Who is Cambridge Education?

by Defend Public Education

January 10, 2017

On September 15, 2016, the Philadelphia School Reform Commission approved a $200,000 contract with Cambridge Education for investigation of the cash-strapped Philadelphia School District that stated:
 

RESOLVED, that the School Reform Commission authorizes the School District of Philadelphia, through its Superintendent or his designee, to execute, deliver and perform a contract with Cambridge Education, to develop, manage, and execute a comprehensive School Quality Review process, to gather data and develop qualitative reports on school quality and to engage the school community and gather community input, for an amount not to exceed $200,000, for the period commencing September 16, 2016 through June 30, 2017. 

The description the SRC provided of the Resolution said:

The information gathered during the School Quality  Review process will be used to inform recommendations on appropriate measures to be taken to promote sustained school improvement through the System of Great Schools process. The vendor's purpose in the School Quality Review Process will be to provide additional on-the ground data to inform decision-making. All final recommendations on the investments and interventions to be made in schools will be made by the District.

See SRC Resolution A-3 for the full description of this resolution.

Since the September 15^th, 2016 meeting, the SRC has held hearings at its eleven Priority Schools. They were deemed low performing based on test scores. All are in low-income communities. No consideration of the economic status of the student population or lack of resources for the schools due to underfunding was considered.

The SRC will look at five options for these eleven public schools:

•  Entering the school into the District’s Turnaround Network
• Merging the school with a nearby high-quality school

•     Engaging a contract partner

• Initiating an evidence-based plan for academic improvement
• Restarting the school

Overseeing the SRC’s Priority Schools meetings is Chris Finn of Cambridge Education. The leadership page of Cambridge Education shows they are all about business, and have no background in education. Joining Cambridge in the Philadelphia Priority Schools hearings is Educators 4 Exellence, a corporate education reform group funded by the Gates Foundation.

According to its website, Cambridge has 350 consultants:

We work with academies, schools and colleges to develop appropriate strategies to bring about sustainable and embedded practice, improving life opportunities for future generations. We recognise all educational institutions have unique needs and we collaborate with you to develop tailored approaches to some of today’s urgent questions.

A central part of their school reviews is “educator accountability” which includes a great deal of “delivering, supporting, and monitoring the implementation of improvement strategies across classrooms, schools, and districts.” Of its long-range strategy, Cambridge Education says:

As education systems grow in independence and sophistication, we can help to track and manage them. Wherever you are, we are your local company – but with global backing.

Cambridge Education’s recent activities in the U.S. are listed on its parent company Mott MacDonald website.

Our education experts at Cambridge Education worked with Springfield Public Schools to provide 130 administrators and district staff with training to meet the new Massachusetts Educator Evaluator Rubric and supporting the design and implementation of a curriculum alignment plan. The District is now able to provide more targeted professional development customised to requirements of individuals.

For Hillsborough County Public Schools we helped implement the Empowering Effective Teachers initiative, requiring that teachers are observed by administrators, peer evaluators and mentors. In 2013, we collected and analysed over 2,500 lesson observation scores with the resulting analysis being used by the county to help inform its decision making.

Through a partnership with Dr Ronald Ferguson of Harvard University, Cambridge Education delivered The Tripod Project®, a system for US educator evaluation using staff and student surveys. These surveys have been an integral part of the Gates-funded Measures of Effective Teaching project, which is improving results in English and Mathematics.

Cambridge Education is based in England with international offices including a subsidiary in the US. Click on the map points to see its offices internationally and in the U.S. Cambridge Education’s goals in the U.S. are described on its parent company Mott MacDonald’s website. The description follows the usual privatization stealth method of corporate education reformers of speaking in vague generalities, but never being specific information about the privatization objective for public schools.

The British website British Expertise says:

Cambridge Education has been in existence for more than 30 years, and was originally a joint venture between Sir M MacDonald and the University of Cambridge. We still maintain close links with the University, but are now part of the Health and Education arm of Mott MacDonald, a major, international multi-disciplinary consultancy company with more than 12,000 employees worldwide. Cambridge Education itself has over 160 staff members at its HQ in Cambridge and 220 worldwide, of which about a third are educational professionals.

The Mott MacDonald Group Executive Board

A current report of Mott MacDonald says it employs over 16,000 people in 150 countries. Education, with its subsidiary Cambridge Education, is only one sector of its portfolio. Others include aerospace, bridges, buildings communications, environment, health, industry, international development, city development, oil and gas, power, railways, transportation, water.

The Our Hertage page of Mott MacDonald Group highlights some of the companies developed by MMG.

Mott MacDonald Group’s current projects in North America says they are expecting “unprecedented growth in North America.”
 

The article “Transforming teacher education and learning” shows that they are aiming to become an international leader in digital learning. They are using their Raspberry Pi system and tablets to “demonstrate the value of technological resources and digital learning in teacher education, helping colleges see the value of embedding these practices into their teaching curriculum.”

Members of the Alliance for Philadelphia Public Schools attended many of the Cambridge Education focus group meetings for the Priority Schools. In their APPS Review of Cambridge Education Reports on Priority Schools they concluded:

After attending several focus group meetings at six of the eleven schools designated by the Hite administration as Priority Schools, after reviewing Cambridge Education’s contract with the district, and after closely reviewing the Cambridge final reports on the eleven schools, there is no other conclusion for us to come to: the Cambridge reports cannot be considered reliable on any level, including anecdotally.

Ken Derstine Update on Philadelphia CorpEd Reform

No one does it better than Ken: Mark Gleason Turns 'Dump the Losers' Into a Pseudoscience

Colonial Philadelphia, or Colonized?

from Ken Derstine:

Is the School District of Philadelphia a colony of the state of Pennsylvania?

by Ken Derstine

February 20, 2014

Parents of Philadelphia students and prospective students should know their right to choose a school for their children is under attack. Several weeks ago the SRC held round table discussions about Universal Enrollment. Participants were asked their opinion about a system where parents would go to a central location when they wanted to choose a school. Parents would be directed to a few selections that an administrator pointed them towards. At the meeting and in the posted notes about this meeting, there was overwhelming opposition to having a Universal Enrollment system.

When the expansion of charters began over the last ten years they were touted as giving parents choice. Universal Enrollment does the opposite. It takes away choice and gives the choice to a bureaucrat in an office who does not even know the child but is looking at a spreadsheet. The overriding concern is not the interest of the child, but the demand of the market, whether this be a traditional, charter, or parochial school.

We are told that we are now in the “listening phase” of implementation of Universal Enrollment. First of all, at the beginning of September, 2013, it was already announced by Mr. Mark Gleason of the Philadelphia School Partnership, the corporate group brought to Philadelphia by “philanthropies” to oversee privatization of public schools, in testimony before City Council, that plans for Universal Enrollment have been made. So this meeting a few weeks ago was just an attempt to sell to parents on what has already been decided by the SRC. In Newark, New Jersey corporate education reformers are already farther along with the same Universal Enrollment plan and it is one of the issues that parents have been opposing which led to the arrest of a parent leader who tried to post flyers opposing the turning of community schools into charters. The administration of Superintendent Cami Anderson has said that the public will not even be told the computer algorithm which is being used to place the children.

We have been through the listening phase before. At the beginning of last year, Dr. Hite and SRC members held community meetings about the proposed closing of schools. For hours, students, parents and teachers lined up to plead for their schools. When the vote was finally taken on March 7th, it was clear that the decision had been made to close most of the schools before there were any community meetings and 24 schools were closed in June. These meetings were little more than a facade of democracy and now the same method is repeated with Universal Enrollment. It is clear that despite community opposition the community will be ignored.

Ever since the state takeover the of the Philadelphia School District in 2001 there has been an ever increasing colonization of the School District by the state. The community has been systematically excluded from decisions about schools and treated as little more than customers and the students as products. Like a medieval village under siege, the School District has been invaded by outside corporate interests and gradually starved of resources even as charter schools are expanded. A few weeks ago the High School for Creative and Performing Arts announced that they may not be able to put on the Spring Show again this year, like they were not able to last year, because they were short of funds. In one day, the community raised $10,000 so they could have their Spring Show this year.

At the same time, the Performing Arts Charter School, a high school of the String Theory charter chain,  was running full page color ads in community newspapers encouraging high school students to enroll in their school in September. There is obviously no shortage of funds there. This school is part of a 2012 $2 million grant for the charter chain from the Philadelphia School Partnership. Traditional schools cannot run ads because they do not have the funds. Teachers must spend hundreds and even thousands of dollars to have the supplies they need to give their students a bare bones education.

Traditional schools have 14 librarians in the entire District. Nursing has been cut in half so most schools have a nurse one or two times a week. High schools with 3000 students have two full time counselors so students must wait weeks to get help with college applications. Yet at the same time we see ads for charters boasting that that have nurses and counselors every day and fully staffed and supplied libraries. 

In August, right before the opening of schools, when the School District was in crisis with the layoff of over 3800 employees, the federal government advanced $45 million to ease the crisis. Governor Corbett held this money up in an attempt to pressure the teachers into making concessions. He only relented after the outcry after the death of student Laporsha Massey which may have been caused by the lack of a nurse in the school who would have recognized the asthma symptoms and would have told the parents to get Laporsha to the hospital or called 911 herself. This holding up of funds for the education of thousands of children for a political agenda is more serious than the trouble New Jersey Governor Christie is in for holding up traffic on the George Washington Bridge for a political vendetta.

It is ironic that this colonization of our School District is happening in the city where, a little more than 237 years ago, the American colonies declared their independence from England. This document has been an inspiration to democratic movements all over the world ever since.

We are very familiar with its opening sentence: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” But do we know the rest?

That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.

That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.

It is time that Philadelphia schools be returned to the people of Philadelphia. We do not consent to the privatization of our public schools! We need an elected school board with taxing powers so we can fix the schools for our children and the future of our city. 

A few weeks ago in the Washington Post, James Meredith, the Civil Rights pioneer who risked life and limb to integrate the University of Mississippi in 1962 issued an ‘American Child’s Education Bill of Rights’. His reason for issuing this document? He said,

We are losing millions of our children to inferior schools and catastrophically misguided and ineffective so-called education reforms. Our schools are being destroyed by politics, profit, greed and lies. Instead of evidence-based practices, money has become the engine of education policy, and our schools are being hijacked by politicians, non-educators and for-profit operators. Parents, teachers, citizens and community elders must arm ourselves with the best evidence and take back control of our children’s public education before it is too late. We all must work together to improve our public schools, not on the basis of profit or politics, but on the basis of evidence, and on the basis of love for America’s children.

That Sucking Sound in Philadelphia

From Ken Derstine:

DN Editorial: CONTROL ISSUES: Is the state using charter rules to help kill Philly's school district? | Philadelphia Daily News

Last week, the School District of Philadelphia confirmed what it feared back in November: It is facing an extra $25 million in unbudgeted costs associated with increased enrollment in charter schools. Charters have enrolled 1,600 more students than allowed by their agreements with the district.

As if we needed another example, this situation is a perfect illustration of the lack of a coherent strategy for public education in the state.

Although the School Reform Commission authorizes charter schools, the SRC has no authority to impose enrollment caps on schools, which means that they have no control over the costs associated with charters.

Cut Testing Budget and Hire School Nurses

Hiring school nurses, improving the health and well being of children in the poorest neighborhoods who need eyeglasses, dental care, and regular checkups, not to mention expensive medicine for asthma, would lead to higher test scores.

Will this incident in Philadelphia change policy?

It depends on how far Pearson and McGraw Hill and gang can keep their Golden Goose laying all those golden eggs as Common Core Standards are rolled in conjunction with the new market based, for profit education revolution.

In the real world, school nurses would be a better investment. But then again, only private school nurses are allowed to administer medical care. As the district manager in Philadelphia said, "nurses have to call 911, they can't administer care."

That's what I call separate and unequal. Oh, the good old days, when there was actually still a Constitution.

**************

After Philadelphia Asthma Death, Focus On School Staffing | CBS Philly

A 2012 state Health Department found that 17 percent of Philadelphia students experience asthma during their school years.

At nurse Peg Devine’s last school in downtown Philadelphia, the figure was 27 percent. She used to run a club called “Asthma-Busters” to teach more than 100 students how to manage their asthma. She transferred out two years ago when the nursing position was cut to part-time.

“When you don’t have the time to educate, it’s just heartbreaking. The kids will come in with an inhaler from their doctor’s office, and they don’t even know how to use it properly,” Devine said.And though the nurses train staff to be alert for medical emergencies, Devine said there are too few adults left in the schools to keep watch.

Education Carnage in the City of Brotherly Love

Now the slow starvation has become a complete denial of life support for Philadelphia’s public schools. - Ken Derstine, Philadelphia Education Crisis Highlights at pa.ed.crisis@gmail.com 

Here's a glimpse of what it looks like in cities and towns across the country as public schools starved for funds and resources are taken over and privatized by for profit charters. Different faces, different places, same story. 

Superintendent William R. Hite Jr. (center) said he wants to rehire more counselors once the district gets more money. (File Photo from Philadelphia Inquirer

Here's some reporting you won't find on the evening news. 

By Ken Derstine:

Editor Comment: Having attended Monday night’s School Reform Commission meeting, I have several observations I would like to share.

It is clear that the privatization juggernaut is moving full steam ahead unimpeded in Philadelphia. It feels like the corporate forces that have invaded Philadelphia are like a giant icebreaker plowing through the district unimpeded leaving us to futilely throw rocks at it as a protest.

The words “union contract” were not mentioned in the SRC meeting. If a stranger attended the SRC meeting, they would have no clue that there is a stalemate with the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers and the SRC is content to let the  school district employees twist in the wind with an uncertain future even has school employees must daily deal with horrendous conditions of huge class sizes over the contract limit and no counselors and other support staff. 

Outright violations of state and federal law are becoming routine in such areas as Special Education.

The meeting was poorly attended. Only twelve speakers signed up to speak and four of them did not attend. There were two excellent speakers, a leader of school counselors and a parent who shouted in the darkness to no affect. 

The counselor spoke of the absurd conditions the few remaining itinerant counselors must work under with no support whatsoever. Most serve eight schools and must go to two schools each day. Just the travel time of moving between two schools in the same day makes their job absurd. Each counselor is supposed to serve thousands of students. She mentioned that the counselors are given no laptops or cell phones to keep in contact with their schools and record information. 

Superintendent Hite picked up on this one comment to mumble something about maybe they could look into technology for the counselors. About the conditions the school must deal with since there are no counselors there was no comment. The parent voiced her frustration at parents being ignored and shut out of the any input into what is happening to the schools. There was not comment from the SRC. The demeanor of the SRC members was cold-hearted indifference and an attitude of we are on course, full steam ahead.

Most of the meeting was spent on business matters such as thirty-five minutes devoted to a discussion of which real estate tax abatement program would be best to save the district a million dollars (as if this made any difference in a district with a $300 million deficit). Multi-million dollar contracts were allocated for testing companies such as $4,259,115 to Pearson Learning and Renaissance Learning for technical support and staff development for “Universal Screeners for Response to Instruction and Intervention” (no public explanation given). The meeting was all about business and technology. Actual education was never mentioned.

Five years ago Superintendent Arlene Ackerman announced Imagine 2014. It was presented as some benign expansion of charters. It is now clear that this was a five-year plan for an undemocratic seizure of the public schools of the Philadelphia School District by private interests done in great secrecy and with deception. Since the state takeover in 2001, the Philadelphia pubic schools have been starved for funding even as the charter sector was increasingly built up, until we now arrive at this year’s “Doomsday budget”.

Now the slow starvation has become a complete denial of life support for Philadelphia’s public schools.

Education Secretary Arne Duncan infamously said the Hurricane Katrina was the best thing that ever happened to New Orleans because it allowed the privatization of New Orleans public schools which are now 90% charters. Eli Broad is notorious for saying, “Never let a crisis go to waste.” The difference between New Orleans and Philadelphia is that our crisis is completely man-made. This has been a crisis deliberately created by corporate education reform to advance a privatization agenda.

The only way to turn this around is for an informed citizenry to rise up against it. 

The problem in Philadelphia is that the majority of people are uninformed due to corporate media. Yesterday I linked an interview in the Philadelphia Inquirer with the head of the SRC Pedro Ramos. It was a pathetic pandering article praising him for the job he is doing despite being opposed by a vocal minority of teachers and students. This Inquirer column typifies the problem in Philadelphia. If people do not seek independent sources of information on the internet they are clueless about the reality of the disaster unfolding in Philadelphia public schools.

In the last few weeks the Philadelphia Inquirer has reduced its Opinion and letters pages by 50%. In its place we get journalism such as the interview with Ramos which can only be characterized as propaganda advancing a corporate agenda. In the case of philly.com, the owner of the Philadelphia Inquirer and Daily News, it must be kept in mind that one of the co-owners, H.F. “Gerry” Lenfest, is an outspoken supporter of charters. His son, Brook Lenfest, is heavily invested in the Mastery charter management company. In 2009, H.F. Lenfest’s Lenfest Foundation announced a $10 million matching grant to expand Teach for America in Philadelphia over ten years. TFA said it was “the largest grant offer a regional Teach for America program has ever received”.

This is the reason why I must continue to do the Pennsylvania Education Crisis Highlights digest. It is my attempt to shine a light into the darkness we are living in.

***************