AI Promoters Set to Become Corporate Education Reform’s Next Golden Goose

Another Bad AI Classroom Guide by Peter Greene

Read on Substack

Nashville Rise Ads Traced to School Privatizers

There is a dirty campaign underway to turn the Nashville Metro School Board into into a rubber stamp for the school voucher ideologues and the corporate charter school industry.  Here is a clip by Nashville reporter, Phil Williams, that you need to see:

David Sirota Weighs In on CorpEd

A clip from Salon (minus links):

. . . .For education, technology and charter school companies and the Wall Streeters who back them, it lets them cite troubled public schools to argue that the current public education system is flawed, and to then argue that education can be improved if taxpayer money is funneled away from the public school system’s priorities (hiring teachers, training teachers, reducing class size, etc.) and into the private sector (replacing teachers with computers, replacing public schools with privately run charter schools, etc.). Likewise, for conservative politicians and activist–profiteers disproportionately bankrolled by these and other monied interests, the “reform” argument gives them a way to both talk about fixing education and to bash organized labor, all without having to mention an economic status quo that monied interests benefit from and thus do not want changed.

Meanwhile, despite the fact that many “reformers'” policies have spectacularly failed, prompted massive scandals and/or offered no actual proof of success, an elite media that typically amplifies — rather than challenges — power and money loyally casts “reformers'” systematic pillaging of public education as laudable courage (the most recent example of this is Time magazine’s cover cheering on wildly unpopular Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel after he cited budget austerity to justify the largest mass school closing in American history — all while he is also proposing to spend $100 million of taxpayer dollars on a new private sports stadium).

In other words, elite media organizations (which, in many cases, have their own vested financial interest in education “reform”) go out of their way to portray the anti-public-education movement as heroic rather than what it really is: just another get-rich-quick scheme shrouded in the veneer of altruism.

That gets to the news that exposes “reformers'” schemes — and all the illusions that surround them. According to a new U.S. Department of Education study, “about one in five public schools was considered high poverty in 2011 … up from about to one in eight in 2000.” This followed an earlier study from the department finding that “many high-poverty schools receive less than their fair share of state and local funding … leav(ing) students in high-poverty schools with fewer resources than schools attended by their wealthier peers.” . . . .

Proficiency Based Learning Invades Maine

Emily Talmage is at Ground Zero of a big corporate education reform story that is coming to light in Maine.  It involves another miseducative, money-making "efficiency" scheme. If it is not already in your state, it is coming, thanks to Gates, Lumina, and ALEC. 

But your teachers and parents can stop it before the blood funnel gets fully attached to your state and local education dollars.

    My name is Emily Talmage and I teach fourth grade at Montello Elementary School in Lewiston, Maine.  In addition to teaching in Lewiston, I have also taught special education and general education in New York City, including one year at a “high-performing” charter school in Brooklyn.  I also have two master’s degrees; one in Urban Education from Mercy College, and another in Developmental Psychology from Teachers College, Columbia University.  I have also worked as a research analyst and assistant at the National Center for Children and Families at Columbia and Oldham Innovative Research in Portland.

    On April 22nd, I provided testimony for the Education Committee in support of LD 1153, “An Act to Restore Local Control to Towns.”

    Originally, I intended to focus my testimony on my concerns over standardized testing, particularly with regard to the new Smarter Balanced tests.  Recently, I have written about my concerns over these tests in a variety of outlets, and have focused on the lack of reliability of such tests; the level of corporate involvement and profit in their development; ways that they are developmentally inappropriate; and how this particular test was not meaningfully adaptive as it claimed to be. 

    As I did more research to prepare for this testimony, however, it became clear that an even greater threat to our schools in Maine is “proficiency based education,” particularly as it is being implemented through organizations such as Great Schools Partnership and Reinventing Schools Coalition. 

    In my testimony regarding LD 1153, I explained that I approach instructional and policy decisions with two questions in mind: How will this help our students, and how do we know?  When I was not easily able to find substantial, peer-reviewed research to validate claims that “proficiency based education” is a valid and proven way to improve student learning, I grew concerned.  After a great deal of searching, it became clear that the reason I was having such difficulty finding research is because it does not yet exist.

    This is because proficiency-based education (also called proficiency-based learning and competency-based learning) is a concept that has been intentionally developed through strategic investments of the Gates Foundation and other corporate stakeholders in order to expand opportunities for profit by way of the new Common Core State Standards.

    Investments made by the Gates Foundation to develop and promote the Common Core State Standards are no secret.  It should also be no surprise that the Gates Foundation has also invested in projects to develop digital, online, and game-based learning.  What has been less publicized, however, are their simultaneous investments in “proficiency-based pathways.”
   
    A paper produced by the Gates Foundation describing current investments related to Common Core has a section titled “Proficiency-Based Pathways.” The report states that “conditions are ripe for creating personalized learning opportunities beyond school—in an anytime, anywhere fashion,” and that “we believe it’s possible with the convergence of the Common Core State Standards, the work on new standards-based assessments, the development of new data systems, and the rapid growth of technology-enabled learning experiences.”

    In order to order to make this vision a reality, however, the Gates Foundation had the foresight to see a need for a new theory of learning that they named “proficiency-based education.”  The report refers to this as a “nascent field” that is “still emerging,” and can be described in a variety of ways, including proficiency-based pathways, mastery-driven instruction, standards-based design, and competency-based education.

    Typically, theories of learning are based on extensive research spanning multiple fields of study (education, psychology, sociology, etc.) and are built upon literature and research published in peer-reviewed journals, where they are subject to scrutiny, debate and dialogue with fellow experts. The Gates Foundation, however, in its rush to develop this field and with apparent disregard for this process, decided to bypass this route through a variety of strategic investments.

    It is also worth noting that another organization, the Lumina Foundation, has been doing related work focused on higher education.  The Lumina Foundation is a private, Indianapolis-based foundation arose from a $1 billion student loan sale to Sallie Mae in 2000. Its primary founder, Ed McCabe was Chairman of Sallie Mae at the time of the sale, and joined Lumina to guide its conversion to an Education Foundation.  The Lumina Foundation is currently funding a three-year effort to develop and promote the concept of competency-based education (a term used more commonly than proficiency-based education when related to higher education) through Public Agenda, a nonprofit research organization, which is coordinating the work.  The Lumina Foundation, it should be noted, also has a variety of financial and personnel connections to the American Legislative Exchange Council, an organization well-known for its interest in privatizing public education.

    Another related organization that has been on the receiving end of the Gates Foundation’s investments in developing and promoting the concept of “proficiency based” education has been the Nellie Mae Education Foundation, a non-profit that retained 250 million dollars as an endowment when it separated from the Nellie Mae Corporation in 1998. At that time, the Nellie Mae Corporation was sold to Sallie Mae, which created the endowment for the Nellie Mae Education Foundation. In 2010, the Nellie Mae Education Foundation also received 1.7 million dollars from the Gates Foundation. 

    The Nellie Mae Education Foundation has been very active here in Maine.  One of the first things the organization has done with regard to developing the concept of proficiency/competency-based education was to award grants to a handful of schools that it claimed were employing “competency education” models.  Eleven small high schools, all with fewer than 600 students, were given grants in return for participating in NMEF’s “study.”  A table profiling these schools can be found in a report produced by NMEF called “Making Mastery Work.”  These schools employ a wide variety of educational practices, many of which educators hold in high-esteem.  These practices include “expeditionary learning,” in which students produce in-depth projects through hands-on work outside of the classroom to demonstrate their learning, and “performance-based” learning, in which students show their learning through specific, “real-life” tasks rather than tests. 

    Curiously (or, perhaps, predictably) the third section of this report discusses the advantages of a variety of technological and digital tools in implementing a proficiency/competency model - even though many of the schools they profile do not use such tools.  According to the report, “Many of the schools keep students updated on their progress using low-tech tools like wall charts, stickers, and student initials on lists of standards. Indeed, many schools find these tools valuable even when they have more robust technology systems in place.”  Nevertheless, the authors of the report conclude: “In this era of digital data, the quest for an effective computer-based learning management system is inevitable.”  In fact, the report even goes so far as to tell us what we, as teachers, want in our classrooms:  “Neither packaged courseware products, which have little flexibility, nor learning management systems that allow for maximum customization but offer no content, meet teacher needs for online curriculum delivery systems.”  

    The report makes five key points in its conclusion, which together establish a clear link between the new Common Core Standards, technology, online learning, and what is now taking place in Maine with the recent implementation of LD1422 and the rapid spread of “proficiency based learning” in our state.

    The Common Core Standards are more amenable to competency education.
    Rapid technology innovations are simplifying the work of instituting comprehensive competency education information systems.
    Blended and online curriculum increasingly provides opportunities for self-acing
    and differentiation
    Friendly policies have passed at the federal, state and district level, making it possible to establish coherent programs in schools, programs and districts
    Schools and districts are developing increasingly mature competency-based
    pathways and approaches that others can study and potentially replicate.

    It is curious that the Nellie Mae Education Foundation discusses these “friendly policies” and “mature competency-based pathways” as though they occurred outside their sphere of influence, when little could be further from the truth. Since 2011, the Nellie Mae Education Foundation has given almost thirteen million dollars to organizations in Maine to implement proficiency-based learning initiatives, including $490,000 to Educate Maine, an organization that worked to get a law passed (LD 1422) requiring that all high school graduates receive a “proficiency-based diploma” by the year 2017. It is worth noting that LD 1422, currently the only law of its kind in the country, is now listed as model legislation on the Foundation for Excellence in Education’s website – another foundation with direct ties to the American Legislative Exchange Council, which again, is well-known for its efforts to privatize public education. 

    Grants from the Nellie Mae Education Foundation to Maine-based organizations include:

    $490,000  to Educate Maine between the years 2012-2015 for State-Level Systems Change and Public Understanding and Demand
    $3,339,416 to Great Schools Partnership for State-Level Systems Change and Public Understanding and Demand from 2012-2014
    $250,000 to Maine Coalition for Excellence in Education for State-Level Systems Change from 2010-2011
    $4,161,396 to Sanford Schools by way of Re-Inventing Schools Coalition for implementing PBL through Reinventing Schools
    $281,000 to Maine DOE for State-Level Systems Change 2011-201
    $4,179,040 Jobs for Maine Graduates based in Portland
   
   
    According to a report put out by the International Association for K-12 Online Learning (IACOL) and Competency Works, another organization funded by Nellie Mae, Educate Maine was formed to engage business leaders in the passage of LD 1422, establishing proficiency-based high school diplomas. Educate Maine has created a pathway for business leaders “to engage directly with legislators in support of personalized, proficiency-based learning.” Despite receiving well over a half million dollars from the Nellie Mae Education Foundation for “State-Level Systems Change and Public Understanding and Demand,” Educate Maine (previously called the Maine Coalition for Excellence in Education) did not register as a lobbyist when they were actively working with legislators and other stakeholders to pass LD 1422. 

    A memo dated July 2011 written by Tanna Clews, then Executive Director of the Maine Coalition for Excellence in Education (and whose work, incidentally, is highlighted on the Lumina Foundation’s “Strategy Lab’s” website), discusses the “$50,000 in additional funding for our policy work and the planning of a legislative retreat.” The memo thanks Yellow Light Breen (former Education Commissioner, Chief Strategic Officer of Bangor Savings Bank and board member at Educate Maine) for his “leadership and persistence in navigating conversations with Nellie Mae,” as well as Henry Bourgeois (former Executive Director of the Maine Compact for Higher Education and president of the Alfond Scholarship Foundation) and Duke Albanese  (former Maine Education Commissioner and current Senior Policy advisor at Great Schools Partnership, board member of Educate Maine, and treasurer of the Maine International Center for Digital Learning) for their “insight and willingness to answer my (many!) questions.” 
   
    The memo also discusses its grant proposal for Nellie Mae’s “Student-Centered Learning: Building a Supportive State Policy Environment” grant program, which “highlights Educate Maine’s legislative work with LD 1422.”  Additionally, the memo discusses the purchase of 200 copies of Inevitable, Mass Customization of Education, to be “distributed by the Maine Department of Education to every superintendent in the state.”

    In legislative records taken in a Maine Senate session on Thursday, April 5, 2012, Senator Brian Langley discusses the “retreat” sponsored by Educate Maine that he took with the rest of the Education Committee to visit two schools who are “involved in the transition to standards based education.”

In preparation for coming into the second half of the 125th the Education Committee went on a retreat in November, sponsored by Nellie Mae, Educate Maine, which includes Cianbro, Apple Corporation, UNUM, and the Maine State Chamber. The New England Secondary Consortium was represented by former Commissioner of Education Duke Albanese. On this retreat we visited two schools who were involved in the transition to standards based education. We actually went into the schools and sat with children, side-by-side with them in the elementary school, and asked them about their education. They were actively involved, engaged, and they could tell you where they were and where they were expected to be before they could move on. It was impressive.
    It is curious, however, to read the description of the classrooms the Education Committee visited.  On a blog post, Representative Brian Hubbell describes his visit with to the Williams School in Oakland, where 200 students attend.  

We visited during the school’s schedule-block for math,” he writes.  “In one classroom, the students were using a variety of tools to learn the fundamentals of multiplication.  In another, the topic was time.  Next door: geometry. Down the hall, it was money and currency.  In another classroom, on the floor with their teacher, students were studying division by doing punctuated sets of abdominal crunches.

Not a single student is described as using technology, online learning, nor game-based digital learning, yet there is little doubt that these are the learning methods being championed by the investors behind Educate Maine.  To read this description and compare it with the stated goals of the organizations’ funders suggests that Educate Maine may have been intentionally engaging in a “bait and switch” scheme with the Education Committee in order to create buy-in and generate support for the new bill. 
   
    This would not be the only time Educate Maine engaged in questionable lobbying practices.  In 2014, Educate Maine took over the “Maine Teacher of the Year” program. That same year, Educate Maine sent a letter on behalf of Maine Teachers of the Year advising that LD 579, “An Act to Allow Teachers to Teach and Students to Learn by Amending the Laws Governing Education Standards,” ought not to pass.  The letter states that the “goal of proficiency-based education is two-fold: to close the achievement gap in Maine and to close the opportunity gap by holding all students to high expectations connected Maine’s Learning Results.”  It worth noting that the original report from the Gates Foundation does not discuss either of these goals with regard to proficiency-based learning.
   
    In Lewiston, where I teach fourth grade, we have partnered with Great Schools Partnership, one of the organizations given multi-million dollars grants from Nellie Mae, to implement proficiency-based learning in our schools.  Most of the work has begun in the high school, where parents, teachers, and students have grown increasingly frustrated and wary of the work they are being asked to do.  The work has centered around reworking report cards and grading systems, creating Common Core aligned rubrics and assessments, and trying to negotiate new scheduling challenges.  In our elementary schools, the work has been more gradual, but perplexing nonetheless.  In a planning meeting, we were required to re-code reading and writing assessment data into “standards-based” format and enter it into Pearson Inform.  When I asked what the purpose of this was, the answer given by our instructional coach was simply, “It’s the way Pearson wants it.”
   
    I now have no doubt in my mind that in Lewiston, we are guinea pigs for a new, experimental method of teaching and learning that has been designed to benefit content providers rather than students.  An article published in Forbes in 2012 had the foresight to predict this change.  Its author, Michael Horn, wrote that at that time:

The behind-the-scenes buzz on Common Core touched on everything from how different the assessments really will be from what some states have today to whether Common Core will doom testing and the accountability movement more generally because of the length of the assessments to whether governors will stick with Common Core once the first year of assessment results come out and people see how students perform poorly on them. 


Indeed, we have seen how unhappy parents, teachers, and students have been with the new Smarter Balanced tests, and it is likely that Horn’s predictions of students performing poorly will be accurate.  It is Horn’s next prediction, however, that is even more concerning:    

Of course, if there were instead systems of assessments in a competency-based learning system built for students to take an assessment on-demand when the were ready to demonstrate mastery on specific competencies, we would see a different picture develop with assessments that left no doubt that they were different.

    In Maine, we are witnessing this very experiment take place in our schools in the form of proficiency-based learning. The Nellie Mae report writes, “Schools and districts are developing increasingly mature competency-based pathways and approaches that others can study and potentially replicate.”  States that have not adopted proficiency-based learning will look in the future to data gathered from students and schools in Maine when deciding whether or not to adopt similar legislation to LD 1422.  We will be the data that does not yet exist.  
   
    In Lewiston, we have already committed at least sixty thousand dollars to professional development for proficiency-based learning in our district for the coming year, as well as many thousands more to additional technology and software programs to support this new, unproven, corporate-driven theory of learning.  Meanwhile, we cannot afford additional teachers so that my colleagues and I will not have overcrowded classrooms (upwards of 30 students) in the coming year, even though we know that smaller class sizes leads to not only improved educational outcomes, but also outcomes for students beyond school.
   
     It should go without saying that I am deeply concerned for the future of our public schools, and am hopeful that we will begin to look more closely at the policies we are enacting in our state.  In my opinion, we do not need more time or more money to implement an experimental, corporate-driven reform idea in our public schools.  We do not need to simply start in earlier grades and move forward from there.  

    Our children deserve much better than this.  They deserve classrooms that employ well-research, thoroughly studied educational practices that have been proven effective.  They deserve educators who are empowered professionals and are able to employ their expertise in meaningful ways.  They deserve adults who will advocate for their needs rather than bend to the wishes of corporate interests.  And they deserve to be treated as valuable individuals – not guinea pigs in a large-scale experiment.  

[1] https://docs.gatesfoundation.org/Documents/supporting-students.pdf
[2] https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2013/12/12/lumina-funded-group-seeks-lead-conversation-competency-based-education
[3] http://www.competencyworks.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/Making-Mastery-Work-NMEF-2012-Inline.pdf
[4] http://www.nmefoundation.org/grants
[5] http://strategylabs.luminafoundation.org/champion/tanna-clews/
[6]http://legisweb1.mainelegislature.org/wp/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2013/02/110-04-05-12R2.pdf
[7] http://www.mainehousedistrict35.com/private-business-and-public-education-a-wary-but-promising-partnership/#comment-67414
[8] http://www.mainelegislature.org/legis/bills/getTestimonyDoc.asp?id=28083
[9] http://nepc.colorado.edu/files/pb_-_class_size.pdf

 

AEI's Self-Analysis of Why CorpEd Is a Loser

Great post below by Philadelphia patriot, Ken Derstine:

I have stumbled onto this amazing video from a panel at the American Enterprise Institute (look at this link) on February 5, 2015. This is a spawning center of neoliberalism! This is the corporate education reformers talking to the choir. It is amazing to watch. This confirms everything I said in Who’s Is Eli Broad and Why Is He Trying to Destroy Public Education? from their goals, to their deep collaboration with the U.S. Department of Education, to Randi Weingarten’s collaboration with them. 

Also, they might present a front that they are powerful because of the subservience of the corporate media, but among themselves they know they are just putting “a bucket in the ocean”. A number of times they ask why the corporate funders keep funding the corporate attack on education when it obviously is not working. They are also aware they are in an ivory tower and have little understanding of their impact on the “grassroots”. This is the video:

Is the ‘new’ education philanthropy good for schools? Examining foundation-funded school reform | American Enterprise Institute

This video is also on YouTube and should be downloaded.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zMDXfl9e4DM 

This video is four hours long, but watch a little of it to get the flavor. (Warning: I said there is no way I can give four hours to this, but it is so engrossing and important, I watched it off and on for two days and I’m sure I will rewatch parts.) 

Watch the first two panelists in the in the first panel. The second panelist, Sarah Reckhow, (starting at 16:00)  co-authored the policy paper ‘Singing from the same hymnbook': Education policy advocacy at Gates and Broad | Michigan State University . What struck me is how matter of fact she is in the video and the paper about Randi Weingarten participating with them which is obviously assumed by other panelists to be common knowledge. See pages 18 and 19 of the paper which shows Randi Weingarten’s collaboration with them. Sarah Reckhow comments that Randi Weingarten has been working with them to develop a teacher evaluation based on standardized tests.

Anthony Cody had a post about this paper on February 9. Reckhow and Tomkins-Stange Document How Gates and Broad Money Got Everyone “Singing from the Same Hymnbook  He makes no mention of Randi Weingarten’s role, nor does he link the panel (which his article indicates he had seen).

Also see my article: Which Side Are You On? | Defend Public Education!

After watching the second panelist, go to 55:00. There is a real demoralization they are showing. Notice what they say about the impact of the Chicago teachers strike.

The second panel is about the “backlash” against corporate education reform. (starts at about 1:30) The demoralization is very evident here.

Howard Fuller of Black Alliance for Educational Opportunity (which Philadelphia mayoral candidate Anthony Williams is affiliated with - see my article Corporate Education Reform and Civil Rights ) is on the second panel. Notable quote (1:54): “We (BAEO) wouldn’t exist without John Walton and this is one of the reasons I love that man."

At 1:47 the panelist Larry Cuban speaks about the Broad Superintendent’s Academy. He is followed by Howard Fuller. (Starts at 1:51.) His remarks are very revealing about how disconnected these people are from what is the reality in public schools and from the impact of what they are doing. Fuller seems totally unaware that he is working for the same political forces that have been underfunding schools for decades and the money BAEO receives from them comes from the low wage exploitation of Walmart workers.

The third panel, starts at 2:42, is about the future of corporate philanthropy. It starts with Dana Goldstein. I commented about Dana Goldstein on Schools Matter on September 30, 2014. There are also articles on Schools Matter if you do a search in the search engine for “Dana Goldstein". 

The second panelist (2:55) talks about corporate education reform in higher education. Anyone in higher education should watch this…and be very afraid. The fourth panelist, Jim Blew (3:18), left the Walton Foundation to replace Michelle Rhee at Students First. He spends most of his time attacking teacher unions. (Note: He says his father was a teacher union organizer.) One corporate ed reform organization he cites (which has gone below the radar, I never heard of them; they are not mentioned on Sourcewatch) as being very influential is the Fisher Family. 

This is the initial article that led to my finding this video:

School Masters: How Gates and Broad Came to Shape the Education Policy Debate | Inside Philanthropy

March 24, 2015

Frederick Hess at the end of panel one made an off the cuff comment (at 51:00) which summed up the bottom line for these people.:

“They (venture philanthropist) may not be as powerful as they think they are in terms of shaping what happens in the nation’s schools and classrooms, but they’re very powerful in terms of us being able to feed our families and being able to do the research and analysis we like to do.” In other words, there is no real passion, no real belief in what they are doing; they looking at spreadsheets and each others position papers….and they are just in it for the big bucks.

Ken Derstine

From Inside the Corporate Ed Reform School Cult

Posted at Education Matters by a former corporate ed reform advocate, Jorge Cabrera.  ht to Peter Farruggio

For nearly three years, I had been involved in what has often been referred to by some as the “education reform movement” in Bridgeport.  In 2012, I was presented with a unique opportunity to work for a new local organization that would work “with the community” to reform the public schools.  The mission was to work towards helping Bridgeport students increase their academic performance and by extension, I thought, lower the dropout rate, increase the rate of college attendance and teach parents how to effectively advocate for the resources and supports their children needed to succeed in school.  As a Bridgeport public school graduate and the first person in my family to attend and graduate from an institution of higher learning, I knew, first hand, how the trajectory of one’s life could be dramatically changed with the attainment of that often coveted credential…a college degree.  Further, as a native Bridgeporter I was sold on the prospect of working with the community I grew up in and loved to help improve educational outcomes for thousands of Bridgeport students.  However, what I did not fully appreciate at the time, but soon found out, was that I was smack in the middle of a simmering firestorm that would divide the community I cared for so dearly and force me to question my own assumptions about “education reform” and the people in front and behind this “movement.”

            Though I did not fully know it at the time, a series of manipulative and deceitful political moves were made before I began my work in the “movement” that would be revealed to me in over 200 conversations with many Bridgeport leaders and friends.  These “moves” would severely taint the work I would embark on and proved to be a major stumbling block to organizing the community.

            Despite these challenges, I began my work full of hope and excited to put my skills and experience toward the noble goal of improving the Bridgeport school system.  Unfortunately, what I learned in the coming years was the incredible lengths some people with access to great wealth and political power would go to in order to privatize an already overburdened and underfunded school district and the ideology that undergirded it.
 This is my story.

 The Best and the Brightest

 As I began my work in the “education reform movement” in Bridgeport, I noticed a plethora of ivy league educated “consultants” and “transformational leaders” that littered the often loose coalition of funders, new organizations and executive directors.  From the beginning, it was clear that many of these new “leaders” that were emerging were well credentialed. They had graduated from prestigious universities and, it was presumed (though not by me), that alone qualified them to lead. Many were very young (recent graduates), energetic, unmarried with no children and little life experience.  They often exhibited a cultish commitment to “the movement.” Their zeal for “education reform” and “saving the children” often resulted in a bizarre abdication of critical thinking that made a mockery of their high priced “education.”  For instance, in many meetings I attended, many of these acolytes extolled the virtues of charter schools as the only solution to closing the achievement gap in Bridgeport but never once did anyone bother to discuss the ample research (i.e. “Teaching with Poverty in Mind” ) available regarding the negative impact of poverty on academic achievement or that Bridgeport had several public magnet schools that outperformed (as measured by standardized test scores) many charter schools.  These magnet schools had long track records (20 plus years) of success and I assumed we should advocate for what we know, firmly, works.  Despite this evidence, there was never any serious discussion regarding expanding magnet school options or advocating for high quality, universal preschool programs (research shows the achievement gap begins at this level).  The entire approach to “education reform” lacked any serious understanding of the many variables (i.e., social-emotional issues, poverty, funding, English language learners) that clearly effect a child’s ability to learn.  Anytime a more dynamic and multifaceted approach to closing the achievement gap was raised it was quickly dismissed as “making excuses.”  The atmosphere vacillated between a callous indifference to the real challenges Bridgeport children faced and arrogant dismissiveness. Permeated throughout these various organizations that formed a loose network of power was a culture that prized blind dedication to the “mission” and socially affirmed and promoted those who obeyed and exhibited “urgency” in “reforming” the “failing schools.”  The people in “the movement” made it clear that it was up to the “best and brightest” of minds to “transform” the “system” as “outside influencers.” By “best and brightest” they almost exclusively meant people who would do their bidding without question and certainly not anyone that would exhibit any degree of independent or critical thought.  On more than one occasion, when the argument was made that the solutions to the multilayered challenge of public education needed to come from the people and required an authentic, engaging process with the Bridgeport community the response was often glib at best.  I recall in one strategic planning meeting when I advocated for authentic engagement and patience to allow parents the time to become informed on the various issues and was told to, “just use language to convince” the parents and impress upon them a sense of “urgency.”  Another person told me, “It’s all about how you say it.”  It was becoming increasingly clear to me that there was little interest in authentic community engagement and problem solving.  The fact that I was hired to do exactly that was lost on virtually everyone!  They were talking at me not to me.  I began to sense that someone or something I was not fully aware of was calling the shots behind the scenes and many of these young ivy leaguers were the mercenaries on the front lines tasked with implementing the agenda.  This whole enterprise was quickly becoming astroturfing and I was in the middle of it.  Worse, I was starting to feel like I was hired to put lipstick on a pig and it was beginning to burn me on the inside.  Nevertheless, through it all, I never gave up hope and tried to create spaces for honest, authentic and fact based discussions inside “the movement” with limited success.

The Knight in Shining Armor

My first meeting with Paul Vallas was like a whirlwind.  He barely came up for air! He spoke in a rapid fire cadence and despite my best efforts I could not engage him in any substantive conversations.  He rode into the city as the new superintendent of schools like a knight in shining armor.  Immediately and repeatedly, I was told by many in the “reform community” that Vallas was a “godsend,” a “transformational leader” with an international reputation of turning school systems around, increasing academic outcomes and changing the lives of, literally, thousands of students. The praise heaped on him was ubiquitous. He often spoke in soundbites and we were told that we were to be a “critical friend” to the new superintendent.  We would support him when he was right and criticize him when he was wrong.  Our main constituents, I was told, were the families and students.  Good enough, I thought at the time.  In reality, we were dispatched to drum up support in the community for virtually every policy change or initiative proposed by Vallas.  Any thoughtful questioning of the efficacy of his proposals was met with stone silence or the injection of the “urgency” argument which was intended to and had the effect of silencing any meaningful discussion.  If one pushed too hard to open up an authentic discussion regarding Vallas’s proposals “the movement” would send strong signals that the questioner was being disloyal and that such questioning was deemed heresy.  It was as if a “bunker mentality” had descended on many in “the movement.” You were either with them or against them.  Despite this hostile environment, on one occasion, I was able to engage Vallas in a rare moment of reflection and candor.  We were discussing different school models and supports for students and I casually asked Vallas if he thought traditional neighborhood public schools could succeed if they were given adequate funding and supports for students, teachers and families.  His response was very revealing. He stated, “Yes! Of course they can, but my charter (school) friends don’t like it when I say that.”  It was a rare, candid moment that spoke volumes and provided a rare glimpse into the mindset of the “reformers.”  The veil was starting to be lifted.  As I continued to have extensive conversations with many community leaders I began to appreciate the deceitful and manipulative manner in which Vallas was hired to lead the Bridgeport school system.  It was all unfolding before me and the truth was emerging.

Power to the People?

 The crown jewel of the “education reform movement” in Bridgeport was the 2012 charter revision ballot question that would of given the Mayor the authority to appoint the entire board of education, among other powers.  The “movement” was in a frenzy to win this election.  We were told that “the people woud decide” and “they (the people) have the power.”  All of the work we were engaged in to build relationships, trust and educate parents regarding the school system and education policy was abruptly halted to focus on winning this ballot question election.  It was a pressure cooker!  When I tried to actually read the proposed language changes to the city’s charter and have discussions with parents so that both I and they were fully informed on what we were asking people to vote on, I was quickly pushed aside in favor of a group of highly compensated New York City media consultants who came in and began directing instead of facilitating the “discussions.”  Immediately, the focus was on marketing and sloganeering.  Worse, we were trying to build the plane while it was in the air! The whole thing was rushed and disorganized. We were told to make sure we communicated to the public that voting in favor of the city charter change was good for parents, students and would lead to better academic outcomes.  The insinuation was that anyone who was against the charter revision changes was anti-child or anti-education. When parents or community leaders asked questions that required more substantive, fact based responses we were coached to respond to everything in soundbites and with shallow arguments that lacked any grounding in reality.  It was the worse kind of insult to the community’s intelligence and pandered to the worse aspects of human nature and—it almost worked.

 Revelation and the Shock Doctrine

 My nearly three years in the “movement” in Bridgeport revealed to me the incredible lengths that private, often unseen and unaccountable power will go to in order to create and capitalize on a crisis.  In Bridgeport, that crisis in our public education system was created by powerful forces at the local and state level who systematically starved the school system by withholding necessary school funding (Shock #1) which then created a crisis that set the stage for a takeover (Shock #2) of the Bridgeport board of education on the eve of the fourth of July in 2011.  Essentially, these forces were engaged in a form of social engineering under the guise of “urgency” and “reform.” To be clear, in this “movement” there are people who have good intentions and sincerly want to improve the conditions of Bridgeport’s public schools but they do not sit at the tables of power when strategic decisions are made and their voices are often silenced. Their talents, skills and knowledge are often used to serve a larger, opaque agenda that is dictated by a radical ideology of deregulation and privatization.  Shot throughout most, if not all, of the education reform “movement” you will find the radical ideology of economist Milton Friedman.  Looking back, there were moments when this mindset (disaster capitalism) was revealed to me in meetings.  On one occassion, a very influential operator in the “education reform” community was discussing the “amazing opportunity” that revealed itself after hurricane Katrina in New Orleans desimated the population and led to the “charterization” of the public school system.  He expounded that sometimes you have to, “…burn the village to save it…” and that what we (the “reform community”) are essentially involved in is, “creative destruction.”  Worse, he argued that we needed a “clean slate” in order for real “change” to happen in the school system in Bridgeport.  But this was my home.  This was the city I grew up in and where most of my family lived and worked.  You want to burn down their city!? You want to destroy it so you can be creative!?  For whom?  It was all surreal.  I was done.

 In Naomi Klein’s book and, “The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism,” she outlines how powerful economic and political forces harness terrible shocks to implement radical policies to privatize and profit from public resources.  In Bridgeport, this ideology played itself out on our public school system and, for a season at least, seemed to be the dominant ideology on the verge of assuming complete power over the public school system.  We almost succeeded.  Thanks to the people of the City of Bridgeport—we did not and that’s a good thing.

 Jorge Cabrera was employed by the “education reform” organization Excel Bridgeport from 2012-2015–the organization on the front lines of the “movement” in Bridgeport.

The Moral Collapse of Education Reform

In 1954 the U. S. Supreme Court declared 9-0 that separate schools based on race are inherently unequal. That decision launched the American Civil Rights Movement, and it provided a moral and legal foundation for civil rights gains among women, the disabled, English language learners, and the LGBT communities.

Now six decades hence, the U. S. has a Secretary of Education admits to having a "Rosa Parks moment" while watching the Hollywood documentary, Waiting for Superman, which celebrates the virtues of black children schooled in segregated total compliance testing camps run by white CEOs and staffed by white temporary missionaries with no professional teacher preparation.

At the same time, the black civil rights leadership has been hijacked, emasculated, and corrupted by growing numbers of neoliberal self-serving traitors like Howard Fuller, Cory Booker, Floyd Flake, Kevin Chavous, and Rod Paige.

In Massachusetts, we have the best and whitest law firms in Boston planning to go to court to force unlimited expansion opportunities for segregated corporate reform schools as an affirmation of their civil rights priorities.

In New York we have white moms calling for more testing to further label, sort, and segregate, and for more charter schools to warehouse black and brown children whose poverty distinguishes their test scores from those of white middle class children, whose advantages have been preserved by the racist sorting machine.

In Washington, we have washed up bureaucrats like Peter Cunningham confessing a bankruptcy of imagination and will to keep alive the legacy of Dr. King and Thurgood Marshall.  How can someone with any functional moral compass intact support another generation of racist accountability practices as the best we can do to realize educational equality?  What kinds of capitulation and cowardice have infected our society, that such utterances can be considered as anything but insane?

Document Dump on Rudd's Privatization Effort at University of Memphis

Last updated January 25

Since being promoted from Provost to President of the University of Memphis, at the behest of Governor Haslam, the Hydes, and and their plutocrat club, the corporate insider, David Rudd, has been fixated on austerity measures and privatization of the university.

His favorite crackpot scheme of the moment involves bringing in a New York corporation to offer minimal "broken windows" temp teacher preparation to serve the children in Memphis who need the most experienced and professionally prepared teachers.

This would represent an experimental step toward a charter university model.

University faculty members have not been enthused.

Below is a summary of finding from public records documents.  Prepared by University of Memphis associate professor, Mate Wierdl, I have edited parts of the summary.


by Mate Wierdl

The main source of the findings below is a PDF file, which is a scanned compendium of public record documents that were obtained via a FOIA request in November. They cover the period June-November, 2014.  The contained documents are arranged in chronological order except the last document which is dated June 3.

http://thales.memphis.edu/mw/relay.pdf

(I refer to this source as S, and will make references as "S, page 22.")

Findings

The plan is that students, from all departments, will be recruited, via a professional ad campaign, to take part in the Relay program after their sophomore year.  After a student leaves her home department, she will take part in a one year teacher "internship" (as it's nowadays called), and will end up graduating from University College.  In other words, the teacher training program will try to cannibalize (not my word, as you will see) our majors.  One problem with this is that under the new budget model SRI, departments will get their $ based on the number of graduates they produce.  Every student, then, going to Relay will represent a loss of funding for other departments.

The program will cost $5 million per year to the University.  Relay will have full autonomy over the program, and they will  handle this taxpayers' $5 million without apparent accountability.  This the very essence of what they call privatization: public money goes into corporate hands without public scrutiny about its spending and without added benefit to the public.

The University will provide space and maintenance of facilities without charge.  Meanwhile, a professor in the math department is on the verge of giving back his half a million NSF grant, since the University couldn't find a space for him). 

The millions (about $20 million) to be provided by donors to the program during the first two years will pass through the university without any overhead, even though the University demands hefty accounting fees for other grant money coming through the university.

Here are some of the highlights from the source.

Professional marketing will take place to recruit majors from other departments (students personal data will be made available for this purpose)

S, page 40, Section titled "Structured campus engagement"

In addition to the upfront professional campaign, ongoing cultivation and recruitment strategies will be conducted on the University of Memphis campus. Ongoing campus-based outreach will include multiple forms of communication and informational sessions encouraging students to explore this pathway into teaching.

Targeted marketing and outreach, particularly to the sophomore class and with a focus on specific candidate pools (e.g., STEM, Honors students), will be conducted through similar on-campus channels as those for the campus-based-ontreach.

S, page 41, last paragraph

In addition, a one-time investment of up to $2M over the first two years of the program is envisioned to support the professional marketing campaign and candidate cultivation activities to encourage service through this innovative program. This funding would cover the development of the content and messaging for all marketing and communications related to this program, website development, professional agency fees, and media campaigns (e.g., social media, viral video, etc.) that aim to effectively reach high school students and first- and second-year students at the University of Memphis (and other colleges) and attract them to this new teacher preparation program at the University of Memphis.

Students will not graduate from home departments but from University College.

S, Page 44, Secion a.

Students who successfully complete the core program will be eligible to receive 30 credits (or the equivalent credits for one-quarter of the required courses for graduation from the University of Memphis). These credits will count towards graduation from the University of Memphis with a Bachelor in Liberal Studies awarded by University College.

The program will compete with the existing teacher training program, and the president knows this well.

S, Page 80

What happens to the current teacher education program? Are the current players on campus ready for a pretty radical new entity that will be “competing” and possibly cannibalizing their students/revenue?

S, Page 47

The success of the new teacher preparation program likely will lead to a material decline in demand for the current teacher preparation program and the University is prepared to manage this transition.

Relay program's planning was done in secret (reminder: we found out about the program from the Commercial Appeal)

S, Page 21, Email from Ed Dean Rakow to Legal Counsel Murry

When can we meet to discuss the status of this and what I am allowed to tell concerned faculty?

The president is asking ex-president Martin [Governor Haslam's mentor] how to "convince" faculty that the relay program is not competing with theirs [knowing full well, it will compete and may cannibalize it, as we saw above. Faculty trying to find out about the secretly planned relay program are called "loud voices."]

S, Page 61, president's email quoted in an email by ex-president Martin

2) needing to coordinate in some fashion with the College of Education faculty that this is a complimentary program (i.e. an urban teacher prep program to pair with the suburban work they're currently doing) not a competing one with the College, otherwise they'll likely see it as an "outside" program in direct competition. We'd need to coordinate with them a bit so a few loud voices don't drown out the good work and overshadow the effort.

No overhead fees for the donors' millions of dollars

S, Page 66, email from the President

2. The pass through on philanthropy dollars, with no recovery or over-head charges by the U of M ..

The above references are just samples.  Further documentation is required to determine the details of the proposed budget, salaries, university support, and other departmental sacrifices.

Investigators are combing records to figure out the exact responsible parties for this apparent intentional violation of shared governance at the University and to uncover the motivation and driving forces behind the Relay program.  

A wider issue than having a private company running a "department" on campus at our expense is the recent outsourcing of university functions to private companies: recruiting, web design, temp workers, etc.  In other words, the apparent privatization of higher education---arriving at the University of Memphis at the same President Rudd moves in.

Ravitch Surrenders to Another Generation of High Stakes Tests

I posted yesterday on the head-spinning news that has placed the majority of one-time ostensible opponents of high stakes testing on the side of corporate education reformists who, of course, support another generation of the same racist and classist tests that have been used to divide and colonize public schools for the poor, and to impose another generation of "broken windows" schooling.

What has sent AFT, NEA, and NPE scurrying into the tent of Arne Duncan and Lamar Alexander was an offer an keep high stakes testing, once in 3-5, 6-8, and 9-12.  This morning Ravitch posted her official letter of surrender to Lamar Alexander, reminding him of what a small "d" democratic saint he really is and letting him know that she supports Option 1 of NCLB 2.0.  

Besides preserving high stakes testing at the federal level, Option 1 also encourages states to continue annual state testing for school closure and charter expansion purposes.  

In fact, Option 1 consecrates states' rights to test those poor and Negro children who can't afford private school as much as they see fit, without any federal intervention possible.  Option 1, in fact, will increase testing for most states.

In finally, finally making her allegiances clear, Ravitch will no doubt lead enough liberals into Alexander's arms to make his high stakes testing plan the one with the best chance to prevail.  

What is most interesting, though totally expected, is the obfuscation that Ravitch creates in her letter about the role of NAEP.  In one paragraph, Ravitch says that NAEP provides all the federal testing we need, and in another, she clearly endorses Option 1, which will keep Common Core testing at three different times between grades 3 and 12.  

Those who don't read the letter closely might believe that Ravitch is only supporting NAEP testing.  That is not the case.  She has decided to pile in with Randi, Lily, Monty, and the rest of the appeasement crowd and to drive this clown car right over the cliff.  

Why was surrender the first option when the embattled corporate enemy wanted to negotiate?  You will have to ask those who chose to give up the fight just when we were starting to win.  

At least now we know who we can count on to conserve the status quo.  In the words of Diane Ravitch this morning,

Conservatives are not fire-breathing radicals who seek to destroy community and tradition. Conservatives conserve, conservatives believe in incremental change, not in upheaval and disruption.

Who would dare expect the end of high stakes testing?  Some radical, I suppose.

AFT and NEA's Politics of Appeasement and Capitulation

At a time when parents and teachers and students have begun to make an impact on bringing an end to the education genocide that began in earnest in 2002 with NCLB, the corporate unions and their chief enabler, Diane Ravitch, have decided that their places at (or under) the Corporate Education table have to be protected, testing resistance be damned.

Evidence: AFT has joined the corporate think tank, Center for American Regress, to whole-heartedly embrace the Arne Duncan of state testing in grades 3-8 and once in high school, PLUS "grade-span" testing, which will happen within 3-5, 6-8, and 9-12.  In short, the testing scheme will have expanded if AFT and NEA have their way.

The statement can be found here, but below is a clip with a couple of comments:

We propose that in order to inform instruction, to provide parents and communities information about whether students are working at grade level or are struggling, and to allow teachers to diagnose and help their students, the federal requirement for annual statewide testing in grades 3-8 and once in high school should be maintained. 

. . . . However, we also believe it is critical to relieve the unintended yet detrimental pressure of high-stakes tests by basing federal accountability on a robust system of multiple measures. While these systems should include assessment results, states should only be required to include tests taken once per grade span—once in elementary school, once in middle school, and once in high school—in their school accountability systems. These systems should also include high school graduation rates at the high school level and other academic measures. While academic indicators should be substantial factors, states should also—as some are doing currently— include qualitative criteria such as school-quality reviews, climate and safety measures, success of students on college-preparation curricula, and/or measures of social and emotional learning. 

So look for a push by the Seligman/Duckworth crapologists who are selling the grit and self-control snake oil as "social and emotional learning."  Does it work?  Ask the Army.  Think KIPP grade cards for "performance character" as another data point. (See example below).

All accountability systems should be designed to help all students succeed and to identify and target interventions to schools with large achievement gaps or large numbers of low-performing, disadvantaged groups. The lowest-performing schools and districts should have to implement research-based, robust, and supportive interventions tailored to the needs of each school and community and be held account- able for doing so. 

In effect, then, the privatization by whatever lucrative means can be dreamed up will continue as Broad, Duncan, and Gates have planned--all with the blessing of the "resistance."

The Case Against the Kevin Huffmans of the World

Kevin Huffman was an English major at Swarthmore in the late 80s and never studied child development, pedagogy, history/philosophy of education, or any of the other subjects that are now viewed as irrelevant and even harmful to education policy know-nothings like Arne Duncan and, of course, Kevin Huffman.

Considerations of child psychology, historical contexts, and ethical teaching practices are anathema to the new generation of Gradgrinds and McChoakumchilds who make lucrative careers by applying antiquated business and management techniques within a profession that was once focused on child growth, development, and learning.

   

After graduation, Huffman taught for two years in the early 90s as a TFA recruit before going on to law school at NYU. A few years later Huffman returned to TFA as an attorney, where he occupied himself as Mr. Michelle Rhee until the billionaire boys got him placed as Commissioner of Education in Tennessee.

Today Huffman resides over one of the most retrograde departments of education in America, implacably fixated on bullying and harassing higher test scores from children and educators, whatever the cost to child welfare, parents, teachers, communities. In the absence of such higher test scores, poor children who don’t produce them are regularly segregated in corporate reform schools and their teachers replaced by arrogant fascists-in-training like Kevin Huffman and Michelle Rhee.

The CorpEd Model that Huffman resides over in Tennessee accepts child human rights abuses as a matter of course and the cost of doing business.  Huffman and his band of ethically-blinkered lieutenants display all the intolerant, insensitive, sadistic, arrogant, and domineering characteristics of bullies anywhere.

Now if you are a parent or teacher of children who display the following characteristics during the high stakes testing season, you could easily mistake them as victims of bullying, which this list of symptoms actually reflects.  

The fact that victims of bullying and victims of test abuse show the same signs should tell us all something, all except the irresponsible, controlling, and blaming bunch of morally repugnant fools at the your state and federal departments of education.

•      Not wanting to go to school

•      Complaints of headaches or stomachaches

•      Anxiety

•      Sadness

•      Lack of self-esteem

•      Sudden drop in school performance

•                       Trouble sleeping or eating

Below is the State of Tennessee’s own definitions of bullying and harassment, which should be enough to dismiss and prosecute the entire Department, the State Board, and the Governor. 

Bullying

Bullying is defined as unwanted, aggressive behavior that involves a real or perceived power imbalance. The behavior is repeated, or has the potential to be repeated, over time. The imbalance of power involves the use of physical strength, access to embarrassing information, or popularity to control or harm others.

Harassment

Harassment is any unwelcome conduct based on a protected class under the federal civil rights laws that is severe, pervasive or persistent and creates a hostile environment that interferes with or limits a student's ability to participate in or benefit from services, activities, or opportunities offered by a school. Harassment meets one or more of the following criteria: is an act directed at one or more students that is received as harmful or embarrassing; is directed at one or more students; substantially interferes with educational opportunities, benefits, or programs of one or more students; substantially affects the ability of a student to participate in or benefit from the school district’s educational programs or activities by placing the student in reasonable fear of physical harm or by causing emotional distress; is based on a student’s actual or perceived distinguishing characteristic, or is based on an association with another person who has or is perceived to have any distinguishing characteristics; is repeated over time – is severe, persistent, and pervasive; causes mental duress, or psychological trauma to the victim.

The good news is that this form of official human rights abuse is about to come to a screeching halt.  Parents everywhere are in the process of demanding an end to such wasteful, harmful, and unethical practices.  Within the next five years, the Huffmans of the world will be as forgotten and irrelevant as Rod Paige and Margaret Spellings.  The task is to make sure that humane schools will be created to replace today’s high tech antiquated chain gangs.

Click here for Tennessee Opt Out info.