NCLB Waivers Allow Hostile Corporate Takeovers of Schools

Thanks to Stan Karp for this compilation:

Lawmakers seek to end N.J. takeover of schools

The Record

Paterson would gain control of its public school system for the first time in 21 years under legislation introduced by Democrats that also would limit future state takeovers to five years, lawmakers announced Friday. "It's time for the state to admit that the prolonged takeover of a local school district is a failed experiment, and it's time to return the school districts that have languished under state control back to the people in those school districts," said state Sen. Ronald Rice, D-Essex, who has sponsored the bill with Nellie Pou, D-North Haledon.

N.J. education advocates to Duncan: State's waiver plan is a disaster.

Darcie Cimarusti, NewsWorks

Regional Achievement Centers (RACs) have been set up all over the state, with some of the funding coming from private donors such as the Broad Foundation, to oversee and "turn around" the Priority and Focus Schools, and potentially take over the management of the schools that don't improve within the two year time limit.

School Shutdowns Trigger Growing Backlash

Education Week (subscription required)

As school closures are increasingly used as a remedy to budget woes and a solution to failing schools in many cities, debates are intensifying about their effect on student performance and well-being, on district finances, and on communities and the processes districts use to choose which schools will be shuttered. Student and parent groups in Chicago, the District of Columbia, New York, Newark, N.J., and Philadelphia gathered in Washington late last month to call for a moratorium on school closings and filed separate complaints with the U.S. Department of Education's office for civil rights.  The advent of the federally funded School Improvement Grant, or SIG, program in 2009, brought school closings into the spotlight as one of four turnaround strategies districts could use to revive struggling schools. Only 18 of the more than 3,700 closures from 2009 to 2011 were financed through SIG, according to the federal Education Department, but the program's emphasis on dramatically restructuring traditional public schools is apparent in many districts that are pushing ahead with large-scale closures.

NCLB Waivers and Accountability

Center on Education Policy

The Next Step: Monitoring the Implementation and Impact of Waivers

If the NCLB waivers stay in place, the next few years will be characterized by policy churn. A majority of states will be experimenting with diverse approaches to accountability using waivers, while other states will be maintaining their current systems as the 2014 timeline draws near. During this period, it will be critical for ED, states, and independent groups to monitor how well the accountability systems in waiver states are working, what unexpected issues arise, how well these systems are understood by the people they affect, and what impact they have on student achievement and school performance, among other issues.

What Impact Will NCLB Waivers Have on the Consistency, Complexity, and Transparency of State Accountability Systems? (PDF format, 268 KB) *

Accountability Issues to Watch under NCLB Waivers (PDF format, 80.5 KB) *

Dear Secretary Duncan,

Published in the National Journal

Letter to Duncan: N.J. Education Standards Are Hurting Minority Students

by Doris Nhan

Updated: October 16, 2012 | 1:05 p.m.
October 16, 2012 | 12:52 p.m.

The new accountability system implemented by New Jersey’s Education Department is disproportionately damaging for districts with lower-income minority students than schools with majority white students, according to a letter sent on Monday to U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan.

The letter, signed by a coalition of educators, administrators and civil-rights groups, alleges that the No Child Left Behind waiver, which New Jersey received in February, resulted in new standards put in place by the state Education Department.

The new state system targets certain “Priority” and “Focus” districts, which are threatened with closings and conversions to charter schools if they do not meet certain achievement outcomes. The classification, the letter charges, disproportionately includes school districts that serve predominantly low-income black and Hispanic student populations and would “reinforce racial and economic segregation and inequity in New Jersey’s public schools.”

In addition, the letter says, the state standards have classified “Reward” schools that are eligible for financial bonuses, which primarily include wealthier school districts with higher white student populations.

According to an analysis by the Education Law Center, an equal-opportunity advocacy group in New Jersey that co-signed the letter, 97 percent of “Priority” schools and 72 percent of “Focus” schools are largely Hispanic and black. In comparison, just 20 percent of students at  “Reward” schools have students of color.

The Obama administration began issuing waivers releasing states from core NCLB requirements after it became clear that Congress had stalled on reauthorizing the act. To be approved for the waiver, states must present their own education-reform plans, including their own accountability standards.

Since July, the administration has granted waivers to 32 states and the District of Columbia.

The coalition asks Duncan to temporarily suspend New Jersey’s waiver until the administration can review the state’s plans.

Here is the full text of the letter.

October 15, 2012

Three Good Anwers to Poisonous Waiver Plan: No Thanks, I Said No, and Hell No

This came to the EPATA listserv.   A letter by Coos Bay, Oregon teacher, Michelle Newsum:

I am (partially) in agreement with the Oregonian editorial board. Oregon should not pursue a NCLB waiver.  Instead we should refuse to comply with No Child Left Behind or Race to the Top and demand complete restructuring of ESEA.

School was a much better place for children before NCLB.  Kids were learning to read with great children's literature, they experienced hands-on science, they wrote across the curriculum, and math was constructive and meaningful. Music, drama and art were woven into daily studies. Class sizes were smaller. Teachers focused on individual students' strengths, interests and needs. Educators collaborated to refine their craft, and teachers enjoyed their important work.

With the test and punish policies of NCLB and Race to the Trough, frightened school districts have turned classrooms into test-prep centers.  Many children experience days full of scripted curriculum---including packets of mind-numbing worksheets and endless practice tests to prepare for the "real" tests.

Under NCLB we have spent billions of dollars on testing.Under Race to the Top we will spend billions more for what Dr. Stephen Krashen (USC educational researcher) calls, "More testing than ever before seen on the face of this planet."

The National Academy of Sciences states, "There is no research base to support high stakes testing."Yet 'reformers' continue to push excessive and expensive testing to (line publishers' pockets and) discover which schools are 'failing' and punish them. (This, by the way, hasn't worked. Reconstituted and charter schools are not benefiting our kids. Indeed, according to a recent Stanford study, 83% of charter schools did not perform better than public schools.)

So these oppressive changes have been made to improve test scores.  Has it worked?  The Oregonian claims the law "has delivered, pushing schools to focus on difficult-to-teach children, to try harder, to do more for them." However, as educational historian Diane Ravitch notes, the rate of improvement on the NAEP (National Assessment of Educational Progress) slowed after the passage of NCLB. This decrease was especially pronounced among the neediest students.

Of course we need some tests. The most useful and accurate are those assessments and portfolios created and kept by teachers to inform instruction and track growth over time.  Dr. Krashen suggests we also improve and keep the NAEP.

The billions of dollars saved from unbounded testing and carrot-and-stick reforms could then be used for real solutions such as:

 * Reducing class size

(This is one of four K-12 reforms backed by rigorous evidence according to the Institute of Educational Sciences [Research arm of the Department of Education]

 * Providing prenatal care for low income women

(Low income women are currently unlikely to receive adequate prenatal care. They have a high incidence of low birth weight babies. Low birth weight babies have a much higher incidence of learning disabilities)

 * Funding public, school and classroom libraries

(Most children in high poverty areas have limited access to books)

 * Providing quality professional development for teachers
 * Including teachers, parents and students in legislative decision making

Michelle Newsum
Teacher

New York Times: Corporate Education Reform's Newspaper of Record

Brent Staples of the NYTimes Editorial Board has put his own unique brand of cynical and disingenuous stupidity on the NCLB waiver plan:

The 2002 No Child Left Behind Act focused the country’s attention on school reform as never before, but the law is far from perfect. The Obama administration is wise to address its flaws, since Congress is four years overdue in updating the law.

The Department of Education’s plan gives states that agree to several reforms — including stringent teacher evaluation systems and new programs for overhauling the worst schools — an exemption from many of the law’s requirements. It would permit the states to change the way they evaluate most schools for the purpose of compliance, allowing indicators other than just reading and math scores to be considered. And it would lift the law’s provision that all students be proficient in math and reading by 2014, which was never going to happen anyway because there were so many loopholes.. . . .

This is a masterful piece of dissembling. Notice that Staples does not mention the "stringent teacher evaluation systems" will be based principally on test scores in math and reading and every other subject in every grade, at least twice a year (we're looking for "growth," remember).  And notice that "new programs for overhauling the worst schools" does not mention the fact that Obama and Duncan have given new impetus to the charter "turnaround" option and have now given approval to New Orleans type "Recovery School Districts" that are based on replacing urban public schools with segregated corporate welfare charters at the rate of 5 percent of schools per year.  Ten years equals 50% of American schools, which is just about the percentage of schoolchildren attending urban schools.

Notice, too, that Staples does not mention that this waiver plan only lifts the 2014 proficiency demand if states are willing to drink the poisonous kool-aid brewed up by the oligarchs and hedge funders to corporatize schools.  Notice, too, that the Staples never acknowledges, even now, the impossibility of the 2014 targets, preferring to pretend that "loopholes" are to blame for not achieving the impossible.

And so Staples opines that Obama is wise to address the law's flaws, even as the Times is short on specifics about what those flaws are or were.  Could Staples mean the flaws that were pointed out in his newspaper, the New York Times, even before the "law" ever became law?  From the NYTimes on August 13, 200, in an opinion piece by scholars Staiger and Kane:

. . . .The trouble with this law in the making is that both the House and Senate versions would disrupt successful reforms that are already under way in many schools around the country. Unless Congress can agree to rewrite the formula for pinpointing a failing school, as some states and some members of Congress are now urging, this education bill — the most ambitious federal initiative in education in three decades and a centerpiece of President Bush's plans for his presidency — is likely to end as a fiasco.

The central flaw is that both versions of this bill place far too much emphasis on year-to-year changes in test scores. Under either, every school in America would have to generate an increase in test scores each and every year or face penalties like having to allow its students to transfer to another public school, being converted into a charter school or being taken over by a private contractor. . . . .

These "flaws" are the ones that Staples and the rest of Editorial Board ignored for almost 10 years as the public schools were blown up every year in every state in order to usher in the era of the segregated corporate welfare charter schools that the Times' Wall Street patrons were and are supporting.  Do you, Mr. Staples and the hedge funders who help you churn out your propaganda, remember the New York Times interview with state officials on July 17, 2001, wherein Missouri Assistant Commissioner, Stephen Barr, called the NCLB proficiency targets "an impossible dream"?  Do you remember the boatloads of research on the explosive effects of this most damaging "bill" that you ignored for the past 10 years?  Do you remember that the New York Times never reported the CREDO study that exposed the fact that only 17 percent of charters nationwide have higher test scores than matched public schools???

With these cheap charter chain gangs free now to expand without restriction in many states, could this be the reason that it is time to stop the school comparisons and begin the "growth model" era, thus making the poverty and opportunity gaps even more invisible than they are today with an NCLB system that even Brent Staples finally admits is flawed.