Teacher Education and Certification (NASDTEC) Clearinghouse.

The Master Plan Connection:

This itemsupports the Board’s Master Plan principles of effective school leaders andeffective teachers by ensuring that varying levels of misconduct will beactionable.

TheRecommendation:

The SBE staff recommends adoption ofthis item on final reading.

Procedure for LicenseDenial, Public Reprimand, Suspension & Revocation

BoardRule 0520-2-4-.01(9) governs denial, public reprimand,suspension and revocation of a Tennessee teaching license. Reporting and recording of action takenon licenses is coordinated with the Department of Education’s Office of TeacherLicensing and local education agencies.

Belowis a general outline of the procedure followed in cases of possible licensedenial, public reprimand, suspension or revocation. Requests for restoration of suspendedor revoked licenses are handled in accordance with Board Policy 5.500, LicenseRestoration Requests.

Reporting

Board Rule0520-2-4-.01(9)(e) requires superintendents to report to the Office of TeacherLicensing whenever a teacher or administrator is “suspended or dismissed, or[has] resigned, following allegations of conduct which, if substantiated, wouldwarrant consideration for license suspension or revocation under” therule. Superintendents are alsorequired to report “felony convictions of licensed teachers or administrators.”These reports must be submitted “within thirty (30) days of the suspension,dismissal or resignation” or “within 30 days of receiving knowledge of the[felony] conviction.”

Procedure

Afterreceiving a report, the following procedure should be followed:

ForAutomatic Revocation

1. TheOffice of Teacher Licensing (OTL) flags the individual’s file (license orlicense application) on a databaseavailable to Tennessee LEAs. Before hiring new teachers, LEAs should check the potential employee’slicense status on this database to determine the reason for the flag.

2. TheOTL creates a file with the superintendent’s report and the teacher’s licenseinformation to Board counsel.

3. Boardcounsel obtains a certified copy of the criminal record showing the convictionfor one of the offenses at T.C.A. § 40-35-501(i)(2) or 39-17-417 (includingconviction on a plea of guilty or nolo contendere).

4. Followingreceipt of the certified record, Board counsel informs the individual thathis/her teaching license is subject to automatic revocation at the next Boardmeeting. Notification is sent atleast 30 days prior to the Board meeting at which the revocation is scheduledto occur.

For Denial, Public Reprimand,Suspension or Revocation

1. The Office of Teacher Licensing (OTL) flags thelicense file on a database available to Tennessee LEAs. Before hiring new teachers, LEAs shouldcheck the potential employee’s license status on this database to determine thereason for the flag.

2. The OTL prepares a file with the applicationmaterials or the superintendent’s report and transmits the file to Boardcounsel.

3. If another proceeding could affect the decision bythe Board, Board counsel may wait for:

a.The conclusion of any LEA investigation and/or termination proceeding or

b.Entry of a final order in any criminal or civil proceeding (including DCSfindings) related to the events giving rise to the report.

4. A three person panel of Board staff reviews thefile to determine whether disciplinary action (denial, public reprimand, suspension or revocation) should be pursued, or ifadditional investigation is necessary. This panel consists of the executive or deputy executive director,counsel to the Board, and at least one other staff member.

a.If the panel decides not to investigate further or pursue disciplinary action,counsel to the Board directs the OTL to unflag the file.

b.If the panel recommends that the Board impose disciplinary action, then

5. Board counsel then notifies the individual of theBoard’s intent and the individual’s right to a hearing. Counsel may alsoinclude a proposed agreed order.

a.If the individual waives the right to a hearing, Board counsel submits theproposed disciplinary action to the Board for roll-call vote at its nextmeeting. Counsel includes aproposed order for the Board to approve.

b.If the individual requests a hearing, then Board counsel schedules a hearingwith an Administrative Law Judge (ALJ) from the Secretary of State’s office,sitting on behalf of the Board.

6. Board or ALJ action:

a.No disciplinary action:

i.If the Board votes not to impose discipline, Board counsel informs theindividual of the decision and directs the OTL to unflag the file.

ii.If the ALJ, sitting on behalf of the Board, finds that suspension or revocationis not warranted, Board counsel directs the OTL to unflag the file. The Board may, however, appeal theALJ’s decision at its discretion.

b.If the Board votes to impose discipline, counsel sends a copy of the order(signed by the Chair) to the individual, and copies the OTL.

c.OTL records the disciplinary action and the grounds on the nationalclearinghouse (NASDTEC).

NOTE:Suspended licenses are subject to expiration.

A visual representationof the procedure is included as an attachment to this policy.

Peas in a pod: Koret Foundation, The Hoover Institution, and Democrats for Education Reform

2012-01-26T07:36:00.004-05:00

"I tell you, my friends, the trouble with this whole country is that so many are selfish! Here's a hundred and twenty million people, with ninety-five per cent of 'em only thinking of self, instead of turning to and helping the responsible business men to bring back prosperity! All these corrupt and self-seeking labor unions! Money grubbers! Thinking only of how much wages they can extort out of their unfortunate employer, with all the responsibilities he has to bear!" ... "Then was revealed the New American Education, which, as Sarason so justly said, was to be ever so much newer than the New Educations of Germany, Italy, Poland, or even Turkey." — Sinclair Lewis [1]

It's no secret that the malicious types running Democrats for Education Reform (DFER) hold the same ideological positions as the furthest-right think-tanks around. Starting with their founder Whitney Tilson, [2] who channels American Enterprise Institute's (AEI) Andy Smarick at every opportunity, DFER is a bastion of right-wing thought that amounts to an enormous serving of Milton Freidman's free market fantasies finished with a healthy dollop of Ayn Rand's infantile insistence that "Big Business" is "America’s Persecuted Minority."

Much like Eli Broad's economic hit-men (and hit-women) trained at his various residencies and academies, DFER operatives have done astonishing damage to the public commons and undermine democracy at every opportunity. In Democrats for Neoliberal Education Reform I outlined the duplicitous underhanded craftiness DFER Colorado operatives Mike Johnston and his colleagues employed to "railroad the anti-community, anti-teacher, pro-corporate SB-191 through the Colorado Legislature." More importantly, we looked at the language of their own document which gleefully "discuss[es] students as mere commodities to be consumed by the owners of the means of production."

In the past right-wing Democrats like those comprising the Democratic Leadership Council (DLC) pretended that they were somehow different than the John Birch Society inspired organizations that informed the DLC's policies. DFER, on the other hand, makes no attempts to mask their muses and ideological allies. Much like Arne Duncan's ballyhooed "education reform" tour with serial bigot (and philanderer) Newt Gingrich, DFER makes no bones about the fact that their natural allies are fringe-right creeps that would put children back to work. [3]

Case in point Gloria J. Romero, DFER California Director, just completed a panel entitled "School Choice, Special Interests and the Education of Our Children" along with arch-reactionaries Terry Moe of The Hoover Institution and Lance Izumi of Koret Foundation. The event, held in "honor" of deceptively named "school choice week," was moderated by teabagger and staunch anti-unionist Lary Sand, who some might recall as having moderated a school privatization event held by Ben Austin, Ben Boychuck, and Bruno Behrend. DFER's Romero, whose hatred of organized labor echoes that of the Brothers Koch, must have been very confortable on a panel with reactionaries whose views up ten years ago were considered extremist even by the mainstream GOP.

Any guesses as to who the panel considered "Special Interests?" It's safe to say that it wasn't The Broad Foundation, The Gates Foundation, or The Walton Family Foundation. Let's look briefly at our ideological peas in a pod.

Terry Moe, who writes with all of the authority of Philip Morris treatise on the health benefits of smoking, is a favorite in the Murdoch, Walton, DeVos, Bradley, Koch, and Scaife circles. The extreme right-wing Hoover Institution (named after the vile president who stood by and did nothing the last time the banksters and Wall Street swindlers crashed the economy) is wont to lionize right-wing monsters (and Milton Freidman acolytes) like the butchering murderer Generalissimo Augusto Pinochet.

Lance Izumi, who spends much of his time writing fallacious fact-frees texts trying to scamboozle middle class parents into accepting "school choice" and distance learning in order to bolster the burgeoning charter and online school sectors, is a senior fellow at the Koret Foundation. Koret, which unabashedly promotes Freidman's discredited ideas while simultaneously celebrating the Nakba, have their — in their own words — "free-market think tank, Pacific Research Institute" based at The Hoover Institution.

Gloria Romero is best known for her obsequious service to the lucrative charter school industry. While a California State Senator, she worked tirelessly to ensure Caprice Young, Jed Wallace, and other charter school tycoons would continue to dine voraciously at the public trough. Among her dubious accomplishments was SB-592 which handed public school property over to private corporations. Romero's most famous betrayal of the working class people of California was her collaboration with Arnold Schwarzenegger and Ben Austin to create the vile corporate charter trigger, which allows well funded Charter Management Organizations to increase market share. Since her ignominious defeat in her bid to garner the California State Superintendent of Public Instruction seat on behalf of the California Charter Schools Association, Romero has worked harder to union bust and privatize public schools than all of the teabagger elected governors combined. Her shameless pandering to the right and constant opportunism was best summed up in 2009 by my friend and comrade Alvaro Maldonado when we were still trying to prevent the parent trigger law from passing:

For those harboring illusions about State Senator Gloria Romero, her ideology, and her intentions. Long time immigrant rights activist Alvaro Maldonado, who led the fight against the racist Prop 187, had this to say about State Senator and Privatization Pontiff Gloria Romero:

I just saw her the other day! She use to be a left liberal, now she's just a plain capitalist liberal! Gloria Romero was an 1970's activist turned Democratic politician just like Fabian Nunez. I think, it should be a good lesson to all that those liberals who tie themselves to the Democratic party are almost without exception, turn into promoters for the capitalist system; be they co-opted, sold out, or just believe that there is no alternative (I generally I don't buy the argument on practicality claimed by the "progressive" Democrats... Their excuses generally hide their opportunism). The UFW traditional leadership (Cesar Chavez, Dolores Huerta, etc) gave us years of union and Democratic party opportunism in their stances on many an issue... but thats too long a story to get into on this comment page... it should suffice to be weary of "progressives" keeping close ties to the Democratic party.

On balance, there's no difference between education policies and philosophies of the Koret Foundation, The Hoover Institution, and Democrats for Education Reform — not even a nuanced difference. Indeed, this is why we are seeing more and more events at which the fringe-right is paired with right of center Democrats. This insidious pairing has several consequences, the first of which is that these right wing DFER types try to call their politics, adopted from the far-right, "progressive." They're not, and we must call them out on this each and every time they try to pass them off as such. We must name names, and remind everyone that reactionary ideas of free-markets and competition are the antithesis of equity and social justice.

"One result of 30 years of neoliberalism is the a widespread assumption that if you're unhappy dominating or exploiting your fellow human beings, it must be because you're stupid or incapable." — Mike Marqusee

_____
NOTES

[1] Lewis, Sinclair. It can't happen here; a novel, Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, Doran & Co., 1935.

[2] For some prime examples see Tilson's amateurish and spurious "Rebutting Ravitch" diatribe. He regurgitates Freidman/Rand balderdash with statements about how public education is "lacking in market mechanisms." Moreover Tilson's own unsuccessful attempts to rebut Professor Ravitch are augmented with likewise perfidy by some of his political idols; including The Hoover Institution's Chester Finn, arch-reactionary Andy Rotherham, and for good measure other assorted right wingers like Stuart Buck and Jay Greene.

As an aside, Tilson's prose leaves so much to be desired, which isn't too surprising for a child of privilege who went on to grow mummy and daddy's money by shorting housing derivatives. That said, don't the elite colleges these ruling class brats attend teach them to write? Tilson couldn't compose a cogent sentence if his life depended on it.

[3] In this age of standardized bubble tests and Fox News, it's easy to forget that "Child labor wasn't outlawed until the passage of the FLSA in 1938. Also read about Mother Jones 1903 "Children's Crusade," fight to limit child labor to 55 hours a week."

Save the University, Save the Republic

2012-01-25T12:35:00.000-05:00

As state legislatures purchased with unlimited corporate money continue to chop higher education funding, public colleges and universities become more susceptible to the Kochheads:

"A great teacher can offer an escape from poverty." Really?

2012-01-25T10:29:00.003-05:00

Using some of those Harvard econometrics from Raj Chetty, Obama precedes the ridiculous "escape from poverty" contention with this emerging statisti-meme:

We know a good teacher can increase the lifetime income of a classroom by over $250,000.

Even if this speculation could be practically demonstrated, which it can't, here's what it would mean.

So divide the $250,000 by 25 kids to a classroom (next year you can add 5 students to this number), then divide that by 45 years (next year add 5 years to that number), and you get a grand total of $222 per year per child. An "escape from poverty"? That won't even buy you an annual subway ride from the Bronx to Manhattan, much less an escape from poverty.

By the way, $222 is what Newt Romney made every 5 minutes last year from his interest income of $22 million. So yes, Mr. President, do say more about income inequality and how teachers offer an escape from poverty. We're all listening.

Testing Band and Music is on its Way

2012-01-24T13:46:00.002-05:00

If anyone thought for a moment music and band would be the one area that wouldn't be measured or tested, think again.

Michael Winerip of the New York Times once again brings us to the front line where teachers continue to do the "dirty work" of corporate reformers who are seeking new and creative ways to make a buck off of children and teachers:

The Education Department will spend about $5 billion on the program, and even if you’re thinking, hey, I could use $5 billion, consider this: New York won the largest federal grant, $700 million over the next four years. In that time, roughly $230 billion will be spent on public education in the state. By adding just one-third of one percent to state coffers, the feds get to implement their version of education reform.

That includes rating teachers and principals by their students’ scores on state tests; using those ratings to dismiss teachers with low scores and to pay bonuses to high scorers; and reducing local control of education.

Second, the secretary of education, Arne Duncan, and his education scientists do not have to do the dirty work. For teachers in subject areas and grades that do not have state tests (music, art, technology, kindergarten through third grade) or do not have enough state tests to measure growth (every high school subject), it is the state’s responsibility to create a system of alternative ratings.

In New York, that will have to cover 79 percent of all teachers, a total of 175,000 people. The only state tests for assessing teachers are for English and math, from fourth grade to eighth.

Third, federal officials don’t wind up looking like dictators telling states how to do their jobs. They’re happy to let state officials work out the details.

In New York, state officials have also decided not to be dictatorial. They’re happy to let the state’s 700 school districts figure out, individually, how to assess those 175,000 teachers.

Fourth, while President Harry S. Truman said the buck stops here, costing himself a lot of extra time and effort, President Obama can say the buck stops way down there, cutting his workload.

Of course, a buck whizzing downward has to land somewhere, and in this case it sits on the desk of Paul R. Infante, the director of fine and applied arts for the Commack School District on Long Island.

Mr. Infante is trying to figure out how to develop a test or an assessment system to rate band teachers.

Several weeks ago the state sent out a guide. The band teacher could listen to every child play at the start of the year and assign a score from 1 to 4.

“At the end of the year,” the state guide says, “the teacher re-evaluates their students.” (Someone needs to evaluate the state’s grammar.)

The teacher again grades students from 1 to 4, and the sum of the progress they have made during the year determines the teacher’s rating.

Our history of dissing high school grads

2012-01-23T15:15:00.001-05:00

Sent to the New York Post, Jan 23, 2012

The Post reports that nearly 80% of city high school grads are not prepared for college work (“Make-believe grads,” Jan. 22). Colleges have been complaining about the low quality of incoming students for over 100 years in the United States.

In the 1880’s Harvard introduced remedial writing classes because so many entering students failed the new entrance exams. In 1894, Harvard criticized high school writing teachers for the poor performance of students entering college. Note that these were the best students in the country attending the best university of its time.

In 1930, Thomas Biggs of Teachers College found that only half of the high school students he studied could find the area of a circle, after a year of ancient history students did not know who Solon was, after a year of American history students could not describe the Monroe Doctrine, and students’ written English was “shocking” and “inadequate.”

Either high schools have always been terrible or we have always been expecting too much.

Stephen Krashen

Original article: http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/editorials/make_believe_grads_ZyIynJbktxBaANFE3wcV5N#ixzz1kJV3Z7PN

The Thrill is Gone

2012-01-22T14:13:00.001-05:00

From a look at today's Google Alert list, it would seem to indicate some pretty consistent concerns with the corporate welfare charter school movement, which shows signs of running out of steam everywhere, except on Wall Street.

Charter schools lose their magic

Gloucester County Times - NJ.com

By Milton W. Hinton Jr. I find it interesting that some very influential people have come out in support of the expansion of charter schools in our state, including Gov. Chris Christie, Mayor Corey Booker of Newark, and Reginald Jackson, ...

Charter school's shutdown shows need for review

DesMoinesRegister.com

Sigourney school leaders say they will shutter the district's charter school at the end of the academic year, after state officials threatened to shut it down. The problems in Sigourney shine a light on the need for better monitoring of Iowa's charter ...

Former CEO of Philadelphia charter school pleads guilty to theft, fraud ... Philadelphia Inquirer Ina Walker (left), CEO of New Media Charter School and Hugh Clark (right) president… (MICHAEL S. WIRTZ / Staff Photographer, file) The former chief executive officer of a charter school in Northwest Philadelphia pleaded guilty Friday to stealing more ...


Charter school foes gather to hear McAllen family's experience Austin American-Statesman Govalle Elementary School parent Vincent Tovar, who organized Saturday's gathering for opponents of the IDEA charter schools planned for East Austin, translates for some Spanish-only speakers at the rally. As part of a technology change, ...

New Somerville charter school debate echoes concerns in 1996

Wicked Local

Students in Laura Powers' 4th grade class at Prospect Hill Academy Charter School were asked to select a book for their summer reading during class on Wednesday. The debate over a newly proposed charter school in Somerville is reminiscent of the debate ...

Charter schools: Where's the beef?

Asbury Park Press

Chris Christie and his administration that our schools, and our teachers, are failing our children. He has hammered away at the need for a series of reforms, from dramatically expanding the number of charter schools, to expanding school choice, ...

Hawaii's Teachers Take a Stand: Take Your RTTT Bribe and Shove It

2012-01-22T09:36:00.000-05:00

From Valerie Strauss at WaPo:

Public school teachers in Hawaii have rejected a contract that called for a move to a performance-based evaluation and compensation system, as required by the Race to the Top grant that the state won from the Obama administration.

The rejection comes shortly after Hawaii was warned by the U.S. Education Department that its $75 million Race to the Top grant had been put on “high-risk status” — the first state to be so sanctioned — because it had not moved quickly enough to implement specific reforms.

Sixty-seven percent of about 9,000 teachers, counselors and others represented by the Hawaii State Teachers Association opposed the contract, which was seen as a way to move Race to the Top efforts forward and improve its status with Washington. It was the first time in the organization’s 44-year history that members rejected a contract that had been approved by its board, according to the Honolulu Civil Beat.

The Honolulu Civil Beat put this headline on a story it ran announcing the defeat of the contract proposal: “Hawaii Teachers Vote a Stunning Blow For Race to the Top”

Race to the Top is the administration’s signature education initiative, a $4 billion-plus contest in which states and districts have competed for a slice of the money in exchange for implementing school reform policies favored by the department. Those include expanding charter schools and evaluating teachers in part on the basis of students’ standardized test scores. Twenty-one states plus the District of Columbia have been awarded grants through several rounds of Race to the Top. Hawaii won $75 million but could lose its grant (a few million dollars have already been spent) if the department is not satisfied with the pace of reform there.

Education Department officials told Gov. Neil Abercrombie (D) in a recent letter that the progress the state had made in implementing reforms in the first 14 months of the grant had been “unsatisfactory.” Federal officials are planning to visit Hawaii early this year to do an on-site evaluation of Race to the Top compliance.

The proposed contract called for a new evaluation system for teachers that would be partly based on student growth, a controversial approach because there are many factors that influence a student’s academic performance and teasing out how much a teacher is responsible is very difficult. The formulas that are used to try to do this rely on standardized test scores earned by students and are not sophisticated enough to be valid or fair, assessment experts say, although policymakers have forged ahead with these systems anyway.

But the contract proposal, according to several Hawaii newspapers, did not actually spell out the details of how the new evaluation system would work. It would, however, have reversed a 5 percent pay reduction that went into effect last year.

Hawaii may be having the biggest trouble among Race to the Top recipients satisfying the Education Department, but it isn’t the only one; implementation in several states is slow.

The Associated Press reported earlier this month that reports issued by states detailing their progress in the first year of their Race to the Top grant showed that most of them were behind schedule with implementation. New York and Florida were having the most serious problems aside from Hawaii, the AP said.

Behind the "No Excuses" Mask: "Evidence Is Not Policy"

2012-01-21T09:23:00.005-05:00

The "No Excuses" Reformers have two refrains that drive their claims about schools and teachers as well as their arguments for reform policy: "Poverty is not an excuse" and "Poverty is not destiny." But behind these mantras is the real message from these self-appointed reformers: "Evidence is not policy."

The "No Excuses" Reformers have remained committed to several alternatives to what they call the status quo: Teach for America (TFA), charter schools, and school choice. What do all three have in common?

A lack of evidence for pursuing any of them as policy.

• The evidence against TFA.

• The mixed, at best, evidence about charter schools (and the reasons "no excuses" charters such as KIPP are inexcusable).

• The most recent failure of market forces/school choice in education reform.

Consider Diedrich's discussion of the two-decades of failure stemming from school choice in Minnesota (a pattern that also occurred in Milwaukee, and both have been essentially ignored by the "No Excuses" Reformers):

"After experimenting with market-based, competitive education initiatives for 20 years with little statewide education improvement, it’s time Minnesota returns to what works best: proper education investment and supporting our students and teachers.

"Minnesota is home to the nation’s oldest charter school law and has also implemented school choice initiatives, such as open enrollment. This simulated market experience has not supported the idea that increased competition drives improvement.

"Minnesota's national test scores in math have increased by less than seven percent since the introduction of a competitive system 20 years ago, and reading scores increased by less than one percent during the same time frame.

"The main problem, among many, is that school systems cannot function as free markets if we want to achieve universal post-secondary readiness. Free markets produce efficiency, not equity for all. Efficiency helps maximize profit, but what about students that aren’t profitable to educate? [emphasis added]

"Using the rules of economics, and assuming we must achieve universal post-secondary readiness, MN2020’s latest report, False Choices: Market-Driven Education Reform Doesn’t Work, demonstrates why free market thinking in education comes at a high price for students, parents and teachers.

"As a result of competition-based thinking, many schools have focused on teaching-to-tests and advertising instead of broad based cognitive development that will provide students with the necessary skills to be successful in a 21st century workforce.

"In moving Minnesota back toward a proven educational path, our latest report makes the following recommendations:
There is a place in education for efficiency, incentives, and innovation; however, policymakers must stop trying to achieve these competitive goals with a false, market-based approach.
Schools must adapt to achieve universal post-secondary readiness by focusing on initiatives that enhance teachers’ professional development and provide comprehensive teacher assessment and feedback.
Instead of using a false market-mentality as political cover to systematically defund schools, we must invest in education for the 21st century, using some of that investment to develop a comprehensive and fair teacher evaluation metric.
Charter schools have a place in the public education system as partners, not competitors, with traditional schools."

And the ignored conclusions from Milwaukee published in 2007?

"Taken as a whole, these numbers indicate significant limits on the capacity of public school choice and parental involvement to improve school quality and student performance within MPS. Parents simply do not appear sufficiently engaged in available choice opportunities or their children’s educational activities to ensure the desired outcomes.

"This may be just as well. Relying on public school choice and parental involvement to reclaim MPS may be a distraction from the hard work of fixing the district’s schools. Recognizing this, the question is whether the district, its schools, and its supporters in Madison are prepared to embrace more radical reforms. Given the high stakes involved, district parents should insist on nothing less."

As the evidence mounts against the claims and policies of the "No Excuses" Reformers, their entrenched refrains ring more and more hollow, and behind those refrains we hear the reality of their commitments: Evidence is not policy.

Joanne Barkan on How Billionaires Rule Our Schools

2012-01-21T04:32:00.002-05:00

False Choices: The Economic Argument Against Market-Driven Education Reform

2012-01-21T04:30:00.002-05:00

False Choices: The Economic Argument Against Market-Driven Education Reform

Tapping Out: The Underwhelming TAP Achievement of the Milken-McIntyre Schools

2012-01-20T22:17:00.001-05:00

A significant piece of the Broad corporate education plan in Knoxville, Tennessee involves turning over control of curriculum, professional development, and instruction in Knoxville's poorest schools to the phony-baloney corporate ed scam run by the corrupt Milken Brothers. Four schools have been TAP schools since 2006, and another 13 schools are in transition to TAP with the help of $26,500,000 in federal tax dollars going to the former swindlers of Wall Street who are now big time players in the corporate welfare education business.

Broad's toadie in Knoxville, Supt. Jim McIntyre (my bolds):

“This significant investment will enable us to move more rapidly toward implementing our vision for educator excellence and enhancing student achievement in our highest need schools,” said Dr. Jim McIntyre, Superintendent of the Knox County Schools. “TAP perfectly aligns with our strategic plan in terms of developing high quality teachers, improving collaboration, supporting high needs schools, and providing innovative and strategic compensation incentives for our educators.”

Well, you decide how much truth is in that statement. The following charts are from the State website, and it shows the CRT state test scores since 2009 (numbers were not available from 2007 due to testing changes that disallow comparisons). Knoxvillians may wonder what $26M in tax money could do for Knoxville children if it were not being handed over to corporate predators.

From the state website:

Note: The 2009 baseline provided a fixed transition point prior to the 2009-10 school year implementations of the new curriculum standards and assessments more reflective of national and international student performance in the 21st Century. The 2009 achievement scores and all grades connected with these scores are considered the new baseline for future public reporting. These converted achievement scores and grades are based on restructured calculations and a redefined grade scale that are updated to reflect the current status of educational attainment in the state in 2009. The 2009 change has prohibited comparisons to previous years’ data prior to 2009 for achievement reporting including state, district, and school-level scores and grades. For 2010, the most appropriate and meaningful comparsion would be to 2008-09 and the 2010 State level data.

Holston Middle School:

Grades 3-8: TCAP Criterion Referenced Academic Achievement									View Chart ?
(3 year average)	2009		2010		2011			2011 State
CRT	Score	Grade	Score	Grade	Score	Grade	Trend	Score	Grade	Trend
Math	48	C	48	C	49	C	NC	50	B	+
Reading/Language	49	C	49	C	50	B	+	49	C	NC
Social Studies	49	C	51	B	53	B	NC	52	B	NC
Science	47	C	48	C	48	C	NC	49	C	NC

Lonsdale Elementary:

Grades 3-8: TCAP Criterion Referenced Academic Achievement									View Chart ?
(3 year average)	2009		2010		2011			2011 State
CRT	Score	Grade	Score	Grade	Score	Grade	Trend	Score	Grade	Trend
Math	38	F	37	F	38	F	NC	50	B	+
Reading/Language	35	F	34	F	35	F	NC	49	C	NC
Social Studies	27	F	28	F	29	F	NC	52	B	NC
Science	28	F	29	F	29	F	NC	49	C	NC

Northwest Middle:

Grades 3-8: TCAP Criterion Referenced Academic Achievement									View Chart ?
(3 year average)	2009		2010		2011			2011 State
CRT	Score	Grade	Score	Grade	Score	Grade	Trend	Score	Grade	Trend
Math	42	D	41	D	41	D	NC	50	B	+
Reading/Language	42	D	41	D	40	D	NC	49	C	NC
Social Studies	43	D	43	D	43	D	NC	52	B	NC
Science	44	D	41	D	40	D	NC	49	C	NC

Pond Gap Elementary:

Grades 3-8: TCAP Criterion Referenced Academic Achievement									View Chart ?
(3 year average)	2009		2010		2011			2011 State
CRT	Score	Grade	Score	Grade	Score	Grade	Trend	Score	Grade	Trend
Math	40	D	39	F	39	F	NC	50	B	+
Reading/Language	41	D	40	D	42	D	NC	49	C	NC
Social Studies	38	F	38	F	40	D	+	52	B	NC
Science	37	F	37	F	38	F	NC	49	C	NC

Holston Middle:

Grades 3-8: TCAP Criterion Referenced Academic Achievement									View Chart ?
(3 year average)	2009		2010		2011			2011 State
CRT	Score	Grade	Score	Grade	Score	Grade	Trend	Score	Grade	Trend
Math	48	C	48	C	49	C	NC	50	B	+
Reading/Language	49	C	49	C	50	B	+	49	C	NC
Social Studies	49	C	51	B	53	B	NC	52	B	NC
Science	47	C	48	C	48	C	NC	49	C	NC

It's the Socioeconomic Segregation, Stupid

2012-01-19T18:50:00.000-05:00

The Common Dreams version:

In a piece for The Nation last week, Linda Darling-Hammond demolished most of the remaining chunks of any size within the crumbling structure of corporate education’'s most ironically-titled reform ever --No Child Left Behind. NCLB is now rubble, even though many unseen victims continue to be buried beneath its mammoth pile.

Darling-Hammond, who was recruited to get Team Obama up to speed on education issues following the 2008 election, entitled her piece, "Why Is Congress Redlining Our Schools?". It should be noted that as soon as Team Obama got a lay of the edu-land in early 2009, they dismissed Darling-Hammond and brought in corporate lackey, Arne Duncan, to serve as titular head of the Education Department while the corporate foundations run the show.

Now that I think about it, she might have more appropriately named her piece "Why are the White House and Congress Redlining Our Schools?”.

Just as red-lining was used for many years by the FHA to maintain racial purity and avoid ethnic mixing in housing, red-lining is a good description of what is going on today in urban public education to contain and isolate children of the poor in the new chain gang charter schools. Thanks to requirements of NCLB, residents of urban areas who send their children to public schools with their sub-par testing results must contend with the federal label of failure and high risk, with public monies often withheld because the poor children in these schools cannot pass tests whose pass rates are directly correlated to family income. And as the teachers and principals in these schools have been blamed, then, for the student failure that poverty has assured, these red-lined schools are labeled, shut down, or reconstituted per the NCLB plan.

The public school buildings, then, are often handed to corporate foundations in sweetheart deals enabled by new charter-embracing laws (try Indiana where charter corporations can buy an empty school for a dollar). Add some corporate, tax-sheltered venture funds and, bingo, a new intensely-segregated charter is born, complete with cheaper marginally prepared teachers (20% cheaper nationally), a chain gang instructional model, total compliance and constant surveillance, zero tolerance, no excuses, and little oversight (see what can happen when institutional safeguards are dangerously absent).

Standing to profit mightily from the urban containment and indoctrination model are growing numbers of self-serving and displaced Wall Street hacks, venture philanthropists, and hedge funders. In charge are the educational management organizations (EMOs) or the charter management organizations (CMOs), which often recruit as principals the former Teach for America Corps members who are schooled in the new corporate model of autocratic control of poor children, even down to the behavioral catechisms and the learned optimism strategies of the creepy positive psychologists with whom they consult.

In the process, then, of turning public schools into permanent corporate revenue streams, tax bills for the 1%ers get further reduced, the teachers unions are eviscerated, and the politicians collect from corporate coffers the unlimited funds they need to get re-elected and continue their support of corporate education reform. And the cycle is complete.

So Dr. Darling-Hammond, that is Why Congress AND the White House Are Redlining Our Schools.

In moving beyond No Child Left Behind in ways that are humane, effective, and efficient, we must implement education policies that challenge economic inequality rather than increasing it, which will require an about-face for most politicians on both sides of the aisle of the corporate jet. One thing that schools can do in this regard is to take seriously the research by James Coleman, which has been ignored or misused since it was published in 1966, just one year after Congressional approval of the first ESEA in 1965.

Coleman’s findings are here summarized by Coleman scholar, Gerald Grant (2009):

Simply put, Coleman found that the achievement of both poor and rich children was depressed by attending a school where most children came from low-income families. More important to the goal of achieving equal educational opportunity, he found that the achievement of poor children was raised by attending a predominantly middle-class school, while the achievement of affluent children in the school was not harmed. This was true even if per-pupil expenditures were the same at both schools. No research over the past forty years has overturned Coleman’s finding . . . (p. 159).

Coleman also found that the longer that poor black children were stuck in low SES schools, the lower their achievement moved in comparison to middle class children.

First up, we need to ditch federal charter school policy that actually calls for high poverty quotas of 60 percent minimum of poor children in order to win the federal grants for "successful"” charter expansion. If charter schools are going to continue at all, this kind of incentive for segregation is exactly the opposite of what needs to be done.

Charters or any other schools should, in fact, have a maximum of 40 percent low-income children, so that the social capital that James Coleman and hundreds of other scholars have shown to be so important in raising achievement can help to equalize the punishing effects of concentrated poverty. Ending socioeconomic segregation, of course, is only a partial solution, but it is one that would signal that we are at least aware of the problem, rather than continuing to ignore the problem as our solutions increasingly resemble what came to be the scourge of eugenics a hundred years ago.

California's high school exit exam: Abusive, antiquated (J. Behm)

2012-01-18T23:12:00.000-05:00

The California High School Exit Exam: Abusive and antiquated
By Jo Anne Behm, sent to the Sacramento Bee

The high school exit exam is a public policy disaster of epic proportions, costing taxpayers over $500 million annually, denying 35k-60k seniors their diplomas every June since 2006. Over 300,000 seniors who earned 230-270 graduation credits, passed 13 year-long courses required to graduate, persevered 13 years, 14,000 hours in k-12 classrooms, some accepted to two or more colleges---are forced to sacrifice college and scholarships, are no longer eligible for Cal Grants or other financial aid, cannot deliver packages for UPS, collect boarding passes for any airline, sell shoes at Sears, or qualify as an apprentice for over 70% of California trades because they have no high school diploma.

It is totally abusive, inhumane, and militaristic to claim these students are not qualified to graduate because of a flawed test based on mind-numbing memorization and a cold-turkey,surprise topic essay that prohibits technology, references, editing. Return to teaching vs. antiquated testing.

Jo Ann Rupert Behm, M.S., RN
State & Federal Public Policy Consultant
Environmental Health, Disabilities, Education

Save Ethnic Studies

2012-01-18T22:38:00.001-05:00

Amigos,

This information is being sent to you by Roger & Norma Cazares . . . PLEASE DISTRIBUTE WIDELY! If you want someone to address this issue further at any gathering, let us know.

As you may know, Arizona has banned the teaching of ethnic studies, specifically targeting Mexican-American Studies in the Tucson Unified School District. Eleven TUSD teachers, administrators and students are suing the state to bring back Ethnic Studies.

To fight blatant discrimination and the spread of this civil/human rights violation to other states, join us for a fundraiser ($10, but hope you can donate more!) for:

SAVE ETHNIC STUDIES
Saturday, February 25, 2012
2:00 p.m.
Lincoln High School
4777 Imperial Avenue
San Diego, 92113

Attached you'll find the flyer for the Save Ethnic Studies event.

Here's the link to the trailer for Precious Knowledge

Here's the link to the description of the ethnic studies program:

Please encourage everyone to register at Eventbrite. com for SAVE ETHNIC STUDIES Fundraiser at Lincoln High School.

Add Your Name to the Save Ethnic Studies Petition

The Mexican American Studies program in the Tucson Unified School District is facing the real threat of being shut down. The program successfully keeps otherwise-disengaged students motivated to learn and go on to college by using curriculum with which they culturally identify to teach critical thinking skills and empower the students to be strong leaders in their communities.

Despite all of the benefits of the program, in May 2010 Governor Jan Brewer signed a bill (HB 2281) into law that aimed to ban ethnic studies in Arizona schools. This law went into effect at the beginning of 2011 and prohibits schools from offering classes that are designed for students of a certain ethnic group. As a result, the Mexican American Studies program in Tucson, which has contributed to a 97% decrease in the dropout rate, is now facing a serious threat to its existence, while African American, Native American, and Asian American Studies programs are all allowed to continue.

An independent audit commissioned by the state found the program to be fully in compliance with Arizona’s ban, and recommended that the program be maintained as part of the core curriculum for high schools. Despite these findings, State Superintendent of Public Instruction John Huppenthal has threatened to withhold $15 million of state funding from the school district.

Join the 11 teachers and administrators from the Mexican American Studies program and two of its students to defend the program. Sign the Save Ethnic Studies petition below to show your support and we’ll keep you updated on the progress of the lawsuit against the Arizona Superintendent of Public Instruction and the State Board of Education.

Learn more! Watch the trailer of Precious Knowledge, which documents the program and the battle to save it. The full program will be shown at the fundraiser.

We the undersigned support the effort to save ethnic studies in the Tucson Unified School District. The Mexican American Studies program poses no threat to the state of Arizona or its education system. On the contrary, it provides a proven-effective method to educate students and motivate them to stay in school and become productive leaders in their community.

We stand in opposition to State Superintendent of Public Instruction John Huppenthal’s attempt to withhold $15 million of state funding from the school district. This action is completely unwarranted given the results of the independent audit commissioned by the state, which found the program to be fully in compliance with Arizona's ethnic studies ban. In fact, the audit recommended that the program be maintained as part of the core curriculum for high schools in the district.

The Mexican American Studies program should be applauded and replicated for its success, not destroyed by a pointless ban.

Here's an interesting interview by Anderson Cooper interviewing Tom Horne and the great sociologist Michael Dyson.

Arizona Oppressors Ban Discussion of Oppression in Classrooms

2012-01-18T19:26:00.000-05:00

From Democracy Now:

Public school officials in Tucson, Arizona, have released a list of seven banned books that can no longer be used in classrooms following their suspension of the district’s acclaimed Mexican American Studies program. Last year, Arizona Superintendent of Public Instruction John Huppenthal ruled the program violated a new state law, saying it "promote[s] resentment toward a race or class of people." "If all you’re teaching these students is one viewpoint, one dimension, we can readily see that it’s not an accurate history, it’s not an education at all. It’s not teaching these kids to think critically," Huppenthal says, "but instead it’s an indoctrination." We host a debate between Huppenthal and Richard Martinez, the attorney representing teachers and students trying to save the Mexican American Studies program. "What has occurred here is that [Huppenthal] has taken away from our entire community a curriculum that was adopted by our school board, that was developed by our school district, and that had successfully operated for well over 10 years," Martinez says. "It’s just part of the same kind of tactics that have been employed in Arizona reflected by [SB] 1070, the anti-immigrant perspective. It is the anti-Latino perspective that exists in this state." [includes rush transcript]

How California can save a half billion every year

2012-01-18T14:47:00.000-05:00

Sent to the Santa Monica Mirror, January 18, 2012

In his State of the State Address (January 18), Gov. Brown made the sensible suggestion that California should reduce the number of tests students have to take. Here is a place to start that will result in instant savings of about a half billion dollars a year: Eliminate the High School Leaving Exam. Analyst Jo Ann Behm has estimated that the combined state and local costs of California's high school exit exam exceed $500 million per year.

The most recent review of research on exit exams, done by researchers at the University of Texas, concluded that high school exit exams do not lead to more college attendance, increased student learning or higher employment.

In fact, researchers have yet to discover any benefits of having a High School Exit Exam.

Stephen Krashen
Professor Emeritus, University of Southern California

Most recent review: Holme, J., Richards, M., Jimerson, J., and Cohen, R. 2010. Assessing the effects of high school exit examinations. Review of Educational Research 80 (4): 476-526.

Universal Public Education Is Dead: The Rise of State Schools

2012-01-17T14:40:00.001-05:00

Universal Public Education Is Dead: The Rise of State Schools

Poet Adrienne Rich in Arts of the Possible made this claim on the cusp of No Child Left Behind (NCLB):

“Universal public education has two possible—and contradictory—missions. One is the development of a literate, articulate, and well-informed citizenry so that the democratic process can continue to evolve and the promise of radical equality can be brought closer to realization. The other is the perpetuation of a class system dividing an elite, nominally ‘gifted’ few, tracked from an early age, from a very large underclass essentially to be written off as alienated from language and science, from poetry and politics, from history and hope—toward low-wage temporary jobs. The second is the direction our society has taken. The results are devastating in terms of the betrayal of a generation of youth. The loss to the whole of society is incalculable.” (p. 162)

Starting with the politically corrupt A Nation in Risk in 1983 [1], political leaders partnered with the corporate elite to drive the public away from universal public education committed to democracy and human agency and toward "the perpetuation of a class system" that serves the state, a corporate state.

Today, a decade after the commitment was codified as NCLB, universal public education is dead [2] and what we have now is the rise of state schools

The Rise of State Schools

More than thirty years, however, before Rich's bold and accurate commentary on public education, Paulo Freire warned against the danger of authoritarian schooling:

"Education thus becomes an act of depositing, in which the students are the depositories and the teacher is the depositor. Instead of communicating, the teacher issues communiques and makes deposits which the students patiently receive, memorize, and repeat. This is the 'banking' concept of education, in the which the scope of action allowed to the students extends as far as receiving, filing, and storing the deposits....For apart from inquiry, apart from praxis, individuals cannot be truly human....In the banking concept of education, knowledge is a gift bestowed by those who consider themselves knowledgeable upon those whom they consider to know nothing. Projecting an absolute ignorance onto others, a characteristic of the ideology of oppression, negates education and knowledge as process of inquiry."

Fulfilling fully Freire's warnings about banking education and ignoring his call for problem-posing education as individual empowerment and as essential for democracy, NCLB codified the accountability era, entrenching standards- and test-based state education to replace universal public education.

U.S. schools under the jurisdiction of state and federal governments are now scripted processes that view knowledge as static capital, students as passive and empty vessels, and teachers as compliant conduits for state-approved content.

The accountability paradigm is antithetical to human agency and autonomy and thus to democracy, but it serves the needs of the status quo and the ruling elite; in effect, accountability paradigms driving compulsory education are oppressive:

"Problem-posing education does not and cannot serve the interests if the oppressor. No oppressive order could permit the oppressed to begin to question: Why? While only a revolutionary society can carry out this education in systemic terms, the revolutionary leaders need not take full power before they can employ the method. In the revolutionary process, the leaders cannot utilize the banking methods as an interim measure, justified on grounds of expediency, with the intention of later behaving in a genuinely revolutionary fashion. They must be revolutionary—that is to say, dialogical—from the outset." (Freire, 1993)

If our commitments to education lie within our commitments to democracy and human autonomy, then we must set aside the accountability regime of scripted curriculum as "standards" and reducing all teaching and learning to outcomes as test data.

Instead, we should build schools that are problem-posing, as Freire explains, wherein students are student-teachers and teachers are teacher-students with both in dialogue and partnership in forming the questions and seeking the answers.

The accountability paradigm fixes knowledge as authoritarian capital, above even the possibility of being challenged. In problem-posing classrooms, students and teachers read and re-read the world as well as write and re-write the world.

To read and write the world is to unpack and examine the world as it is, bound by the context of time and place at the moment of the reading and writing. But this is mere observation; if we stop here—even if we are rejecting the banking concept of education—we are failing action, which requires re-reading and re-writing.

Re-reading and re-writing the world acknowledges that being as a human is always becoming, and these acts embrace the perpetual cycle of re-reading and re-writing as essential for both human agency and democracy. Teaching and learning are reciprocal and on-going, not hierarchical and ends to attain, possess.

A decade after enacting NCLB as federal education legislation and as we seek ways in which to intensify the accountability paradigm with national standards, to increase national testing, and to reduce teaching to simplistic metrics such as VAM, we are ringing the death knell for universal public education and embracing state schools that accomplish personal and social devastation, as Rich anticipated: "The second is the direction our society has taken. The results are devastating in terms of the betrayal of a generation of youth. The loss to the whole of society is incalculable."

[1] See Bracey, G. W. (2003). April foolishness: The 20th anniversary of A Nation at Risk. Phi Delta Kappan, 84(8), 616-621; Holton, G. (2003, April 25). An insider’s view of “A Nation at Risk” and why it still matters. The Chronicle Review, 49(33), B13.

[2] See Ravitch, D. (2010/2011). The death and life of the great American school system: How testing and choice are undermining education. New York: Basic Books.

Reference

Freire, P. (1993). Pedagogy of the oppressed. New York: Continuum.

New Jersey's Poorest Schools Literally Crumbling

2012-01-17T14:04:00.010-05:00

There's a battle brewing between David Sciarra of the Education Law Center and Governor Christie in New Jersey . It looks like when it comes to emergency repairs in poor school districts, the Christie administration needs improvement, has not made adequately yearly progress and has failed the most vulnerable children of his state.

The Abbott districts identified 700 emergent conditions in need of repair but the state only sees 300 of those as meeting the criteria. In a letter to the DOE office, ELC identifies hundreds of EMERGENCY projects that have not been fixed.

Politifact of the Newark Star Ledger says Sciarra, a civil rights attorney, has "crossed the line" because he said "nothing has been done" when in fact, a few projects left over from former Governor Corzine's term have been completed and a "few emergent" projects were completed over the past two years.

Politifact: Now, let’s mention some specific projects in Newark and Camden.
In Newark, construction was substantially completed in 2011 on nine SDA-managed emergent projects, according to Steve Morlino, executive director of facilities management for Newark Public Schools.

Those projects included roofing work at BRICK Avon Academy; Dr. William H. Horton School; and South Street School, according to a list provided by Morlino.

Wendy Kunz, Director of Abbott Facilities Construction for the Camden school district, also pointed to a few emergent projects completed during the past two years, including replacing the roof and Heating Ventilation and Air Conditioning units in 2011 at R.C. Molina Elementary School.

But those and other former Abbott districts have not received approval for hundreds of other proposed emergency repairs. Newark school officials proposed work on more than 130 emergent conditions, but they have not been approved yet to go to construction, Morlino said.

Following site visits, state officials are reviewing 300 emergent conditions identified by the former Abbott districts, Pasquine said. The districts identified more than 700 emergent conditions, but 400 of them were preliminarily rejected by the state Department of Education for not meeting the established criteria, she said.

You're doing a heckuva job Christie!

"...education which stops with efficiency may prove the greatest menace to society. " Martin Luther King

2012-01-16T14:43:00.001-05:00

Onthis day when we remember the life and contributions of Dr. Martin LutherKing, it is fascinating to review his speeches and writings and realizes howtruly prophetic he was. His words are as fresh and relevant today as theywere when he delivered them. He was the moral compass of the country and hisloss was devastating to our future - the future that is the present we livetoday. Like so many prophets who called out the evils they saw insociety, he was killed. But the message of the true prophet cannot be killed,and Dr. Martin Luther King's message lives on in those of us in whom hismessage took root and became part of who we are.

It is appropriate on this day to read and remember Dr. King's essay oneducation. It is amazing to realize that he was just a junior at MoorehouseCollege when he published this essay in the college newspaperin 1947.

Click to read the full text of The Purpose Of Education

What would Dr. King have thought of thecurrent high stakes testing? I think his feelings are quite clear: "...educationwhich stops with efficiency may prove the greatest menace to society."

The current obsession with accountability testing is all aboutefficiency as the pinnacle of school reform. I believe that if Dr. King hadlived, we would not be in this terrible state in education where efficiencydrives education. Dr. King was right. This obsession with efficiency at thecost of education's true purpose is a menace to society.

Every year on his birthday, I listen to Dr. Kingdeliver his “I Have a Dream Speech” I heard him deliver it on August 28, 1963.I was a child and not lucky enough to be there, but I watched the March startto finish on television. “This is history” my mother said. She certainly wasright! Take a few minutes to listen onceagain to this remarkable speech, which remains a manifesto for American socialjustice:

Dr. Marting Luther King "I Have A Dream" Speech (August 28, 1963)

Happy Birthday, Dr. King. Wish you were here.

Accountability without Autonomy Is Tyranny

2012-01-16T09:12:00.000-05:00

Accountability without Autonomy Is Tyranny

When educational research reaches the public through the corporate media, the consequences are often dire. Chetty, Friedman, and Rockoff released "The Long-Term Impacts of Teachers: Teacher Value-Added and Student Outcomes in Adulthood" and immediately The New York Times pronounced in "Big Study Links Good Teachers to Lasting Gains":

"Elementary- and middle-school teachers who help raise their students’ standardized-test scores seem to have a wide-ranging, lasting positive effect on those students’ lives beyond academics, including lower teenage-pregnancy rates and greater college matriculation and adult earnings, according to a new study that tracked 2.5 million students over 20 years."

The simplistic and idealistic headline reflects the central failure of the media in the education reform debate, highlighted by careless reporting such as including this quote from one of the study's researchers:

“'The message is to fire people sooner rather than later,' Professor Friedman said."

This newest attempt to justify value-added methods for identifying, rewarding, and retaining high-quality teachers (as well as firing so-called weak teachers) has yet to be peer-reviewed, and two close examinations of the study—by Matthew Di Carlo and Bruce Baker—have praised the data but urged caution about conclusions drawn by the researchers and the media response:

"This appropriately cautious conclusion stands in stark contrast with the fact that most states have already decided to do so. It also indicates that those using the results of this paper to argue forcefully for specific policies are drawing unsupported conclusions from otherwise very important empirical findings." (Di Carlo)

"These are interesting findings. It’s a really cool academic study. It’s a freakin’ amazing data set! But these findings cannot be immediately translated into what the headlines have suggested – that immediate use of value-added metrics to reshape the teacher workforce can lift the economy, and increase wages across the board! The headlines and media spin have been dreadfully overstated and deceptive. Other headlines and editorial commentary has been simply ignorant and irresponsible. (No Mr. Moran, this one study did not, does not, cannot negate the vast array of concerns that have been raised about using value-added estimates as blunt, heavily weighted instruments in personnel policy in school systems.)" (Baker)

Despite these strong and careful cautions, Dana Goldstein has now followed up with a praising piece in The Nation that links to Di Carlo's work, but on balance accepts Chetty, Friedman, and Rockoff's claims and suggests:

"Given the widespread, non-ideological worries about the reliability of standardized test scores when they are used in high-stakes ways, it makes good sense for reform-minded teachers’ unions to embrace value-added as one measure of teacher effectiveness, while simultaneously pushing for teachers’ rights to a fair-minded appeals process. What’s more, just because we know that teachers with high value-added ratings are better for children, it doesn’t necessarily follow that we should pay such teachers more for good evaluation scores alone. Why not use value-added to help identify the most effective teachers, but then require these professionals to mentor their peers in order to earn higher pay?"

Journalists, politicians, bureaucrats, and researchers are nearly uniform in failing to identify the central flaw in pursuing data as the holy grail of identifying and rewarding high-quality teachers, and the persistent positive response to Chetty, Friedman, and Rockoff's study doesn't prove VAM works but does reveal that there is little hope we'll make any good decisions about teachers and schools any time soon.

Teaching in a Time of Tyranny

Ten years into the federalized accountability era designated as No Child Left Behind, one fact of education is rarely mentioned (except by people who do spend and have spent their lives actually teaching children day in and day out): Since 1983's A Nation at Risk, and intensified under NCLB, teachers have systematically been de-professionalized, forced by the weight of policy and bureaucracy to implement standards they did not create, to prepare students for tests they did not create (and cannot see, and likely do not support), and to be held accountable for policies and outcomes that are not within their control.

And this is the fact of the accountability era that has evolved from holding students accountable for test scores in the beginning to the more recent call to hold teachers accountable because, as media pundits claim, teachers and their protective unions are all that is wrong with the U.S.—at least according to Mort Zuckerman on CNN:

"I think there are huge problems in this country and a lot of it, in my judgment, stems not from capitalism [emphasis added] but from the government....

"Because the education is a government function. If there ever was a public function in this country from the days it started, it's public education and we've done a lousy job. Part of it is frankly because we have lousy teachers.

"Part of the reason we have lousy teachers is we have teachers union that say won't deal with those issues. So there are lots of reasons why education is not being properly handled in this country."

If U.S. public education is failing (and that is at least complicated, if not mostly inaccurate) and if teachers are the source of that failure (and that is demonstrably untrue since out-of-school factors represent at least two-thirds of the influence on measurable student outcomes), let's consider where the accountability should lie.

For the past ten years, teachers have been reduced to mere conduits of policy, curriculum, and tests that have nothing in common with what educators and researchers know to be best practice. Teacher have had little or no autonomy in these decisions and practices. To hold people accountable for implementing behaviors they do not control or support is, simply put, tyranny—not accountability.

The teacher quality debate is failing among political leaders, corporate elites, and the media because none of them are teachers, and as a consequence, they are controlling a debate about reform that they do not allow to start where it should—not at how to measure teacher quality, but at creating teaching and learning environments that honor the autonomy of children and teachers as professionals.

The ugly truth is that the leading elite do not truly respect children (especially children of color, children living in poverty, and children speaking home languages other than English), and they genuinely do not want professional teachers.

If children were treated with dignity in our schools and provided the environment they deserve to look critically at the world and if teachers were allowed their professional autonomy and held accountable for only that over which they have control, those children and teachers would likely notice and confront the tremendous inequity being controlled and perpetuated by the corporate leaders, corporate politicians, and corporate media—threatening the privilege that is being protected by calls for more testing, more data, and more accountability.

Hasty and misleading reactions to research that confirms the corporate narrative and even moderate pleas for compromise, such as Goldstein's, are equally inexcusable because they all fail to confront that accountability without autonomy is tyranny.

We are a people tragically enamored with data to the exclusion of humanity, dignity, and the very ideals we claim to be at center of our country—individual autonomy.

And we have sold our souls to capitalism, blind to the reality that the only thing free about the market is that our consumer culture is free of any ethics, free of any commitment to social justice.

Of course teacher quality matters, of course every child deserves a quality teacher. But that isn't something we can measure and force to happen as if students and teachers are cogs in a machine.

So ultimately every second spent crunching data about VAM is wasted time; every moment and penny spent on more standards and testing, also wasted time.

Teaching, learning, and human autonomy are complicated and beyond metrics, but they must become the ideals we put into practice. All else is tyranny

The trouble with Alexander Russo

2012-01-16T02:23:00.002-05:00

The irony is that Russo suggests we critics have been successful because WE are coordinating ourselves! And the "reformers" ought to do the same! We are seeing the most coordinated, sustained and systematic campaign ever mounted in public education. Once again, if you have not done so yet, watch the video in which Stand For Children CEO Jonah Edelman drops the veil and reveals exactly how his group coordinated with other non-profits, with the Chamber of Commerce and major newspapers in Illinois to gain clout. But Russo slyly suggests that somehow those of us crying foul are the ones doing the coordinating. I think there is a term in magic for this - misdirection. — Anthony Cody

Photo courtesy of LS4C1.

Over the holiday break Beltway insider Alexander Russo launched a broadside against activists, community members, and educators standing up to the corporate education reform juggernaut. His piece, Media: Reform Opponents Are Winning Online (For Now), was a heavy handed cheap shot in the guise of a compliment. Rather than dedicate too much space responding directly to Russo's piece, please see the following responses:

Anthony Cody - Are Critics of Corporate Education "Reform" Winning the Online Debate?
Nancy Flanagan - Reform vs. Anti-Reform: Quoth the Raven
Kenneth J. Bernstein - Did you know I'm a Goliath?
Anthony Cody - Lopsided Debate Over Education Reform Reveals a Broken System

Russo's underhanded dig is followed up with his suggestion that billionaire funded astroturf groups like StudentsFirst, Stand For Children, and TeachPlus have the potential to correct what he perceives as an "imbalance." For Russo, the corporate education reform astroturf need to step up and post comments under articles, use twitter, blog, and avail themselves of social media. It simply isn't enough to be funded by the likes of the wealthiest one percent including names like Walton, DeVos, Broad, Bradley, Gates, Koch, Hastings, Dell, Powell-Jobs, Scaife, Tilson, et al. It's not enough to have the unwavering support of a bipartisan neoliberal consensus at every level of government including the most anti-public education administration and Department of Education of all time. It isn't sufficient to have the unquestioning editorial support of every mainstream media outlet—not to mention Rupert Murdoch's vast propaganda empire—all of which spew a nonstop stream of privatization propaganda with nary a dissenting note. This last point is of paramount importance, since it's often forgotten that outside the realm of privilege that has regular access to the Internet, there's a majority that obtains their information from more traditional sources.

This means that there are broad swaths of society that are only exposed to what Professor Diane Ravitch calls "the dominant narrative" in regards to education policy. Bearing testament to the sage philosophers who declared "the ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas," we see this one-sided dominant narrative played out both everywhere and in the absurd. This is why Oprah can declare child abuser Michelle Rhee a "Warrior Woman" despite Rhee's abject failures in D.C. It's how the reactionary Jim Newton, Editor-at-large of the dubious Los Angeles Times can:

cast an all African American CUSD Board as "civil rights villains" and then speak of the wealthy white Ben Austin, and his right wing charter school trade association as heroes for hoodwinking parents into handing a community school over to the vile Vielka McFarlane

without batting an eyelash. It's how supposed liberal darling Davis Guggenheim had no qualms taking money from both arch-reactionary Philip Anschutz and right leaning libertarian Bill Gates [1] to fabricate a privatization propaganda film so mendacious and malevolent that celebrated education historian Diane Ravitch called it a "a pernicious movie."

Indeed, this dominent narrative is so pervasive, that it's almost unconscionable that Russo would suggest that his fellow proponents of neoliberalism should see themselves as plucky Davids against a chimerical Goliath consisting of a ragtag group of educators, activists, and community organizers.

It would be easy to dismiss Russo's screed as mere bombast, but it goes much deeper than that. Russo, despite his churlish claim that he was "not taking sides" [2], has always served as a mouthpiece for the policies and ideas of the powerful. When I and several PESJA colleagues were a little more pointed in our criticisms of Russo on Twitter, he took exception. Speaking only for my interactions, Russo accused me of misplaced anger (there's anger, but it isn't misplaced). When I reminded him of his continual kowtowing to power he wrote "you obviously don't read my blog or know my views the labels dont fit." Russo's assertion (much to my chagrin) is patently false, not only do I occasionally read his blog, I periodically post comments there. I've also written about Russo before, but we'll get back to both of those things in a bit.

Anthony Cody makes a very important observation:

the online debate is rather meaningless if the real decisions about our schools continue to be made based on misinformation, bribery and political gamesmanship. I believe the online debate has been deliberately ignored by the corporate reform sector, as they see it as a battle they can well afford to lose, given the access to real power their funds buy them.

The Cody quote reminded me of when I was at a talk by author and activist Paul D'Amato and he made the following remark about the phrase speaking truth to power: "The problem is that power already knows the truth, they just don't care because they're power." That sums up much of the so-called education debate, but I want to mention one of the more insidious aspects of the concept that there's an actual "debate" over corporate education reform.

Russo and his ilk use the word "debate" to imply there are two sides possessing ideas of equal validity and equal promulgation, and that the best ideas will rise to the top, a rehash of the vacuous "marketplace of ideas" concept. As noted above, the corporate education reform behemoth has unlimited outlets to promote their ideas even when they know they're wrong. If recent history has shown us anything, it's that if you repeat a wrong idea enough, a sufficient amount of people will believe it. [3] The aforementioned quote from the The German Ideology reminds us that the ruling class will use every means at its disposal to ensure their ideas are the dominent ideas. Russo is right that there's an imbalance, but he utterly duplicitous to suggest that it's in favor of public school advocates.

Couple the fact that the amplification of ruling class ideas is unmatched with the oft suggested concept that all ideas have equal validity. Even a cursory look at this proves it untrue. There's plenty of "ideas" propping up bigotry, racism, sexism and homophobia, but that doesn't make them valid or worth debate. If there really was a marketplace of ideas where ideas were judged solely on their merit, such ideas would have died long ago. Instead they persist because they serve the needs of the ruling class that in turn relentlessly perpetuates them. This is equally true of the ideas proffered by the corporate education reform industry and the nonprofit industrial complex pushing neoliberalism on the last of the public commons. Bad ideas are passed off as solutions and the shoddiest ideas are packaged up in policy papers and passed off as research and studies. While this topic deserves far more space, see my recent NCTQ essay for an example of how reformers publish information that can only charitably be called "biased and dishonest."

Ultimately Russo does a great disservice to suggest that not only do the reformers hold valid ideas, but that they are somehow not being heard, or that there's, in his words, an "imbalance." Why would Russo, who portrays himself as a neutral education blogger, side with the powerful?

Revenue for the second quarter was $685.3 million, up 3% from $667.9 million a year ago. Earnings per diluted share from continuing operations were $2.62, including one-time, mostly non-cash expenses of $0.21 per diluted share related to cost reduction actions. These results compared favorably to earnings per diluted share from continuing operations of $2.20 in the prior year period. Improved profits reflected higher sales of educational technology and services, children's books and ebooks, and classroom and supplemental educational materials. Consolidated earnings per diluted share were $2.60 in the quarter compared to $2.14 a year ago. [4]

The above quote is from Scholastic Inc., which is the huge corporation Russo writes for. Scholastic, like Pearson, McGraw Hill, Harcourt, and Kaplan, stands to profit far more from policies that corporate reformers push, especially the racket surrounding standardized testing and preparation thereof, but also scripted curriculums. [5] To be sure Russo would probably deny his writing is influenced or biased by his relationship with Scholastic. I'll leave it to the reader to determine that for themselves.

Getting back to my past interactions with Russo, let's start with Russo's recent book Stray Dogs, Saints, and Saviors. While I've only read excerpts, I wasn't impressed with the pro Green Dot narrative, although it's marginally less of a cheerleading job than Russo usually performs for the lucrative charter sector. Moreover, there's no mention in Russo's work of the possible payola scandal in which Locke principal Frank Wells was promised a well paying "consulting" job with Green Dot if he provided material assistance in the hostile takeover of the school. Russo is cloying and obsequious when discussing Green Dot, and his exaggerated reports of the supposed Locke "turnaround" leave out the fact that given the tremendous resources poured into the project, using the word turnaround is sardonic at best. I address this in Millionaires, Mendaciousness, and Miserable English Scores: the false Locke success story. I would also posit that, as in the case of Richard Whitmire's schoolboy-like crush on a thoroughly discredited D.C. Superintendent which turned into a lackluster book, Russo's book sales are tied into his maintaining that his subject has a modicum of credibility.

During the twitter skirmishes that follow his post, Russo took exception to the following tweet by PESJA:

"The preponderance of @alexanderrusso's writing finds him providing cover for privatization minded plutocrats, reactionaries, and profiteers."

Yet this is precisely what Russo does. A perfect example is his essay Philanthropy: The Myth Of The All-Powerful Billionaires which stakes out a stalwart defense of plutocracy that would make even the most servile sycophant to power blush. Here are a few quotes from his dubious work:

Nor do I really believe that the richest people in America have free rein to impose any extreme or cockamamie idea they feel like on American schoolchildren.

Most of all, I don't believe that there is something inherently sinister, or malicious, or even all that new about philanthropic involvement in public education -- or all that much better about public, for-profit, or nonprofit involvement. The fat cats are easy targets, convenient scapegoats, excellent distractions...

Near the end of his article Russo takes a nasty swipe at the distinguished Joanne Barkan, whose Got Dough? How Billionaires Rule Our Schools is perhaps the most cogent and well known work exploring how the plutocrat class operates in the education arena. Russo goes as far as to suggest that Barkin peddles "conspiracy theory" and that her denial of that is "disingenuous." This brazen assault on Barken's character comes from a man so thin-skinned that he responded PESJA's mild criticisms by saying: "obviously i was wrong to even bother engaging you with you. all you want to do is attack people. bye!"

In another Russo piece he tries to piggyback on Dana Goldstein wrongheaded Why Not Occupy The Schools? When time permits, I will dismantle Goldstein's subpar essay, especially the imbecilic turn of phrase "meritocratic innovation." [6] More importantly, both Goldstein and Russo, in their rush to try and draw a distinction between the one percent pushing school privatization policies and the Wall Street bail out recipients that tanked the world economy, forget that one of the key players in the former is also one of the latter. In a recent exchange with the derisive Lynne Varner I discussed who this is:

...Eli Broad who received hundreds of millions in TARP bailout funds for his preferred shares of AIG. As you must know, Broad's foundation is just a complicit in the privatization of public education as the Gates Foundation. In one of the most disturbing ironies of our time, Broad now uses those bailout funds to wage war on the remains of the public commons.

Fenwick English, in a manuscript endorsed by the National Council of Professors of Educational Administration (NCPEA) Publications, cited Eli Broad as the top neoliberal offender on his The ten most wanted list of enemies of public education leadership. [7] To pretend that there's any diference between the criminals that the Occupy Movements protest and the neoliberal cabal destroying public education is to create a false dichotomy and a false narrative. Indeed, they are one and the same. The ruling class certainly isn't entirely homogeneous, but they do have a committee managing their common affairs called the state, and they do tend to stick together when the perceive their interests are threatened.

Additionally, it's somewhat disingenuous for Russo and Goldstein to speak on behalf of the occupy movements. I cant speak for the entire movement either, but at the very least I was one of the organizers of OccupyLAUSD and spent several nights camping for education justice in front of the Beaudry LAUSD headquarters, not to mention being interviewed on the day OccupyLAUSD started as an offshoot of OccupyLA. I think I might have a little better idea of what occupy is about than apologists for neoliberal mechanizations in education. Russo's asinine statement "reform opponents need to make sure not to discredit themselves by trying to turn Democratic-funded philanthropies and well-intended nonprofit CMOs into Wall Street or heartless corporations" is as vapid and vacuous as it gets. They are Wall Street and heartless corporations!

Lastly I want to turn to an exchange I had with Russo in November of 2011. Russo had written a vicious diatribe against Professor Diane Ravitch so mean-spirited, it made my sharpest polemics look like eulogies. Even the title of Russo's piece, Diane Ravitch's Reform Vilification Industry, is offensive in the extreme. After a tangent dig at Michael Moore, Russo has the unmitigated gall to suggest:

Ravitch's description of NCLB's impact and destructiveness (closings, firings, charter conversions, etc.) is exaggerated and unsupported by data. She also vastly overestimates the power, coordination, and reach of all the reform groups, which suits her purposes in terms of creating a straw man but is also unsupported by the facts and does little to inform readers about what's really going on.

Each of these assertions are false, but it's interesting how Russo, adept like no other at devising straw men, projects that onto Dr. Ravitch. My response to Russo was:

How wonderfully reactionary and expected of you Mr. Russo. Are you sure you didn't mean to say "the world doesn't need another "it's-all-about-me" Michelle Rhee," or is anyone defending the working class from your plutocrat buddies a target for your biting invective.

You always rail against anyone standing up for public education, but you really outdo yourself when you lash out against the most celebrated experts on education of our era.

You make it a point to say Dr. Ravitch's various assertions are "unsupported" by "data" and "facts." How so? I write alongside and correspond with several of the top education researchers and experts in the world. None of the so-called reforms that you and the plutocrats you gush about favor, is supported by any legitimate peer reviewed research that I'm aware of. It is you sir, that is devoid of data and facts.

Professor Ravitch sent me a private note on twitter thanking me for standing up to Russo, and while I was honored, there's more at stake here than just defending individuals. All of us that have seen the brutal effects of neoliberalism (structural adjustments) played out in South and Central America via the International Money Fund and The World Bank at the behest of the Washington Consensus know that we are fighting for our very lives. Ask a Bolivian peasant or Oaxacan schoolteacher if our struggle against neoliberalism is a product of paranoia or conspiracy theory.

In an interesting irony, Russo commented back:

from ed sector's elena silver to regular contributor john thompson on the same subject:

"You can try to lump us all into one scary camp of accountability hawk reformers who are bent on launching an educational civil war, but you can't make it true. More importantly, I'm not sure how it helps the cause of improving public education to do so."

http://www.quickanded.com/2011/11/dear-john-education-sector-thinks-a-lot-about-teachers-and-more-school-time.html

Dr. John Thompson is a common acquaintance of Russo's and mine, and we both feature Thompson's guest posts. My correspondence with Thompson started when I commented on one of his essays about the President's education policies and he didn't take exception to my sharp criticisms of the Administration. We've been corresponding ever since, and he even shared an email with me the other day he received from the late great Gerald Bracey on the day he passed. Thompson said it was Professor Jim Horn's recent repost of one of Bracey's works that prompted him to dig up the email. Thompson seems to get along well with Russo, so I'm sure he's not a bad guy in person. It's Russo's politics that I despise.

Back to the irony of Russo's response. I had already responded to Elena Silver's (as had Thompson) piece before I knew Russo had responded to me. My response to Silver works perfectly here:

Dr. Thompson is being far too kind.

Education Sector is widely known as a mouthpiece for the most reactionary anti-public education ideologies. Writing for them and then disavowing allegiance with the "camp of accountability hawk reformers" is disingenuous at best.

Working with a privatization minded right-wing think [tank], by definition, puts you precisely in the camp you claim you're not in, even if just by being there you give cover to the Chubbs, Hesses, and Hanusheks.

My admonishment of Elena Silver extends equally to Alexander Russo. If you provide cover for or are an apologist for the "scary camp of accountability hawk reformers," then you merit the dubious distinction of being "lumped" in with them.

The ascendancy of neoliberal corporate culture into every aspect of American life both consolidates economic power in the hands of the few and aggressively attempts to break the power of unions, decouple income from productivity, subordinate the needs of society to the market, and deem public services and goods an unconscionable luxury. But it does more. It thrives on a culture of cynicism, insecurity, and despair. [8] — Henry Giroux

_____
NOTES
[1] Both Anschutz and Gates donate money to the fringe right Discovery Institute. While Anschutz funds a host of other extremist organizations like the Institute for American Values, Gates is no slouch in this regard either, pouring cash into the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC).

[2] PURE's Julie Woestehoff's response to Russo on this gets to the heart of the matter. She says 'You can't claim you're "not taking sides" when you call one side of the debate "reform opponents" and "reform critics." Deb Meier correctly comments about your "reformy types" that "they have the daily regular media as their constant blog site."'

Confer Woestehoff with Paulo Freire's ‎"Washing one's hands of the conflict between the powerful and the powerless means to side with the powerful, not to be neutral. "

[3] Weapons of Mass Destruction in Iraq.

[4] Scholastic Reports Fiscal 2012 Second Quarter Results

[5] Think also Common Core Curriculum.

[6] We've discussed Dana Goldstein here before in Dana Goldstein "Hearts" Yellow Unions and Company Crafted Contracts. In the piece I write "Goldstein, while not as deceptive or reactionary as Matt Ygelsias, nonetheless provides a progressive veneer to reactionary right wing education policies espoused by nefarious organizations like the billionaire funded Democrats for Education Reform and Communities for Teaching Excellence."

[7] English, Fenwick. The Ten Most Wanted Enemies of American Public Education's School Leadership. Connexions. 8 Nov. 2010 <http://cnx.org/content/m34684/1.4/>.

[8] Quoted in ibid. Giroux, Henry A. The Terror of Neoliberalism. Paradigm Publishers. 2004. (p. 105).

GUEST POST: The Parent Trigger Trap

2012-01-14T08:22:00.000-05:00

The Parent Trigger Trap

by Douglas Storm

This from a piece in the the Courier-Journal (Louisville, KY and Southern Indiana) titled “Bill would give Indiana parents ability to convert schools to charters,” about the so-called “Parent Trigger.” As a nod to my favorite local school board member (you know who you are), I wish this were about Parent Tiggers. That would make the world a much happier place.

Parents could vote to convert traditional schools to charters under a bill an Indiana House committee passed Wednesday.

But several lawmakers said they might not vote for House Bill 1219 when it moves to the House floor unless the bill is amended.

The bill, authored by Rep. Rhonda Rhoads, R-Corydon, would convert schools to charters — which are public schools that are freed from many state regulations — if more than half of the students’ parents vote to do so.

School boards could also create charters, as allowed by state law.

***

“At this point, I like the 51 percent of parents because they’re the ones who have children at the school,” Rhoads said. “People in the community may have no idea of what’s going on in the classroom, even though they’re paying for it.”

Dale Chu, assistant superintendent for policy, legal and communications at the Indiana Department of Education, said the department supports the bill as proposed because it parallels Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Bennett’s push to allow students to have high-quality education.

Chu also said parents expressed concern about their lack of input when the state board of education intervened in seven of Indiana’s lowest performing schools.

“This bill as it is currently written would go a long way by giving some voice back to those parents and empowering them,” Chu said. “If they’re feeling marginalized and like they don’t have a voice in their school and their school continues to struggle, they have a lever that they can use.”

First, this is a legislative maneuver authored by and instigated via the ALEC right-wing think tank The Heartless Institute. Here is their Policy page on the Parent Trigger aimed at Indiana. Note that it is about creating an impression of “empowerment” and “local control.” This is how the page begins:

Schools in Indiana are failing to make the grade, and parents are afforded virtually no recourse when their children fall victim to a failing school. A Foundation for Educational Choice poll recently found that among the six polled states, Hoosiers are most likely to see their public education system as failing.

Who writes the tests and administers them and assesses them?

Who authored the grading system that will guarantee a 1/3 failure rate opening the door for coercive corporate take-over? Maybe this guy? Vic Smith offers some analysis.

Who is the Foundation for Educational Choice? You know, it’s the tribe of Uncle Milt (Friedman, not Berle). I wonder why they left the “Friedman” off in the above?

According to the poll, “Hoosiers are most likely to see their public education as failing.” Now that’s an interesting formulation, isn’t it. It’s not a poll that shows that Hoosiers do indeed see their public education system as failing; rather it’s one in which the “psychology” of the average Hoosier or “political temperament” of the average Hoosier can be understood to be one pliable to the propaganda of failure. In other words, Hoosiers are most likely to believe the lies. Hear that, Hoosiers? Right-wing think tanks housed in your capital think your gullible rubes.

The Indiana Parent Trigger would allow a simple majority of parents at a school to “trigger” one of three reform options: close the school and allow the students to transfer to better-performing public schools, convert the school into a charter school, or give each student’s parents a voucher usable at a private school of their choosing. (my emphasis)

Here’s what Kenneth Saltman of DePaul University and author of Capitalizing on Disaster (here is a good review) and The Gift of Education (both to be read in conjunction with the Emery/Ohanian book) has written about the knowing machinations of these, um, people (?):

Privatization advocates were quite explicit in their desire to undermine local control over educational decision making and to create a situation in which it would be very difficult to reverse the implementation of vouchers. For example, Karla Dial, reporting in the right-wing Heartland Institute School Reform News [money tells lies more efficiently, ed.], quotes Chris Kinnan of Freedom Works, a D.C. organization fighting for “smaller government” and more “persona freedom.”

“Having those vouchers for a couple of years would change the way parents and students and even educators think about them,” Kinnan said. “The impact would be so powerful that if you did it right, [school] systems would be competing to attract these [kids with vouchers]. It’s all about changing the incentive. Once you have that freedom it would be very difficult to go back to the community control system.”

For Kinnan and his ilk, “freedom” means privatizing public control over public resources so that fewer people with more wealth and power have more political control over said resources. The genius of framing the amassing political and economic control over public resources as individual consumer choice is that it takes on the deceptive appearance of increasing individual control, although it actually removes individuals from collective control. Privatizers aim to treat the use of public resources as “shopping” by “consumers,” thereby naturalizing the public sector as a market–as a natural, politically neutral entity ruled by the laws of supply and demand rather than as a matter of public priority, political deliberation, and competing values and visions. Such metaphors…fail to admit that markets themselves are hardly neutral or natural [but] are, on the contrary, hierarchical, human-made, political configurations unequally distributing power and control over material resources and cultural value. (Capitalizing on Disaster, 31-2)

Further in the piece from the Courier-Journal there is a quote in opposition:

Libby Cierzniak, a lobbyist for Indianapolis Public Schools, said the school district opposes the bill as passed. Students do not always stay in the same school as the one in which their parents may be voting to create a charter school. Cierzniak said this is especially true of junior high schools that offer only a couple grades.

“If they vote to change, it should really affect them,” Cierzniak said. “Schools are community resources, and taxpayers and voters should have a say, as well as the parents of the children who are in the pipeline to eventually attend that school.”

First, Libby, do not use BRT-speak like “community resources” and “pipeline”–yikes–but what’s necessary to see here is that this newspaper labels her a “lobbyist for IPS”–do public schools have lobbyists? Possibly. But it seems to me that’s what we might have called an elected representative from the district–a lobbyist for public education (or all things public I suppose). But does this piece indicate the verifiable detail that all of this legislation is part of a larger coercive effort by the members of the Business Roundtable and all their “think tank” flacks? Nope. It’s honest work after all.

Finally though, what strikes me as the most obvious goal of any of these reforms is that the only thing that will be achieved is community dissolution. For all the ridiculous rhetoric about individualism our greatest successes are always communal. What does pursuit of true individualism serve? One person. It’s hard not to think that all the world’s billionaires are battling it out for the title of the Biggest Individualist and that the US of A invades and occupies countries under that same banner. One country under one god, right?

And in an unrelated related piece regarding the Indiana Fascist Club law against “embellishing” our sacred anthem:

Republican Sen. Vaneta Becker of Evansville is broadening her proposal for a state law on how the national anthem should be performed.

The proposal would require any performance of “The Star-Spangled Banner” in any public place be in its entirety and without embellishment. She had earlier proposed a bill for the state education department to set standards for singing and playing of the national anthem at public schools.

Becker told a state Senate committee Wednesday that she believes such a law might not be very enforceable but would send an important signal about the respect the national anthem deserves.

The National Anthem has zero content to be proud of if you ask me. We honor a flag and military victory over taxation. Where has that gotten us?

Well, it does make sense that the right-wing reps would honor it–it is honestly a far more appropriate emblem of their worldview, isn’t it. Well, maybe it should be redesigned to feature only one star and one stripe.

'Teach for America' overstates its classroom success

2012-01-14T08:01:00.011-05:00

'Teach for America' overstates its classroom success | The Post and Courier, Charleston SC - News, Sports, Entertainment

A recent article in The Post and Courier announced "Struggling schools to get strong teachers" (Diette Courrégé, Dec. 13, 2011). The article, as well as commentaries and a subsequent article, suggests that Charleston's high-poverty schools struggle to attract and maintain high-quality teachers and that Teach for America (TFA) recruits are appropriate solutions to that problem.

South Carolina and Charleston, however, should heed the considerable evidence that challenges that claim.

First, we must acknowledge that teacher recruitment and retention are historical problems faced across S.C. and the U.S. in high-poverty schools, but we cannot gloss over that the high-quality teachers needed are certified teachers with many years of classroom experience -- characteristics research shows contribute strongly to student learning.

One of the hidden cultures of schools is that veteran and high-quality teachers often are "rewarded" with top students and elite courses such as Advanced Placement.

Currently, top students receive the double benefit of privileged lives and the best possible teachers teaching the most challenging curriculum while children of color, children living in poverty, and English language learners sit in classrooms taught by inexperienced and uncertified or under-certified teachers.

Next, a flawed assumption running through much of the discussion of high-poverty schools and teacher quality is not being addressed -- specifically the direct role of teacher quality in measurable student outcomes.

Many comments in the articles and commentaries in this paper have implied that teachers of "top" students are high-quality and teachers of high-poverty, English language learners, and special needs students are not high quality. This is a hasty and misleading claim.

Measurable student outcomes, specifically standardized test data, remain highly correlated (between about 60 percent and 86 percent) with out-of-school factors. Teacher quality tends to be masked or distorted by test scores, not reflected in test scores.

So let's acknowledge that hiring TFA recruits does not address the essential teacher quality problem facing Charleston because TFA recruits have no experience as teachers, only five-weeks of training, and a mere two-year commitment to their positions.

All of the basic characteristics of TFA recruits match the problems high-poverty schools face in teacher recruitment and retention -- not the solutions.

Next, TFA itself raises more questions than it offers solutions.

TFA is primarily, by their own materials, a program to train leaders; teaching and learning are secondary and serve fundamentally as avenues for TFA recruits, not commitments.

Further, most of the information surrounding TFA is promotional material.

As Philip Kovaks has detailed in a series at Anthony Cody's Living in Dialogue blog (Education Week/Teacher), we have very little peer-reviewed research on the effectiveness of TFA recruits, but what evidence we do have suggests that TFA is well funded and marketed, but an unproven experiment with children trapped in poverty:

"How TFA can continue to make the claim that they produce corps members who make 'as much of an impact on student achievement as veteran teachers' despite evidence to the contrary is a fairly simple matter. Thanks to massive grants and payments from school districts around the country, TFA has quite a war chest, and they can afford a massive public relations campaign that includes directly lobbying the federal government using your tax dollars."

To invest in TFA, then, is to perpetuate an organization primarily interested in building leaders but has yet to show evidence that their program is worth the investment for public education -- except it benefits the organization and the recruits who leave their schools for other fields.

The greatest concern, however, that S.C. and Charleston should raise about hiring TFA recruits for children in high-poverty schools, special needs students, and English language learners is that such a choice is further marginalizing those children in a system that is currently failing them both in their lives and schools.

I have raised this question before and have yet to receive an adequate answer: If TFA does in fact provide high-quality recruits for our schools, why doesn't someone hire them for the top students in order to release the most experienced certified teachers to work with the struggling populations of students (now being targeted by TFA)?

My suspicion is that no one would tolerate that decision; the parents of top students would balk at novice recruits without certification taking over their children's classes.

And they would be right.

But it is also true that our children trapped under the weight of poverty should not be reduced to experiments for TFA recruits, but instead deserve experienced and certified teachers.

SEE ALSO re: TFA in Charleston SC:

Unpacking TFA Support: Twisted Logic and Assumptions

Follow up: TFA in Charleston SC

Holding Journalists, the Media Accountable

TFA Invades Charleston SC

Reference

Peske, H. G., & Haycock, K. (2006, June). Teaching inequality: How poor and minority students are shortchanged on teacher quality. Washington DC: The Education Trust, Inc. Retrieved 7 September 2009 from http://www2.edtrust.org/NR/rdonlyres/010DBD9F-CED8-4D2B-9E0D-91B446746ED3/0/TQReportJune2006.pdf

TFA Resources

Teach for America - A Hidden Curriculum?

Teach for America: The Hidden Curriculum of Liberal Do-Gooders

Teach for America: Liberal mission helps conservative agenda

Philip Kovacs: Research Suggests Teach For America Does Not Belong in Huntsville

Philip Kovacs: Teach For America Research Fails the Test

Philip Kovacs: Huntsville Takes a Closer Look at Teach For America's "Research"

Philip Kovacs Takes on TFA in Huntsville

The Dialogue Heats Up over Teach For America

Petition to Change/Reform TfA

Teach For America: A False Promise

Teach For America: A Review of the Evidence

Ravitch: The Problem with Teach For America

Richard Cohen's Teach for America Column Deserves a Failing Grade

My Big Break to Become a CGO and Rocketeer!

2012-01-13T18:10:00.000-05:00

In what can only be described as the cruelest joke ever pulled on a corporate headhunter, someone gave my name to Monisha Dozier of Bellwether Education Partners (the high-rolling charter advocacy outfit where crook, Andy Rotherham, labors as thought leader) my name, yes, someone gave Bellwether my name, as a possible candidate for the Chief Growth Officer of a chain of corporate charter chain gangs known as Rocketship Education. ha ha ha ha ha, whew, ha ha ha.

Monisha must have thought she was onto something big, for she neatly sent along the Rocketeers' business plan with the job description AND the Rocketeeer strategy outlined for fund-raising, buying politicians, rooting into communities, and eliminating public schools, which the Rocketeers euphemistically refer to as "eliminating the achievement gap in each city."

But, first, Monisha's letter, which I truly must frame:

Hello Jim,

We don’t know one another but I’m an executive recruiter who focuses entirely on senior level searches in the urban education reform community. I work for a nonprofit organization which I helped to found called Bellwether Education Partners which you can check out here if some additional context would help.

I’m writing to you out of the blue because your name has been surfaced by someone I respect in the context of a search I’m currently conducting. My client is Rocketship Education which, as you may know, is a California-based charter management organization which is doing incredible work with underserved students, getting results, and attracting significant national attention for these things and its blended learning model. Rocketship’s growth plans are ambitious – and national – and so they’re seeking to fill several positions right now with people of exceptional talent across the US.   You’ve ended up on a target list of prospects specifically related to the search for their first ever Chief Growth Officer.   As you can see from the attached job description, the role contains politics, communications, and development and is ultimately responsible for getting Rocketship into new cities and expanding once they are there. This is a very senior and critical role there; as such it will be highly compensated and can be in any city. They are looking for someone who is excellent on strategy and campaigns, and can be a great salesperson for the brand which is very hot at the moment.

If you’d like to talk more about this, please let me know.   You can explore this with me, and them, quietly and we hope you’ll consider doing so.

Best,
Monisha

Monisha G. Lozier
Partner, Talent Services
BeLLWeTHeR EDUCATION PARTNERS
w: 312-451-2984

I wrote back and asked about salary and who referred her to me, but I got an out-of-office reply. Too bad. And I could not wait to share the news. "Hello Jim," it say. "Senior and critical role . . . highly compensated." What would you guess? 500K?

If only I were a whore!

So here we have the Eduwank's vulture-enabling scam, Bellwether, fronting as a consultancy while recruiting for an outfit with all the Palo Alto Mafia onboard, including New Schools Venture Fund, the Broadies, Reed Hastings with his Dreambox, TFA, Facebook, and sundry other corporate leeches and buzzards of the online biz. Quite a family affair.

Tim Ranzetta and Theresia Gouw Ranzetta, Partner at Accel Partners
Bill Gurley, General Partner, Benchmark Capital
Dave Goldberg, CEO SurveyMonkey
Sheryl Sandberg, COO Facebook
Jason Stinson and Aileen Lee, Partner Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers
Jennifer Carolan and Shawn Carolan, General Partner Menlo Ventures
Reed Hastings, CEO Netflix
Dave Peery, Peery Foundation
Toni Rembe Rock and Arthur Rock, Venture Capitalist
Jonathan Chadwick, CFO Skype
Franklin McKinley School District
To become involved as a board member or partner, contact info@rsed.org for more information.

Yes, do become involved, for if you don't, they will involve you, anyway. This outfit plans to come to your city or a city near you, no doubt about it. In one swoop, they were able just days ago to make an incredible feast of the poor in San Jose, thanks to Mayor Chuck Reed and Congresswoman (D) Zoe Lofgren. 28 schools. Right now they have a dozen cities targeted. See plan below. They have a plan to corral and brainwash every poor urban child unclaimed by the KIPPsters and their acolytes, while creating an industry for the glassy-eyed, autocratic zombies who graduate from TFA. Once a Corps member, always a Corps member!

And they haven't left out the parents, either. After all, if they are going to be able to pull the trigger to eliminate urban public schools, they are going to need to train parents to push for the now infamous "parent trigger."

Rocketship alsoprovides parents with the organization and training to advocate for change forall schools.

So here, just below, is the job description for the Chief Growth Officer. Enjoy reading, and if you have hiring suggestions for Monisha, give her a call (w312-451-2984). I was going to nominate Jeff Skilling, but someone told me he has ongoing pinochle game he can't get out of. How about one of the Milken Boys? They are both out of jail, I hear.

Rocketship Education
Position Description: Chief Growth Officer

OrganizationalOverview
Foundedin 2006, Rocketship Education (www .rsed .org)is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit corporation whose mission is to eliminate theachievement gap in public education by operating a network of high-performing,urban, college preparatory, K‐5 elementary charter schools in high‐needneighborhoods. Rocketship’s growthplans are aggressive and underway; we intend to expand our network to tencities over the next five years and to 50 major cities in the United Statesover the next fifteen years. EachRocketship school has a clear and simple goal: students achieve grade‐levelproficiency by the time they graduate from elementary school and have theskills and focus they need to put them on a path towards college.

Rocketshipoperates five schools in San Jose, California, serving 2,500 students and plansto open two additional schools in San Jose in 2012. Among 2,000 low-incomeelementary schools in California, these first three Rocketship schools are allin the top 5% statewide and are the top performing low-income elementaryschools in San Jose and Santa Clara County. Rocketship schools have results rivaling wealthy schooldistricts (such as Palo Alto) while serving 80%+ low-income students and 70%+ EnglishLanguage Learners. In 2013,Rocketship will open its first school outside of California in a city to beannounced in March, 2012.

TheRocketship School Model
TheRocketship School Model combines outstanding classroom teaching withindividualized instruction in our Learning Lab and uses tutors and technologyto meet the specific needs of each and every student. Specifically, the Rocketship model comprises four keypillars:

First,Rocketship empowers parents to help their children through aculture of high expectations and deep parent engagement, including annual homevisits, monthly community meetings, and frequent family activities. Rocketship also provides parents withthe organization and training to advocate for change for all schools.

Second,Rocketship develops talent – recruiting and training excellent teachersand developing our teachers into outstanding school leaders. Rocketship has a deep relationship withTeach for America to bring both talented corps members and alumni toRocketship.   We attract thebest talent by paying teacher salaries that are 20% higher than those insurrounding districts. OurAcademic Deans on each campus work full-time to develop teachers intooutstanding professionals. OurLeadership Development team operates a three-year program to develop ourteachers into capable school leaders.

Third,the innovative Rocketship model delivers outstandingacademic results for students through individualized learning andexcellent classroom teaching. InRocketship’s Learning Lab, every student receives two hours of dailyinstruction individualized to them, focused on exactly their developmentallevel through tutors and online instruction. This focus on students’ individual strengths and areas forimprovement accelerates learning for all students by quickly adapting to theirneeds and providing instruction where each student needs it most. As Learning Lab delivers more of astudent’s basic skills learning, our teachers are able to focus on what they dobest in the classroom and maximize that time for teaching critical thinkingskills, social-emotional learning and project-based learning. The emphasis onindividualized learning and extension of knowledge in the classroom ensuresthat every child succeeds and that Rocketship students emerge with the skillsand characteristics necessary to succeed in college and life and to activelycompete nationally and globally.

Finally,in addition to the academic and teacher quality benefits described above, theRocketship School Model scales. Our approach delivers significant advantages in terms of eachschool’s quality but also allows us to grow. Learning Lab is staffed with non-certifiedparaprofessionals instead of certificated teachers, saving $500,000 per schoolper year. Rocketship reinveststhese savings to improve school quality by increasing teacher pay, teachersupport and development, leadership development, and providing enrichmentprograms such as art, music and physical education. The model’s efficiency also allows Rocketship to open newschools in new facilities without philanthropy. This, combined with a human capital approach to developschool leaders from among the ranks of teachers, allows Rocketship to not onlyscale, but to improve the quality of each new school as leader selection drawsfrom a larger and larger pool of teachers. Philanthropy is applied only toward national efforts todevelop the infrastructure necessary to open and support more schools and nottoward day-to-day school operations. This makes Rocketship the first scalable charter school network.

ThePosition
Thisis an exciting time for Rocketship Education. Having captured national attention for its school model,student results, and rapid expansion, Rocketship must navigate political forceswhich do not always desire to partner with organizations like Rocketship tobring great schools to their community. As one of three leaders reporting directly to the CEO, the Chief GrowthOfficer (CGO) will augment an already exceptional team and will play a criticalrole in building the next high-performing national network of charterschools. The Chief Growth Officerwill act as the chief political strategist and chief salesperson for theorganization.

Specifically,the CGO will be tasked with creating conditions at the local, state and federallevel to allow Rocketship to meet its growth goals. Rocketship has three phases of development in each new city– Engage, Empower, and Eliminate. To Engage, Rocketship works with cities which have the right politicalconditions to approve up-front a cluster of eight Rocketship schools andmobilize citizen groups within those cities to reach approval. Today, there are currently one dozencities where this is a possibility. In order to expand the Engage pipeline, we must work at the state andlocal level across the country and help national advocacy groups create morefavorable conditions. Additionally, we must advocate to align federal and state policies toallow for high-growth charter networks.   For example, in a growing number of states, high qualitynetworks have agreements directly with the state to open as many schools asthey have the internal capacity to deliver. However, California has not been effective at opening up itscharter law to provide ease-of-expansion for the best operators, causingsignificant wasted time in the chartering process each year. It will be the CGO’s job to prioritizeareas where state or federal changes are needed to allow Rocketship to meet itsgrowth plan.

Approximatelyhalf-way through the build-out of the first cluster of schools in any city, wemust create the conditions for significant expansion. For example, in San Jose, there are currently 90 low-incomeelementary schools not currently bringing their students to proficient orabove. Rocketship currently hasten charters granted and is seeking 20 additional charters to open schools overthe next five years. The Empowerstage requires broad community awareness of the achievement gap, specific dataanalysis on the magnitude of the problem, specifically identified failingschools, and a short timeline (typically five to ten years) for the problem tobe fixed. Rocketship wassuccessful in creating this awareness in San Jose through SJ2020, which wasco-championed by the mayor and superintendent of county schools. We believe this type ofawareness-building with community leaders will be necessary in all futureregions and will require significant community organizing and advocacy toaccomplish.

Finally,as Rocketship accomplishes its initial expansion goals, we focus on completelyeliminating the achievement gap in each city. It is very likely that there will be additional schools torestart in order to do this and we expect that the Eliminate phase to be themost contentious given that the financial impact on school districts will besubstantial. As the first scalablecharter network, it is crucial to remove politics as a barrier to servingchildren by working with communities to create the will for lasting change.

Clearly,the political process will be significant in each market we enter. Therefore, the CGO will lead a Growthdivision within Rocketship that will include at least three VicePresident-level professionals managing National Expansion, Communications, andPhilanthropy as well as a substantial budget for changing the policyenvironment for charters in the United States.

TheCGO will:

●      Possess the core characteristics required of everyRocketeer – mission-driven, innovative, disciplined thinker, collaborative, andpersonally responsible;
●      Build and lead the mission-critical Growth team whosestrategy and results will shape and drive the next era of Rocketship expansion,develop and manage the performance of the team, and institute strongaccountability systems and professional development plans and support for itsmembers;
●      Serve as a senior-level contributor to Rocketship’sleadership team and help to maintain collective focus on overall performance ofthe organization;
●      Drive the expansion of Rocketship into ten cities by2016;
●      Prepare Rocketship to enter 50 major cities in theUnited States over the next fifteen years by focusing on cities currentlylacking the political will toenable them to partner with Rocketship and, subsequently, supporting regionalGrowth staff to generate political will during the Engage and Eliminate stagesof expansion through framing, organizing, and advocacy;
●      Fundraise in each new city ($3M per city) as part ofRocketship’s initial package to Engage;
●      Influence state policy initiatives to advocate forRocketship to operate in states with current legislative restrictions on newschool models;
●      Influence federal regulations to align them with theevolving charter school market to ensure that Rocketship and otherhigh-performing school networks are funded appropriately; and
●      Drive awareness of Rocketship through outstandingcommunications among national, education and local thought-leaders and mediaoutlets as the proven leader of successful, scalable reforms in publiceducation in the United States.

RequiredQualifications
Thisis an outstanding opportunity to play a significant role in public educationreform across the country. Therefore, first and foremost, the CGO must believe that no student’slife is subject to the destiny of demographics. Further, this is a hands-on, senior-level role as a leaderin a small but rapidly growing entrepreneurial organization so the CGO mustbring top-level senior management experience as well as a roll-up-your-sleevesattitude and work ethic.

Thesuccessful candidate will have the following skills and experience:
●      The ability to position Rocketship in the policy arenaas an agent for positive change through strong communication and strategicskills;
●      Five or more years in the education field, asignificant portion of which should be in policy resulting in a sophisticatedunderstanding of local and state education politics;
●      Five or more years as a senior-levelmanager, including a demonstrable track record of assembling effective teams, strategic planning,communicating a vision and setting priorities, managing team execution,delegating, mentoring others and developing emerging leaders;
●      A personal story, philosophy and track record ofbuilding strong, trusting relationships through excellent communication andlistening skills with diverse parent and community groups to empower them tochange current policy;
●      A significant network of federal, state, and districteducation officials to aid in Rocketship’s expansion; and
●      A bachelor’s degree.

Theideal candidate will also possess some combination of the following:
●      In-depth experience running political campaigns forindividuals and/or issues;
●      Superintendent, executive-team, or board-levelexperience inside an urban, public school district;
●      Experience as a state or federal legislator;
●      A results-oriented, goal-driven, team approach towork;
●      Confidence and persuasiveness compelling enough tobring divergent groups together;
●      A background in fundraising and track record ofraising funds from significant donors;
●      A communications background, having been responsiblefor outbound communications for a significant organization;
●      Experience working in a high-growth (100% annualgrowth) start-up environment;
●      A sense of urgency; and
●      An advanced degree, preferably in Education or PublicPolicy.

Location
Rocketshipsupports top executives working throughout the country, and requires theleadership team to travel to Palo Alto, California at least four days per monthto meet with the senior team in addition to other travel requirements. Remote employees must be able to demonstratepast experience in being a productive team leader from a remote location.

Compensationcommensurate with experience, reflecting the importance of Growth to Rocketshipand direct reporting relationship to the CEO.

Idealstart date
January2012.

Vulture Philanthropy and Vulture Capital Limb Sitting in Providence, RI

2012-01-13T10:08:00.003-05:00

Achievement First is a chain of zero tolerance, soul-crushing corporate charter schools built from the mold of the total compliance, autocracy-breeding KIPP schools, wherein poor minority children are brainwashed into embracing the creepy autocratic exceptionalism preached by their TFA/KIPP captors. With only a few years remaining of white majority rule in the U. S., these kinds of schools represent a crash program by white corporate America to seed their character values, or lack thereof, among other groups that will faithfully promulgate them once they are psychologically brutalized and behaviorally neutered from the earliest grades.

Make no mistake about it--behavioral and character traits are more important than academics, as KIPP's Mike Feinberg has admitted. In this brave new world of character report cards rounded to the second decimal place, curiosity has replaced integrity, social intelligence has shoved aside fairness, grit has replaced honesty, and something called zest has been put in the place of caring. These new values to be drilled into urban children represent those of the hedge funders, vulture capitalists, and predatory philanthropists who control and get fat from the operations of these zero tolerance hellholes.

The charter chain predators are on the move in Providence, RI, where Achievement First has a plan that would drain between $6-9 million annually from the public school budget of the city. This would represent a death blow to efforts by the public schools in Providence to continue quality programs that have resulted in big improvements in recent years.

Local parent groups are appealing to Governor Chafee to intervene to stop the disastrous intrusion by the vultures who see Providence as another potential feeding site, as public institutions continue to suffer from the economic disaster brought on by the predators of Wall Street in 2008.

Go the Change.org and sign their petition. Help Providence parents save their schools from the vultures and to say NO to zero tolerance schools.

Nine Years Before Ten Years After

2012-01-12T18:21:00.000-05:00

I have been deliberately ignoring the 10th painful anniversary of NCLB-S. I appreciate the grisly work of Lisa Guisbond and Monty Neill in unearthing all those dead bodies and in reminding us that those who don't recall the past. . . .

I know. I was looking for something else and came across a Bracey's (may he rest in peace) prophetic piece posted on the Web on January 3, 2003. For those who never read Bracey while he was alive, try it on. It still fits.

THE NO CHILD LEFT BEHIND ACT, A PLAN FOR THE DESTRUCTION OF PUBLIC EDUCATION: JUST SAY NO

Gerald W. Bracey

Gerald W. Bracey is an Associate of the High/Scope Educational Research Foundation and an Associate Professor at George Mason University. His most recent books are The War on America's Public Schools (Allyn & Bacon, 2002) and Put to the Test: An Educator's and Consumer's Guide to Standardized Testing (Revised edition, Phi Delta Kappa International, 2002). The opinions are his own.

The No Child Left Behind Act is a trap. It is the grand scheme of the school privatizers. No Child Left Behind (NCLB) sets up public schools for the final knock down.

Paranoia? Hardly. Consider that the Bush administration is de-regulating every pollution producing industry in sight while cutting Superfund cleanup money. It has rolled back regulations on power plants and snowmobiles and wants to take protection away from 20,000,000 acres of wetlands (20% of the total). President Bush's response to global warming: “Deal with it!” by which he means, adjust to it while we make the world safe for SUVs. The president wants to outsource hundreds of thousands of government jobs to private corporations.[1] He wants, in other words, to get the government out of government.

Would an administration with such an anti-regulatory, pro-private sector policy perspective turn around and impose harsh, straitjacket requirements on schools, demands that would bankrupt any business? Of course not. Unless it had an ulterior purpose.

Recall that the president's original 2001 proposal provided vouchers to let children attend private schools at taxpayer expense. Congress, chastised by the massive defeats vouchers suffered in referenda in California and Michigan in the 2000 election (voucher proponents outspent opponents 2-1, but the measures went down in flames, 70-30, in both states), stripped the voucher provisions from the bill. They didn't strip them from Karl Rove's mind. After the 2002 elections, the Wall Street Journal declared "GOP's Election Gains Give School Vouchers a Second Wind."[2] They'll be back. In fact, they already are. President Bush has put $75 million for vouchers for the District of Columbia in his 2004 budget proposal and some congressmen want to extend their use to other cities as well[3]

There are any number of impossible-to-meet provisions in the NCLB, but let's take just two of the most prominent: those for testing and for teacher qualifications. The federal government cannot force NCLB on states, but any state that wants NCLB money must agree to test all children in grades three through eight every year in reading and math and, two years later, science as well. The tests must be based on "challenging" standards and schools must show "Adequate Yearly Progress" (AYP) until, after 12 years, all of the schools' students attain the "proficient" level. The school must demonstrate AYP overall and separately for all major ethnic and socio-economic groups, special education students and English Language Learners. And pigs will fly.

The massive testing requirements alone will force many states to spend massive amounts of money to develop, administer, analyze and report the test results and other data needed for mandatory "report cards" schools must develop and send to parents. Many states will have to abandon their own programs labored over for the last decade--or two. Their costs may well exceed what NCLB provides. An analysis by Rutland, Vermont School Superintendent, William Mathis, found that the state will receive $52 million dollars from NCLB, but that it will cost the Green Mountain State $158 million to implement the law's provisions[4]. Mathis estimates that national cost to states between $84 billion and $148 billion[5].

The word "proficient" is a trap, too. According to the law, each state decides how to define it, but the word already has great currency in education circles as part of the lingo surrounding the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). It is one of the NAEP achievement levels, the others being "below basic," "basic" and "advanced." Not many children attain the proficient level on NAEP tests.

Although in common parlance, the NAEP achievement levels have been rejected by everyone who has ever studied them: UCLA's Center for Research on Evaluation, Student Standards and Testing (CRESST)[6], the General Accounting Office[7] and the National Academy of Sciences[8], as well as by individual psychometricians such as Lyle Jones of the University of North Carolina[9]. The studies agree that the methods used are flawed and, more importantly, the results don't accord with any other data.

For instance, Jones pointed out that American fourth-graders were well above average on the mathematics tests of the Third International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS), yet only 18% reached the proficient level and a meager two percent scored at the advanced level in the 1996 NAEP mathematics. Similar low percentages are seen in the 1996 NAEP Science assessment and TIMSS Science where American fourth-graders were third in the world among 26 nations. Finally, on the 2000 NAEP reading assessment, only 32% of fourth-graders attained proficient or better, but American 9-year-olds were second in the world among 27 countries in the international reading study, How in the World Do Students Read[10][11]? It makes no sense that American kids do so poorly on domestic measures such as NAEP but stack up well against the rest of the industrialized world.

The NAEP achievement levels were developed at a time when the National Assessment Governing Board was controlled by Chester E. Finn, Jr., and other ideologues on the Right. Their purpose was to sustain the sense of crisis created by 1983’s golden treasury of selected, spun and distorted statistics, “A Nation At Risk.” NABG hired three of the most respected evaluators in the country to evaluate the NAEP standards and standard setting process. When the evaluators reported that the process didn’t work, NAGB summarily fired them. Or tried to. The contract forbade it.

When NAEP was first introduced, the enabling law forbade it to report at the state level. Congress revised the law in 1988 to make state reporting possible and currently about 40 states volunteer (and pay) to receive state-level information. Under NCLB, state-level NAEP goes from voluntary to mandatory. All states must participate in the biennial NAEP reading and math assessments to "confirm" their own results. Studies have already shown that a much smaller proportion of students reaches proficient on NAEP than on the various state tests. Because the NAEP levels are exceedingly high, Robert Linn, co-director of CRESST observed that even getting all children to even the "basic" level on NAEP would constitute a mighty challenge[12].

The NCLB bill contains incentives for states to start at a low level (to have any prayer of achieving AYP). This is why, on a preliminary analysis of "failing schools" in various states, Michigan, with high standards had 1513 failing schools, and Arkansas, with low standards, had none. Yet on the fourth grade NAEP reading assessment in 2000, Michigan had 28 percent of its students at or above proficient while Arkansas had only 23. Differences like this will turn into discrepancies between what the state assessments say and what NAEP says about how many students in a state are or are not proficient. Critics and profit seekers will take the discrepancy between the state results and the NAEP results as evidence that the schools are still failing and that the states and districts are lying to their citizens about school quality.

Districts and schools that fail to make AYP are subject to increasingly severe--and unworkable--sanctions. Their staffs can be fired, their kids sent to another district, the district abolished.

Using the original formulation, the White House's own calculations revealed that had NCLB been in place for a few years, about 90% of the schools in North Carolina and Texas would have been labeled "failing schools." North Carolina and Texas? These are states that have been singled out in recent years for their progress on a variety of tests. If they can't meet the standards, what hope is there for the rest? None--that's the purpose of the law. The National Conference of State Legislatures estimated that 90% of all schools would fail while simulations by the Council of Chief State School Officers put the failure rate at only 88%[13]. As a consequence, some wags are beginning to refer to the law as LNSS: Let No School Succeed.

In a move clearly aimed at greasing the skids for vouchers, the U. S. Department of Education put out regulations that make no sense at all. As a first step to quashing failing schools, children in those schools must be offered the option of going to a more successful one, successful defined solely in terms of test scores. It does not matter if the "successful" schools are already stuffed to the gills. They must hire more teachers (where they will find them is something of a mystery), bring in trailers or build more classrooms (where they will get the money is something of a mystery). They must, in the words of Under Secretary Eugene Hickok, build capacity. Only if the arriving students would so crowd the schools as to violate fire or other safety and health codes, can they be denied access. Thus, in theory, we could face a situation in which virtually all students attend schools currently enrolling only 10% of students. In some places, one must truly wonder where kids will go. Los Angeles has enough classroom space for 145,000 high schoolers. The district currently has 165,000 with a projected 200,000 by 2005[14].

There are more than a few technical problems with the concept of AYP. Researchers have found that test scores at the school level are quite volatile from year to year[15]. According to RAND researcher David Grissmer, the tests would not identify the good and the bad schools, but only the lucky and unlucky ones[16]. Not only are the test scores volatile, most of the volatility is associated with factors that have nothing to do with what goes on in the classroom.

No one has given any consideration to student mobility. Nationally, 20% of American students change schools each year. In urban areas the figure is more like 50% and in some instances, the students in a building at the end of the year are not those who started there in the fall. How, then, can the school be considered failing or succeeding?

Similarly, nothing in the law takes into account the phenomenon of summer loss. This is critical. Disadvantaged students show substantial summer loss while middle class and affluent students hold their own in mathematics and actually gain over the summer months in reading. One study found that poor and middle class students gained the same amount during the school year, but, because of summer losses, the poor students fell farther and farther behind their middle class peers as they moved from first to fifth grade[17]. Thus schools that actually make adequate yearly progress during the school year will get labeled as failures because of what happens during the summer months.

Moreover, no one has given any attention to what happens when large numbers of children leave "failing" schools for more successful ones (the U. S. Department of Education has given large grants for publicity campaigns to insure that parents are aware of this option). Suppose the arriving students raise the average class size from 22 to 29 students. This alone could easily transform a successful school into a failing one.

And what kinds of test scores will the arriving students bring? The legislation demands that schools give priority to the neediest students--those with the lowest test scores. The arrival of large numbers of low-scoring students might well convert a successful school into a failing one. At the same time, since the departing students take their low scores with them, the sending school's test scores will automatically rise. But if the sending school gets out of the failing category, it doesn't get the kids back. It only gets to stop paying for their transportation, thereby turning NCLB into an unfunded mandate on parents.

The above problems present sufficient difficulties for schools, but their lives become more arduous because they must to disaggregate the data below the school level. We have mentioned already that school-level test scores show volatility from year to year. Imagine what kind of instability we'll see when we have report by smaller units: blacks, whites, Hispanics, Asians, Native Americans, special education students, kids on free-and-reduced price lunches, and English Language Learners. And if one group doesn't show AYP, the school takes the hit.

When the pre-ordained high failure rate occurs, vouchers and privatization will be touted as the only possible cures. Subsequent to the voucher defeats in Michigan and California, voucher advocates have stopped touting vouchers as a cure-all for the whole nation on market grounds and have started pushing them for poor people on civil rights grounds. They contend that middle class people aren't interested in vouchers because they think their public schools are good (they're right). But with the high failure rates guaranteed by NCLB, even those good schools will fail--51% of the schools North Carolina recognized for "exemplary growth" failed under NCLB[18]. Conservative school critic, Denis Doyle wrote that the NCLB means that the nation is about to be "inundated in a sea of bad news" and that the schools are going to get "pole-axed.[19]"

The privatizers will shout "The school system has proven it is an ossified government monopoly that can't reform itself (Chester Finn shouted precisely this in 1998 in the Wall Street Journal[20]). You've had your chance. We warned you. We gave you 'Nation At Risk' over twenty years ago. Nothing has changed. It's time to apply American business expertise to education." Right, as in Enron, Tyco, Global Crossing, Imclone, WorldCom, the 993 companies that have "adjusted" their accounting reports in the last five years, and the myriad dot.coms that failed because their officers didn't have a clue about how to run a business (How come no one ever criticizes business schools?).

If not yet in bankruptcy court, Chris Whittle and his Edison Schools Inc, will be waiting (Edison stock has been as high as $39 a share, but in February, 2003 it was hovering around $1.35; in ten years, the company has failed to show a profit in even one quarter). Recall that Whittle announced his plan for a national system of private schools in 1991 when President George Herbert Walker Bush was riding high after the Gulf War. So certain was a Bush re-election—coronation, actually—that the most likely Democratic candidates declined to run and left the certain defeat to the Governor of Arkansas.

Recall, too, that Whittle had paid Bush’s secretary of Education, Lamar Alexander, $125,000 as a consultant while Alexander was Governor of Tennessee (Whittle Communications was headquartered in Knoxville). Alexander also bought $10,000 worth of Whittle Communications stock. He transferred the stock to his wife when he became president of the University of Tennessee (for some reason, his wife also wrote a check to Whittle for the shares. Apparently, Whittle never cashed either one of them, but he later bought the stock back for $330,000[21]

Whittle's original grandiose plan prophesied 200 private schools by 1996 and 1000 by 2000 (he currently manages, not owns, about 130 public schools). He said it would require about $1 billion to create a prototype of his scheme and another $2 to ramp it up to a national scale. Where on earth would he get that kind of money? Whittle said from bankers and investors. Three billion from investors who had already lost about $400 million on his earlier adventure, Channel One?

Whittle actually needed Bush and Alexander to push their school voucher plan through Congress. Then children could use those vouchers to attend Edison schools.

When the unthinkable happened and Bush lost, Whittle had to fall back on managing a few public schools. Whittle no doubt already has an advertising campaign ready for when the failing grades start arriving. He will then portray the Edison "model" as the only means of consistently achieving AYP, even though evaluations have found Edison achievement results mixed at best and a dozen schools that Edison lists as showing "positive" trends have terminated their contracts.

But Edison has friends in high places. Lamar Alexander is now a Senator who managed, despite his freshman status, to wrangle a seat on the education committee. Another fan, Eugene Hickok, is Deputy Secretary of Education (Hickok was responsible for persuading then-Pennsylvania governor, Tom Ridge, to impose Edison on Philadelphia schools). And a third Whittle pal and voucher advocate, Lisa Keegan, heads the Education Leaders Council (in which Hickok was very active before taking his current appointment), which has received millions in no-bid contracts from Secretary of Education Rod Paige. Whittle will be ready to roll if the moment comes.

As will be former secretary of education, William J. Bennett. Bennett now heads K12, Inc. After decades of warning people that computers offer no educational advantages, Bennett converted and is now CEO of this company that produces on-line curriculum materials. The "supplementary services" provisions of NCLB offer Whittle, Bennett and other private companies opportunities after the public schools "fail."

The testing requirements alone are enough to consign the schools to failure. The requirements for "highly qualified" teachers simply hit the schools while they're down. All current teachers in schools receiving NCLB funds must be "highly qualified" by 2005-2006, as must anyone who was hired after the 2002-2003 school year began. By "highly qualified," NCLB means those who hold at least a bachelor's degree, have full state certification (or have passed the state's licensing exam), and who have not had any certification requirements waived on "an emergency, provisional, or temporary basis."

There are nationwide shortages of people with such qualifications in mathematics, science and special education--and the cities. Chicago says 25% of the teachers in low-performing schools don't meet the requirements[22], while Baltimore put the figure at 31%[23]. A 2003 survey commissioned by Education Week shows that 22% of all high school students take a course from a teacher without even a minor in the subject. For high-poverty high schools, the figure is 32% and for high-poverty middle schools it is 44%[24]. These precise figures are recent but the teacher qualification problem has been known for some time. We can only assume that the framers of the legislation knew in advance that states could not meet the requirements. They just didn't care.

Even classroom paraprofessionals must have completed two years of college and have an associate's degree or have passed a state test on content and teaching skills. New hires must meet this requirement as of January 8, 2003; existing paraprofessionals have four years to ratchet up their credentials.

Paraprofessionals are low-salaried staff who often come from lower-income neighborhoods. Many urban education experts contend that they are the best possible candidates to become accredited teachers--they are familiar with the situation and know what they're getting into and have shown that they can deal with it. But there is no federal money to assist them to their degrees and if they should attain one, they will no doubt find more attractive salaries outside of the school. And better working conditions--NCLB greatly restricts what services they can provide to children. They can't teach, for instance unless, "directly supervised" by a teacher.

Harry Reid, the Democratic whip in the Senate is said to have gathered some education lobbyists together and asked, "How on earth could you have let this happen?" ("on earth" was not actually the phrase he used). How, indeed? Well, money can be attractive and addictive. How else to explain Democrat George Miller and Ted Kennedy's willingness to endorse President Bush's proposal? Kennedy and Miller now complain that Bush didn't deliver the promised dollars--their versions contained $10 billion more than the $1.4 billion of new money actually appropriated[25]. Some states are already thinking that their costs--in dollars, not even counting hassle--might well be more than they get from NCLB. David Shreve of the National Conference of State Legislatures estimates that the cost of program to states could run as high as $35 billion[26].

Thomas Gaffey, a state legislator in Connecticut says, "I'm sitting here shaking my head. I knew this was loaded with problems, but what the heck was going through their minds?"[27] What indeed? States should look at the lucre-drug that Bush and the NCLB are offering them and just say “No!”

[1] "Christopher Lee, "35 Senators Oppose Outsourcing Plan." Washington Post, February 5, 2003, p. A21.

[2] Robert Tomsho, GOP's Election Gains Give Vouchers a Second Wind." Wall Street Journal, November 11, 2002, p. 1.

[3] Valerie Strauss, "President to Push Vouchers for D. C. Washington Post, February 8, 2003.

[4] Sally West Johnson, "Mathis Rips Feds Over School Act." Rutland Herald (Vermont), February 5, 2003. The analysis can be obtained by emailing William Mathis at wmathis@sover.net.

[5] William J. Mathis, “No Child Left Behind: Wat Are the Costs? Will We Realize Any Benefits?” Phi Delta Kappan, in press.

[6] Robert L Linn, "Standards-Based Accountability: Ten Suggestions." Policy Paper, Center for Research in Evaluation, Standards and Student Testing, 1998.

[7] General Accounting Office, Educational Achievement Standards: NAGB's Approach Yields Misleading Interpretations. Washington, DC: Author, June 1993, Report GAO/PEMD-93-12.

[8] National Academy of Sciences, Grading the Nation's Report Card: Evaluating NAEP and Transforming the Assessment of Educational Progress. Washington, DC: National Academy Press, 1999.

[9] Lyle V. Jones, "National Tests of Educational Reform: Are They Compatible?" Princeton, NJ: Policy Information Center, Educational Testing Service, 1997. Accessible at www.ets.org/search97cgi/s97_cgi.

[10] U. S. Department of Education, The Nation's Report Card: Fourth Grade Reading 2000. Washington, DC: Author, Report No. NCES 2001-499, p. 15.

[11] Warwick P. Elley, How in the World Do Students Read? The Hague, Holland: International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement, 1992. Available in this country through the International Reading Association, Newark, Delaware.

[12] Robert L. Linn, Eva L. Baker, and Damian W. Betebenner, "Accountability systems: Implications of the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001." Educational Researcher, August/September 2002, pp. 3-16.

[13] Information can be found at the organization's websites, www.ncsl.org, and www.ccsso.org.

[14] Randy Ross, "School Choice Where None Exists." Education Week, December 4, 2002, p. 37.

[15] Thomas J. Kane and Douglas O Staiger, "Volatility in School Test Scores: Implications for Test-Based Accountability Systems." In Diane Ravitch (Ed.), Brookings Papers on Education 2002. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, 2002.

[16] Lynn Olson, "Study Questions Reliability of Single Year Test-Score Gains, Education Week, May 23, 2001 p. 9.

[17] Karl L. Alexander, Doris R. Entwistle, and Linda S. Olson, "Schools, Achievement and Inequality: A Seasonal Perspective." Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, Summer, 2001, pp. 171-191.

[18] Tim Simmons, "U.S. Standards Perplex N.C. Schools." Raleigh News & Observer, June 2, 2002, p. A1

[19] Denis P. Doyle, "AYP Revealed, Now What?" The Doyle Report, June 4, 2002. "AYP Once More Once," The Doyle Report, June 13, 2002. www.thedoylereport.com

[20] Chester E. Finn, Jr., "Why America Has the World's Dimmest Bright Kids." Wall Street Journal, February 25, 1998, p. A22.

[21] “The Editors: Slick Lamar. The New Republic, March 4, 1996.

[22] Catherine Gewertz, "City Districts Seek Teachers With Licenses." Education Week, September 11, 2002, p. 1.

[23] Kate Walsh, Teacher Certification Reconsidered: Stumbling for Quality. Baltimore, MD: The Abell Foundation, 2001.

[24] Education Week. Quality Counts 2003: If I Can't Learn from You…Ensuring a Highly Qualified Teacher in Every Classroom. Bethesda, MD: Author, January 9, 2003.

[25] Erik W. Robelen, "Democratic, GOP Education Plans Differ by Billions." Education Week, March 27, 2003, p. 1.

[26] Robert a. Frahm, "Lawmakers Hear Criticism of Education Reform Law." Hartford Courant, February 8, 2003, p. 1.

[27] Ibid.

McIntyre's Austerity Plan for Cutting $7M Ignores $27M in the Bank

2012-01-12T14:23:00.002-05:00

Last Fall Eli Broad's Tennessee transplant, Supt. James McIntyre, laid out his wish list for slashing teachers and privatizing services in Knoxville, Tennessee Schools, all based on a purported shortfall of $7 million from a $384+ million dollar budget:

Facing a looming budget deficit of at least $7 million, Knox County Schools' Superintendent Dr. Jim McIntyre is outlining a number of drastic cuts.

In a memo to the Board of Education, McIntyre said outsourcing custodial services, closing small schools, and adjusting school start times are areas in which significant savings could be realized. He also said adjustments to high school staffing levels and re-evaluating the policies for community use of school facilities would help eliminate the deficit.

"None of the areas analyzed present options that are without significant impact on one or more segments of our population, and most of the options in each analysis would require changes not just in operations but to what may be seen as a philosophy of support or service," McIntyre wrote. . . .

Looming, I tell you! Now with this find by Knoxville blogger, Mike Donila, one must ask if McIntryre was unaware of school assets or was he determined to create a false crisis in order to save his Club LeConte cronies a few tax dollars.

Below is page 202 of Knox County's last Comprehensive Annual Financial Report for 2011, which shows a $27,000,000 unassigned fund balance (click to enlarge):

Guest Post: Against Oligarchical Roundtables In Education

2012-01-12T08:41:00.000-05:00

Against Oligarchical Roundtables In Education (and really, everywhere else too)

by Douglas Storm

If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don’t have to worry about the answers. Thomas Pynchon, Gravity’s Rainbow

It’s that simple really. All we do now is ask the wrong questions and get irrelevant answers because the questions determine the direction we’ll be heading. The Pynchon quote comes from the stunningly simple book by Kathy Emery and Susan Ohanian called Why Is Corporate America Bashing Our Schools? By simple I mean obvious. When you read it you are just left with a kind of awe-struck response to the clear and obvious abuses perpetrated by that class of Americans we call “owners” or corporate managers. They have the money, the networks, the connections, the property and the will to assert their will upon us all. And without us even being aware of it. If you read no other book about AMERICA–you must read this one.

Missions and Visions disguise motivations and worldview. The Monroe County Community School Corporation is using “surveymonkey” to allow public comment on their proposed statements of purpose and “belief” (yeah, I know): gathering data, as it were, in a rather stark example of the way the world works these days. Given that it’s likely nothing the community of parents say will matter (unless they are major contributors to campaigns or major property owners in the county) we can at least examine the proposals in a way that allows us to know what’s coming.

First, I think I’ve said somewhere that the two institutions I think of when I consider these kinds of facile exercises is the Church and the modern Corporation. This in itself is starkly instructive.
Next, a possibly the primary point to consider: the words used tend to be “of the moment” and in effect are meaningless as to any revelation of content within said institution. But, a big but, what they do allow is an expansive application of practices to “meet the mission” parameters. It’s a kind of business contract that is always ambiguous and always interpreted to fit the business ideology.

Finally, we’ve arrived at a pretty clear codification of “secret” meanings over the last decade or so. The Business Agenda determines our practices. Certain words indicate the willingness of a Board or Superintendent to put that agenda first to the detriment of the community of children and citizens.
I intended to break this down but it’s already been done by Emery and Ohanian so I’ll just insert their analysis and critique where applicable. The primary question we are always advised to bear in mind (i.e., a correct question to ask), “Whom do these statements serve?”

Read with care…mission statements from school districts across the country. Ask yourself why every word is there: what does it mean and what does it hide? Ask yourself who profits. Which statements seem to be emanating from a public relations echo chamber? As you read each mission, put yourself in the shoes of the five-year-olds, eight-year-olds, thirteen-year-olds, and eighteen-year-olds in that district. Does this sound like a happy place to be? A fit place for a child you love? (Emery and Ohanian, 81)

What is clear from any number of examples is the worldview of the owners of an economic hegemony. Here are the “draft” Vision and Mission Statements of the MCCSC:
Vision Statement: A World Class Learning Community – For Leaders of Tomorrow
Mission Statement: Maximize student achievement, working in collaboration with parents and the community, to be productive and responsible citizens, who are successful globally.

Plenty of mission statements reek of backroom cigar smoke and corporate-politico handshakes, but take heart: with world-class standards infecting so many education plans, we only found one school board intent on producing world-class children. Of course technological society and world of tomorrow ooze their way into the rhetoric; they are all just euphemisms for the global economy, which is what this is all about. As many have noted, it’s a mean economy, cruising the world for cheap labor. (80)

The “core beliefs” that come next all begin with the phrase “We believe…” and form a kind of creed. See the Nicene Creed for another example of this.

Value 1: All children can learn; we can teach all students; there are No exceptions.
All children can learn what? We can certainly teach all children that there is only business ideology and success is only to be measured in those terms. That seems pretty reasonable, right?

Value 2: In the facilitation and development of diverse curricular and extra-curricular programs which result in high levels of student engagement, address student needs, interests, and integrate technology when appropriate.
Wow, that’s a mouthful and all beliefs there are somewhat “open for business.” We must not see these as independent beliefs but rather beliefs that make the mission and vision possible. These support the global economic hegemony. It’s kind of like reading a fortune cookie and then always finishing with the phrase “in bed,” but in this case we’d need to insert a business phrase. Try any of them and see if they work. Maybe “to be productive” in some grammatical form works?

Value 3: Children are unique and their self-esteem will be fostered to become successful (ly productive in the global economy for the corporate class).
See, it works.

Value 4: A positive attitude creates a successful working and learning environment.
Hey, don’t even think about complaining or disagreeing with this!

Value 5. District employees are high valued resources (in the production of economic ideology).

Value 6. In an environment in which continuous improvement through Professional Learning Communities is embedded in our culture to ensure high performance.
Continuous improvement sounds exhausting! But it’s important that we embed a business hierarchy that treats its teachers like soldiers serving the principal (getting order from) who in turn serves the Superintendent who in turn serves the (bypassed board) State economic and ideological agenda. I mean, they’re “embedded” after all!

Value 7: In a safe and secure learning environment. (Locked Down and Monitored! Embedded security.)

Traveling under various guises, economics pops up in lots of mission statements. Not as the actual word but as an underlying theme. Watch for its permutations: productive employment and productive lives, or, in billionaire Eli Broad’s words, future knowledge workers. Such language reveals the extent to which the Business Roundtable agenda and myth making dominate school boards. (79)

Judy DeMuth, the Monroe County Community School Corporation’s Superintendent, will speak tomorrow at 7:30 a.m. to the Bloomington Chamber of Commerce to bang the economic agenda drum. This is a natural venue for her to speak as it is to the business leaders that our schools now bow and march in lock-step to their ideology.

My impression is that business leaders don’t really care about education as a way to offer what we might call “learning and enhancement” particularly when applied to individual quality of life. It seems to me as if there are only two goals: reduce or eliminate a public cost that they don’t want to pay, because, primarily, “my money should only serve my purposes,” and increase opportunities for market capture.

I think too that there is a real “success” bias now that is ONLY applicable to the financially well-off. By this I mean, the wealthy only think their way is the right way and if you didn’t get there with them then you have failed at doing things the right and best and proven way. If you are a failure at understanding and applying this right and only way of conceiving of the human goals of living then why should I (rich, socially successful person) subsidize your stupidity and cost myself (and my children) money. Also, if you disagree with my ways why would I want to fund an education that might lead to you opposing me from a power base in the future that might harm me?

Of course, I oppose this vision, mission, and core belief litany and offer a simple replacement.

This school will protect children from poverty and coercive ideology. This school will provide free space where all children will find all the methods of play and creativity we can think of so as to promote as much joy and common caring and understanding as possible.

Chime in.

*Movers and Shakers in “partnership” with Education in Indiana.

Guest Post: NCLB's Faith-Based Reforms, a Post Mortem

2012-01-10T17:12:00.000-05:00

By John Thompson

No Child Left Behind, like the War in Iraq and "Voo Doo" economics is a part of the American tradition of "the Power of Positive Thinking." If teachers really believed that "every child can learn," said the law's authors, revitalized schools would undo the legacies of Jim Crow and poverty. It is thus fitting that we celebrate NCLB's tenth anniversary with the words of Adlai Stevenson, "I find Saint Paul appealing and Saint Peale appalling."

Educationally, NCLB was a faith-based law that attributed schools' problems to "the benign bigotry of low expectations." It proclaimed that "No Excuses!," "High Expectations!," and an attitude of "Whatever It Takes!" could undo concentrations of poverty. An unholy coalition (or should I say an overly holy coalition?) of the left and the right agreed that the horrific conditions of the educational "status quo" were "no accident." Schools were failing in precisely the way they were designed to fail. Unions, because they defended teachers with the wrong mindset, were "courthouse sitters," standing in the way of the civil rights movement of the 21th century.

Politically, NCLB was presented with a bipartisan happy face. It did not need huge investments, such as the costs of refighting the War on Poverty in order to get kids ready and able to learn. NCLB was essentially based on the hypothesis that the way to make a hog bigger is to repeatedly weigh it. Economist Eric Hanushek, for instance, has estimated that great gains could be achieved by tests that cost as little as $50 per child, per year. And Hanushek subsequently estimated that testing's minor investments, that were only modestly sucessful, data-driven accountability produced gains worth $14 trillion.

Hanushek acknowledged that we do not know how to systemically overcome the educational legacy of generational poverty. The economist supported NCLB, however, because it created, "a new attitude along the lines of 'we might not know what to do, but we've got to do something.'"

As educators predicted, however, some experiments worked while others resulted in the narrowing of the curriculum, rote instruction, nonstop test prep, fabricating test score gains, and pushing out difficult-to-educate students. Those unintended consequences, said liberal NCLB supporter Dianne Piche, should not be blamed on NCLB because, "The law is not a person ... it's a piece of paper."

And that led to another paradox. Education bureaucrats who designed NCLB worked with pieces of paper. Because of their disconnect with actual schools, they can claim innocence. But, a decade ago, educators predicted precisely how and why NCLB would backfire. Actual practitioners should have explained that the phenomenon that Piche et. el calls "student performance" is not necessarily something real. It is just bits of electrical bursts in computer systems. That data may or may not reflect actual learning. What gets measured, however, gets done, meaning that, predictably, teaching and learning took a back seat to gaming the numbers.

On the other hand, a retrospective by the economist Mark Schneider, claimed that NCLB actually worked, even though improvements on the most reliable assessment, the federal NAEP, slowed after its enactment. Schneider postulated the force known as the era of "consequential accountability." So, he argued the 2002 law deserves credit for performance gains in 1998!?!?

But now, Schneider has agreed that, "overall gains in performance during the NCLB era are not large." Schneider has thus reclaimed his inner materialist, and has distanced himself from the idealistic roots of NCLB. which said that all it takes to transform schools is to really believe. He has now spilled the beans on what other "reformers" really believe is the key to improving schools. "We had the screws on the states," he said, but politics interfered.

So, retrospectives on NCLB bring to mind other idealists like Billy Sunday, who served a loving God who sometimes was very, very ANGRY. To improve schools, we must first proclaim, "something good is going to happen to you TODAY!" But more vengeful "reformers" know that faith alone has not been transformational. Perhaps they should have reminded their allies that it is not enough to proclaim, "Heal!" Hands also need to be placed on the radio, before we can expect the faith healer to do his work.

Consequently, retrospectives defending give a glimpse of the two sides of the contemporary "reform" movement, that embraces both the liberating power of choice, but also command and control micromanaging of school systems. Some "reformers" are the good cops who love poor kids, and their paradigm is, "I think uplifting thoughts, therefore an educational reformer I am." The bad cops are the social engineers who impose data-driven dictates and litmus tests on educators. Their NCLB was a crusade to wipe out "the status quo."

These postmortems also recall the theories of Thomas Berkeley and Samuel Johnson's counter-argument. Berkeley's positivism denied the existence of material reality. Johnson replied by striking a table ad proclaiming, "I refute it thus!"

For the last decade, teachers have demonstrated Johnson's realism and passed on actual examples of how the spirit of NCLB has backfired. I was one of the naive educators who hoped that our stories might convince the true believers that reality is more than the old paradigm. I never recognized the power of the simpler explanation. Teachers' experiences might be the result of a mass hallucination, so it is understandable that they have not dampened "reformers" faith in data and NCLB.

Dr. John Thompson was an award-winning historian, lobbyist, and guerilla-gardener who became an award-winning inner city teacher after crack and gangs hit his neighborhood. He blogs at thisweekineducation.com, and huffingtonpost.com, and is writing a book on 18 years of idealistic politics in the classroom and realistic politics outside.

With 99% of the People, Why Can't We Get 2/3 of the States

2012-01-10T15:00:00.000-05:00

During this political season, corporations are taking their turns lining up to sponsor political debates whose results are then made made entirely meaningless and irrelevant by subsequent unlimited blasts of negative ads that serve to buy the candidate most likely to prostrate himself completely at the feet of American plutocrats.

Since the 5-4 SCOTUS decision in Citizens United v FEC, we are quickly approaching the full realization of a new era of corporate post-partisanship, when political principles and democratic values are traded in for complete allegiance to the corporate creed of unlimited greed and positivized fascism.

It will take a Constitutional Amendment, but it can be done. Take a moment to see how: